[S/R] Playing with Fire

[Saber]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Being a thinker has a lot more to it than just the work “think”. A thinker goes about their life, imagining various things of different topics. They let their minds wander, let their heads wonder, and they observe the world through a much different lens than the average person does. A think questions everything, he always asks for more knowledge, and he always seeks answers. Never does he stop in his quest for answers, nor does he ever give up midway for should he ever do so; then he has failed his duty as a thinker. Thinkers never give up because they know that the quests to find the answers they seek are just as important as the answers themselves. And once they find the answers, their journey to find it helps them in creating a way to articulate it well enough for others to understand. Thinkers don’t just ask questions for themselves, but they do so for all of the people who cannot. A true blood Thinker is a type of person which is hard to come by because of their subtlety, but one can see them very easily in a crowd. However, not one thinker is the same as another.

Some Thinkers are quiet and keep to themselves, only speaking once spoken to or when they truly are stumped. They go at the world alone, taking its challenges upon their own shoulders as they search for the underlying truth behind everything. Some Thinkers are the opposite; loud and engaging with the people around them. Loud Thinkers are always verbally berating people for answers, or are always bringing others with them on quests for the answers. They do not care about silence or secrecy and believe in doing whatever it takes to get the job done. The two different kinds of thinkers are alive and well in the human race, and everyone has a bit of each inside of them. Some people are just far more in tuned with their inner “thinker” than others… Saber is one of those people.

A silent, loner who never stops questioning, who is always seeking something, Saber picks at the world with almost every fiber of his being. There are times when he is forced to go alone; as dungeons which he finds are far too unsafe for multiple people. Other times, he brings others along. This time, he is alone again. Down in the depths of his underground Library, Saber paces with tired eyes, indulging in the knowledge of a fellow alchemist from years past. Unlike many people who attempt to remake things with their own minds, Saber uses the world around him. Everything he needs to advance the technology of the world he now lives in has already been conceived, or has at least been thought about. With his memory of reality, Saber had learned to combine both the physics of his current world with the templates of the real world to make his inventions. As a blacksmith, he used his prior knowledge of complexity and metals as a template for what he wanted. Once he knew what he wanted and what he needed, he then the schematics and information provided by a book written by someone from the world he was actually in.

: Word Count :
543

Coded By Saber of L33T T3@M

[Saber]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Unlike his actual reality, the game world he was in operated differently. If he tried to bring in something from reality, he couldn’t just make it. No, he had to build up to it. Saber had to make each individual piece and mimic the technological advancement of technology. He had to do it naturally; one step at a time. He could not make a gun without making the internal mechanisms, and he could not make his armor without making the rings. The same was to be said about his current project. There were steps he was going to have to take, a process he would need to follow, and items he would have to make before he could have his end-goal. Unlike his previous ideas, this one would be his first attempt at a multiple-piece project. It wasn’t a sword made out of iron or an armor piece made out of interlocking plates. There were several parts he needed to make and he needed two classes to do it; Blacksmith and Alchemist.

“Here it is…” As the Scholarly player turned the page, he discovered what he was searching for; an explosive power. In his world, it would be called gunpowder. Here in the world of Elder Tale it was called Black Dust. Black Dust was a powdery substance which would combust when ignited and it was made out of a very fine combination of materials. Saber personally didn’t know what was required to make it, but that was why he consulted a book. In the book, the materials required were simple; potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur. Along with the required materials, the author alchemist also listed the required amounts of the materials; seventy-five percent of it would be potassium nitrate, fifteen percent of the powder would be charcoal, and ten percent of it would be sulfur. For a higher explosive end, the creator would just have to increase the amount of sulfur. However, doing so would destabilize the material.

When Saber turned the page again, there were instructions on how to actually make the gunpowder manually from scratch. Though, as Saber read it, he grimaced. The way to get the potassium nitrate from absolutely nothing and naturally would take him almost a full year, ten months, and required him to have livestock as it was made from manure and urine. Yea, no. No way in hell was Saber doing that. Charcoal was made from just burning wood, while sulfur was also quite difficult to make. However, there was the ability to use sugar as a sulfur substitute; it just would create less of a boom. Sugar would do him well enough though. Sulfur would just help the powder burn better. All in all, Saber had a long road ahead if he wanted to make what he was working on; or he could hope the game was already working in his favor. With that in mind, Saber put together his laundry list of required materials and closed his book. Rather than leave the book in the pile on the table and lose it later, the Assassin deposited it into his inventory and headed out.

: Word Count :
523

Coded By Saber of L33T T3@M

[Saber]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Pulling his hood up and over his head, the Assassin huffed and slipped out from his shop, quickly moving away from it to hide himself again. His first stop was the market place and as he made his way to it, he summoned a sack of gold coins and attached it to his waist. To cut down on the time required to reach his destination, Saber took to the rooftops and moved quickly across the skyline. It took him a short few minutes to reach the central selling zone and once he had, the man pulled his cloak tight around himself and descended into the crowd. Immediately, the Assassin began to wade his way through the street and went to his first stop; an NPC Logger named Rivert. There, he purchased thirty logs from the wood merchant and also four packs of matches (twenty in each pack) that he could use to light them. With one ingredient in tow and the only one needed from the market stowed away, Saber turned his eyes on the exit. On his way out, the Assassin snagged a shovel from a tool merchant and tossed it into his inventory. As Saber reached the other end of the stand, the Lander nearly shouted at the player for stealing but a bag of Gold struck the man in his chest; payment.

Barely a minute had passed since Saber had appeared in the market before he had what he needed and the Assassin returned to the rooftops with haste, not giving anyone a chance to stop him and talk to him. The next stop was a nearby bakery. The Assassin dropped back down to the streets, entered, and purchased four pounds of Sugar. Yes, four pounds of sugar slid across the counter from the baker to Saber’s inventory. The baker, another lovely Lander by the name of Tina, called the Assassin strange as he passed her a few pieces of gold for her materials. Saber nodded in agreement. He was making black powder; of course he was strange. Though what she didn’t know was that he wasn’t strange, just lazy. He wanted sugar because he didn’t want to get sulfur, which would take forever. Saber had a day. Before he left, Saber also purchased a two-layered cake and six cupcakes. The next stop would be the most annoying out of the three, and so he moved quickly just to get it over with. Though, he didn’t move fast just out of the need to get done swiftly; he also did it because daylight was fading, and he needed a lot of materials. Said materials he probably wouldn’t be able to get from just one place.

Heading outside of London, Saber took to the forest and headed towards the outskirts of the civilized world. He didn’t go to Sarum, and he didn’t go to Avon. Instead, Saber headed to the fields and the meadows where actual farmers lived; people who were far more patient than Saber ever could be. These people used their own system to survive and small towns had their own infrastructure, making them self-sufficient. Saber entered one of the towns and immediately went to the market. Here, he purchased fertilizer. A lot of it. Five bags with twenty pounds of fertilizer in it; each containing twenty-five percent of the potassium nitrate which he needed. The man he bought the fertilizer from had plenty of it, thirty bags of it, but the Assassin dared not drain the man of his stock. Instead, the Assassin asked the man of another dealer nearby; two towns over, a man in white.

: Word Count :
602

Coded By Saber of L33T T3@M

[Saber]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Thankful, Saber paid the man a little extra for the information and left town. He followed the directions and just as he had been told, there was another seller of the fertilizer. This man, however, sold bags with thirty-percent potassium nitrate. Each bag was fifteen pounds; Saber purchased ten. In total, Saber had one-hundred pounds of fertilizer with twenty-five percent of the potassium nitrate and one-hundred-fifty pounds of fertilizer with thirty percent potassium nitrate inside of it. He basically had a lot of it, enough where he probably wouldn’t need any more of it for a long, long time if he was going to become a farmer. Sadly, he was a farmer, but in a different sense.

With his materials in hand, or in his inventory, Saber returned to London and back to his underground Library. There, he went to his forge. As he approached it, the Assassin tabbed at his inventory and switched his class to Blacksmith, giving himself power over the metallic elements rather than the magical based things. His body glowed for a moment and his display flickered, showing him the change on his screen as his visible data updated. Though, after a few taps, his crafting subclass was once again hidden from view. Then, Saber got to work. He grabbed ten large iron bars and tossed the first one in.

Out of the bar, he made as large of a cylinder can that he could. He spread the metal out into a sheet, curved it around, and melded the object’s edges together. Once he had the cylinder made and all of the bumps smoothed out, he took another, smaller, bar of iron and tossed it into his furnace. As it cooked, he grabbed some plaster material that he used for molding and started to prep it. He dipped it into the trough he used for metal to moisten it and made it into a sort of clay. Once it was mendable, he began to make it into a square, a large square. He added more and more of the material until he had a decent sized chunk of it sitting beside his anvil. Before the plaster could harden, Saber took his hollow iron circular object and squished it into the middle of the plaster. Once it was set, he poured even more plaster into the center, filling up the core of the barrel but leveled it out at the top, not allowing anymore plaster over the edge of the top of the metal.

With his drum mold ready, Saber placed a small amount of mold material over the top to seal it all up, made a hole for pouring, and removed the excess material from the mold. Time was now required for it to sit and for the mold to be made effectively. To occupy himself, Saber opened up his map, searched the surrounding area of London, and placed a waypoint just outside of the city on his display. Then, he closed the entire thing. Slapping a timer up on his display for ten minutes, Saber returned to his table and pulled out a fairytale book to read… Ten minutes he would need to wait.

: Word Count :
529

Coded By Saber of L33T T3@M

[Saber]

Do you believe in ghosts?

And they were long as hell. But, once the ten minutes had passed, Saber returned to the mold and very carefully chipped off the “lip” for the mold, and then pulled the iron cylinder out of the center. Unlike his other molds, Saber didn’t break this one down the center. He left it together and only removed the top cover. Once it was made and a notification appeared on his display “mold created”, Saber went into his Blacksmith screen and added the new object into his list of available crafts. He named it “10 Gallon Drum mold”. Once it was set, he used up the required materials and created ten of the molds, putting all of them along the side of his anvil. With them all set, he returned to his furnace and placed in a cast iron bucket. In that bucket, he dropped in two iron bars. He closed the door to the furnace once they were set and increased the temperature inside by adding some air to the hot, burning coals. It only took a minute or so for the bars to liquefy, and Saber opened up the furnace door once he saw the brilliantly glowing orange.

The Blacksmith put on heat-protective gloves and pulled the bucket full of liquid iron out of the heat. Then, he carefully poured the liquid into the molds. One at a time, he filled them up with the liquid metal until the liquid started to come back up the narrow throat of the molds. When all ten were set and his bucket was nearly empty, Saber set the bucket with the excess iron liquid onto his anvil so that it could cool. As the molds cooled and took their shapes, Saber started to work on more metal; he lined up two iron bars beside his furnace and tossed one into the flames.

Once it was hot enough, he took the bar to his anvil and broke it into three equal chunks of hard glowing orange. He did the same to the other two bars until he had nine chunks. When the iron in the bucket had cooled enough, he extracted the metal from the bottom of the bucket and returned it to the fire. It was already flattened for the most part and was enough to make the tenth required piece. Out of the ten pieces, Saber made ten discs with their edges slightly bent to make edges; lids. By the time he had finished with the ten of them, the molds had also finished cooling. With a chisel and a hammer, Saber broke the hardened molds apart and removed his ten lid-less drums. He deposited seven of them into his inventory, but left the other three on the floor. He took all of them and cut a small hole out of the bottom and attached a slider onto it, allowing for the hole to be open and closed with just a small tug. Then, he placed a small grate to barrels themselves which would block any heavy material from escaping. Once they were set, he sent them into his inventory and took ten small pieces of metal from his bins. He made ten large sheets of thin metal out of them. Before also depositing them into his inventory, Saber cut several holes into the sheets to allow air to pass through them. Once he was FINALLY DONE with the forge, the Blacksmith released a heavy huff, and left his library. As he did so, Saber switched back to Alchemist. It was time to play with magic.

: Word Count :
595

Coded By Saber of L33T T3@M

[Saber]

Do you believe in ghosts?

The sun was cresting over its high point by now, and reminded Saber that he was halfway through the day. It annoyed him that this was taking so long, but he had no choice; the process was annoying. With that in mind, he left London and went to the waypoint he set. It was a largely uninhabited area in the forest and very few players came by, but it was also fairly close to a river. Saber set up shop by said river and took out his shovel. He took his time with this part of the job, as it was the most labor intensive part. Over the course of an hour, Saber dug nine holes into the ground, large enough for him to place all of his wood into them evenly, but also small enough for him to put the metal sheets over them. He also dug a small trench in front of three of them. He made the trench wide and deep enough for a barrel to be set into it. He then summoned his ten drums and placed three of them on top of the metal sheets and above the fires. When the three were placed and began to heat, he filled them with water from the river and left them to boil. He summoned the other three untouched barrels and placed them in the trench in front of the blank three fire pits. On those fire pits, Saber placed the three barrels with the grates. Then, he filled the barrels to their three-quarters mark with fertilizer; the fertilizer which had the thirty percent potassium nitrate content.

By the time he had everything set up; the water had begun to boil. Saber gave the barrels a few moments to bubble up a little more, and so that he could take a breather, and then summoned a bucket. He used the bucket to move the boiling water from one set of barrels to the next. He filled the barrels up to the brim with the fertilizer-water mix and let them simmer for five minutes before finally opening up the grates at the bottom. Water rushed out and poured into the barrels in the trenches. As the water flowed, Saber moved more of the boiling water over into the three filled barrels. As they started to empty, Saber brought his heat-resistant gloves out of his inventory and pulled one water barrel at a time off their flames. He made sure he got all of the water that he could to run through the fertilizer barrels until the three in the trenches were almost topped off. As they were, he set down the last water barrel off to the side, closed the grates on the fertilizer barrels, and carefully removed the three barrels out of the trench he had made. He placed these barrels on top of the now open fire pits and left them alone, letting the water boil and evaporate. As he waited, he read a book.

: Word Count :
499

Coded By Saber of L33T T3@M

[Saber]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Soon, the sound of bubbling water faded, and the sun was also going down. Saber closed his book at this point and returned to mending to his fires. They were also getting low, but that was good. Inside of the barrels and at the bottoms, there was a white crystalized substance which had formed. He probably had around three pounds of it, if that, and that was enough. As the water began to dissolve into its last bits, Saber put a lid onto the three fertilizer barrels and sent them away into his inventory. He sent away the three sheets of metal below them and made sure the other three barrels were void of water before making them disappear as well. Once he finished, he accessed his inventory and noted the coordinates of his current location on his map. He used his shovel to arrange a small circle around the holes and the trench, creating a small “warning circle” to keep the random stranger from accidentally falling into the pits should they not be paying attention. In the time it took him to do this, his logs finished burning and the water had completely evaporated.

Saber tipped each of the heated drums over and extracted the potassium nitrate from the bottoms of them, collecting it into a small container. When he couldn’t scrape anymore out, he sent the barrels away to his inventory along with the metal sheets which were beneath them. Out of the pits, Saber collected the charcoal which was left over from the fires. Whatever he couldn’t gather, he smothered with dirt to ensure that a random fire wouldn’t start out of nowhere. With the hard part done, Saber collected some water from the river and headed back to London. There, he went back to his Underground Library and descended into its depths, closing the stone-wall door behind him.

: Word Count :
312

Coded By Saber of L33T T3@M

[Saber]

Do you believe in ghosts?

In the depths of his library, he took out five small bowls from his inventory and summoned forth his three materials; sugar, charcoal, and potassium nitrate. He placed the three materials each into their own individual bowl and left two empty; one would be the mixing bowl, the other the grinding bowl. First, he added a few grams sugar into the grinding bowl, ground it up, and swirled it around before adding it to the mixing bowl. Next, Saber put a few pieces of charcoal into the grinding bowl and crushed the material into as fine of a grain as he could with his own hands and the mortar. When he couldn’t get it any grainier, he added it to the sugar and very carefully began to mix the two together. Next, he added the potassium nitrate into the grinding bowl. There, he stirred and ground it up gently. Once it was also very grainy, he added it to the sugar-charcoal mix. Now, he made his movement as careful and gently as possible. The object he now stirred was deadly, and he had to be careful with it. He mixed it with extreme care until the mixture was a solid black. Lastly, he added water. He didn’t douse it but added just enough to make the power a gooey mixture. He stirred it up a little more and then poured it all into a pan.

Saber took the pan, returned to his furnace, and put on a heat-resistant glove. He set the pan on the lip of the furnace’s door and let the water boil right there. As it did, he very gently stirred the black mixture. It bubbled and burned on the pan as the water boiled, but slowly became a dusty substance again. The water caused the three separate materials to mix much more than they were before, and the result, once the water was gone, was the black power Saber desired. He was gentle with it, and pulled it away from the flames and poured it into a fresh container. He had about a pound of the black power now but before he could call it a success, he took it over to his anvil. Very carefully, he placed some of the power onto the top of the metal object and summoned forth a pack of matches. He lit one and then touched the very edge of the powder. A second later, it went up in flames… Saber flinched and stepped away, dropping the match out of fright.

“Holy crap.”

: Word Count :
423

Coded By Saber of L33T T3@M

Total Word Count: 4026

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Research completed

Items Made: Charcoal, XX Gallon Drum, Metal Sheet, Potassium Nitrate, Black Dust

Recipes created:

Charcoal
Materials Required: x1 Wood
Posts Required: 1 Blacksmith
Requirement: Level 1 Blacksmith / Level 1 Woodcrafter / Level 1 Alchemist
A black, charred substance left behind after burning wood until all impurities are gone. It can be used to light a fire in place of coal should lighter fluid be applied.

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XX Gallon Drum
Materials Required: x1 Metal or x1 Equipment Mold
Posts Required: 1 Blacksmith
Requirement: Level 5 Blacksmith
A large metal drum capable of storing up to XX Gallons of liquid or the equivalent in solid materials.
>During creation of this material, state the size of the drum.

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Metal Sheet
Materials Required: x1 Metal
Posts Required: 1 Blacksmith
Requirement: Level 1 Blacksmith
A simple sheet of metal capable of being mended into different shapes or being used to cover things.

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Potassium Nitrate
Materials Required: x3 XX Gallon Drum, x2 Metal or x2 Metal Sheet, x1 Bag of Fertilizer(at least 25% Potassium Nitrate content), xX Gallon(s) of Water (Amount of Water must match the size of the drum used)
Posts Required: 1 Blacksmith / 2 Alchemist
Requirement: Level 5 Blacksmith / Level 25 Alchemist
A white crystallized substance made after a long period of curing manure with natural substances and animal urine. It can also be extracted from Fertilizer once it has already been made. It is used in making fertilizer and explosives.

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x1 Pound(s) of Black Dust
Materials Required: x1 Gallon of Water, x1 Sugar, x2 Charcoal, x3 Potassium Nitrate
Posts Required: 1 Blacksmith / 1 Alchemist
Requirement: Level 20 Blacksmith / Level 45 Alchemist
A black powdery substance which is highly volatile created by the Funeral Parlor. In its current form, the powder is not deadly. However, upon applying a slight amount of open flame to the powder, it will ignite. Lower amounts of the powder will simply burn. Larger amounts of the powder can, and will, explode. Increase the amount of powder and more heat to create a larger explosion. Keep this item away from any sources of high heat or open flames. Store it in a sealed and thermal resistant container during transport. You have been warned.