Completed Work Can't Wait

[Ornea]

...

Work Can't Wait
Timestamp: 70 Summer 515 AV
Location: Wind Reach

WORK ORDERS AT SIGHT


It was a rude awakening from the dreams Ornea might have had about her homecoming to Mount Skyinarta after a whole year in Lhavit. Not only was it raining, people were also indifferent to her return.

This was Wind Reach and work came first. Everybody must work, in particular in times like these, and one more Inarta arriving to the city was promptly seen as one more laborer arriving to the work force. This was after all what people were meant to be ; useful to their people. That was their purpose.

The city had no welcome speeches to offer when it's lost daughter returned. Instead she was just told it was "on time", and then she was assigned to an emergency crew and told to join them in them and start to work as soon as she had put her things in her cave room. She was expected to do this without any unecessary delay. Visiting people, and other homecoming things, could wait until she was off duty for the day; now she was expected to hurry up and start working.

Ornea felt a bit shocked as she headed to the room where she was now going to live. She realized her stay in Lhavit seemed to have softened her up, without her being aware of it. In the mountain city with the well behaved citizens, she had become accustomed to deal with softspoken, polite people who approached her respectfully, with nicely worded wishes and requests. The only ones who had been brusque in Lhavit were the goats ... she sent a resentful thought to the holy okomos and the many troubles they had given her.

But, there was no time for thinking of the past right now. Luckily she was born and raised in Mount Skyinarta, so she swiftly found her small cave home in the common living area of the mountain, unlocked the door and entered. The room was smaller than the apartment she had rented in Lhavit, and it lacked windows of course, as this was inside the mountain. She didn't linger to inspect it in detail though. She would have a closer look at it later, after work and all the other things she needed to do.

Work was just one of her orders for the day, namely. She had also been ordered to go out and take a bath in the rain. Everybody had to do this at some point during the day. And before the bath she would buy new soap and a body oil at the market. She didn't know yet how this would be possible to combine with the job, but supposed she wold find time. Somehow.

Welcome to Wind Reach, she thought to herself. She made a very simple plan, while she locked the door and headed to the emergency crew she had been assigned to. Work. Shop. Bath. She would do it in that order. Work came first and couldn't wait.

...

[Ornea]

...

TUNNEL CLEARING


Landslides and quakes! Ornea caught up on the situation in Wind Reach, as she started to work alongside the others in the emergency crew she belonged to. Several tunnels had collapsed, the aeries had been shut off from the rest of the city for while, and were possible to reach only by eagle or by rope ladders.

She learnt that lava had been flowing up through cracks, some people had been trapped by it, and the baths had been closed due to the too high temperature of the water. Well, there was the explanation for the strong smell of her fellow workers. Personal hygiene had been hard to maintain under the conditions. It explained the outdoors bath orders too.

The area around the city had been affected as well, and the entrance to the city had been blocked and only recently been opened again. But right now Ornea was more concerned with the tunnel they were clearing.

Looking at the tunnel, it was hard to believe that this was actually just a minor problem in comparison to what the city had been through during this summer. The quakes had damaged the tunnel walls and there was a lot of stone, some crushed doors and other wooden debris, and in addition some crushed glass which might have been bottles and other household glassware, but was now only shards.

The crew leader threw a pair of working gloves of thin leather to her and told her to don them and keep them on, in order to avoid injuries. In addition there was a short leather apron she could borrow; it looked like it was from the crafting area. She pulled on the apron and the gloves, happy to get something to protect her clothes and hands. And then she started to work.

This wasn’t avora work. It was pure, hard manual labor. She mustered all her strenght to lift stones of various sizes and weights and put in the effort needed to carry them to the wheelbarrows where the drew gathered stones. Everything of wood went to other wheelbarrows, and glass was put in barrels. It was a long tunnel and though the hard, monotonous work was simple enough, it seemed endless. Being Inarta she didn’t whine about it. What must be done must be done. She worked on silently, like the others did.

When she happened to be the one who put in the last stone or piece of wood that made a wheelbarrow were full, it was her task to take it to the place where they dumped all the debris. Ornea pushed the heavy wheelbarrow all the way back along the tunnel and out of it, and had to put in all her strength in this hard and taxing part of the job.

The hard work, the debris and the dust made her dirty, sweaty and physically tired. But there was nothing to do about it, except endure it.The others were far worse off than she was. Ornea realized this when she heard them speak cheerily about how it was raining and how they would get to take a rain shower this day, and clean themselves a bit. This happiness about the prospect of a cold shower spoke volumes about the levels the personal hygiene in Mount Inarta had dropped to.

The hardworking team had arrived at what had been a small side tunnel to the right. The emergency crew leader assigned Ornea to clear this small tunnel alone, while they others would continue to work at the tunnel they were in. There was no sign of malice on the woman’s face when she gave her orders. It was just work, and she was just using her work force in the most efficient way. Ornea wasn’t sure of which caste the crew leader was, but she seemed like an avora. At least Ornea hoped so. She didn't like the thought that she might actually be working under a chiet at the moment. Perhaps somebody had misunderstood Ornea's caste ... but it wasn’t the right time to try to find out the ranks. She followed her orders and did her duty and started to work in the side tunnel.

...

[Ornea]

...

INTO THE SIDE TUNNEL

The side tunnel turned out to be hard work just as expected. It was was narrow and it was hard even for one single person to move and work there, with all the debris that clogged it.

She worked on just like before. It was physically taxing to say the least, and every muscle in her body got it's part of the strain, when she bent down and put in all her physical strenght to lift up heavy stones. She carried them to the waiting wheelbarrow, and when it was filled she pulled it to the place where she had been told to dump the content.

Obviously other people were taking care of the debris from there. She could see a lot of busy people working around the place, but she didn't stop to find out what exactly they were doing, just observed them briefly. It wasn't her business. Somebody else had organized this. She was sure they had thought it through and knew what they were doing.

The rubble and the debris was going somewhere, and it was most likely put to use for something too, she thought to herself as she returned to the narrow side tunnel and continued to work with clearing it. There was still a lot of crap to shuffle ... and she was going to do it.


FULL FOOD RATION WITH EXTRA SOCIALIZATION

The hard and monotonous physical labor seemed endless and she had no idea how long time had passed when the emergency crew was ordered to take a break and a meal. They were given full rations. Ornea took the opportunity to speak and socialize with her fellow workers and they told her that full rations were only for the emergency crews. All others were on half rations and had been so for a while. Ornea listened to this while she slowly ate her food.

Not so long ago, she had been in Lhavit with it's constant supply of food from the peak of Sharai, where farming went on around the year. She thought of the food there now, and she missed it. The other workers were quite interested in hearing her stories about Lhavitian food when she started to tell them, and the socialization peaked. Food, or the lack thereof, was always a topic of interest. Right now they were eating, and full rations too, but soon they would be back to half-starving and they knew it. Nobody whined about it though. It would have been un-Inartan to complain.

Instead they told each other heartily that the work was going well and they would for sure achieve the expected result today, or exceed it. They were proud of the hard work they were doing; in their culture hard work was always for the best and always something to be proud of, whatever they were doing. It was the same with Ornea. She was avora, a metalsmith, but now she was proud of her hard labor with clearing tunnels and carrying stone; she was working for the city and for the Inartan people, and it meant the world to her. Wasn't this a core thing for the Inarta, to sacrifice oneself for the best of the collective when it was needed, and do what must be done?

The break and the socialization ended and all of them went back to their tasks again, strengthened by their full rations and hearty encouragement to work hard.

Work. Shop. Bath. The words were on repeat in her brain, keeping her plan for the day alive as she lifted stone, carried stone, pulled stone in the wheelbarrel and went back to start over and lift and carry more stone. The constant focus on this planning, as well as the constant hard work kept her overgiving injured mind centered in the present in a very nice way. There wasn't a chance to be distracted and drift away in her thoughts.

...

[Ornea]

...

THE DAMAGED DOOR

After a while she stopped by a damaged door. It was hard to see it clearly, and without thinking Ornea fell back into a bad old habit. She reached into herself and called forth the djed, let a small amount of res form in her hand, ignited it and lit of the tunnel with a small flame of magic fire.

Once she had used the reimancy she became aware of her mistake as she felt headache and nausea begin. She stopped it, cursing herself for the relapse. But it had been a brief mistake, she told herself. She was just a little bit dizzy, right? And now she was going to fetch a lantern and all would be fine ...

She had to climb over the wheelbarrow on the way out of the tunnel. This was a bit tricky, as the wheelbarrow was unstable and she had to mind her balance all the time in order to not make it topple over.


LATE TO THE LANTERNS

It had seemed simple to just go out and fetch a lantern, but it tured out be harder than expected. A lot of lanterns seemed to have been destroyed, and as Ornea had arrived the same day, she was late to the lanterns. The best ones were taken, long ago. What remained was a miserable collection of half-damaged lanterns, with dented metal parts and crushed class parts. Ornea was told those had been salvaged from the tunnel debris.

It was what they had, so she picked an unreliable looking simple metal lantern; it had been shaped as a cube, and it was obvious that it had been made for function, not for beauty. It was likely made by an apprentice, she thought as she had a closer look at it. It was now a somewhat compressed former cube, and in Ornea's opinion it was a clipped piece of scrap metal, no less. Complaining was out of question though. She got a candle for the cuckoo lantern, and armed with this miserable light she returned to the narrow tunnel and the broken door.

All the fuss about lanterns, or the lack thereof, had occupied her and driven the whispers inside away. As her mind cleared up she realized that no, the headache and the nausea wasn't gone. That had only been wishful thinking and imaginations created by the sweet whisper. She was feeling crappy and weak. Being oversensitive to the use of djed was no joke. In hindsight she couldn't understand how she could have been as foolish as to use reimancy just to get more light, like it was a commodity meant to make everyday tasks a little bit more comfortable. It worried her how habit had seized her before she had a chance to become aware and stop it.

But next time she would be prepared and ... Next time? There would be no next time, she promised herself. She would never again give in to unwitting impulses and use magic without thinking. In her thoughts she swore by Ivak she wouldn't.

It was time to climb back over the rickety wheelbarrow. This was more of a challenge now when she was carrying the lantern. Somehow she managed to climb up, keep her balance, and then very cautiously take one step forward, and then ... the wheelbarrow nearly toppled over and she lost her balance and had to jump in order to not fall. As she leaped forward, she could hear the crash when the wheelbarrow tumbled over and spilled it's content on the tunnel floor behind her. A cloud of dust whirled up into the air and added to the layer of dirt she had aquired during the workday.

Coughing, she put the lantern down in a place she considered safe and started to inspect the damaged door in order to decide what to do with it. As thoroughly as it was possible under the circumstances, she investigated the broken parts of mostly wood and some metal and tried to figure out how to best remove them from the malformed doorway. She didn't know what was kept in the room behind the door, but doubted somebody was living there. It seemed like some kind of storage cave.

...

[Ornea]

...

ARMING UP

The light was better than before, but not by much. Anyways, it allowed Ornea to do a closer investigation of the damaged door. She could see that it was a totally plain door that had been functional, but not meant to be decorative. It was just a door, or more correctly a former door. There were cracks in the wood. Splitter and splinter littered the floor in front of it. Carefully, she run her gloved fingers over the cracks and concluded it might be possible to use a crowbar to pull at the wood and dismantle the door.

A crowbar ... she didn't have a crowbar so she would need to fetch one. This meant she needed to face the wheelbarrow again. It was totally impractical in the narrow tunnel, the way it blocked the way. But it was also necessary. She would need to put up with the inconvenience. Cursing silently at the rickety equipment, she put one foot on it and then she climbed up, hoping to keep her balance. It was a bit tricky as usual, and for a little while she was stuck up there, as the wheelbarrow rocked threateningly like it planned to tumble over and send her head over heels to the floor on it's other side.

But Ornea was determined and managed to compensate for it by holding out her hands and mowing the weight of her body, and as soon as she felt her foothold was good enough she jumped, nearly acrobatically, and landed on her feet on the other side of the clipped wheelbarrow. Feeling a bit triumphant she went out to ask for a crowbar.

The work was going on in the bigger tunnel as well. The leader of the emergency crew took the opportunity to ask Ornea about her progress and the Ornea reported everything, telling the whole story, with every detail, the way Edward Lucis had liked her to do it. Not until she saw how the crew leader looked at her did she realize that she might have overdone it a bit. It reminded her of the shocked expression on the face of that Lhavitian woman at the pulleys ... whatshername ... Zbignieva? Yeah, that was it. But Ornea dismissed this sidetrack memory and avoided to get distracted. The effort at focusing and keeping her balance on the wheelbarrow seemed to have helped her to compose herself a bit after the mistake with the reimancy, she noticed.

With the crowbar in her hand she returned to the side tunnel, ready to tear down the door. At least she hoped so. It had looked sturdy, the door. No doubt it would put of a formidable resistance and force her to use all her strenght in order to pull it apart and find out what had happened to the room and its content.

...

[Ornea]

...

DUMPING THE CRAP

No time to waste ! Ornea put the crowbar into a crack in the wood and while holding it in a firm grip she pushed with all the strenght she was able to muster, using every muscle in her body, or so it felt to her. The effort was considerable. She pushed as hard as she was able. She added the force of her whole weight, as she leaned on the crowbar and used it as a lever to pry apart some of the jammed pieces of damaged wood.

She worked on this way for a while, determined and patient, until she had pulled out most of the wood debris from the malformed doorway. She picked up the debris, and felt grateful for the sturdy gloves and the apron. She was by now very dirty, dusty and sweaty, and her read hair was plastered to her damp forehead.

The wheelbarrow was full, and she grabbed the handles and pushed it to the dump; another tough piece of pshysical work, with all the stone and wood she had piled there in order to not need to take it in two batches. She was really feeling the effect of all the hard labor now. Her body was aching, but she silently endured it. Being Inarta and also a smith she wasn't a softie. Coping with the task was a question of self-respect. Content with herself she dumped the content of the wheelbarrow among the rest of the debris they were cleaning out of the tunnels.

After this she dutifully pushed the wheelbarrow into the narrow again. Right before the doorway to the side room she stopped, dropped the handles and made ready to climb over the equipment once again. Carefully, feeling that this would be a challenge, she climbed up, one foot at the time, while holding her hand to the wall.

Now when the wheelbarrow was empty and there was no stones to weigh it down and make it more stable, it was super rickety. Once she had stepped up into it, it rocked in an unpredictable way and she had to compensate for it by moving her body, moving the center of gravity back and fort as best she could, and then she fell ... nearly, as she somehow managed to come down on one foot, push off against the tunnel wall with both hands, do an awkward jump forward and find her foothold again. She felt like quite the acrobat after this accomplishment.

Doing a proper job in the emergency crew took incredibly long time. But it had to be done, and Ornea wasn't into trying to cheat. She would do it thoroughly, really thoroughly. Her time at Lucis and Lucis had enforced this trait in her personality, as Edward Lucis had been obsessed with high quality. Ornea had perhaps been content with good enough quality in the past, that was true. But no more! Nowadays she shared the obsession for high quality. Nothing else was possible.

She picked up the damaged but still functional lantern, and thought briefly that she was going to report that they needed to craft new lanterns. Metalwork. She could propose that they'd use tin with some copper ...oh, well, she would do that later, but not now. Right now she she had a room to investigate and clean out.

The doorway was a dark gap in front of her.

With the malformed lantern in her hand she stepped in, prepared to investigate and deal with whatever she was going to find there.

...

[Ornea]

...

THE GADGET CHAMBER

She entered. The sparse light from the lantern danced over the walls as it swung slightly in her grip when she turned around in there in order to get an overview of the place.

It was a small chamber, and nobody seemed to have been there for a long time. The walls were raw. It was one of those small cavern rooms nobody had ever seen reason to put in effort to embellish. There had been a few shelves, but those were broken, and lay in pieces on the stone floor where they had fallen, likely during the landslide. A couple of small wooden chests, hardly more than big boxes, sat in a random way on the floor. She guessed they must have either just been tossed in carelessly, or moved around when the earth had started to move.

Ornea put the lantern down, squatted beside the debris and started to investigate it, without taking off the gloves. It was the usual uninteresting stuff. More things for the dump, enough to fill the wheelbarrow again. She didn’t sigh at the thought. Work was just work. It didn’t occur to her to start to sigh or whine. She would simply get things done.

She started to lift up the remains of the shelves, and as she wanted to be efficient she didn’t run back and forth a lot of times, but muster all her strenght and carried a quite heavy load to the wheelbarrow. She repeated this several times, until the floor of the small chamber was empty, bar for two small chests. She could have stopped there and went to empty the cart, but she found it better to take out all the garbage at same time in order to save time.

Before she put the small chests on top of the load in the wheelbarrow she was going to have a look inside them though, if it was possible to open them. Ornea tried to lift the lids, but it didn’t work. She debated with herself if she would spend the time to try to pick the locks, or just throw the small chests on the dump without bothering with them. The likelihood for them containing anything of interest seemed low.

The light from the lantern was enough to make it possible to see the locks. They seemed to be of a very simple kind. Perhaps so simple that she would be able to pick them just by sliding a knife in between the lid and the box and move the small piece of metal she supposed she would find there. It looked like the simplest possible mechanism. Ornea wasn’t used to pick locks, but she had begun to learn a bit about gadgeteering while she was in Lhavit and seen some of the locks they used at Lucis. It wasn’t like she knew much about it, but she could try.

Ornea wasn’t wearing a knife, but she took a thin wood splinter and tried to use it to open the chests. It didn’t work at all. After a while she gave up. She had tried to pick the locks, but failed, that was just how it was. But she had at least tried. So she would just throw the chests away ... but now it struck her that she had the borrowed crowbar. She could use it to break up the lids of the chests with sheer force. She grabbed the crowbar and weighed it in her hand. Then she investigated the first chest. She found a place to apply the crowbar, put it there and pushed down on it.

The wood gave with an unpleasant sound, and she opened the chest.
It was full of small odd metal objects. Ornea picked them up and studied them in silent surprise. She had no idea what their purposes were. But she could see that they had cogs. They were gadgets. With her background from the gadgeteering firm in Lhavit this intrigued her and she felt far more fascinated by her findings than the average Inarta would have done. She put them back into the chest and closed the damaged lid. She was going to apply to keep them if nobody else would claim them.

The next chest was a bit harder to open, but after putting in effort she was able to investigate its content too. It contained nothing else than crinkly pieces of parchment, full of what looked like hastily drawn sketches and nearly unreadable writing. But the moment she looked at it, Ornea knew what it was. Ivak! Gadgeteering ideas, hastily scribbled on the nearest available piece of material possible to write on. The library of Lucis was full if this kind of cryptic and badly organized gadgeteering notes somebody had found worth saving for another day. It was impossible to quickly understand what any of it was about, but it sure was gadgeteering notes.

Most people would definitely have found it worthless. But to Ornea the collection of small mysterious gadgets and the heap of notes came off as an unexpected treasure. She closed the lid of the second chest too, and put both the small chests on top of the load in the wheelbarrow. Then she carefully climbed up on it, steppe over it and jumped down on the other side. She grabbed the handles and pulled it with her to the dump place. The leader of the emergency team found her there, and told her the work was over for today.

Ornea reported her findings and requested to get to keep the two small chests with the gadgets and the notes, if nobody else would ask for it. After this she went back to her quarters. She was going to follow the orders to take that rain bath now. A cold shower in the rain ! She was already looking forward to the luxury she had begun to understand this was in Mount Skyinarta these days.

Continues in Cold Shower

OOCI hope to get the small chests and their content, if possible

...

[Emergence]

Grades:
Observation +4
Endurance +3
Organization +1
Climbing +3
Acrobatics +1
Larceny +1

Lores:
Wind Reach: The Effect of Earthquakes
Wind Reach: Half Rations During Crisis
Endurance: Lifting Rocks - Clearing Debris
Inarta: Don't Complain
Djed: Overgiving on Top of Overgiving
Non-Traditional Uses of a Crowbar

Items:
1 Ruined Wooden Chest which contains:
- 1 sketch of a Very Simple Lock plan. This plan cannot be understood or created fully without Novice Metalsmithing and Novice Gadgeteering as well as some lores on locks.
- 1 sketch of a key. This plan cannot be understood fully without Novice Metalsmithing and Novice Gadgeteering as well as some lores on keys. It cannot be created without Competent Metalsmithing as well as some lores on keys.

1 Ruined Chest which contains:
- Various broken and loose parts of a Warded Lock mechanism. Some parts are not included and will need to be obtained elsewhere. I leave this up to your discretion, though I will be keeping watch.

Comments:
I really enjoyed the thread! I thought you captured the Inarta attitude rather well! GASP theres no way that person was a Chiet, the nerve!
I also liked that you managed to find something neat. I love it when that happens, I think its how Miz goes round! Please understand that creating this lock will be very difficult to do. You will not only need to thread about figuring out what the plans are of, but also how to create a lock, how to recreate a lock and key and then the actual creation/repair. Whatever you do with this I suggest having me, or another St grade teh lock related threads rather than a normal grader.