Day 288

[wayofvoice]

Who: Paarthurnax and you
Open: Open
When: 288
Where: About the Bastion in general
What: The daily life of a dragon
Format: Any
Warnings: None yet


Life goes on in the Bastion. Whether death, calamity, or simple misfortune, that is how things work. That is how it goes for Paarthurnax, as well.

In the morning, when the sun is still faint, he takes off to the Skyway and doesn't return for some hours, bringing back both shards stuck in his teeth and the meat of a mammoth to eat, or share.

In the noon and some hours following it, he teaches his class at the stone tablet with its letters in his own tongue, patient and careful for both new students and more practiced ones alike.

The only change to this seems to come in the evening. It's then that people might notice him at the Monument, drawn up high as he sits and inspects the device.

People are free to talk with him during any of these times. Paarthurnax has always made it known that he can be approached, after all.

Comments

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

[Rob nods and twitches his fingers one by one as he goes through the list.]

Food, water, shelter, health and sanitation, fire and energy, security. The basic survival needs.

Food we're doing fairly good with, both from the farm and Colin's hydroponics system, though they both rely more on technology than I'd like in this situation.

Water we're good for, though I have to wonder if the Monument is responsible for the river still flowing or if that's just something that still happens in this world. Some kind of water purification system could be good to have around just in case, but for now we're good.

Shelter we have plenty of, and the tree I made gives us materials to make more, though I'm pretty sure that the Monument is the only reason why it works, same as with your jar of teeth. I'd like to get a forest here as a backup, but there are so many different kinds of trees I could have the Monument make that I'm not sure which ones would be most useful, though I have a few ideas. A sawmill would be really useful too, but that's something I think we can actually build without needing to use any shards at all. I just need to work out some details about how the machinery would function first and find some of the raw materials on the Skyway.

Health and sanitation... To be honest I have no idea what the Bastion is doing with our waste, but if worst comes to worst outhouses aren't difficult to make. The hospital is good for healing, but supplies are going to be an issue eventually and for emergencies on the Skyway it does nothing. If I can work out how to make potions though, some of the plants I've been reading about can be used in healing potions, so I can have the Monument bring them in and we'll be able to make as many potions as we want. I'll... need to try and teach as many people as possible how though once I've figured it out myself. Healing potions aren't something I want to test though, so something with an easy way to check like invisibility is better while I'm learning. From my reading though it seems like luna moth wings and juniper berries make a potion that speeds the body's natural healing, so that's something I'll need to look into trying out.

Fire is straightforward to deal with if we lose energy. ...Though I've actually never tried to make a fire from scratch before. Energy is an issue for all the modern conveniences we have though. We don't have to worry about staying warm, since it's always warm here, but the hydroponics farm and some of our food storage rely on having power. Colin's working on a fusion generator that'll provide us with plenty of power and that he claims will be safe and reliable. Considering in my world the technology to make a useful one is still being developed and requires a small army of specialists to manage I'm not so confident, but it sounds like it's been vastly improved by Colin's time so I guess I'm not qualified to have an opinion on it. Still, if the Monument starts running out of power again the Bastion will start to come apart again, so anything that can stop that from happening is useful.

Security is the really hard one, and I'm still not sure how to deal with that efficiently and without endangering anyone in the Bastion. There haven't been any issues with security that I know about - the monsters on the Skyway don't seem to be able to come in here on their own - so it's something that can probably be a lower priority, but it's the kind of thing where if we need it we'll really need it.

I wanna get all those categories at least partially covered before I move on to luxuries. Except for security and keeping the Bastion from coming apart I don't think it'll be too difficult to get everything together. I just wanna make sure we have a strong foundation to build from, rather than going for fast solutions that we might not be able to maintain indefinitely.

[For as quiet and non-conversational as Rob usually is, if you can get him talking about something he's interested in and/or knows about, he'll actually go on for a while. That and despite his instinctive nervousness about giant predators, Paar is someone who seems like a good listener and won't fall asleep when Rob goes on for too long about something.]

[wayofvoice]

[It's true. As Colin can likely attest to, Paarthurnax is more than happy to sit and listen to someone go on about something, particularly if it's something they're clearly passionate about. So he stays quite, nodding now and then to confirm that he's listening.]

It seems that you have much planned. It is quite a list for one person.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Someone needs to do it. There's no telling how long it'll take to get four more Cores, so we need to be ready to spend a long time here.

[wayofvoice]

[A thoughtful rumble.]

When Aoi and I had arrived to this place... Six cores had already been discovered. Now, some months later, only four more remain.

How soon we find such things... May depend entirely on fortune.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

I'm still not entirely sure what's going to happen once we do find the Cores. I don't think we have enough facts to understand what to expect, just a lot of assumptions and theories.

[wayofvoice]

The only ones who know are those three... Raile, Zia, and Zulf.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

They don't have all the answers either; they can't tell what effect all of this has on other worlds. But then, unless someone who knows how to look into other universes shows up, that's not something we're likely to have an answer to.