[OPEN] OUTPOST HAVEN [player plot]

[distant_one]

Who: Anyone and Everyone
What: Open Post for Player Plot
When: Early August and Onward
Where: Staging Point in Crenshaw and Outpost

Content Warning: None in the main post

[Ooc: This is an open log place for the Outpost player plot, plotting post here and location post here. Feel free to post starters here and tag one another.]

Wall Complete

On one of the days after the wall is finished but before the gate is added D schedules a section of time when only a few people will be at the outpost so a hazardous construction project can take place, just a handful of guards.

When the all-clear is given for construction crews and day shift guards to return the outer wall is practically glowing with heat and the individual stone blocks have been fused together. The ground around it is scorched but there's no lingering fire anywhere despite the smoking and blackened trees and greenery.

Staging Point

On the main floor of the house D has chosen to use as the staging point is an area set up for collecting and preserving blood. Darkblood and coldblood keep easily enough but more care is needed when dealing with vileblood and there's an abundance of dried plants ready to be ground to a powder and added to collected vileblood in the first stage of making the special blood mortar.

In one of the rooms upstairs are scales and measuring devices and glass and metal jars ready to receive the mixture of all three blood types in specific parts along with another plant mixture, the last stage before it's mixed into mortar, which is better done in large batches at the outpost itself.

Tree Clearing

One of the tasks to start off the next step of construction is clearing trees for fifty yards in every direction outside the wall as well as any bushes that are large enough to obscure vision. Felled trees are moved inside the outer wall to be processed mostly into logs for use in construction.

Simple wooden watch towers will be erected at the corner of each wall and wooden stairs in a few other places to allow rapid access to the walls for defensive purposes.

Extra wood and other plant material will be processed for firewood and any other purpose it can serve.

Excavating

Digging and leveling start for both the eventual large basement as well as long trench corridors to run under what will be the kitchen and bath house and clean up area to provide places to run pipes or access the foundation from below. Both buildings share a wall with the already completed bunk house and form the basis of what will eventually be expanded to become a barracks.

Construction

The main focus in this phase is making the place livable for people full time. Getting clean is especially important with blood pollution and corruption still being large issues. There's a bath area to be constructed with six individual bathing areas and a pair of large fireplaces to heat water until more permanent systems can go in. Before plumbing and other things can be done the baths will drain into a set of underground paths and from there to a gravel-filled pit beneath what will be another rose garden.

A kitchen will also go up with a pair of fireplaces and room for people to cook and clean with room for plumbing and more advanced options to eventually be added but for now all food and water will come from storage barrels brought in from the staging point and taken back when they're empty.

Comments

[martyrofduty]

Duty nods. The heat capacity for stone at these dimensions is massive, and the surface area limits natural cooling. If it were a wise call to cool it so rapidly, D would have arranged it. Duty expects that would undermine the process, potentially making the wall brittle.

"Impressive," Duty comments.

[distant_one]

"Yes. We're lucky to have access to this. I'll be bringing in stone blocks of the same material but not enough for full buildings at the rate we're going. Outer walls, foundations, and maybe load bearing walls or pillars."

And it is luck that they're benefitting from someone else's act of kindness to a corrupted creature.

[martyrofduty]

Luck usually has a lot behind it, not merely good or bad fortune. Duty looks with sharp focus at the stone, considering the limitation. He thinks to the abilities he is most familiar with, those people have where he comes from.

"What is the stone made of?" Duty asks. He's not prying for secrets. "Necromancers can create more of what they manipulate. Someone might do the same for it." D gets that much of an explanation. Duty doesn't expect his people to be the ones to help here. If for some reason they are the only ones, he'll negotiate what he can.

[distant_one]

"I haven't been able to find quartzite in any large amounts, but there's plenty of granite and a few different kinds of sandstone." D expects the color of the mostly white granite will change when it cools, but hopefully it won't end up like the more pink-tinted granite he had bypassed to collect this instead.

"This is granite. It's too bad there's only ancient volcanic rock here and no recent volcanic activity, volcanic ash flows are useful but a volcano would be just one more thing to cause problems from month to month."

[martyrofduty]

This outpost is farther out from Trench than most places, and it has much more beast activity. D cannot exactly hop over to the closest active volcanic regions for raw materials, not unless someone has a particularly useful ability for that.

"Knowing Trench, it would erupt," Duty agrees. "I leave acquisition of resources to you." If D needs or wants help, he'll ask.

[distant_one]

"I'm told Necromancy from your world can be used on things that were never alive. Does that mean they could make more from materials there weren't once part of something living?"

Duty had brought up that piece of information so D feels reasonable enough asking about it.

[martyrofduty]

What counts as living or once living is not always as simple as whether or not it's an animal or even plant. Duty considers the planet below their feet. Planets have souls that can live and die. The line can blur, but most necromancers are not taught that planets have souls and the ranges of possibility lyctors, much less John, can do.

"Most necromancers, no," Duty replies. "Lyctors or John, could." Not that it's an extension of ability that comes naturally or immediately as soon as one has a soul acting as an infinite battery. It's a skill, like any other.

[distant_one]

D nods in acknowledgement. "Human sacrifice in exchange for relative immortality and increased abilities. The lyctors are the other very old ones?" He's relatively certain Duty is at least close to D in age. John is a bit more confusing to his senses, likely due to whatever it is that sets him apart as 'god', but D guesses they're close.

Requesting they use their abilities to make more building materials isn't something D sees as worth the cost. Especially if Duty doesn't see it as something that can be volunteered.

[martyrofduty]

Duty briefly considers the way Alfred and Cristabel forced their necromancers' hands. Yes, it entails human sacrifice, but for them, for their cohort, it was not a greedy struggle for power but devotion to rebuilding humanity and seeing it last. It was no sure thing, back then, that they would make it. Even given John's divine abilities.

"Generally," Duty replies. Ianthe left before he arrived, and Harrow— Duty has not spent time with Harrow in Trench. He's unsure what her status is, so far as lyctorhood goes. There's no point in promising anything before he knows what anyone is willing to do.

"Any use for regenerating bone ash?" he asks instead. That he knows firsthand Harrow can do, and she's always been one who likes to be useful. It wouldn't be as much an ask from any of them.

[distant_one]

"What does 'regenerating bone ash' mean before I answer that." D can see a few reasonable interpretations of that based on what little information he has.

There's too much fundamental difference in the way their worlds work for him to be confident in picking the right one without more context.

[martyrofduty]

Duty pulls a weapon off his belt, what to all appearances could be a stake made of bone with a metal point. He holds it vertically between them, and after no particular visible signal, it extends to a full length spear. Adjusting his grip near the butt of the spear, Duty breaks off the end of the haft, spear in his left hand and a sharp edge of bone in his right.

In short order, the bone grows out of the broken end to reform a whole and unbroken haft. Another moment later, it retracts into its condensed form. "For example," Duty answers. It has myriad uses. For necromancers skilled enough bone adepts, it can readily increase the durability of constructs. It's a material resource in the Nine Houses, if a limited one. One doesn't have to be a lyctor to accomplish it, but it becomes much easier.

[distant_one]

"That would be very useful." D can think of many uses right away, particularly if it can be formed into complex shapes.

"Will it still function like that if its maker isn't around?"

[martyrofduty]

The simple question has complex answers, all the less clear by the potential for people to live as squid in the ocean, presence unknown to those on land. D doesn't need an essay or a magical theorem, however.

"Some designs, yes. Some weapons," Duty say. After all, John didn't make the spear. It has worked since its maker died. The thought hurts, but Duty doesn't flinch away from the knowledge. He never forgets. Sometimes, he manages not to think about it.

[distant_one]

"Let's stick to things that will endure if we return to the sea or lose our abilities altogether." That's the point of this after all. Surviving and enduring, and leaving something that will be here when they depart.

[martyrofduty]

Duty nods. That makes sense. In the end, none of it is about them. They are simply seeing it through.

"I'll talk with John."