The Handy Wrench: Side B [Casual Invasion/Solo]

[Renai]

Renai's eyes alighted on the old workshop at the edge of London, glancing out at the lake nearby and letting a small frown cross his features. A while back, he had gone and attempted to make a boat with a certain mechanic and had even recently made a request of that same mechanic. Speaking of that mechanic, he wondered if Hiro had been alright questing with Ruemia. Renai was a little concerned as to how that worked out and a little worried, considering he had essentially bailed. It wasn't like he had meant to, but Fairy Circle had a way of pulling him in and making all his plans impossible to complete. The woodcrafter let out yet another sigh and scratched his head. Elegance, Vincent! The sigh quickly turned into a bit of a scowl. While he was grateful to his parents for bringing him up, despite the situation surrounding his entrance into the family, that didn't mean he appreciated being mentally told off from the heavens. Seriously, the gardening knife lady and that ridiculous 'elegant maid' kept shouting at him from out of nowhere. Enough already. It got especially bad after he entered the game and even worse after meeting Ruemia. Ugh.

Well, that wasn't exactly why he was here. His concern was more aimed towards how it seemed like the 'Handy Wrench', as it was called, seemed to be lacking any proper structure. Hiro wasn't around, but his so-called workshop was basically open to completely rifle through. That wasn't okay. He had requested a lock from Hiro a bit ago, so now Renai was moving through the items until he found what it was he wanted. When he got a hand on the lock in question, Renai spun it around in circles in his hand, staring at it. How was he going to implement this? Renai's hands turned the device over and over in his hand. The woodcrafter couldn't make the device itself, but it was something he absolutely needed to create a door. After all, what building cannot be entered? The woodcrafter's interest was in making accessible buildings for the sake of living and using, not prisons and cages.

Renai wasn't really concerned with appearance to begin with, but instead wanted to work on being able to implement a door in and of itself. The first thing to do was to size it up, figure out where the proper placement of the lock was, and then implement the lock inside the door itself. First thing to do was to make a wooden model of the lock itself so Renai could toy around with a model without ruining the actual device. It was one thing to 'borrow' Hiro's equipment for scale and another entirely to go ahead and use it without his permission. What kind of elegant housekeeper would Renai be if he went ahead and trampled all over Hiro's security when he was attempting to improve it? Pulling a block of wood from the pre-sorted pile, Renai began slicing and sanding, trying to create a scale replica of the lock Hiro had made. It wasn't particularly hard, he just needed to take some time to do it as he considered just how much 'motion' he could instill on a woodcrafted device.

[Renai]

He just needed examples of wooden structures that moved. It was obvious to begin with, Renai noted as he continued to whittle away at the block of wood in front of him, that motion could be intrinsic to certain wooden creations. Wooden armor was a perfect example of this and, now that he was thinking a bit more globally, didn't the Japanese have those sliding wooden doors? There wasn't any need to strictly adhere to the western ideal, but it would be useful to be able to create both kinds of doors. He'd need to be able to create a wooden hinge for the standard western door and perhaps the easiest way to do it would be to create slots within the frame of the door itself. It would be much like the key inside a lock, except the hinge would actively attach to the door in what could be thought of as a tetris z shape. The door itself would feature an l-shaped indent to hold the z-shaped block. Then the z-shaped block could fit to another simple hinge block and that could form a full wooden hinge.

Glancing down at his hands, Renai nodded in approval at the wooden facsimile of a lock. This was acceptable. Now he'd just need to find a way to fit it to the frame of the door itself. Time to carve a hole out of a decent thickness block of wood. He figured most doors were a few inches thick, so Renai grabbed a slab of wood that was a few inches thick and began to tinker, cutting out an appropriately sized hole and expanding over and over until the lock fit snugly inside the hole itself. Attaching some glue to the sides and fitting it properly, Renai gazed at his creation carefully. It would... probably do. Probably. Grumbling under his breath a bit at the worktable, the woodcrafter moved the fake locked door to one side and cut a hole in the side, carefully creating that l-shaped indent that he had talked about before. Drilling holes in that and pulling it out, Renai turned the 'almost hinge' around in his hands before slicing out a chunk near the end. Pulling out another small block and fitting it together, the crafter cut a hole straight down through the hinges together and fitted a singular pick down through the hinge. Done. Putting the hinge back into the door, Renai turned the thing around here or there, sanding the inside down and moving it in circles. Perfect. Pushing the hinge into the door, Renai turned the object around in his hands. So this was a real and proper door now. With a lock and hinges that turned around in circles. With nails or indents in the door itself, one could very easily attach this to a wall or a frame. He just needed to actually start making walls and such.

Or making sliding doors instead. That is also an option.

[1041]

[Renai]

Sliding doors were totally important. One-hundred-percent important. Renai's eyes moved to the stacks of wood in the corner, putting his 'in-progress' work up on the side before grabbing a new block of wood to work with. The thing about sliding doors was essentially that they were paper doors with wooden frames. If he was going to make a large wall, then it was basically going to need to be covered in some sort of cloth or paper. He'd need an Artisan and a Scribe or a Tailor, so he'd need to employ one of those once he made the frame. Or he could cheat and go ahead and make his own covering via the housekeeper skills, but that was a consideration for later. The important thing to do first was learn how to make a frame. Doors were solid wood, which isn't too bad, and the boat that Renai had once made was much the same. These were solid structures with no loose parts and open holes, but Renai couldn't imagine someone sliding a door that was a massive block of wood. It'd simply be much too heavy. Not everyone had the rippling muscles that the mechanic owner of this place had. Hirosame was an exception.

It'd basically be like making a massive window, more or less. The door itself was going to be a block of wood at the bottom, with a frame to put a painting or covering up higher. It would be a crisscrossing of wooden blocks. Nodding to himself, Renai laid out a large block of wood in front of him and began sawing away, sanding the edges and creating a proper doorframe, so to speak. It was particularly easy considering Renai had just finished making a proper wooden door, so he just cut out a proper hole and then sanded the edges. Cutting in a hand guard at the edge and scrubbing away at the top and bottom to create ridges to slide on, creating a proper sliding mechanism. This really wasn't that hard at his level anymore. It was one thing to make a boat and another to make a bloody door. Sanding away more and more at the edges and gluing on struts against the frame, Renai pulled the door up and inspected it. The vertical bisector segment was thicker than all the rest for structural support and the entire door was basically created in a way so that the door didn't bend and wobble needlessly. The only thing left was to put up some sort of tapestry or cloth in the middle and effectively finish off the door. With any luck, Renai would have officially managed to make doors suitable for both indoor and outdoor use, as well as eastern and western styles. That way, anyone who was so inclined could theoretically live in the way that they personally were comfortable. And that would be just fine with Renai. Now to put this up on the side and figure out how to make walls for this workshop before Hiro came back and found out Renai was screwing around.

[1558]

[Renai]

It probably would have been good if Hiro was actually around, now that Renai was thinking about it. He might have been a woodcrafter, but that didn't mean he inherently or implicitly had the strength required to do some of the heavy lifting his craft implied. Personally, he probably would have been better off sitting in a corner and making small figurines or mannequins or something, but he had a certain debt to repay. After all, he had requested that Hiro make a lock for him and the other party hadn't even requested any payment. And he did technically owe Ruemia as well, so the solution was fairly obvious. He'd make this workshop of Hiro's more reasonable, with proper walls and a proper door and maybe even a proper signboard. Once he was done with that, he'd go build Ruemia a house worthy of her stupid ojousama status. Perfect plan, really. As it stood, Renai had already managed to attempt to make some paltry attempt at doors. He had the sinking feeling that he wouldn't actually succeed, now that he was thinking about it properly, but it would probably be better to have a shed with a lock to store things than an open workshop where anyone could walk in and take your stuff.

Coincidentally, that was exactly what Renai was doing. With a bit of a scoff under his breath, he shook those thoughts away. It'd be inelegant if he was to be 'stealing'. He wasn't stealing, he was throwing a lovely surprise. Of course. Rolling his shoulder, the woodcrafter moved to lay down a foundation off to one side. Squinting at the wall, the player shrugged and moved outside the workshop. He wasn't sure if Hiro would like it or even if he would succeed, so he wasn't about to tear down the workshop itself. Instead, he'd build a workshop around the workshop. Great plan. Renai's first task was essentially to set up two posts such that he could stick the wall in between and so the wall wouldn't just fall over on him. It was easy enough considering there were ample trees and other things that he appropriated into making his wall. Woodcrafters could apparently make things really fast with their higher leveled skills, right? He needed to be able to deal with unreasonable situations and, in the worst case, start crafting on the fly to get himself out of a bad spot. After all, no one likes to be walled. Nodding to himself, Renai set about making the overall plans for the wall.

Walls in general tended to have a basic structure to them. If Renai was remembering correctly, the trick to a wall was to make a base and then put up sheets around the base. In other words, it would be mostly hollow on the inside. That was the point of a stud-finder or whatever, right? The woodcrafter nodded to himself as he considered how exactly to make this wall work. No windows and no doors would be acceptable for his first wall. He'd figure out how to add in doors or windows later. Given that, the player first set out a long rectangular frame, pulling out his hammer and his nails and setting them in place before he went back inside the workshop. Shuffling back and forth between the frame and the workshop with some measuring tape and a pencil, Renai marked out lengths for the cuts, scoring a certain distance against the wood pieces before sawing them off. It was probably a good thing the workshop had quite a few spare materials or Renai might have been in a serious pinch in terms of funds.

With a bit of a cackle and more than a few basic wooden beams done, the woodcrafter set himself to the task of putting the beams in place. Setting the beams out equidistant from their adjacent beams, the woodcrafter nailed each beam in place one by one. He had something like a beam every couple feet, creating a rather solid looking array of vertical lines that spanned out in front of him. More than a few planks had been murdered for the sake of this frame, but it was all fair game. Renai considered picking the frame up from the ground so he could get some sheets on here and turn the frame into an actual wall, but even tugging up on a corner gave away a problem. Ignoring the fact that Renai was about as wimpy as one could get, the wood itself warped when he pulled it up. Simply put, if he kept lifting, the entire thing would snap as he lifted and his work would be completely ruined. With a bit of a huff, the silver-haired scientist took to the textbooks to figure out how to solve the problem. The frame wasn't rigid enough and bent when he pulled it upwards, but wasn't that because he only had restrictions in the vertical direction? Now that he was thinking about it, nothing was built with just straight up-and-down beams. Even if he had the horizontal beams to hold everything in place, it seemed that he'd need to add some intermediate beams in the center as well. Maybe spacing them apart from each other would also be a decent idea so that all of the twisting and torsion wasn't focused on one area of the frame.

With yet another huff, Renai measured quickly and cleanly, checking the distance across each vertical beam and committing it to memory before he went off to cut some more wooden beams. It was the same process as before, admittedly, so it wasn't very interesting. After a few minutes of measuring and scoring and cutting and sanding, the player had a few horizontal beams in his hands. Wobbling back towards the frame of the wall, the male carefully began hammering each of the beams in place, focusing mostly on the center horizontal bisector as he worked, staggering each beam just enough so that the rotation would be more properly spread apart. This was a decent enough idea, right? Putting the hammer down as Renai finished pounding in the last of the nails, the woodcrafter leaned against a nearby tree and sighed. What a freaking pain just for one wall. If he was going to end up making houses, was he going to have to do this for all of them? He really didn't remember the maintenance on those old houses back home being this much of a pain, but then again, he didn't have to cut all the materials by hand and it was maintenance, not construction. He needed a bit of a rest though. In terms of what he was going to do next, the crafter figured the only thing really left to do was attempt to pick the frame up and attach the sheet material to the outside. Then apply an outer coat and seal everything up to create a proper waterproofing? Once that was done, attach a final coat and properly cover the whole thing so it turned into a respectable wall? Renai scowled again. Sure was a lot easier when he could just 'borrow' materials from the local store. Elegantly, of course. Getting thrown in jail wasn't elegant though.

[1212]

[Renai]

At this point, Renai was more than a little tired with all his recent shenanigans. He had gone and made two kinds of doors and was making walls now. He'd still have to make a ceiling after all of this and then three more walls and then he'd finally be done, but until then, there was still work to be done. Groaning and picking himself up, Renai swatted away the imaginary voices of that old hag maid yelling at him to be elegant and stumbled over to his tools. His legs and arms were both sore and he wasn't used to doing so much work all at once, even in the real world. With another soft groan and a stretch of his back, Renai moved to pick the frame up. He'd have to properly lean it against enough points along the frame to prevent warping, but he couldn't exactly leave it lying on the floor anymore. Clenching his teeth and sighing, the human felt the hair on his neck raise. Glancing over his shoulder a few times just to be sure no one was spying on him, the woodcrafter let his ears shift and pop out, eyes glowing a deep yellow as his muscles rippled under his shoddy starter clothing. He managed to still keep his tail from popping out and making him feel really gross, but the partial change gave him enough of a strength boost to push the frame up and against the workshop. It was propped up against a tree and a building and some other points, bending just a little bit, but as it was currently, it was fine enough for applying the first sheets to.

Which of course, required more carpentry work. He was going to have to make a carpentry workbench soon so he could more smoothly engineer these parts and not have to take nine million hours doing all of this nonsense. Shuffling back into the workshop, Renai took his already-measured measurements and plotted a rather rough graphical map of just what he needed to do and how many of these panels he was supposed to cut out. He didn't really want to make half panels or anything, but he had gone ahead and stupidly put the beams in random areas in terms of horizontal alignment. Well, this was just the primary layer anyway. Insulation could be a task for later, now that he was thinking about it. Whatever he was thinking about wasn't entirely relevant to the actual worry of getting the wall to be less of a frame and more of a wall though, so Renai quickly went ahead and created more panels, aiming to create two to each open rectangle. That meant four to each vertical section to begin with. That and a whole mountain of nails. With a sardonic chuckle, Renai got to work.

It really wasn't even that difficult, honestly. It was just a whole lot of work for not a whole lot of progress. It was like carefully whitewashing a fence, taking care to get everything but using the same repeating, monotonous motion. One after another, panel after panel went up. First one column, then another, then another, until Renai's hands and back hurt from the amount of squatting and hammering he was doing. It was going to be worth it though. Definitely. He wasn't quite sure why he was getting so worked up in regards to succeeding, but something about showing up Hiro and Ruemia and throwing a house in their faces was satisfying to the rather strange crafter. The little monster continued to pound away before sliding over to the other side, slamming more panels onto the structure as he continued to work. Every so often, he marked where the studs were with a pencil so he wouldn't have to do stupid guesswork later, but the rather awkward leaning position of the frame-turned-wall made it easier than expected. Finishing up smoothly, Renai looked at the patchwork of panels and frowned. Two steps left, right? Do some sealing and plaster work to properly waterproof the darn thing and then put the final wall piece on.

The crafter shuffled back into the workshop and went hunting for some sort of plaster. It was a finishing material, yeah, but whatever. Renai wasn't doing a great job anyway. Was he supposed to make plaster as a woodcrafter? Wasn't that technically cement of some kind? That didn't sound like woodcrafter stuff, but then again, Renai had thought that making paper would be a woodcrafter job. After all, paper was made from trees. Then scribes showed up and Renai was turned on his head in regards to that. Well, this wasn't exactly a wall that was set in cement, so it would have to act more like a shed wall. Renai really would have preferred to not screw up so early in the game and forget to properly anchor his frame, but he was all sorts of dumb. Scoffing at his lack of foresight, he just figured he'd make a wall and get it over with. The research would probably be sufficient to make either a partition wall or a load-bearing wall. Applying some coating across the panels, Renai threw some more panels on there kind of willy-nilly. He was starting to get a little sick of this whole project, so he decided to just jump to the end.

The end of the narration being the part where he applied some plaster and this weird mix of old glue and water so as to properly provide some sort of sealant. As it turned out, glue was marginally water-resistant and Renai is a giant slacker, so he just casually went ahead and slathered the glue-water mixture on some of the joints, doing his best to not completely screw up his attempt at a wall. It was a little... bad, but it was solid. And it didn't look terrible. Renai figured if he had thought about how it had to be load-bearing from the start and properly gotten a foundation settled in like he was building an actual house, maybe it wouldn't have sucked so bad, but oh well. One makes do with what one has. The wall itself was larger than Hiro's workshop, so Renai just casually dragged it over to one of the trees and set it down. No warping, which was good, so maybe he hadn't screwed up too badly. Somehow, the crafter had managed to succesfully attempt a wall. In retrospect, adding a door or a window was just adding horizontal beams where the horizontal beams needed to go, since literally all the weight was going to be on the load-bearing portions and mostly on the outside. Good to know. Yay physics.

[1123]

[Renai]

There were really a whole lot of opportunities to go ahead and make a shed or a house or something. Anything, in fact, that didn't leave a giant wall kind of just sitting there next to Hiro's workshop and a whole host of stupid woodcrafting objects cluttering up the workspace. So many opportunities that Renai simply did not take. If you were to ask why, the simple reason was that he had gotten distracted by some new idea that had popped in his head. At first, he considered making mannequins. Hundreds of them. He'd start placing them everywhere around town and freaking people out, but that wasn't something he could pass off as a joke. If people got seriously offended or freaked out, he was in trouble. So the obvious solution was to do something completely different. He had an itch he needed to scratch and he'd be damned if he was going to keep doing this other work and never end up tending to his own basic needs. Those basic needs basically being the urge to play music. He had played that one organ that one time, but it just wasn't enough.

He wanted more. He wanted to be able to play more, whenever he wanted. As far as he knew, there weren't any easy recipes available for use in terms of making musical instruments. People bought those cheap things from the store or got a musical instrument as a starter item, but could those really be considered 'quality goods'? There was a difference between a cheap knock-off and the real deal and Renai had every intention of being able to create proper instruments. Or at the very least, being able to make instruments. With a quiet frown, the woodworker shuffled back inside and, for once, actually glanced at his Housekeeper skill. Act as though you are five levels higher in the chef, tailor, and woodcrafter categories? It certainly let him craft the easy items among the chef and tailor works, but the important part here was that it took his ability to work with wood and bumped it up even higher. There should have been a higher chance of success, given that. Either way, he was starting to ramble into an aside that was unrelated and the main point here was that he was pretty well off as far as woodcrafting went. He just needed to figure out how to make instruments. The biggest problem for him was that a lot of instruments were made of metal. All of the instruments in the 'brass' category were largely comprised of metal and a large number of woodwinds featured the same basic properties. Instruments like trombones, flutes, and saxophones really weren't often seen in wood form. Flutes had exceptions, perhaps? On the other hand, a large number of stringed instruments featured wood prominently in their make. Guitars, pianos, cellos, violins, and so on. There were even some woodwinds, such as the clarinet and oboe. These were within his bounds.

Well, if he was going to make anything, he'd need to actually start working on it instead of theorizing about how to build and what he could and couldn't build. If he was going to build something, then it would probably have to be a whistle to start. It wasn't really an instrument and more of a sharp, shrill noisemaker, but if he could get a handle on how to make the mouthpiece and get sound to properly resonate, that would be something. Grabbing a small chunk of wood from the pile of blocks that was sitting around, Renai took his knife to it. There wasn't any need for glue here, just some sandpaper, a knife, and wood. Cutting away at the object more and more, Renai thought back to the 'slotted door hinge' that he had made. If he was going to make a whistle, the 'drum' of the whistle was going to be at least partially hollow, but actually cutting away at that with the mouthpiece in the way would be impossible. He'd simply make two parts and cut them so when he was done, he could 'slot' them together. Much like plugging a wire into its proper port or clipping together a seatbelt or a fastener. Working more on cutting into the bell of the whistle, Renai carved away carefully and slowly, hollowing out the inside of the piece of wood like a pumpkin. After that was done to a sufficient level where it would pass for a facsimile of an actual whistle's bell, the player got working on the mouthpiece. This was part of where his housekeeping skills actually did come in handy. He was used to paying attention to small details and having to be careful with objects, so his hands were steady as he carefully chipped out and sliced a mouthpiece. If he was remembering from his old work on acoustics, the reason that whistles made a sound in the first place was the change in sound waves. When playing any woodwind with a reed for a mouthpiece, the reason the instrument makes any sound at all is because the reed vibrates.

In other words, the rest of the instrument is a tuner and a means of increasing the volume via resonance. Whistles, which didn't feature reeds, probably had to cut the air. When whistling normally, a requirement was to create a small stream of air. In doing this, the concentrated air had a larger effect and was able to produce sounds via the interaction with the shape of the mouth. The vibrating stream of air against the blade of the whistle was what created the sound. The real problem in all of this was that these instruments produced standing waves and had resonant frequencies. That more or less meant a lot of physics. Although instruments had certainly been made in ages long past without the use of fancy modeling software and the like, those methods were a little outdated. Renai clamped his lips together as he stared at the little whistle in his hand. It was going to make a stupid sound, he was sure, but it was something. Perhaps it would be more convenient to base his designs off of an instrument in front of him while improving the parts he knew were wrong? Putting the whistle together and sanding the edges a bit more, Renai scratched his head. Where was he going to get an instrument to copy?

[1076]

[Renai]

Distractions, distractions. Renai was getting distracted yet again. As much as he wanted to continue work on the musical instrument and the house, there was something else bugging him. It was the call... the call of Zillyhoo. Or something stupid like that. Renai didn't really know, but he did have an actual bit of work to get done before he got too wrapped up in his personal projects. Projects that involved dumb things like building walls and bettering life for all. Stupid stuff like that. At any rate, the thing that he intended to do now was to go ahead and create the one and only, legendary, super-mega-magical 'Crook of Frailty'. He wasn't exactly sure why it was called that and the whole thing sounded kind of dumb for the name of a weapon, but a certain someone had gone ahead and requested that he make the item, so he was off to do so. It was a stave of some kind, more like the magical variety, so he was expecting it to turn out looking like some sort of silly curved wooden prop. The woodcrafter himself was one who preferred to have staves that were more along the lines of the bo staff, which was admittedly the weapon he was going to turn his own weapon into. For now, however, he had a crook to create. Shuffling back into the workshop and grabbing some wood, the crafter quickly began whittling away the more worthless parts. He was using some really cheap wood for the whole thing and would eventually repeat the process once he had gotten the basic idea down.

[271]

[Renai]

Renai's scowl didn't vanish off his face at any point in the entire adventure that was essentially slicing off parts of a wooden block in an attempt to make it into something at least resembling a weapon for mages and healers. The craftsman grumbled under his breath as he continued to work, slicing bits and pieces off and continuing on his quest to make an incredibly shoddy cane. That was basically what he was making, wasn't it? The only really tricky part here was making the top portion, as everything else was more or less crafting a cylindrical beam. The top portion was the important portion and no matter how this cane was dressed up as some sort of weapon, it was basically a cane. A motherneeping cane, yo. Vincent continued to chip away at the block of wood as he worked, whistling casually as little chunks of wood clattered to the ground. Soon enough, the only portion really left was the top portion. He just had to go ahead and chop this part into little itty bits and make some sort of design and then it'd be good, right? Probably. Most likely. It was a solid plan if he said so himself. Speaking of solid plans, Renai decided that the appropriate shape for the top of the cane was some sort of curved umbrella thing. Basically, the object was going to look like an umbrella with no actual coverage from the rain. Very fancy, of course. The craftsman took his chiseling tools and created a rather arbitrary curve, twisting the end of the wooden object into strange spirals and rather unreasonable twists. By the time he was done, he was so grossed out by the stupid top of the stupid cane, he stupidly chopped the thing off entirely.

Woops.

[300]

[Renai]

Well, he basically understood the premise of the entire thing anyway. It wasn't like he was going to give this shoddy junk staff to the requester and pretend that it was actually a level 10 weapon. Renai was dishonest, perhaps, but he wasn't a crook. The staff was a crook. Renai shrugged and shuffled towards the marketplace for a bit, quickly picking out some material that wasn't basically junk. It was easy to tell what was 'level 1' material and what was 'level 10' material. It all basically sucked, but the level 10 material sucked less. Predictably, it was ten times as expensive. Repressing the scowl that should have alighted on his face, the player swung through the marketplace and took what he needed, dropping what gold he had in return for the materials. He'd get paid based on whether or not what he made was decent, so it was best not to waste any materials. Keeping to that rather lovely plot, Renai quickly replicated his work on the original cane, noting how much easier it was to shape the wood and slice as he pleased. For the 'top' section this time, he simply created this sort of half-spiral thing. It was nothing more than the wood curling outwards and then moving clockwise into the center of a circle just once, creating something that looked a bit like a question mark. A very stylized question mark, perhaps, but a question mark nonetheless.

As Renai mentioned in the first post (if you were paying attention), this was an object that would be known as the Crook of Frailty. The customer would probably be pretty happy to see it. It didn't look half bad. Wait, wasn't this something that necromancers use...?

[289]

[Renai]

Renai's thoughts drifted towards the house and the musical instruments that he had intended to make, but suddenly he had another request coming his way. Alright. He had conveniently forgotten that Midori had gone and requested that he craft her a new puppet. Renai had no qualms about that, being a woodcrafter, but he did have to learn how to make a puppet. Sure, his woodcrafting skills might have been improving rapidly, but that didn't mean he automatically knew how to make everything. With a bit of a sigh, Renai shuffled back towards the workshop and pulled out a few small blocks as he considered how he was going to make this work. Now that he thought about it, hadn't he basically assumed that woodcrafter's couldn't make objects that moved until now? He had made a hinge, yes, but that didn't mean he had really considered the possibility fully. Still, didn't the existence of puppetry on the list of craftable objects mean that woodcrafters could craft mobile objects? Maybe he wouldn't have to rely on a mechanic so heavily after all. Almost mechanically, Renai noted that his hands had slowly been carving out what appeared to be a ball joint. That was an integral part to making puppets and he had been more or less considering it in his head, but it was a little surprising to see that a lot of what he did was somewhat automated. Well, this was a somewhat decent ball joint, now he just needed to create the socket. Once he had this working properly, he'd be able to create the full puppet. The only thing after that was attaching it to the control bar. The joints needed to move smoothly for the puppet to be able to be manipulated, after all.

[297]

[Renai]

Well, the ball and socket joints were done. That was nice enough. After a bit of careful testing and sanding, Renai had managed to create various ball joints to fit into various sockets, going as far as to even create fingers that curled slightly and had a limited range of motion. He couldn't get too fancy with the fingers and create too many joints. Not only because it might be hard for the earlier puppeteers to control, but also because it was a little difficult for him to create such small objects that worked appropriately given such cruddy materials. Seriously, this old wood stuff was nonsense. If he made anything too delicate, there was a high likelihood that the object would break on use. He was seeking to create a durable puppet for Hiro's buddy, Midori, not create some rubbish facsimile of a proper puppet. Scowling as he attached a few more joints together and created an outer casing for the joints so they weren't as visible, the woodcrafter checked the dimensions again. Midori wanted something that was larger enough to make a difference, probably around four feet in height. Keeping that and human proportions into account, Renai attached the limbs and continued to carve out pieces of wood for the remaining pieces. As it continued to come together, Renai was starting to feel bad for the puppet. It needed clothes or something. Maybe. Well, as long as it looked like this, there wasn't much to worry about, but eh. Snapping the final piece in place and nodding to himself, Renai admired the relatively large puppet. It didn't have hair or a control bar yet, but he was going to change that soon.

[283]

[Renai]

Last part then. The marionette itself was basically put together, but there were a few aesthetic considerations to worry about. It wasn't like he was particularly inclined to go the extra mile or anything, but he did have a design that he had been sent and he was relatively determined to get out a decent product. After all, as a woodcrafter, a fair number of puppet requests would be heading his way. He wasn't about to disappoint. Still, he had to take a moment away from woodcrafting in order to do those important aesthetics. Time to switch to Housekeeper. Renai crafted a bit of a flexible frame for a wig out of some cloth and quickly began sewing in hair strands, attaching tuft after tuft of hair. It wasn't like he was being particularly sloppy, but the materials weren't that great to begin with and he had to improvise. He wondered if this was really a tailoring job, all things considered, but as the woodcrafter gave the doll a haircut and straightened out its 'hair', he figured it didn't really matter. The last task was to craft a control bar, which wasn't too hard a task. All it really was was an attachment of two planks together at a certain distance and angle, creating something similar to a cross. Thinking about who it was that would wield the puppet, Renai took some extra care to make the control bar a bit thinner so it was easier to hold. It wasn't like he was looking down on Midori, but she was a bit smaller than he was, so he'd have to adjust based on that instead of based on his own hand span. He had always had somewhat large hands, after all. The last thing to do was just attach strings to the puppet at different points, tracing the strings up to the control bar and attaching them firmly. Done.

[319]

[Renai]

Renai's eyes flicked from the puppet to the control bar as the player frowned slightly. This was a puppet, he supposed, but he wasn't exactly happy with it. It was staring back at him blankly, no facial features added based on the description of the buyer, but it just wasn't good enough. He was going to reforge this one. It wasn't like he was going to remake the whole thing, that would be a serious waste of materials, but he did want to remake and redo some parts. Specifically, the control bar and attached strings. He had thrown them on a little haphazardly before, he was now realizing, and he was fairly certain there was a better way to deal with this. Snipping the strings off and coaxing them away from the frame of the puppet, Renai took to the control bar and stared at it long and hard. If he was right, his buyer would prefer to have additional range on the puppet. In fact, he was recalling that she had made that sort of request, but he couldn't be bothered to go back and check. With that in mind, the easiest way was not to improve the puppet, but rather its control mechanism. The control bar as it was now was somewhat hefty, even for Renai, and he had made it for someone a few sizes smaller than he was. This was the thing to improve. Definitely. Taking it apart and glancing at it, Renai shuffled to the pile of wood in the corner and nodded to himself. He knew what he was going to do now.

[269]

[Renai]

Renai's hands moved quickly, turning two pieces of wood around in different configurations and trying to figure out the best way to balance the weight and still be able to properly control a puppet. Eventually, he decided on a configuration, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was controlling a puppet at larger distances. Larger distances meant larger motions meant more torque and force required for any action. Renai's eyes seemed to gaze at nothing as they swiveled, looking at some imaginary blackboard of equations that simply weren't there. His view was glazed over as the equations and concepts filtered through his mind and he considered the structural mechanisms of a control bar until he finally sighed and slumped down on the table. It wasn't that he couldn't create something decent, but the materials, his own skills, and the skills of his buyer meant it was going to be a little difficult. Some day though, when Midori was an ace puppeteer and he was a proper woodcrafter, he'd definitely make her something first class to make up for this bullshit. Plating the control bar with a bit of extra wood at some edges for structural support and thinning out parts near the middle to decrease weight, Renai carefully attached the strings of the control bar to the puppet itself, making the little puppet girl hop up and down a bit. That wasn't too bad, he guessed. It was certainly easier to move and could probably move a bit further out, but Renai just wasn't satisfied. Still, it was done, so he'd just turn it into Midori as it was and hope she liked it.

[274]

[Renai]

Renai's eyes flickered as he stared up from the table. He had had plans to go ahead and continue building roofs and walls and maybe instruments as well, but something else was demanding his attention again. This time, it was the idea of Vanity Clothing. To be quite honest, he was a little fed up of walking around in these dumb starter clothes. While he certainly didn't have the best armor around, he also didn't exactly appreciate looking like he had popped into the world just yesterday. With that in mind, Renai changed the course of his work temporarily into something else entirely. The first thing he was going to make on the list of things he had to make was most definitely going to be a jacket. He was just a little cold, quite frankly, and jackets were also top class items to have and wear. They were stylish and functional and fashionable and really there wasn't anything at all bad about them, if you excluded just how bulky and heavy they could get. In the world of Elder Tale, however, the inventory kind of solved that problem because whatever wasn't being used at the time could be stored away in void space indefinitely. Quite useful all in all. So he got right to it and began taking his own measurements in this awkward dance of measuring tape and hands that frankly involved a lot of tripping over himself and grumbling. After a good while, he finally managed to get the dimensions on his own torso and figured now was the appropriate time to take some fabric and make the thing. The thing being the jacket.

[277]

[Renai]

He had really been slacking off recently, hadn't he? He somehow felt like he hadn't been doing any work for two weeks while he had just been sitting here, staring into space, but there was work to get done and someone had to do it. It had to be done, they said! And by they, he meant himself, because there wasn't anyone controlling his actions or something. Nope. Nothing like that here. At any rate, there was a jacket to be made. How were jackets made? There was some obvious thoughts that basically involved noting that this thing wasn't going to be made from just one piece of fabric. Even vests and shirts, which were arguably some of the most simple pieces of clothing, had multiple parts that were sewn together after being sized and all. Renai decided that the best thing to do was to just go for it and, in that same style, Renai went for it by taking some fabric lying around and cutting and sizing it. The basic idea was basically to have one piece of fabric for each arm, one for the front, and one for the back. There wouldn't be any real trim on this vanity clothing because, honestly, that was a bit above his level and he was just a housekeeper. If anything, he was far more suited to repairs and reworks than actually creating things out of scratch, but what had to be done would be done, as they said. They, of course, still being himself. He kept telling the reader that there wasn't anyone controlling his actions, after all.

[268]

[Renai]

There was perhaps some thought that he would take this seriously at some point and actually do tailoring like he was supposed to, but anyone and everyone who was anyone at all knew that Renai was not the type to take things too seriously when he was working on his own on some new ridiculous project or plan. That he had gotten vanity clothing to this stage at all was in and of itself a tiny miracle and he was somewhat bored again, but things had to be done and clothes had to be sewn, so he pulled out a needle and twirled it in his hands as he looked at the fabrics underneath him. He had gone ahead and figured out the placement for most of the fabric, as it stood, and was in the process of snip-snip-snipping away at the fabrics in an attempt to get them into their proper shape. Not too hard, really, as Renai was fairly decent when it came to spatial reasoning and planning. Besides, how long had he been doing repairs on clothes? With needle and string in hand, the youth got to sewing, pulling the needle in and out of the fabrics with a dexterity and grace that didn't come from the housekeeper skill, but rather ages upon ages of experience. Patching up ripped clothes and the like were well within his grasp, after all. In no time at all, the patchwork jacket was more or less complete and sitting there in front of him for him to inspect carefully. Really quite simple, after all. It was, all things considered, not too bad. Not decent, but still, usable.

[276]

[Renai]

This was all well and good, but the Woodcrafter was going to have to get back to Woodcrafting eventually, right? He needed to make musical instruments and build houses, but more importantly, he also needed to go ahead and learn how to make better martial arts weapons. Because why not, amirite. Amirite? Renai was, in fact, right. So he got right to it and shuffled straight forward into making a basic martial arts weapon. The most basic of all! A staff. Yes. This was clearly going to work. And contrary to the opinions of certain people, Renai didn't feel like he needed to follow idiotic rules like physics and conservation of mass. What was this, reality? Haaaaaa. Ha. No. Renai just got straight to work cheating like a cheater does and ignoring the rules. Cutting down a tree and carving a staff out of the 'perfect sapling'? No. Sanding it down? No. No, Renai was just going to take this block of wood he found nearby and then start cutting off chunks, hacking away, and giggling like a maniac as he defied the natural law and order of things. Because following rules was for squares and Renai was no square. No, he was a real and proper lady housewife octagon! And the octagon in question was quickly forming the block of wood he had obtained (because again, planks were for squares, which he was not) into the proper shape of a staff. That was to say, he was basically chunking away parts until it got closer and closer to resembling a tall, thin cylinder. This was splendiferous. One might even say it was sublime.

That was, if one didn't know what those words meant and was trying to be a square. So Renai didn't.

[294]

[Renai]

[blame Murasaki]

WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST FOR A SPECIAL NEWS BULLETIN. RENAI HAS FALLEN TO WOLVES AND THIS POST HAS BEEN OVERTAKEN BY WOLVES.

WOODCRAFTING WOLVES.

THIS RPER NOTES THAT RENAI IS BEING HELD RANSOM UNLESS THE RPER CAN PROVIDE A REASONABLY LARGE LIST OF THINGS ONE CAN DO WITH WOODCRAFTING. OH NO. LET'S BEGIN.

1. BUILD A BOAT. AW YIS.
2. Now that that's out of your system, you could make a lockbox.
3. Imitate Terraria.
4. Hand out weapons to children under the guise of "the weapons are fake! no metal!"
5. Make a wooden copy of yourself.
6. Repeat #5 99 more times.
7. Place wooden statues of yourself everywhere in town.
7b. Especially the bathrooms.
8. Position these wooden statues in formation around the Cathedral. Praise the moon.
9. Follow someone around and continually move the statues behind them on the sly. Cause mental breakdowns.
10. Make a fake tree and hide inside. Repeat steps 7-9 with your new prop.

The RPer would like to take this moment to warn against carelessly breaking the fourth wall. For shame, she notes. For shame. For shaaaaaaame. Then he continues to break the fourth wall. Wolves have got Renai, after all.

11. Repair the warehouses in London.
12. Build a house.
13. Build an apartment or variety of other shelters.
14. Learn to weave with wood. Tailoring isn't the only thing that can make baskets, you know.
15. Revisit your childhood and introduce Lincoln Logs to the masses. Cause widespread addiction. Get rich.
16. Create a scaled version of your newfound Lincoln Log creation to feed your newfound addiction. Woops.
17. Build yourself a time-out box to help cope with withdrawals. Gotta break the habit.
18. Build yourself a dinner table. That's important.
19. Lrn2Chair, noob.
20. Find an orphan and build him a swingset. Get him in your debt forever. It begins.

The RPer wishes the wolves would let Renai go already, but that doesn't look like it's happening any time soon. Too bad.

[334]

[Renai]

After much internal struggle and debate, some deep metaphysical thoughts, and a whole lot of bribes with fresh, raw meat, this RPer believes that she has persuaded the wolves to let Renai go. This RPer was wrong. So very, very wrong. He made the mistake of actually bargaining with these wolves so early on and the end result was quite simple. More. More woodcrafting things. More to appease the WOODCRAFTING WOLVES.

21. Catapults.
22. The obvious thing to do after catapults was ballista.
23. Build a bonfire. That's always fun.
24. Make a Guy Fawkes thing. Then burn him. Burn him into the ground.
25. Build a treehouse.
26. Be incredibly sexist and make a 'no girls allowed' sign for your treehouse.
27. Regret your ignorance and amend the sign by making a wooden ladder to let the girls in.
28. Ponder whether 27 is still sexist as you build yourself a rocking chair to ponder in.
29. Realize it was and regret once more. Attempt to amend by taking some time to learn how to chop wood. By chopping down your sign.
30. Make wooden pots and paint them so they look ceramic. Throw them at people and laugh.

The RPer takes this moment to note the wolves really aren't satisfied. At all. In fact, they think most of these things are kind of lame, but they're WOODCRAFTING WOLVES, so the RPer isn't exactly sure they have the qualifications to make judgments like that. Still, they have Renai held hostage, so the RPer notes he still has to write more. She really doesn't want to see her poor character eaten by wolves.

31. Grow yourself a tree. Plant trees to make up for all that wood you're cutting down. Then cut it down. Life is cruel.
32. Harvest the sap of trees and learn how to make glue from the resin. Glue is important.
33. Make fake grass. Paint it green. Place it in random areas and watch people step on it and cry.
34. Regret your cruelty and set out taller grass that goes up to knee length. Hide coins inside.
35. Convince some kid he is the hero of time. Hand him a 'Kokiri Sword'. The sword is wooden, of course.
35b. Realize 35 is a copy of 4, just phrased differently. Amend this by getting the kid a shield instead. Make the shield incredibly flammable so he keeps coming back. Profit.
36. Build a sandbox for the really small kids. Turns out you can actually be a nice guy once in a while.
37. Make a bridge with 'Quick Construction'. Laugh as the suckers wear it out and fall into a river.
38. Repent for your cruelty by making a bridge. The bridge is actually a single plank in the middle of the river that's anchored down. So yeah, learn to anchor things in water.
39. You suppose you should actually repent. Build a walking stick for some old lady or dude.
40. Install a harpoon launcher into the cane. Make sure it launches harpoons. It's like a crossbow. Except harpoons. Probably use mechanisms like a recurve bow so it's easier for the oldies to fire.

The RPer really feels like this list is starting to get kind of long and silly, but the wolves refuse to let Renai go. Still. Lame.