thebastion | Day 271 | OPEN | The first step is usually the hardest

Entry tags:

Day 271 | OPEN | The first step is usually the hardest

Who: Rob, Anyone
Open: Open
When: Day 271
Where: Wherever
What: Unexpected fashion choices.
Format: Will match

[Pre-post solo stuff]

It had been a week already and, like every morning where he had woken up in his cottage over the past week, once he was ready to leave he stopped and stared at what was on his dresser for a bit before taking it to a mirror and staring at it again. Even being his own worst critic he could tell that he'd done a good job, all things considered. He liked how it looked with the mix of badass, primal, and vaguely creepy despite it not turning out exactly as he'd imagined.

But what about other people? He was very much aware that in his own world this would be considered weird despite his own opinions of it, and that was the problem. If he went outside with this he risked being stared at, people judging him, and people thinking he's weird. The horror.

Today though, as he looks at it in the mirror, a thought occurs to him. Namely, a thought about the waste if he doesn't take it outside. With that thought in mind, he slowly makes his way downstairs to his front door. And stands there. He puts his hand on the doorknob, pauses, pulls it back, pauses, puts his hand on the doorknob, pauses, and repeats the process a few more times. The phrase "They're all gonna laugh at you!" starts bouncing around inside his head and he closes his eyes, trying to force down the anxiety that's making its way up. If he'd thought ahead he could potentially have avoided this problem; if he hadn't acted like his usual self when he'd first arrived everyone might expect something like this from him, but instead he'd presented himself as he normally did and now feels the weight of everyone's expectations about what he's like pressing down on him. Acting against that expectation is hard, and he's not sure how long he remains frozen in front of the door, paralyzed by internal conflict.

Finally though, he clenches his teeth and starts breathing heavily. Will a colossal burst of willpower he opens the door and steps outside, closing it behind him before he act on the urge to abort and go back inside.

[Open]

As of today, Rob has started to accessorize a bit. And by that I mean: a rabbit skull with a shard faintly glowing from within each eye socket, two rabbit humeruses, two rabbit femurs, and two rabbit tibias are spaced out on a braided leather cord, which is being worn by Rob as a necklace. Yes, this is indeed a thing that is happening, and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. Rob himself is just going about his business as usual, though he does look oddly tense while doing so.

One order of business for today though is to hunt down everyone who went on the mission to the Ura. With those people, he approaches them, unintentionally stealthily contrary to expectations based on appearances, and quietly speaks up despite his apprehension about actually being the one to initiate conversation.

"Hey, um, I was, uh, I was wondering how well the carts worked out, and, uh, and if there were any improvements you think I could make to them. Or for if I make another one. I-If you're not too busy, of course."

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[You can certainly ask, you know.]

Not doing anything too difficult here. Just some basic maths and predictions. Barely need to devote processor cycles to it.

What's on your mind about 'em?

[No, no, he'll just make an ass out of both of them.

He shifts a bit and stuffs his hands in his pockets, hunching over a bit more than usual. His necklace swings away from his chest and hangs in the air. He hesitates a moment before taking a deep breath and diving in.]

I was thinking that, well, basically if I kill something I need to make the best use of whatever it leaves behind. With the rabbits and any other animals that leave their bodies behind, I need to make sure their hides are tanned for use later, their meat is eaten, their organs are eaten or used for some purpose, and everything that's left over serves some purpose. That last part's a bit harder - we aren't so hard up for materials that we have any reason to use bones for tools, for example - but if all else fails I can grind the bones up and use them and any other parts I can't find a use for as fertilizer to help feed us in a different way. The animals were the part I figured out first; I've read about the "use every part of the deer" thing before, so it's just a matter of learning how to use every part. The squirts and the monsters that just drop shards though...

[A pause for another deep breath because this part is even harder to think about.]

I don't want to kill any sentient beings, but I've thought for quite a while that self-defense is an okay reason to kill. I still have to try my best to avoid killing the squirts, and you placating them with food seems to work, so I'll need to remember to bring some with me whenever I go out and hopefully that'll help. With the other monsters, I can't specifically hunt them unless we desperately need the shards or a specific individual is causing us a lot of trouble. As for the shards they drop if I do have to defend myself...

All the shards that living things drop have to only be used on things that will help everyone long-term. I can't let them just be used the same way as the ones we find lying around. It's... it's the best thing I can come up with for the equivalent of "use every part of the deer".

[It shouldn't be hard to tell that what he's really looking for here is a validation of the conclusion he's come to, for Colin to tell him that he's discovered the correct solution to the dilemma. If that wasn't what he was looking for, why else would he specifically explain his thoughts unprompted?]

[Colin studies him for several seconds, running over what he's saying. It occurs to him that there was never actually a question there, and he sighs and smirks.]

Easy there, Rob.

Sounds like you've thought long and hard on this. Not all that surprising. I'm guessing that explains the necklace?

[He gives a nod towards it.]

Lemme ask you this... is this what you genuinely feel? Or is this you trying to atone for a perceived mistake and being unsure of how to go about it?

[The moment of silence is unsettling and Rob feels like he's being judged during it.

The question isn't one he expected to hear, and he responds with his own moment of thoughtful silence before speaking.]

...Both? Maybe? I... It's not something I ever had to think about before. I mean, I've read a few things about how different cultures view hunting, but the closest thing my culture has to a view on it is "food comes from grocery stores, getting it by hunting is primitive and barbaric", or for some people "killing anything is wrong and you should let yourself starve to death before you eat an animal." [The tone he uses for those quotes makes it fairly obvious that he doesn't agree with either of those views.] It... It makes me wish I'd been raised in a culture that had some kind of actual traditions about this kind of thing to prepare me. I wasn't expecting it to feel the way it did. The easy solution would be to just never kill another animal or monster ever again, but the only way to ensure I never needed to would be to never go out on the Skyway again. I... I can't just sit around and be some questgiver sending people out to fetch X number of shards for me, and there are too many useful things that we'll want hides for; I can't just dump the killing part on someone else. I can't force this experience on someone else. I need to be able to do this kind of thing when and if I need to, but like you said, I still need to be able to sleep at night. [And he's had a couple nights with poor-quality sleep over this already.] I feel like... I guess coming up with a sense of morals about it? is a decent starting point towards that. This doesn't feel like something unreasonable, at least?

[Is this what he genuinely feels? He's not sure yet. He'll need to live like this for a bit to know. But it's something, which is a lot more than what he had the other day when Colin told him about the Squirts.]

As for the necklace... [His hand comes to run a thumb along the side of the skull and he suddenly looks slightly awkward and embarrassed as it occurs to him how the way it came to be might be interpreted by someone else. He doesn't continue the sentence immediately.]

The Elerians would say that you need to do what you need to live. They would tell you that there'll be time enough to look back on things when you're dead, and reading the story of your life.

The Mrrshan would tell you to trust your instincts. They might scare you, they might make you rash, but they'll always have your immediate best interests at heart.

We just won't go into what the Psilons and the Darloks would say. Neither of them are particularly helpful here.

Me? I can't tell you what to think. I do think that your aims are noble, though I worry that you're probably putting an undo expectations upon yourself. Yeah, we need pretty much all the supplies that we can get, though I think you may be pushing yourself on trying to find use for bone, when we've got steel available.

[There's another smirk.]

Tell me about the necklace?

[Rob shuffles slightly for a moment, and he's a little quieter than usual when he speaks, looking at Colin's chest instead of his face.]

Lord of the Clans. It's a tie-in book for the Warcraft games, telling the story of Thrall's rise from being a human's gladiator slave to the warchief of the orcish horde. When he leaves the Warsong clan to find his birth clan, the Frostwolves, Grom, the Warsong chieftain, gives Thrall the necklace made of the bones of his first kill as a sign to other orcs that Grom vouches for him. You see Grom wearing the necklace on all the art of him. From context it's likely a trophy and, given their traditions, probably a way to honor the animal's spirit. I don't know if animals are aware of how their remains are treated; I'm not a shaman. Unfortunately. [That one word contains a perhaps surprising amount of disappointment, but Rob continues on without any more delay than a normal period has.] But when I remembered that scene it seemed like a somewhat fitting thing to do. It feels more like it turned into a reminder of what it felt like to kill though. But yeah. [He taps the different parts as he names them.] Bones of the first thing I hunted and killed, hide of the first thing I hunted and killed, first shard I found when I came here, shard that dropped from the first Squirt I killed.

A good symbol. Something to remind you of who you are. Never something to be taken lightly.

[Colin smiles.]

I don't know if that's what you're looking for, though. The shamanism, I mean. It sounds like a good ideal, more than anything else. Not that ideals are a bad thing, they give you something to shoot for.

Where are you going with all this, then?

[He's somewhat aware that being called on to mediate problems with another world beyond just the physical would likely get old fast, but, well, he does have his reasons for liking the idea.

With no laughter at the revelation of where he got the idea for, he looks up again, though he's still not relaxed by any means. He's also not sure whether Colin is asking him "How do you plan to proceed from here?" or "Why are you telling me this?", so he'll kind of answer both.]

I'm not sure. I think this might be as far as I can get by just thinking about it. I think I'll need to work the rest out as I go. I just... kind of needed to voice my thoughts, see if someone else thought they were reasonable or if I was just going off the deep end.

I may not be the best person to ask if it's the latter.

[Colin grins.]

Not a day goes by that someone doesn't question my sanity.

The biggest thing I can recommend right now is finding what you want to do, and doing it. You're pretty good at carpentry, and we definitely need a carpenter around here. May not be prestigious, but it's a good job.

Of course, there's LOTS of things we need. So if it's not what you want to do with yourself, you've still got plenty of time to do something else. Worse comes to worse, I've been filling in gaps where we need them.

[Rob just blinks at the sanity comment, because he's not sure how to respond to it.]

There's definitely some more things I wanna make sure this place has, and I'll probably come up with a ton more as I go along. Most of them'll need at least a few shards to get set up, though in the long run they should eliminate the need for shards for certain things.

It'd be useful to have an actual carpenter around instead of just me though. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want woodworking to be the main thing I'm doing here. I mean, if people desperately need to to I guess I could, but there's certainly some other things I want to look into doing...

[He trails off as he's reminded of something he'd been thinking about earlier and shifts topics.]

...I'm wondering, though; what do you usually feel after you've finished making or fixing something?

[Worst part? It wasn't a joke. He KNOWS people think he's nuts. He's had the psych examinations to prove it.]

Where do you think actual carpenters come from?

[Colin grins at him.]

Everyone starts somewhere, and nobody's a pro when they start their job.

That said... Nothing says carpentry has to be your main job. I'm an engineer. It's what I enjoy doing. I'm also one of the most ass-kicking computer scientists in the galaxy. And that? Is a hobby. Figure out what you want to do, what you like to do... and excel at it.

[A brief diversion to the first part of that statement.]

Just don't forget to spend some shards on yourself. Reinvestment in the society is a wonderful thing, but it saps morale if you don't splurge on yourself every now and then.

And as for how I feel when I finish a job? I feel the satisfaction of a job well-done. I like knowing that I've fixed something, or made something function in the universe. It's a feeling of completeness, and the knowledge that the next job is ready for me to tackle.

I can think about getting something for myself once I've bought everything I want to for this place.

[Rob chews on his lower lip for a second.]

I... When I finished the first cart, I felt... I guess it was a feeling of accomplishment? Not like the accomplishment from winning a game of Magic or reaching Exalted with a faction, an accomplishment that actually means something. It's almost the same as when I saw the tree I bought for the first time, or... or every time I killed a Squirt. The Squirts are kind of different, though. They're more about the feeling afterwards when I realized I just did something that allowed me to continue to exist. But either way... that kind of accomplishment's... something I haven't felt in a long time. Years, maybe. It... It felt good.

[His voice cracks slightly as he says those last two words.]

[Colin smiles, and he steps closer to Rob to put a hand on his shoulder.]

That's something you don't learn in school and that nobody'll teach you.

It's a primal thing. When you CREATE something? Something functional and right? It makes you feel good. It triggers something in the brain that flows with the natural pulse of the universe.

Now you're sounding like a mystic and not an engineer.

[It's not said disparagingly though, since that would be calling the kettle black.]

I guess... for now, looking at things that give me that sense of accomplishment is probably a good route to take until I find something more specific.

There's not much difference between the two, really. Each knows how part of the universe works.

I just have the benefit of having been raised on the plane of law, so I REALLY know how the universe works.

Look, just find what you enjoy doing that also benefits other people. Enjoy your work, and it will make it that much easier on you. That's one of the secrets of life.

"Plane of law"? That sounds like a nightmarish place to get stuck.

That's probably a good goal. [One easier said than done though.] Speaking of things that benefit other people though, I wanted to ask you about some of the feedback I got from them being used in the field? There's a couple of problems I'm not sure how to solve.

Mechanical law, not "Justice" law. Numbers, equations, functions of the inner workings of the universe. More math than you could shake an Einstein at. Einstein, right? I'm not mixing my scientists, I don't think...

Anyway, mechanical problems, shoot. I'm always happy to help.

Hawking might work too. Or Newton if you wanna go super old-school.

The one that came up several times is how they had a hard time moving through the swamp they had to go through. For general speed, I'm going to see if Stewart can show me how to make metal rims for the wheels, but that's not gonna help all that much once they leave firm ground. Someone suggested raising the bodies of the carts off of the ground more, which might help, but that'd basically require a whole new cart with the way these ones are built. You have any intermediate ideas?

The important thing is I was in the right species and reference frame.

[Colin smiles, then he considers.]

Surface pressure is your big issue. No matter how big your wheels are, only a certain portion of them will be on the ground at a time. All your weight will be pushing down on that small surface, and you'll sink like a stone.

Unfortunately, the only real advice I can give here is don't go into a swamp in the first place. You can't really make a cart amphibious, and we don't really have the resources to make a hovercraft that could also carry that much of a load. If you widen the tires and make some rubber treads with thick teeth, it will help, but only so much.

[Rob nods along as Colin talks.]

Widening the tires is something I'd forgotten about, but yeah, that's about what I was thinking. Unfortunately it sounds like the swamp was just a function of the Skyway and there was no other option; the other path was too narrow to get the carts through. Do we have any rubber around? I don't think I've seen any, unless there was a section of the scrapyard with them we didn't see.

[For the record, on their trip to the scrapyard Rob prioritized steel, insulated wire, and motors and solenoids for what he gathered aside from shards, and can be assumed to follow that strategy on future trips unless something else comes up.]

We can ask them about routes later. If there's any way to avoid the swamp, even if it adds time to a journey, it should be taken. Like I said, we can try to make things more mechanically sound, but sometimes, it just isn't feasible. To really make it work, you'd need to make brand new tires to be swapped out before going into the swamp, and then swapped back after they get out.

[Colin shakes his head.]

We don't have much rubber here, it hasn't been priority salvage. We can probably find some, I'm sure.

I can't see it being a priority either. For now metal rims are probably the best that can be done. I'll have to start thinking about what a new cart design would be like, other than higher off of the ground. Not sure if bigger is necessarily better in this case, considering how the Skyway can be.

Speaking of the swamp, any ideas for giant-monster-repellent that won't be a problem for people or ostrich horses? I hear there was a bit of a close call on the way.

Bigger isn't better, here. Wider wheels have their own issues, which is why there's not going to be a catch-all solution here.

As for animal repellant... You're better off asking Raile than me. I have general animal knowledge, but Raile's the expert in this world's native critters.

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Day 271 | OPEN | The first step is usually the hardest

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