The Golem Census

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"Immature" isn't what you'd call his associate. "Suspicious" would be a much better word. The mines taught you to never be too trusting, so you regularly find yourself peeking over your shoulder, always to see him still there, following without a word--soundless save for the odd rattling bits of what you assume are armor under his cloak.

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You turn forward only soon enough to feel a boot thrust into your chest, toppling you back several feet across the hard, dusty ground.

The man in black bounds over you from behind, flying forward at a sprint toward the ragged assailant, and in an instant he's run through--impaled on his long knife.

The bandit sets his sights on Carver, and shoves his shoulder into the cloaked man to remove his body from the weapon.

How badly does he lose on a scale of mild to vivisected?

>>191218
who, the bandit?

He gets two steps forward before realizing he left the knife. And his hand.

Rolled 597 (1d666)

>>191218
Roll decides

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Just got back from a dinner and only had a couple hours. Heading to bed now.
>>191481
He makes for Carver threateningly, and a sudden gleam of light catches your eye.

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He stops moving, and the confidence drains from his face.

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A bright ribbon of blood spirals through the air with the bandit's severed left hand at the end of it. Behind it, through the dust and shade, you see the cloaked man still falling from the initial shove, with an enormous blade in his hand. Or...in place of it? His cloak is only open for an instant, but the body underneath seems nonsensical--human only in general shape, but nothing like it in substance.

Yeah, not leaving a prompt. Just suggest whatever if you want. I shouldn't be too busy tomorrow, so I can make more progress then. Considering a timeskip into the protagonist's apprenticeship. Does that sound cool?

Deep underground, the normal stone around you is instead crumbling soil, and instead of sticky heat, there is cold. All around is rumbling and shaking. You try to construct struts and cross-frame supports, but they either snap straight away or dig in with the warping of the tunnel.

Though only just realizing it now, you feel as if you've been here, desperately fending off the collapse for some great period of time. When the walls finally close in too narrowly to move, or to even draw breath, you can see only from the end of the cave a thin skeletal monster, staring toward you.

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You awaken with a gasp. The air feels strange--damp and cool like the night, even though the sun is shining. You're in the back of a carriage, occasionally bumping and rattling over rocks in its way.

Carver is at the reigns in front, and behind you is an endless field of green pastures and strange trees you've prior only seen in paintings.

You get up to your knees, try to stand, and a dizzy wave washes through your head that forces you back down with a thud.

"Oh, you're up?" asks Carver, glancing back. "Had me worried there. Been out more than a day. Hit your head or something? Or do you just not get enough sleep?" He laughs.

The point about sleep was certainly true, but the other? Maybe. You think back to the last thing you remember; there was some mugger, but then what? From your nightmare the memory of the black-cloaked associate returns.

>>196431
You have a lot of friends like that black dude?

>>197080
"Too many to name. And even more enemies!" he laughs. "But on that one's level? Nah. It's the one and only." He nods to himself. "A real beauty, if I'm one to say it. Extreme lightweight build. High offense with a focus on speed. Constructed with grade-A gravestone through and through...save for a few wooden supports in the weaker joints here and there, of course. You know how it is."

You don't know how it is.

"Got a brain under that mop, kid?" He sighs. "Pshh. That's about what I figured."

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"I design golems. And if you wanna make bones like I do, you're gonna learn."

>>197703
Okay. What is a golem?

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"Gravestone constructs. You know all that reddish rock you've been mining out of the ground for...how long? We sculpt with that. Ever notice the big pieces are worth so much more than the small ones?

"Golems are made from a bunch of smaller 'sculptures' working in tandem. Things like our good associate Paperback over there." Carver gestures his pipe toward the thick case next to you. "I suppose that was the first one you've ever seen one? With bumpkins like you it shouldn't surprise me, but I'll be damned if it doesn't every time. No offense."

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"There are these things called leylines. You'd do well to keep them in mind from now on. You can think of 'em like, uh..." he tilts his head side to side, draws a puff of smoke and blows it out. "Rivers, I guess? They're these big invisible flows of energy that stretch across the world.

"They have two ends: a 'spring' where the energy rises over the surface, and a 'well' where it drops back down into the world. They tend to move and shift about, maybe a little like the weather.

"Sometimes both ends are stationary. 'Anchored,' we call it. Sometimes only the well is--sometimes just the spring. Sometimes it's neither, and the whole damn line just stretches, shrinks, wanders around the world randomly..."

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"Gravestone gets its power when leylines flow through it. Uhm..." Carver stands up, turns around, and reaches back into the carriage to grab your mining helmet.

It is at this point you realize the carriage has no horse.

He unscrews the light's cap, then pries at the glass circle. When it finally pops off, a small glowing stone tumbles out.

"See this? Gravestone you've been carrying around the whole time! Isn't that somethin'?" He tosses it up, tries to catch it, misses, then picks it up off the floor.

"It's a simple sculpture just made to generate light. They put 'em in these helmets so you're never in total darkness. And it goes without saying more complex sculptures can make much, much more complex uses of the lines' energy.

"Ya get all that?"

>>198671
No. (IC)

But this gravestone stuff is actually pretty valuable? Why me, then? What does some puzzle have to do with designing golems?

>>199100
>But this gravestone stuff is actually pretty valuable?

"Now? Very. Assuming you're the guy who owns the mine!" He chuckles. "Used to not be worth a damn thing, though. Just another boring mineral any idiot could get out of the ground for a couple claws, not that it would be worth his time. That's how it got the name; wasn't good for much more than making funeral slabs out of.

"Then, uh... forty-something years ago? You could say it all kinda 'woke up' all of a sudden. Strangest thing. Pretty much all the stuff I just told ya was discovered since then."

Carver brushes the small piece against his shirt, and runs his thumb back and forth across it haltingly. He scoffs, and tosses it back over his shoulder.

"That isn't even real stone, though. It's reconstituted dust, baked back together like pottery. The effects are weaker and the buyers are second-rate. For you, it'll just be a decent practice material to learn the basics."

You pick up the piece, and discern immediately it's not the type of stone you're familiar with. It's somehow softer, and you get the sense you could almost dig into it with your fingernails alone.

"Most sculptors use that because they're not skilled enough to work with the real thing." He laughs out his smoke, and speaks through it. "I'm not most sculptors."

>Why me, then? What does some puzzle have to do with designing golems?

"It's a quick and dirty gauge of how well you can visualize in three dimensions." After a moment he looks back, and can tell this must be your first time hearing a few of those words. "How good you are at, uh... imagining shapes. Moving them around in your head.

"Speaking of which, I told you to bring sharp tools, didn't I?"

Your stomach grumbles.

"Now's as good a time as any to practice. Get a knife or something and shave down that gravedust piece into a cube as best you can--the, uh... shape that puzzle ended up in? In case ya didn't know. Go for efficiency. As little wasted material as possible. I want a good one. Disappoint and I'll be pissed. You should be done by the time we arrive."

>>199674
.....get a ruler and knife?

No idea what he means by moving things in my head, but I can do what he wants.

Try to bargain with him. I'm not into being an apprentice for no pay -- and today, my pay is food. Ready my paring knife. Pace myself, and measure his expectations.

You ready one of the knives you brought along. There are much sharper ones, to be sure, but it can get the job done. Examining its edge, you remind Carver your end goal going into this wasn't to learn. You're only going to work if there's something tangible to get out of it.

He laughs. "I like that attitude! Turning into a deal. That'll come in handy..." Then with a bit more authority in his voice: "...with someone else. You won't make deals with me." He bends down and rummages an item out of the front. "Take this."

He tries to pass a small object back, but it slips out of his fingers and onto the floor. It's another piece of gravestone, this time a more complicated shape. There's a loop on one side, and on the other a kind of thick triangle with its corners cut off, and tiny, seemingly random lines and shapes etched into the surface.

"On your side. Third locker from the left."

Looking over the interior of the carriage, you find what appear to be many curved cabinets arranged on their sides, sealed tightly with no handle to draw them open. On each one is a shallow indentation of a shape similar to the piece he handed you.

You fit the piece into the hole of the one Carver described, and feel a shake through it like a key unlatching a heavy lock. The compartment pops open by a finger-width.

"You can keep that sculpture. Wear it like a ring if you don't wanna lose it."

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A delicious scent escapes the locker. You've smelled this before, on the nicer side of town. It's meat, you're certain, but of some kind you've never tried. You open the box wider.

Inside you see many compartments, with the biggest holding not just meat, but the longest, thickest strips you've ever seen. They're moist, rich, red, fatty, and covered in salt.

"So don't bargain with me. It's all up to you. Eat raw like some dumb animal if that's what you want... or make the shape I said, and have a fire to cook it with."

>>205367
Cut the cube first, that smell is gonna get distracting if we keep it nearby.

Yeah, let's get down to business. He seems alright. Save what dust you can, wherever you can.

Wear the ring for now, but make a note to find a better way to hide it... hands are too fragile and easy to sever.

If the meat looks well cured enough, I'd try some 'raw'. Or pocket some for later.

Sneak a sketch of the ring if you can.

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You put the cut of meat back in with the others, and begin shutting the container. When the lid nears closing, it freezes a moment, then snaps flush with the rest, airtight. You lick your fingers, tasting many unfamiliar oils and spices

Before putting knife to stone, you remember even this dust is valuable, and realize you should come up with something to catch it with. A piece of your notebook's paper should work, and you'll be able to fold it closed when complete so that none spills out.

You take a moment to think about meeting this sculpture's conditions, making the biggest such shape that could fit within this one. At a glance, your mind snaps to a symmetrical way, but you immediately recognize that to be wasteful. If someone made it that way, acting before thinking... could this be another challenge like that puzzle? Regardless, you know the right way. You picture the finished form already there, trapped inside, and begin freeing it.

On the smoother stretches of road, you split your sculpting time with quickly sketching out the ring-like rock from different angles. There's no way to get your impression of it down perfectly, but you're reasonably sure you could recreate something very close to it from only those drawings... but how close is close enough?

The piece takes shape, and what at first you thought was the heat from your hand gradually warming it you now know must be something else. Touching with your other hand makes a startling fact obvious: the object is generating its own heat. Though the change is imperceptible between each small shave of the knife, you do make satisfying progress.

The motions, checks, and measuring all become comfortably regular, allowing your mind to wander. As the sun sets, the weight of this new life dawns on you. You think of the family you left behind, who's only getting farther away. Your home. The deep, dank mines. The water-sellers, scamming buyers out of volume with their false-bottom cups. The rhythmic echo of your pickaxe to be replaced with the tapping of hammer to stake. You're not sure how long it will be before you can return--whether months or years--or what will happen to it all while you're gone.

Long after bump limit. Just wanted to finish off the scene off. Will backup this thread on the blog, and possibly begin character sheets.