Building a Better Tomorrow

[greatcleavage]

Who: Roy Greenhilt and OPEN
What: Roy is doing construction work and needs help, plus he has questions for others!
When: November 13-20th
Where: Outside the mana pool located in the former monkey compound.
Warnings: What you bring?


Stone by stone, the area that had once been home to countless cannibalistic apes gained a semblance of order.

Literally stone by stone; Roy could plan and design buildings, but he lacked the tools and the knowledge to shape stone any more than crudely. Wood was a better resource, and with his hatchet Roy could make makeshift joins like giant blocky teeth, but without better resources wood didn't have the durability of stone, and that was important.

So the structures and buildings Roy put together were ramshackle. No hope for it. So long as they served their purpose, what more could he ask for? A coop for the bludrocs had been finished first; now he turned his attention to making a large building, out of blocks of stone cut from the nearby seaside cliffs and hauled here with brute force, and wooden poles cut as best he could manage and jammed into the ground.

Roy had big plans, because he believed they were, if not literally necessary, so highly advantageous for the long-term survival of everyone here that he couldn't justify not doing this. And thus he labored on.

Honestly, though... the man looked exhausted. Not physically; he could honestly keep this up for days without flagging. Blocks of stone and trees' worth of wood were no real burden to him. No, his exhaustion was all spiritual, bordering from a quiet conviction that had only grown in strength over time: they were all doomed. A chaotic, disorganized bunch that was one pig head on a stake away from being a literary study of the madness that lurked within mankind as soon as the trapping of civilization were stripped away, with a series of unavoidable, unfightable, unmanageable disasters queued up to batter then down till they broke. His last breath of sympathy for the Storyteller had utterly vanished when that god had made clear in no uncertain terms that they were to leave the mana pool in the temple compound utterly indefensible, thus guaranteeing they would be assaulted on the islets in due time. Roy, in other words, was a man bereft of hope; his efforts to build, to protect, to preserve were all grim defiance of the inevitable at this point, a commitment to going down swinging.

Not the healthiest attitude, but it kept him going.

No laboring in grim solitude for this fighter, though! As people passed through, emerging from the mana pool in the former compoundd to conduct whatever mainland business they had to accomplish, Roy stopped to offer them a wave. "Excuse me, just one moment? I'm looking for more resources for this task, anyone who can craft, and compiled information about the Storyteller." (One of these things is not like the others.)

Comments

[greatcleavage]

Every job begins somewhere, with someone -- and it needs to be done, with one man or ten. [Plus you can't keep bludrocs on the move, not effectively.] Right now I'm trying to flesh out a storage building for anything we don't want exposed to the elements, but if you have ways to improve the coop...

[He motions at said coop, which clearly suffers from his lack of ability to put finishing touches on it. Serviceable, yes, but far from ideal.]

[bloodyashes]

[You can't exactly farm on the move, either. At least not unless you've got ambulatory vegetables.

Look, he's been attacked by enough angry trees that he's not going to rule it out.]

No. Agriculture isn't exactly my specialty.

[They'll just have to trial and error some things.]

[greatcleavage]

Honestly, I'd settle for anyone who has even basic knowledge of woodcutting or masonry at this point. [Which he doesn't expect to come across, but that doesn't allow him not to try. Ah well.] We seem to be a group short on community-building skills.

[bloodyashes]

[A small headshake.]

I can build a campfire with the best of them, but not much more. I'm more used to sleeping up trees if I needed shelter and there wasn't any around.

[Also, Roy, from what he's seen thus far, they're a group that's a little short on community, in general.]

[greatcleavage]

[He knows. That doesn't mean he can ignore what they need, even if everyone else is content to just goof around and die.]

That's a valuable skill to have, honestly. I haven't found any good flint here, and there's plenty of meat I'd much rather see cooked than not. Still...

[Roy shrugs, trying to make light of his own tiredness.] Anything helps, and I don't think tree shelter is viable long-term.

[bloodyashes]

[It gets a simple nod from Asch, at least.]

I tried to smoke as much fish as I could when the water level fell. At least the wet wood was good for something.

[Plainly, he's familiar with survival in general... Just not so much building.]

And as long as it keeps me out of reach of predators and out of the wet, I don't care much.

[Moreso the wet, lately.]

[greatcleavage]

That's a good start. I'm hoping for some centralized storage here to keep animals out of food stocks and preserve it as long as possible. [Always hoping someone had more suggestions on that score, too.] We need safety from more determined assailants, as well. The apes that were here were perfectly capable of abducting us even from the islets.

[bloodyashes]

...Best way to keep animals out of food stocks is other animals, isn't it? Cats and so on.

[Not so much the bigger ones, but there don't seem to be that many of those around. Vermin, though... he's sure there's plenty of rats.

There's always rats.

The rest... He frowns, before making a gesture that Roy can probably guess is "tell me more."]

[greatcleavage]

Rats and bugs are a problem if we can't seal the shelter, but it will at least help against the elements. Thus my bemoaning a lack of joining skills. Or failing that, sealing...

[Roy trails off, as that thought occurs to him.]

[bloodyashes]

There's clay out on the cliffs west of the temple, you could probably at least get a start on sealing the buildings with that. I'm not sure if there's enough to make full buildings out of it, though.

[The dung-critters are very helpful in that regard.]

[greatcleavage]

I don't know of anyone who knows how to fire bricks, but just molding it in for sealing purposes might be enough. Hell, we might even be able to make do with mud if we dried it well.

[The prospect at least seems to perk Roy up; though he generally never seems terribly exhausted, a certain frustrated sense of futility seems to at least lessen, like a weight lifted off him.]

[bloodyashes]

The humidity would probably be the biggest problem.

[He gestures at the air, because, well, it's a tropical island it's real heckin humid.]

Shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to fire the bricks, though, you can probably sacrifice a few to trial and error.

[greatcleavage]

Yes, it's true. I just have the impression that they involve straw or something, to be properly made. If we could make some, it would be huge...
Maybe somebody here knows. If you could help ask around, I'd appreciate it.

[Better to send two people to do the job than one, right?]

[bloodyashes]

I think that's only some kinds. We can probably replace the straw with strips of dried palm leaves, though, if not some kind of more local grass.

[Something something horticulture isn't his specialty. He nods agreement to the request, though it's not like he will probably find out much.]

[greatcleavage]

We certainly aren't short of time to experiment. And mud and clay look like resources we'll never run short of. [Plus that poop-clay, which Roy himself will use without complaint, but he gets the feeling others are a little iffy on it.]

[bloodyashes]

[Yes well let them be iffy, it's useful and they need to do something other than piss in the woods anyway. Especially with all these mangos, they're delicious but uh, high in fiber, you know.]

Or sand, but the only use I know for that is sandbags or glass.

[Not that... prepping some sandbags wouldn't be a good idea, in case there's flooding again.]

[greatcleavage]

Right, and we lack the resources for either. [The lack of basic resources to obtain basic resources is honestly frustrating. Canvas sacks are like five silver in any town, but here they are in desperate need and possessing nothing.] Not that I know what we'd use glass for right now...

[bloodyashes]

Work with what we can do.

[Not much point in worrying about what they can't.]

What needs moving?

[greatcleavage]

Raw materials. Wood locally, stone longer distances. If I can get some help with the wood, I can concentrate on the stone, unless you're superhumanly strong, in which case if you're willing I can get more ambitious than I had planned.

shoot i thought i hit send on this

[bloodyashes]

Stronger than I look, but probably not superhuman territory.

[Though, who knows what counts for superhuman in another world?]

I can comfortably carry something about your weight, armor and all, if that gives you a better baseline.

[greatcleavage]

[A Strength score higher than 18. That's not difficult...]

Excellent. We could move some reasonably large pieces of stone doing that. Of course, ideally we'd have some sort of cart or transport, but...

[bloodyashes]

[Look that means absolutely nothing to him, therefore he's using a standard that doesn't rely on bizarre, vaguely-defined mechanics!]

Even if we had one, there's not really a road. And establishing one of those would take even more time.

[greatcleavage]

There's a path from the Storyteller's temple to here. I know because I cut it in a fit of best-judgment-available. Not ideal, but passable. But also not the straightest shot, so your point is well-taken.

[bloodyashes]

It's easy enough to get over there - [He waves in the direction of the mana pool. He's been making pretty good use of them to jump around.] - it's more the paths everywhere else I was concerned about. The clay's up on the coastal cliffs, that's not going to be easy.

[greatcleavage]

Or some of the... uh, byproduct clay. [Roy is not too proud to use it, but he can understand why people would be squeamish about that stuff.] And we haven't found anything we could readily tame as a beast of burden either, which is interesting.