We all logged off from BaS after that. I took Baxter to the park and then cooked him a steak as a treat. For myself, I ordered takeout from a Korean place on Hearthside West. Sticky ribs and fried chicken in a sweet-soy glaze, as well as japchae, which was a noodle dish with tons of sesame oil, soy sauce, and seasoned beef.
That night I got into my pajamas and went to my bedroom and turned on the tv. There was a game on, so I watched that while Baxter curled up on the end of the bed and snoozed. Pretty soon he was snoring louder than the TV.
The next morning, I made a cafetiere full of a new Colombian coffee I’d bought to try out, and I took a steaming cup to my desk. There was an email waiting for me from Sasha Watts over at BaS headquarters. She was just checking in to see how I was doing.
I typed a quick reply back telling her the progress we’d made. She replied back soon after saying that the name of our tavern was ridiculous, and I told her that I agreed.
When I logged back into BaS, my goal for the play session was to earn two more building-related skills so I could get the Architect-Builder class. This meant that one of the two classes had to be 'architect'.
I went to the Blade and Grunder, where Hercule was in the kitchen cooking a batch of lamb stew with red wine gravy and dumplings. Through the open door I could see him stirring a big clay cauldron using a wooden spoon. The smell was so good it was almost entrancing. Hearing me enter, he came out into the bar area to meet me.
“Well, mornin’ to ya, fella. The usual?”
“If ya don’t mind,” I said.
Hercule clicked his fingers and pointed his index finger at me. “You got it.”
I ate a breakfast of fried bacon and sausages, with two poached eggs and a handful of mushrooms cooked in oil. It tasted frigging great. It was way too unhealthy a breakfast to eat every day in real life, of course, but if I couldn’t eat bad stuff in BaS without worrying about it, then where could I?
The breakfast served little purpose except for it tasting great, since you didn’t need to eat in BaS. Still, it boosted my mood and by the time I left the Blade and Grunder and stepped outside, I was in great spirits.
It was a good day. The morning air was brisker than a naked run from the shower to the towel cupboard, and smoke was rising from Gorgal’s forge. Over at the stables at the back of the Blade and Grunder, a family of four who’d stayed the night in the tavern were getting their mules ready to pull their carriage.
I left Blade’s Rest and was about to head to the traveler road directed toward Westfell, when I saw a strange-looking carriage heading my way.
The carriage itself was normal, being of wooden construction with giant wheels and a space for a driver on the front and a storage area at the back. It was the driver and the animal doing the pulling that was the strange part of it.
The driver was a man-sized slug creature with slimy hands attached to slimy arms, and in these hands he clutched leather reins that were strapped to an elephant. But this was no ordinary elephant – it was much skinnier than its real counterparts, and it was the size of a horse. Even though it was on the small side, it had a huge snakelike trunk and two bleached tusks on either side of it.
Every so often the slug, who was wearing a tanned brown coat, flipped peanuts to it, which the elephant caught with its trunk. The elephant seemed happy with its tail swishing as it walked. Though I reckoned that was more about swatting flies than showing pleasure. Still, it seemed cheerful enough.
When the strange driver and beast got closer, I saw that there were dozens of huge burlap sacks on the back of the carriage. The bags were waxed to protect them from rain, and the contents inside bulged in straight lines. They were books, I reckoned. They had to be.
The slug pulled his carriage to a stop at the entryway to Blade’s Rest. His name tag was yellow, which indicated that he was an NPC, if I hadn’t already have guessed. His name was Marvin and his elephant was called Charles.
He took his hat off his head and doffed it to me.
“Well, good day and good mornin’, my two legged friend!” he said. “It’s a little too dry of a mornin’ for my liking, but that’s okay. I reckon the sky’s promising a nice bit of rain later.”
I nodded at him. “Morning.”
Marvin peered at the hamlet sign. Unlike real slugs he had proper eyes, which were sitting atop the tentacles on his head.
“Blay’s Rest,” he said. “That the name of this place?”
“Blade’s Rest.”
“Sorry. My eyesight isn’t too good. Charles here acts as my eyes when we’re on the road, he can see things from miles away, can’t you, Charles?”
Charles happily swished his trunk upward and patted Marvin on the head with it. The slug fed him a peanut.
“What can I help you with?” I said.
“Well,” said Marvin. “I’m what you might call a traveling bookseller, on account of me traveling around, selling books. You a reader, son?”
“Yup.”
“Then how about I show you my wares?”
Thinking how inconvenient it was to travel to Westfell to see Bryp the satyr – and why I kept going back to his shop in the first place- I reckoned it wouldn’t do any harm to see what Marvin had for sale.
“Sounds good.”
At this, a menu system appeared in the center of my screen. It was a list of Marvin’s inventory, showing hundreds and hundreds of books. I was able to sort them by type, price, and effect.
When I filtered by ‘crafting’ he had four books for sale.
Plane and Simple by Hugh F. Yellerstone
[Effect: Learn carpentry skill]
Screwing Around by M.S. George and B. George
[Effect: Learn improvisation skill]
Cracking Flags: A guide to the world of Limestone and Basalt by Anonymous
[Effect: Learn stonemasonry]
The last book was titled Tinkering Around, and it was a beginner’s guide to tinkering. Tinkering was a more developed form of improvisation, allowing the creation of items involving mechanics and explosive powders, among other things. It also allowed the crafter to repair items, as well as modify or improve stuff. The tinkering book was listed at 12 gold, which was steep for a skilltome.
“I might take the tinkering book, but we’ve gotta talk about the price.”
Marvin regarded me with the look of a slug who’d had people haggling with him all of his life. “How so?”
“I mean, it’s clearly second-hand. The condition is shoddy. And is that a stain on page 12? Hmm. I’ll give you 7 gold for it.”
There was a moment of pause as Marvin thought about my offer, which in effect meant that the game was performing a charisma check on me. My language skill, coupled with my intelligence, boosted my under-the-hood charisma check chances.
I said nothing, waiting for him to speak.
“Done!” he said.
I handed him the gold and took the book.
“Say. Is it worth me adding Blay’s Rest…Blade’s Rest… to my regular haunts? I tend to make a circuit of Gobbler’s Creek, sometimes going as far as Waterfall Mass if business ain’t good around here.”
“We’re only going to get bigger, so yeah, I’d say so.”
“Splendid as a muddy puddle on a drizzly day! Say. I’ll make this easy for ya. I’ll leave a waxed, artificed notepad here by your sign. Write down any books you need. The notepad is artificed, so it’ll alert me to what you need no matter where I am. I’ll procure ‘em and deliver ‘em to you when I swing by.”
“Got it.” I jerked my thumb behind me. “There’s a tavern over there if you guys want to rest and get something to eat. I’m sure Hanz and Franz will love to get to take care of an elephant.”
Marvin shook his head violently, making his tentacles sway. “No. Oh no. I don’t like taverns, no sir. Cooks use way too much salt in their food in places like that. All I need is a nice spot of rain and a hunk of lettuce, and I’m happy.”
I took one last look at Marvin’s wares before he left. There was a cookery book for people with cookery ranked apprentice and above. I bought it for Hercule, hoping it would expand his range of recipes.
When Marvin and his elephant carried on down the gently sloping travelers’ road and headed toward Black Salt Lake, I took my new book to my hut and I opened it to the first page.
To learn the tinkering skill, I had to either repair, take apart, or modify an item, with various examples given.
I chose to modify a crafting hammer, but I was going to need some supplies in order to do some tinkering.
I went to Westfell, where I visited a tinker supply store owned by a gnome called Dilbert who wore an apron smeared with oil, and who was so entranced by a giant metal gear that he was fiddling with that he didn’t hear me come in.
“Hello?”
Dilbert looked up. He was wearing a set of tinker goggles with gears on the side that let him change lenses at will. I didn’t know what each lens did and why he needed different ones.
“Yup?” said Dilbert.
“I just need some tinkering supplies.”
“Let’s get on with it, then. I’m behind on my orders.”
From Dilbert I bought a set of springs and a small tinker’s motion mechanism, which was a strange metal box with stuff inside that rattled when I shook it.
I didn’t like to craft stuff in the street, but there was no point heading all the way back to Blade’s Rest. Besides, this was BaS. People did all kinds of weird stuff. Even now, I glanced across the street to the row of shops where the tinker’s place was, and a dwarf player named BubbaGumpGimp was pan-frying some trout, right there in front of everyone.
As BaS towns went, Westfell wasn’t the busiest in terms of players. This was because of its lack of quests and its low-level shops. There was a military garrison at the northern borders of the town which offered combat-focused players a few noob starter missions, and there were plenty of shops selling basic equipment. But it was the sort of town that players would quickly outgrow, and once they reached level 10 and above, they would most likely head for the tougher parts of BaS.
The ones who stuck around tended to be crafters like me, as well as folks who weren’t even here for leveling, but just wanted to enjoy the full immersion. They wanted to walk through a sunny town where the nights didn’t last long and were, in fact, just as pleasant as the day. They wanted to eat in taverns where the food tasted better than a microwave pizza. Instead of watching TV in their apartments, they wanted to spend the evening in the Westfell merchant’s plaza, where they could sip mulled wine and watch a fire eater put on a show.
Ducking into an alleyway so I had some space, I took out a crafting hammer that I’d made earlier using my crafting station.
Using the springs and the tinker’s motion mechanism, or the TMM, I created my first tinkered item.
Item modified: Crafting Hammer.
Modification: [Poor] Slow Self-Hammering Crafting Hammer
My modifications increased the value of the crafting hammer from 2 gold to 8. That was a decent change but it didn’t cover the cost of the springs and the TMM. Oh well.
More impressed were its effects. A small, blue bar appeared above the hammer. When I positioned the hammer above something and told it to activate, the hammer rose up and down of its own accord. As the hammer was rated [poor] and I didn’t yet have the tinkering skill, my tinkering work wasn’t all that great. The hammer would probably stop working after a few repetitions.
Anyway. It was a step closer to getting the skill.
I took the hammer apart, set each part of it in my inventory, then waited a second. Next, I reassembled the self-hammering craft hammer again. Doing this counted as creating a new object, which took me even closer toward earning the skill.
After doing this several times, I received a notification.
You have learned a skill – tinkering.
Rank: Apprentice
The craft of repairing or modifying items, often with the use of mechanics and gears. Advanced tinkers can use explosive powder.
Do you wish to accept [Apprentice] tinkering?
When I accepted, tinkering was added to my growing skill list. With 4 crafting-related skills, all I needed was to learn the architect skill and then I could get the architect-builder class. Just one problem, though – right now I didn’t have any skill slots left. I needed to level up.
Just then, my teamchat pinged.
Linc: Guys…need help!