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Imogyeran has lived with the old man Hyoran for quite a while now. Since unlike the Blueseva household, most rural houses do not hold own a calendar or a clock, his sense of time is relatively blurry, but he is aware of the fact that almost a year has passed since the young boy’s arrival at this barren barn.
In fact, today is February 13th 334 RPT, a single day before his first arrival at this place. In the meantime a lot has changed in this now not so shabby house of their’s.
The most immediate change is the addition of his new sister Mary or Maria Astaros Ashenwald, as they dubbed her.
Maria is a young Uzunku girl of a slightly younger age than Imogyeran, though her exact birthday is unknown. She is also slightly taller than the boy and a lot more talented in helping out on the farm and doing calculations for the group’s weekly grocery shopping trips down at the bazaar.
Her face is a round one, which is circled by somewhat unkempt chestnut-brown hair, that reaches down to the girl’s shoulders. Originally, Maria was only wearing lumps as her clothing while carrying a brown bracelet with an intricate design on it.
Hyoran however insisted on buying her some improved clothing(though Imog wanted to simply patch up her original clothing)
and she ended up with a light-blue overall and a pair of brown trousers in combination with some sturdy gloves for working on the field(she later got Imog to sew a red flower-pattern on the overall - Imog stitched his own hands a total of 24 times)
The bunch got the gloves with a discount under the pretext of reporting the new worker of their fields to their higher-up, or rather to report this to the local landlord. In exchange, the amount of crops required from them would be increased a bit and they would be given a larger field to manage.
The old man Hyoran found her in a similar manner, in which he found Imogyeran, the only difference being in the former acting a lot more natural than the latter, i.e. crying a lot more and keeping a large distance between them and Hyoran.
One thing led to another and the two kids built up a relationship of siblings and eventually Maria proactively proclaimed herself as Imogyeran’s sister and Hyoran’s niece, hence her taking on the family names of Ashenwald and Astaros.
Since Imog has a wide variety of (shallow) knowledge to teach her, Maria quickly came to study under him and unlike the former she possesses a high talent in a myriad of fields of research.
Her progress in martial arts as well as in economy is rapid and the girl quickly learns to take advantage of that knowledge to this family’s benefit.
There was one time in fall, where she haggled down a merchant on the bazaar using all types of negotiating tactics and got a 25% discount out of that.
To recall a more recent time:
A few weeks ago, Maria, while alone on an errand, met a pair of merchant and attendant, who were traveling through the Estican region. During their encounter, the lone girl was able to strike up a conversation with the two of them. It seemed like the two of them were from a different country judging by the boy’s expression of having a hard time on communicating with her and the slight accent from the voice of the master. Through their small-talk, the merchant apparently saw some potential in her and offered to take her in as a second disciple.
Needless to say, she declined but the meaning of such an invitation would not go unnoticed, even under the dense ears of Uncle Hyoran, who later told her about the crazy chance, she could have had.
To make a long story short, this incident was the focus of conversation inside house Astaros for the last few days and Maria’s brother got mighty jealous about the lack of attention directed at him, thus resulting in this morning’s wake-up-call.
But Maria is not the only change to the Astaros family:
The entire interior of this shack has been remodeled by the “Ashen Architect, Imogyeran the Great” into something truly magical.
In the first revision by the boy, the packed dirt, which represented this house’s ground, was given two additional layers, one net created out of barley strands and an additional stone layer, which tried to further insulate the earth from critters and warmth.
Now, the packed dirt has been compressed to one twelveth of its original size and is hard enough for a decent shovel to have a hard time digging into it. Also, the first two layers have been reworked to be a wide alternating area, which steadily layers the highly compressed dirt walls against a densely folded net of barley.
Additionally, Imogyeran has started to experiment with air pockets as another insulation method and is in the process of removing the Barley nets in their entirety in exchange for highly pressured air pockets.
The stones beneath the house, which were roughly clustered together like some kind of protective veil are now cleanly cut into a system of cubes, which in itself circles a sort of barrier around the house. On the stone surfaces, there are runes carved into, which help in keeping critters away, albeit only to a slight margin. Underneath the cubed circle, there is now a large square ground, which has been polished and cut properly and acts as the foundation to the entire building.
The house’s walls, which have first been made to have their wooden planks interconnect with each other, have been given additional stability by inserting small stone pillars from the ground inside the wood, where they would normally be invisible to the naked eye. Over time, the connection of these 4 walls have gotten really dense and there really is no further need to enhance their thermal capacity or aesthetics. Instead, Imogyeran focused on carving a couple of runes on the inside of the wood, camouflaging them like a rustic pattern from the inside, which in turn are providing extra stability for the wood, albeit only a slight amount.
Imog learned about the function, upsides and downsides of runes only about 6 months ago.
That is why his proficiency in rune carving is that low. Also, there is the fact, that he is less than impressed with the capabilities of the rune craftsmanship.
Runes, in essence, represent the written analogue to the spirit language. They are capable of exerting influence over the spirits under varying effects based on the person carving them.
A single rune contains a number of strokes, which indicate its power over the spirits as well as their specific property.
The influence over the spirits of a single rune grows exponentially with the number of strokes used in a rune; so does the amount of time spent on each stroke.
For reference, Imogyeran is capable of putting four strokes into a single rune, while the professionals are typically carving a single rune out of 8 to 10 strokes. A total amateur in
rune-crafting might be able to do anything between 1 and 3 strokes, though the amateurs, who are capable of 3 strokes, are hailed as talented people in the industry.
In this case, it would be unfair to say, that Imogyeran can be considered an amateur, since the field of runes and the field of spirit-channeling are interconnected with each other:
A lot of the same exercises, which a spirit-channeler has to go through, are also undergone by runesmith apprentices during their apprenticeship and beyond(typically starting upwards of 35 years with the exceptions ranging from 8 to 13, almost no middle ground)
The act of carving a rune goes as follows:
Step 1)
Empty your mind and flow into the same state of being, which you need to be to speak the language of the spirits.
Step 2)
Engage into communication with the surrounding spirits. Let the spirits tell you, what they are willing to do for you and influence them to be doing what you want to do.
Step 3)
Channel the spirit’s thoughts into your carving tool and carve them into the material of choice.
This act of engraving the spirit’s duties acts as a formal contract and exerts a binding influence over the spirits, which in turn creates the desired effect.
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Typically, the extend of the effect is varying widely from material to material. Materials such as metal, carbon or anything artificial show a far lower potency for rune enhancement and are thus not typically enhanced for combat purposes. In fact, any artificially processed material loses out highly in potency of being able to communicate or be used as a medium to communicate with the spirits.
Same goes to a lot of the natural ores, which can be found inside larger caves and dungeons and are typically used for metallurgy.
The best of these materials would be cut stone, which still shows some of the benefits of rune-crafting to a decent degree.
Regardless of the obvious demerits of using runes, Imogyeran simply used them because he was bored and wanted a better aesthetic for indoors.
Lastly, there is the roof. The roof of the house has been reworked entirely and now contains three main pillars, which rise from the ground in a straight line and support three cone-shaped roofs made of wood. The cones are made with the same techniques as the walls and have been hidden a bit by decorating the smooth surface with moss and grass, while the stone pillars inside the house were to be used for personal purposes.
Imogyeran has started connecting a durable rope between the pillars. For the next few weeks, he would have his rope dancing phase, where all he did was try to balance on the rope(with little success and fall) and put together a choreography for his rope act. However, he eventually got bored and the rope now hangs in the air without a bother. Sometimes the unusual family uses the rope as a deposit for clothes or other utility. The pillars have later been reworked to separate the house into three rooms, each room only separated by half a wall, meaning, that the three rooms are directly connected to each other. Hyoran was the one, who gave that idea due to him ‘not wanting the two kids separating and distancing themselves from him’. The latter readily agreed to his request.
Next, let’s go outside of the small shack and you will see a change as well.
Firstly, the pathway to Hyoran’s house has been smothered out and one can see a sort of
trample-path slithering its way towards the shack’s entrance, which is a now cleaned up
hazel-red wooden gate.
The outside of the shack has been painted by Maria into a combination of this color and the natural light-brown color of the wood itself.
She got the money for that from the next change.
Before the house, there spans a huge field, which is now thrice as big as it was before. Due to the increase in residents, the responsibility of the people has also increased. The increase in food given to the landlord as toll and taxes might have been proportional to the increase in land, but the excess food has been separately sold and contributed in a threefold increase in the family income. Thus, they could buy a bunch of herbs and the so called avella-nut- a brown nut, which can be crushed into a beautiful hazel-red powder- and they synthesized the paint by diluting the crushed avella with water and then making the colored water viscous by mixing in the boiled herbs with the powder. The resulting color is slightly less radiant than the original powder but for their purposes, this is more than enough.
Then there is one question remaining: How are they able to finish administering their fields right now? And the answer might not surprise you.
For the first harvest Imogyeran simply ordered ‘Yun’ to create gales, which perfectly cut the crops out of the ground(while also whirling up quite deeply into the surface of the field) and then created a suctioning tornado to collect the plucked out crops(and made a total mess of the field. He later got scolded for multiple days and had to renovate the field on his own)
This method of collection was later banned by Hyoran and Imogyeran got creative with inventing some new tools, which would help the team work. His solution was the creation of a plow using the wood from the nearby woods to plow the fields as well as a water distribution for watering the field.
A plow is a tool, typically on two wheels, which has separate blades protruding into he ground, which create straight grooves in the soft soil. Once they are finished, the seed are distributed slightly into the groove’s surface, which are watered after that.
Until that point in time, Uncle Hyoran has tilled, plowed and harvested the fields manually with a hand-plow and sickle as well as a watering can. Even though Hyoran’s body is naturally well built, this activity over extended periods of time has taken a significant toll on his body, due to the continuous lowering of his back and knees during harvesting and plowing.
This new plow has the advantage of relieving stress on the upper back and knee musculature and efficiency in terms of area tilled within a certain time.
The disadvantage of the plow however is the high weight, which would put a strain on the lower back and shoulders if one were to use it by their own.
However, the plow is not to be used by a single person. The plow, which Imogyeran designed by taking the architectural difficulties of constructing it and replacing them with spirits and such, has been lightened considerably in comparison to the ordinary model and as such it is possible to work the plow using the three people as the pulling power.
This luckily hasn’t been needed due to the existence of ‘Yun’ and Dogogo; in other words they are the ones pulling the plow.
Sadly, the group knows that this family will not last all that longer and with the situation being as is they have already started negotiations on buying a proper Rejoro fuero– an animal on 4 hooves, which is covered in blue scales and has two large, red horns jutting out from its forehead - to take away some of their workload.
Tomorrow, the three of them are planning to go negotiate with one seller of such an animal to help pull the plow and bring some more life inside this place, while Imogyeran is out on his travels.
The time of farewell is imminently drawing closer. According to Imog, only 2 weeks are left until he will depart from this place. Today, the three have huddled together in the room of Maria, the middle room of the house, to have a nice dinner after the incident yesterday.
During dinner, they eat broth with some bread crumbs soaked in it and have a happy time together. At the dinner table, Maria asks a question she has been curious about for a while but couldn’t answer, because she felt like she hadn’t earned the right to ask.
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This pure question causes Imog to stagger for a moment. He quickly gulps down the contents inside his mouth before looking at her with a bashful gaze.
< I also need to train a bit more before the tournament, which is why I am going a bit earlier than originally planned. After that I need to visit my old home for once in a while. We didn’t really go apart that well, so I need to properly make up with them. After that I want to go traveling the world. I always wanted to do that.>> As always, he dumps a lot of info at once, but Maria is already used to that, so she skillfully understands the conversation and asks the brother, who is petting his bulging belly. < Her gaze is as inquiring as usual as she stealthily grabs onto Dogogo, who has made himself comfortable inbetween the two siblings to cuddle him. Hyoran is also making an interested expression while he quietly slurps the broth, not really following the conversation too well but just well enough to get the gist of it. Imogyeran on the other hand is pulling his ear while looking unusually bored and annoyed before speaking. < He takes a deep breath and continues in a quick speech. < Next on my trip, I found a group of circus people, who taught me my juggling skills. I think I mentioned that one to you sometime before. They were really nice, though kind of too happy for my taste but I loved their style. After that I made my way to Medalia village, where I threw a rock and won the rookie martial arts tournament and a pack of premium meat. Next thing I knew, I was assassinated and thrown off a cliff and almost died. I had to starve for a few months and was eaten by a centipede and starved for about the rest of the time. Other than that nothing happened. >> . . . .. I wait for an answer from the other two but for some reason nothing comes to my ears I turn around to see the two of them staring at me, their mouth wide open, wildly trembling lower lips and wide eyes. If I didn’t know better... < During my life I have gained a surprising amount of expertise in the fields of dropping my jaw while competing against larger groups. I shall not be beaten! … Are they frozen up? They haven’t moved for a while now so I walk up to them to check whether they are feeling well, a slight concern in my head. Suddenly, Maria lets out a loud scream, startling me tremendously. < ? I must admit that I expected an exaggerated reaction but this does surpass my expectations. Why is she screaming like that? … I think, she has calmed down a bit so I speak up. < Before I can finish, I am grabbed by a hand like a beast’s claw into a vice that there is no escaping from and when looking up I can see the face of a smiling demon looking at me. < I turn my head to Uncle Hyoran to help me but I am greeted by the face of another demon, sternly looking at me as if I was being passed judgment upon. < < I have no choice but to comply and thus I tell the two curious demons about the entire story ever since leaving the Blueseva mansion. No details left out.