The Start of an Adventure [Solo/Crafting]

[Dresden]

Yay crafting! Solo words: 348

It was amazing, Dresden mused, what these Adventurers could do. What he, and most People of the Land, had considered an unsalvagable ruin of unknown purpose and design, the Adventurers had taken and turned into a bustling hub of commerce. The scribe had been skeptical when he had first heard that the ruins of a building known as Saint Pancras Station were the best place to acquire the materials he needed. So far, though, he'd seen nothing to disprove that information. The station was beginning to resemble something out of a children's bedtime story. A large part of it had been cleared of the ruined stonework, the roof had been repaired, and the entire building fairly hummed with activity. Dresden had to focus to avoid being swept off into the whirl of activity. Adventurers were everywhere, buying and selling and crafting things. The scribe had a task of his own, however. He needed a map, but in order to do that he needed the right materials to make it. The first step in that would be creating a pen. His own had, sadly, been snapped in half when he fell on it during an altercation with a boar on his way to the city. That's just the risk when you write and walk at the same time, but he'd needed to make notes in his grimoire. He noted with grim satisfaction that the money he'd claimed from the corpse of that boar was more than sufficient for his current needs. He sought out some cheap ink, a sharp knife, and a feather, then sat down at one of the myriad tables. Making a new quill wasn't hard. He'd had to make them since he was young. All he did was cut the vanes and down off one side of the feather, then sharpen the tip so that it had a proper point. He grabbed a scrap of paper off the floor and tested it with the ink. The ink itself left something to be desired, but overall, Dresden was satisfied with his pen. Now to make the paper. if I lose myself tonight, it'll be by your side

Made by Sifr @ THQ.

[Dresden]

Yay crafting! Solo words: 270

Quill pen safely tucked into his inventory, Dresden stood from the table and went out back into the station. The pen was one thing, but you couldn't write a map in the air. The standard paper that he was finding everywhere wasn't going to be sturdy enough for a travelling map, either. It was all too thin. It'd take the map well enough, sure, but it wasn't strong enough to stand up to travel and repeated use. He needed something stronger, something that wouldn't tear or rip when he used it frequently. He sat down at the table, looking at the pieces of paper he'd purchased from various shops. They all looked slightly different, but they had a lot in common. They were all thin and not very smooth, to be entirely honest. You could see the fibers. Unlike the parchment he was used to working with, these papers all had parallel fibers, instead of overlapping. He looked around and spotted some Adventurers with stacks of paper soaking them in containers of water, obviously with the same intent that he himself had. Each individual piece of paper was flimsy on its own, but if they were soaked together and then dried as one piece, they'd be significantly stronger. Dresden found a container with room for another person, and soaked his papers the same as the other scribes. This was a familiar process to him, but it was mostly a waiting game. You had to wait for the papers to become wet enough to combine, then you had to wait for them to dry out. Still, it wasn't hard. Just boring. if I lose myself tonight, it'll be by your side

Made by Sifr @ THQ.

[Dresden]

Yay crafting! Solo words: 336

Dresden laid the wet parchment paper on the wooden table, water dripping through the cracks between planks. It wasn't going to take too awfully long to dry, but it was still going to be a few minutes. The scribe put his head down on the table next to the paper, attempting to relax and maybe get a nap, but all the activity around him dashed those hopes within the first five minutes. There was just so much going on, it was impossible to do something as mundane as sleep. Of course, he couldn't just leave the paper lying on the table. Someone might take it, or think it was trash, or any number of things. So that brought him back to square one; literally watching paper dry. In order to alleviate his boredom, the scribe looked around at the other occupants of the hall. That proved to be a source of more entertainment than the Person of the Land had thought it would be. People were doing all sorts of things; sewing, writing, smithing, cooking. The smells were half-kitchen and half something he'd never smelled before and couldn't decide if he liked, the latter half coming from a table full of people working with machinery that Dresden had never seen before. The Lander continued to people-watch for a good amount of time before he checked his paper and found himself satisfied with both its dryness and strength. He placed it into his inventory, so that he didn't lose it, and he stood to go and look for another map to copy. He didn't have to look far. A stand by the Britain Royal News was literally handing out templates for starter maps. After promising to return it shortly, Dresden took one of these templates and found another place to sit, calling up his parchment, quill, and ink. He placed a rock on the template and the inkwell on the corner of the parchment and compared the two, trying to learn what he was about to write. if I lose myself tonight, it'll be by your side

Made by Sifr @ THQ.

[Dresden]

Yay crafting! Solo words: 306

Dresden stared at the parchments that sat on the table in front of him, taking in the information and deciding exactly how he was going to transfer that information from the British Royal News's template to his own blank map. He wasn't the best scribe, and he wasn't going to make a work of art, but he was going to make the best map he could make, and you didn't do that by putting pen to paper without a plan. Ink was permanent. You had to respect that if you wanted to be a good scribe. If the Adventurers took any notice of him, they probably thought he was insane. The system would take care of most of the work if he was just trying to copy a map, just like it always did. But this was more to Dresden than copying something from one piece of paper to another. This was the map that would start his adventures, the first map of many in a quest to chart the whole Unfounded Kingdom. It was destined to be rewritten and copied a great many times, but today was the day that Dresden Blackstone's first map was going to be created. The Lander put ink on the pen, and started copying. He threw himself into the work, like always. It was part of being a Blackstone. Whatever you did, you did one hundred percent. No slacking allowed. The work you made bore your name, so best make it work you can take pride in. A practiced signature made the last mark on the paper, and a brand-new map of Londinium and the surrounding area sat on the table in front of him. It wasn't complete, it wasn't perfect, but it was a good map. It was a map that he was proud to be able to sign. Dresden Blackstone t if I lose myself tonight, it'll be by your side

Made by Sifr @ THQ.