Tailoring is a profession, a Tailor is a class, and both of them are specialized in the creation of clothing. The tailoring skill, however, is a crafting skill, NOT a trade skill.

Trade skills are unspecialized, broad skills that have their own collection of skills that work under them.

Crafting skills are specialized in the production of items, have their own skill collections, and are found within the skill collection of a trade skill.

Tailoring is considered to be a specialized evolutionary skill that can be added to the Sewing trade skill collection, and like all crafting skills it also has its own skill collection. The collections are a form of categorized sub skills that fall under the umbrella of the parent skill, like Tailoring can be found under Sewing.

Skills that fall under a trade skill are not restricted to being used solely for that purpose. In fact, a great many combat classers learn certain trade skills solely for the extra skills that can be used in combat. Heavy strike, a skill under smithing, is one of the most commonly sought after. While its stated purpose is to increase the impact force of a hammer on hot metal, it has the same effect no matter what the hammer is swung at. Furthermore, despite it being a skill that is blatantly designed to be used with a hammer, it can be used with anything fairly similar such as axes and maces.

Renowned System Scholar Melkikzan Reinhandt the Eighteenth postulated that the great number of trade sub skills that can be used in combat was by design, as opposed to chance. His famous “How else are trade classes supposed to protect themselves?” argument was presented…

Adam put down Trades and Crafts: The Real Workers with a groan. Mother Knows Best was working hard again. He loved the skill for the huge amount of information it gave him, but hated it at the same time. Learning large amounts of things by magic had its disadvantages, namely a massive, but short term, headache. Even the pain didn’t detract from the skill much, he simply needed to take breaks while reading books like the one he had put down. With so much packed into a short piece of each of the tomes he’d been given, Adam was struggling to get through them very fast. That’s not to say that he didn’t learn very much.

Far from it.

The last week had been incredibly valuable for Adam. He’d not only gained Cooking, Cleaning, and Sewing, but a number of sub skills for each as well. And all of them followed along the path described in the book he had been reading. The skills were mostly things like Threading the Needle, which, while ostensibly a skill for literally threading a needle, could also be used to squeeze through tight spaces. It would also help in shooting arrows through tight spaces, if he could use a bow in any way shape or form.

The most interesting thing about gaining the trade skills had been the effect that Mother had on them. Ruth commented several times on the speed at which he progressed, pointing out that he must be a natural. In a way it was true, but mostly that knowing using the skills was truly part of being a Mother.

It wasn’t just the class boost that helped either. One of the earlier passages in Trades and Crafts: The Real Workers had pointed out that trade and crafting skills were actually a combination of a skill category and a knowledge skill. And Mother Knows Best was working hard to put extra effort into making his increasing understanding of his trade skills push him farther and faster down the road to master. Not that he was anywhere close to that. Even with Mother Knows Best pushing as hard as it could, it would still be a lifetime of hard work to master even one of his trade skills.

Adam glanced at the book he’d put down, then turned his gaze to the small stack of more books on a rickety stool in the corner. He’d be changing books the next time he picked one up. The theory on trade and crafting skills was somewhat interesting to him, but he didn’t need theory at the moment. Right now he needed the basics of how the system worked, why it did the things it did, and how to get the most out of it that he could. A book on trade skills was useful when that was what he was focusing on, but now that he had learned all of them that he needed for the moment it was time to move on.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

With his early morning studying done, it was time to head to the kitchen again. Breakfast didn’t make itself after all.

Some time later, while he was still working in the kitchen, Adam was called to the training ground. Having not expected the summons, he simply tucked his tools into his apron and headed out. His expectation that Martin had returned was confirmed by the man launching an attack at him as soon as he stepped onto the training field.

While Martin had been gone, he had continued his attempts at finding a weapon he could actually wield, as well as his unarmed combat. He’d even found a replacement trainer of sorts, or at least another old man who liked to yell instructions at him while Adam attempted to hit him. When Adam asked for his name, the man said he’d tell him if he could hit him. He still had no idea what the man’s name was. One of his favorite things to do was belittle Adam’s inability to use a weapon. He would constantly yell, “The first rule of unarmed combat is to find a weapon. ANY weapon! C’mon, boy, my dead granny has a better chance of making contact than you do.”

While none of the man’s commentary was particularly helpful in actually teaching him how to fight, Adam did accidentally learn a new trick. It wasn’t a skill by any stretch of the imagination, but it was significantly more effective than one would think. One day he had given in to the man’s demands and actually grabbed a nearby weapon. When it inevitably shot out of his hand, Adam realized that all of the weapons shot straight out of his grip, allowing him to aim. In a manner of speaking, that is.

It wasn’t accurate enough to precisely hit something, but good enough to guide a suddenly flying weapon towards an opponent. The weapons certainly weren’t moving with enough force to seriously harm someone, but no one wants to be in the path of a flying sharp object, that’s how you lose eyes. As of yet, he hadn’t hit anyone with a weapon, but he was beginning to figure out that he could use his new trick to move an opponent somewhere else. That somewhere else may or may not, usually not, be where he wanted them to be, but he figured practice would help.

Speaking of help, Mother Knows Best was surprisingly silent on the subject. Adam was still trying to figure out if that was because it was outside of the purview of the skill, which would be a first, or if it was such an asinine idea that the skill refused to help. It could also be that it was an attempt at utilizing something his class forbade him from using, or the fact that it was not an actual system skill that kept his knowledge skill from dumping some helpful know-how into his head.

That is to say, that when Martin attacked him, Adam tried to do the same thing that he had been doing, pull a weapon out in such a fashion that it would launch itself from his hand in Martin’s general direction. That wasn’t at all what happened. Instead of a flying knife forcing Martin to divert his attack momentarily, Martin tripped over his own feet when he suddenly needed to dodge a knife thrust to the face.

Two people were frozen in a small cloud of dust kicked up from the ground. One was an older man, lying on his back from his sudden fall staring in shock at the other. The second person was barely a teen, a large boy really, standing above the man while gaping at the knife still clenched in his out thrust hand. Silence and dust settled over the scene before it was broken by a voice.

“Is that a paring knife?”

“Uh… yeah. Yeah it is.”

“Huh. Never saw that coming.” Martin just stayed on the ground. The combination of shock and surprise were a bit much for him at the moment.

Adam, for his part, simply adjusted his stance while absentmindedly putting the paring knife back into its sheath in his apron pocket. With a little metaphysical gymnastics he tried poking the place where he imagined that Mother Knows Best lived in his head.

For some reason he imagined the skill residing on a small little plot of land with a big garden, and a thatch roofed cottage stuck inside his head somehow. In that cottage lived a little old woman, who looked remarkably like a mix between an innkeeper and a witch. The cottage held a giant cauldron that at times smelled like the most delicious things ever made, and at others like warm death. At the moment she was simply looking at him with a smug look on her face, as though she’d known all along that his class prevented the use of tools of war, not specifically weapons. She couldn’t have told him that though. Oh, no. It was too obvious. And little boys needed to figure out the obvious things for themselves.

When he realized he was about to start arguing with the imaginary witch in his head, Adam sighed and gave up. There was just no point arguing with certain people. That realization sent him staggering, as an absolute flood of knowledge hammered into his mind, bringing the absolute truth of his realization to light.

There really was no arguing with certain people, and those people were mothers. After all, Mother Knows Best. And some day, given enough time and topics of discussion, so would he.

Because Adam, too, was a Mother.