[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]

There was a story there. Everyone's had something of a hard time recently. When Luke let it go, Duty did too. It wasn't as though he shared about his difficulties broadly. Community allowed for some privacy, some secrets. Some ran on timers, but Duty had more time. To do it right.

"Now more than ever," Duty agreed, "Having an abundance of vileblood is a good problem. Even people not out here are helping." Including people not everyone felt the warmest about.

"That's how people survive. Together."

[faithfulson]

Luke let out a soft hum, nodding faintly. It was much the same as what the Alliance lived by, and it was what helped them survive against the Empire. It was no different here; they would survive because they had each other, and the determination to see this through. Something like this would probably sound corny to some people, but it was very, very true.

"Is that what brought you out here?" he asked, turning slightly to give Duty a curious look. "The community?"

[martyrofduty]

Like much of life, Duty had more than one reason he came to work on the Outpost. They were not always easily divided, themselves a community of reasons woven together and stronger than any one strand. "Yes," he answered.

A moment later, he added. "I work here, and I am a Hunter," Duty explained in more detail. "Hunting is important; people's safety. That too is a part of community." But, those words say silently. "I wanted to build, to help make something, to do more than hunt and kill."

If that opened the debate on killing beasts, so be it. Not every beast, not every beast that was once a person, can be saved. Duty had spent most of his existence before Trench fighting. Sometimes monsters. Sometimes men. So many long years since he got to build, really build. Not merely keep his construction team from throwing blows and spilling blood.

[faithfulson]

Luke hummed softly at that, understanding.

"I haven't committed to any single job here," he confessed, waving a hand to indicate not just the outpost but the whole of Trench as well. "I rather be free to fill whatever role I can as I'm needed, rather than be focused on a single position."

He would help out at the orphanage, or at a shop if someone needed it, or with anyone that asked for his assistance. As a Jedi, it felt like an appropriate way to follow a path similar to what he would have done back home. As a person and a Sleeper, it felt like the least he could do.

"I admit, though; hunting the creatures here is more of a challenge than I would have anticipated," he confessed, a bit of a sheepish tone coming to his voice.

[martyrofduty]

Their professional tracks could hardly diverge more—Duty with specific obligations and general schedule, something to be counted on day in and day out; Luke with as many kinds of obligations as there were people asking for help, everything changing. It's still a similar attitude, to help build community where it's needed.

"Community would be weak were everyone the same," Duty says. Even if they could swap, they have their reasons for their choices.

"Hmmm," he ponders the statement. Physically or philosophically? Both can make it challenging. To know the creature on the street may be your neighbor or family or friend. To fight corruption, where the fight itself could turn you into a monster. "How so?"

[faithfulson]

"Well..." Luke began, pausing to chew contemplatively on his food a moment. "There's the usual concerns: that these creatures behave differently from those I'm used to, that the situation can quickly change to you being the one hunted and not even know. On top of it, there's the more serious issue of some of these creatures being able to slip under my notice, so I can't sense the danger coming. And... well..."

Luke fell silent then, knowing very well that other Sleepers could end up as those monsters as well. He poked at his food a little despondently at that, remembering the feeling of scales slipping through skin and...

He frowned to himself, shaking his head. "You get the idea," he finished a little vaguely.

[martyrofduty]

So much comes down to different universes. Time in Trench doesn't erase instincts and expectations that are more or less relevant depending on the situation. Duty, not having any more or less ability to notice these creatures than before, suspects Luke may usually have that.

The silence is the heaviest of all. Anything that gets someone who likes eating food to stop stands out (as opposed to the other way around with those it's a daily struggle to get to eat). "Coming back from the dead is little comfort next to what's possible here," Duty agrees. He's done it, and he's seen a lot in his short time here.

"None of us are required to take a particular path," Duty says, "What you do here and at home don't need to be the same. It only needs to work for you."