For want of a tree... (research, private, Miki)

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception -[BLIND] -[SOBER]

Continuing with his canvas of the forests surrounding London, tehm had spent nearly two weeks now searching for a tree comparable to the one he had found in the copse north east of London which had been too high level for his initial attempt. Unfortunately, his search had so far proven to be in vain. He wasn't exactly sure when, but at some point the quest had ceased to be about creating the perfect staff, and become more about the quest for exploration.

Although tehm had no way of comparing his map to that of others, he suspected that he had now explored more of the land around London than any other person since coming to this new land. He had even become better at identifying some of the types of tree which surrounded the land. Since his initial try he had begun taking numbered samples of woods that he thought could be promising and memorizing the features of the parent tree before placing them into his bag of holding. When he returned to town he would then go to the woodworking shop to have the samples identified thus allowing him to identify some of the characteristics of those trees when exploring in the field. Using this method, tehm had identified the type of tree that he had tried for his first real attempt at a staff as "Yew"; a quality wood long used for the creation of staves and bows.

As he was finishing the mapping of section N13 on his player map, Tehm discovered the most promising tree that he had seen in over a week. it was not perfectly straight, and the sapling a bit too old, but with enough work it just might be servicable. Perhaps the best quality of this tree, however, was that it was one that he knew quite well, it was an Eastern Maple.

Although Maple is a hard wood, it is one of the softest of hardwoods, and extremely supple. Of all of the woods he had tested, Maple was one of the best at reducing the shock transferred to the hands upon striking an object, and the grain was extremely consistent; giving the wood an excellent "hand-feel" upon proper sanding.

Word Count: 370

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception [BLIND] [SOBER]

Taking out his hand-saw, Tehm quickly took down the thick sapling and using his knife to strip the few small limbs from the lower six feet of the tree. After sawing off the remainder, tehm carefully began using his knife to strip the bark from the staff and roughly smooth out the junctions where he had removed the branches.

In comparison to the Yew which he had worked previously the maple had a much smaller taper and so, rather than mimicing the actions he had taken before, Tehm began using a rough piece of sandpaper to smooth the entire length of the staff, expecting that the removal of the bow to the staff would be a bigger issue than the removal of the taper.

Unfortunately, no matter how he sanded the dense wood, there was no way of getting around it. This wood would never become a great staff. Although he could likely force the bow out of it, to do so would render the staff too thin and require him to basically ignore the grain of the wood, greatly weakening the ends of the staff.

(Damn it all...)

Realizing that the cause was lost, but unwilling to simply ditch the staff which he had spent several hours on, tehm begin the slow trek "home".

Word Count: 215

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception [BLIND] [SOBER]

The next morning, unwilling to give up on the bowed stave, Tehm remain in "his spot", the seldom visited, walled corner that he had been using since the event that had trapped him in Elder Tales. Taking out his carving knife, he marked off A section, approximately 15" from the base, and began using his carving knife to plane the wood on either side of the marked off "hilt" as if to fashion a thick katana blade. After several hours of work tehm began working again with the coarse sandpaper smoothing out all of his knife marks and restoring the natural curve of the wood in the fashion of the wooden "bokken" he had sitting in a corner of his room at home.

Although this was a trivial pursuit: what need did he have for a wooden sword in this world? It was not without merit. As he had already discovered, the primary thing that had prevented him from creating his staff was not technique, nor skill, but rather "skill level". Every cut of the knife, every swipe of the sandpaper was adding slowly, agonizingly slowly, to his woodcrafting experience and bringing him another step closer to being able to work Yew.

Word Count: 202

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception [BLIND] [SOBER]

It had taken a total of three days, but he was finally finished. After reams of sandpaper the wooden bokken felt as if polished it was so smooth and the balance was better than the shoddy factory made one which he had purchased so long ago on earth.

Grunting softly as he stood up, tehm stretched his stiff back and began making ready for another excursion out, into unexplored forest, when he heard something rare.

(Why is an adventurer headed over here?)

Tehm wasn't really sure how he knew it was an adventurer, it wasn't any one thing you could place, but there was something about the way that the landers walked that made them easy to pick out. This was not a lander.

Dropping the bokken on the ground, tehm casually rolled the end of his walking stick up onto the top of his foot and kicked the end up into his waiting hand.

"Hello there! What can I do for you stranger?"

Word Count: 164

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.