Crusader Lord

Nerves In Carbonox Reforged: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

my gimmick, stolen from right under my nose

@Ammokkx

Mom said it's my turn with the Alaya-Vijnana System. :P

Nerves In Carbonox Reforged: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

@Ariamis Another question, ah, if that is ok to ask I mean!

So I have an idea of sorts for a Secondary System for a Framewerk, an idea basically taken from a Gundam anime but trying to tweak the details of it a little to change it from being a 100% pure 1-1 (hopefully). In that vein I wanted to ask:

Could a pilot have a special Secondary System for their Framewerk, one that involves them recieving a special set of cybernetic implants but not becoming a full Cyborg. These implants would be the pilot-side part of a system installed in the Framewerk that effectively gives the pilot a somewhat stronger/deeper form of Synchronized Agility, literally operating the Framewerk and its systems as if it were their own body, but at the cost of taking up a whole Secondary System slot. It would also come with some EMP vulnerability and such, not as much as a Cyborg would have to worry about it at least....but more than a standard pilot has to worry about.

Would such a thing be potentially acceptable? Or would it be too OP or such? Suggestions for potential weaknesses if it needs more of those?

Overall I just wanted to test the waters and ask about it all at least. ^^;

Nerves In Carbonox Reforged: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

@Ariamis Just as an aside, what does "you get one more Mod for your Framewerk" mean if you get the "Cyborg" Background Potential? Another weapon or system in effect? What defines a 'mod' in this scenario, then, if not that (because it seems explicit enough when mentioned elsewhere I mean).

New Dawn of Civilizations(Always Open)

<Snipped quote by Crusader Lord>

As far as I can find. The first metal hammers were made of copper that was found and shaped in a hammer. Otherwise, casting it using stone or clay molds. I found that wooden tongs were a thing in the ancient past before metal tongs, so you could use those.

This help or should I research more?

@Theyra

That does help! Or at least confirm a couple of things for me to hopefully make it work out IC. Whew. Thanks!

<Snipped quote by Crusader Lord>

If you mean bronze tools, then I'd say thats been around for a while. If iron though...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrous_metallurgy

'It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC, iron was being produced from iron ores in the region from Greece to India,'

As for metal production seems to go like
Copper
Bronze
Meteoric iron
Naitve/Telluric iron
Iron ore

@Wernher

Hmm. Yeah, this does help! She might need to see if enough minute copper or such can be found to make a hammer to then handle iron with afterwards, or else she might need to cast something iron using raw heat and something like local iron sand from the mountains at first to get a first tool up and running to better work with iron and so forth thereafter.

-------

Eliza is wanting to get into iron tools, basically, though in this area of the world people still live a rather sedentary hunter-gatherer neolithic type lifestyle. Their tools are straight-up stone age!

But this is a more iron-rich area of Japan, and I don't want to push the initial rules on availible resources beyond what would be reasonable. There is also iron sand that could be smelted down into stuff, as the Japanese irl managed to eventually do, though currently Eliza isn't thinking about that sort of thing at this very moment and do I want her to come across it organically in due course (sooner, or later, either way).

Stll, this all confirms that there is something to work with here! I did choose her a challenging starting area for a reason, but whew does it present some challenges in the process. Thank you both! :D

@Theyra@Wernher

New Dawn of Civilizations(Always Open)

Posted!

Trying to get some non-smeltery-or-smithing-efforts type stuff up for a moment. A peek into a potential friendship and into how far this hard-working redhead is willing to go! Not that she's quite at her goal yet, but if the ancients had to tinker a lot to get things to work....even someone with a great head-start in knowledge still has to figure it out in the practical sense all the same! Etc, etc.

Next post I am tempted to get a 'first metal tool is made' bit to happen, even if its maybe a hammer head of a small sort attached to a wooden handle of some kind, but I need to figure out if clay vessels and stuff like wooden tongs might work for metalworking stuff.

((I have no perfect picture on how the first metal hammers were made so far in my research, ugh. Does anyone here have some potential info on that so I can have a practical and sensiuble progression for Eliza making metal tools and such? (@_@)))

New Dawn of Civilizations(Always Open)

Eliza Marie Lee

Year - 1

Day - 185

Location - ??? Village (Approximately near modern Okayama)

To say that she had to test everything she remembered about smelteries, a thing that had just been a matter of curious reading and learning to her before all of this, was an understatement. First she needed things like charcoal and bricks, for one thing, which had been its own journey just to create for the sake of maybe, potentially smelting some kind of iron. Maybe. A mere 'maybe' in all of this! And yet it was at least something, something to work toward, something....something to do with herself in this day and age at the very least. Something to do as she worked on two simple doors for her new home and tried to use what help the frustrated and groowing Narasu was willing to provide. Sometimes his father might pitch in outside of woodworking lessons and if he'd not as much to do for the day, perhaps, though Kunne had visited a couple of times to make sure she was 'doing well' if nothing else. Sometimes Eliza had found herself even invited over to eat with Iramande and his family, and a few times had eaten with them and another family who seemed to be Kunne's brother and his wife and kids. She likewise still went to help the village women each day, sometimes even watch the younger children for them, to boot.

In short, it had been a lot of work, a lot of effort, and a fair amount of things going on! Yet it hadn't all just been herself, in the end, despite things elsewhere taking from her efforts to get a smithy up and running. She'd even begun to get to know a local girl named Ayai more as of late, a younger woman closer to her age and....in all honesty she had barely begun to reflect on how much she was thankful for that in hindsight as of late. Someone who had similar thoughts about life, despite the cultural divide, but was a few years younger and was looking for a husband among the growing and younger men of the village. Someone who knew what it was like to have brothers and no sisters, and who had a penchant for burnt food thus far to boot! Not quite her best friend, and yet a familiar enough thing to have around as they'd hung out sometimes while Eliza had tried to help her learn to cook a bit at her place or simply wished to talk about things in what little free time each of them had.

Meanwhile, baked clay bricks, as well as supporting stones to prevent fires underneath, sat before her in a tube-shaped structure with a baked clay 'pipe' of sorts sticking out of the side for air intake. The fourth smeltery design sitting before her, and the sixth one she'd made overall since Narasu brought back possible ores to her. To the side of these, but separated from them distinctively, a tightly-made clay brick box filled with the latest batch of charcoal. Albeit most of her existing charcoal was stacked inside of her house atop stones to keep them out of the weather for the time being, or had been placed inside of the current and other possible smeltery designs to try to get them to work. Beyond that, though, a humble clay-dome-covered fire pit for firing clay bricks sat there as it was, with a pile of clay bricks that sat next to it. All the while, Eliza herself was currently busy putting what she felt were the finishing touches on the latest attempt at creating a smeltery of some sort.

And that wasn't mentioning how long even getting to this point had taken! She'd been here well over a year and a half now, and despite being seemingly a still-foreign oddity to a number of the villagers by now, albeit few had even come to watch her from afar now and then from what she had seen over the passing of the months, things had been going....well. Well enough that she'd managed to discern that some of the 'rocks' Narasu had brought prior were actually metals of some kind. Iron, maybe copper to boot, and he'd continued to bring her such rocks as they'd tried to refine 'what' to look for....then again the attempted smelting hadn't quite gone entirely according to what she hoped-

"Eriza! Are you working out back again?"

"Hmm?"

Ayai's voice rang clear as crystal, calling from her front door as the embers of the dying brick-making fire fizzled atop a bed of what by now was merely ashes. It snapped the redheaded woman out of her train of thought, hands on her hips and still midly-black-dust-stained fingers turned away from her clothing, a mild sigh coming from her mouth as the edges of her mouth turned up somewhat. The smell of smoke and burning wood clung to her, and yet she would turn about and lightly jog over to her home once more. Popping her head into the door, then, the face of the smiling, hair-bun-secured-with-a-bone-comb-wearing, friendly younger woman greeted her with-....eh?

"Tch. Good to see your showed up, Eriza."

"Kunne?"

"Yes! She wished to come along while you help me learn to cook today! Remember? And you're teaching me how to clean a fish!"

If Eliza could have smacked her forehead into the door frame for a moment, just to knock some memory back into herself, then she'd have done it. Ayai had told her a few days ago that Kunne wanted to come see the next session of her lessons! Er, not that Eliza had been doing anything but learning from Kunne and watching the other women work away at cooking otherwise by now. But where she'd been picking things up, it seemed, Ayai had, well...

"Ayai's mother tells me she's been somewhat improving, and so I came to see how you've been teaching her somewhat. The men have returned with fish and deer by now, and so we managed to get some to bring here."

She...Ayai's mother...eh?! It was time to spend together, at least, but...was the younger woman improvving enough for it to be noticed? And by Kunne of all people?

"O-Oh! Yes, we can get to preparing these right away. Ah, just let me clean my hands first-"

The surprise still fading, but not completely gone, Eliza would hurry to her 'washing hands' water vessel (kept distinct from drinking water) and would quickly move to get the black of charcoal soot off of her hands. As the vessel sat near her home fire in the center of the structure, and near a pile of bricks she hoped to make into a proper oven for wood in some fashion sooner than later, Ayai followed her example somewhat thereafter as Eliza took the one fish from the girl as Kunne held the chunk of deer meat that was to be cooked. The older woman never raised somewhat of an eyebrow at the practice, though Eliza's boiling of even fresh water before its use had raised her eyebrows in the past, but she did glance as Eliza moved to grab a stone knife she kept for cooking purposes. Well, cooking and cleaning purposes at least.

"We can head to the river, if you'd like, though I got another fresh pot of water sitting near the front door we can use to clean the fish."

Some of the women seemed to prefer going to the running river or the shoreline to wash some of the catch of the day. Well, the fish at least. Mostly they seemed to enjoy oysters for the most part, it seemed, especially in the spring and summer. Fish was still there as well, though it seemed more a winter things alongside smoked and dried shellfish kept for the winters. Not a common a thing, though the place where they dumped their many empty oyster shells and broken tools and such that had no use a bit outside of the village was something clearly visible even from afar during the day.

But on a day like this? A good fish was a treat it would seem. No wonder Kunne had come along to see this in particular.

"Hmm, if you've the good water to spare, then that is fine."

...It was a peculiar use of water, yes, that was for certain. Well, not too peculiar but...er...she had a pot for drinking, a pot for washing hands, and a pot for cleaning food to be prepared to eat. It was not exactly all 'normal' to everyone there in the village, she gathered, but it was something of a familiar comfort from home at least. Not that it didn't mean hauling a few jugs of water from the river rather early in the morning, though, so she could get other things done for the day. Water really was a heavy thing when it came down to it. Ugh.

Nodding, Eliza would wuickly go to retrive the pot nearby to Kunne, bringing it closer to the fire but keeping it away from her drinking water that had already been set aside next to the fire pit's opposite side. Then, as Ayai moved closer to her to watch, Kunne would work on getting the deer meat on the basic spit that Eliza had above her firepit. Not an uncommon thing for women in the village to make use of, a spit that is, as Eliza had come to learn over the past year somewhat. Not that she knew everything about the locals, really....but she was also splitting her time up with her own efforts as well.

"So take the blade, and place it about....here on the bottom of the fish. You see?"

Ayai nodded in return, before Eliza carefully moved to cut an opening on the bottom of the fish which she could then put the knife into. She then began to move it up the bottom of the fish.

"You want to not be too hasty, or else you might break the knife. But you also don't want to push the knife in too deep so you don't damage its guts. Those could make the meat bad."

"Eh? But won't it all wash out in the water?"

"Well, no, some things can taint good meat. It's the same with preparing a deer the hunters caught. Let's let you finish cutting this open, so if you'd put your hands over here with mine..."

Kunne watched silently as she now moved to put wood on the fire, seeing the hands of Eliza take those of Ayai's as she held the knife. Guiding her hands to cut the fish, how deep to hold it, and how to move the blade. It was...something, something the girl hadn't had a chance to learn from her own mother as far as the readhead knew. And that was rather strange to boot. Yet Ayai's mother had often been sickly and weak much of the time after the birth of her youngest child (Ayai), it seemed, from what Kunne had once told the redheaded foreigner in private. From there, Ayai's older sisters had done things, but not really shown her anything much in their scramble to get things done and help their mother over the following years since.

In that sense...well, someone willing to teach her was certainly a valuable asset to have around perhaps. Or a friend who was willing to teach things she hadn't the chance to learn.

"So like-, ah!"

"Careful! Careful. Whew. You nearly cut yourself there."

Ayai was a beautiful younger woman, and she'd eventually confided in Eliza that she felt 'behind' the other village women...younger and older alike. Not in every way, her mother and sisters had taught her some things, but time was finite and life contionued in its eternal march onward. She knew how to sew clothes well enough, somewhat on making clay pots and firing them, and she'd been among the few to talk to Eliza rather than gawk from afar. As far as Eliza was concerned after these past many months, Ayai was a friend who was trying her best. At the same time, the girl seeemed...almost a bit desperate to 'get up to par' to boot.

"This is how you remove this organ, slicing at these spots here...and here. That way you can get the stoamch with ease."

"Oh! What about the scales, though?"

"Only after we get the inside cleaned out first. That'll make it easier to remove them, and without the risk of cutting into the body and the guts in the process I think."

"But wouldn't doing that first be easier?"

"Eriza is right about that much, Ayai."

"Eh?!"

Well...progress was progress, at least, right?

---

[Summary - Eliza has been doing a lot of work for almost the past year, mostly amounting to building her way up to hopefully some kind of smithing operation yet still in the future. She needed charcoal, and clay bricks, and that has taken months of work to get up and operational. She's prepared some experimental designs, based on her hobby and looking into things like smelteries when she was back home originally, and been able to do enough to figure out what 'rocks' Narasu has been bringing her are actually metal or not. Most of that metal in kind has turned out to be iron. Villagers don't all talk to her still, some still see her as a foreigner, but others have been looking at her work from afar with curiosity and Kunne's brother and his fmaily have met her properly by now too. Further, she's somewhat befriended a local village woman a few years younger than her named Ayai who has become a friend of sorts while tryhing to learn a few things from Eliza in an 'attempt to catch up to the other village women' in ways so she can find a husband.

Yet during an afternoon of finishing her latest attempted smeltery, and Narasu likely out hunting with his maternal uncle, Ayai showed up suddenly with a fish and...Kunne in tow?! Kunne carrying some deer meat to cook over Eliza's firepit and its spit at least, while mainly there to observe the two younger women go through a cooking lesson on how to clean and prepare a fish. Or is there perhaps more to Kunne's intent to observe than meets the eye?

In any case, Eliza continued to work at her personal goal as well as work with and learn from the Jomon villagers whom she lives amongst. She hasn't seen another tribe in all of this time either, though....so perhaps this tribe is a bit more isolated than some of the others, by choice or simply by coincidence or otherwise. Yet something in that vein might be on the horizon as well? Who knows for sure? Only time will tell!]

New Dawn of Civilizations(Always Open)

@Crusader Lord@Wernher@ActRaiserTheReturned@TruckKun

Just checking in to see how people are doing, and I do plan on posting this week.

@Theyra

Doing good! Will be working the next two days, and was waiting for another post to pop up before I post again.

Nerves In Carbonox Reforged: A Roll-Your-Own Giant Mecha Roleplay

<Snipped quote by Dezuel>

Fun character, reminds me a bit of Char. The Frame is also quite the workhorse of a hybrid Specialist/Frontliner. Accepted.

@Ariamis

I Had To Do This

And hi, Ari! This RP looks tempting. So tempting, dangit! :O

But I at least wanted to drop a friendly meme off and say hi, say the RP looks great, and let my temptation to make an app be known. Also now I need to go back and watch, or rewatch, the old OG Gundam and such too for that matter. Its been years...

New Dawn of Civilizations(Always Open)

Got a post in finally! Thank goodness. Took longer than I had thought, but after this I might do a bit of a longer skip, or two smaller scenes from two more skips, to try to catch up to where everyone else is at somewhat. Will see how it goes! Certainly going to be busy these next two weekends as well.

The hope I have is for Eliza to get ahold of iron, since it is more notable to this area of Japan from what I can look up, then finding copper and maybe only some minor surface tin eventually so bronze becomes a thing in a more organic manner. Then finding out the mountains nearby have iron sand, which will lead to her having to rediscover the type of process used by irl Japan to make steel from that. Etc. Nothing to be rushed, but more long term things to enjoy coming across and discovering alone or with others!

Will take time for her to produce significant results, though, but that's part of the charm of this tougher starting location in my eyes! It all takes time. A lot of effort. Etc.

And post. Love reading your stuff guys, and am eager to have the first time skip and have our characters meet and interact eventually!

@Crusader Lord Especially, love the details and character building.

EDIT: Added the tl;dr

@Wernher

This has been a rather enjoyable thing so far, and I do enjoy reading what Astrid, William, and the others are up to as well! :O

Hopefully we all run into each other eventually as well. Could be when the world becomes more globalized naturally in due time, could be sooner depending on world travels or conquests our people might make along the way as our immortals realize they are (in the aging sense at least but not in the dying by violence sense) in fact ageless immortals now. Etc, etc!

Ahem, but I am rambling a bit overall here. Apologies. ^^;

New Dawn of Civilizations(Always Open)

Eliza Marie Lee

Year - 0

Day - 275

Location - ??? Village (Approximately near modern Okayama)

One hundred and twenty days. It had been one hundred and twenty days of working hard to carve the wood, gather more trees for building, and working hard to get the building she was envisoining built to fruition at the very least. She wasn't an architect, however, and neither was she a construction worker. Her expertise lied in other areas, areas that for who knew how long would never be formulated as as knew them and understood them to be like. She'd been learning how to carve wood, to make and repair stone tools, how to cook, hoow to clean and prepare food, how to make pottery, and in the process of it all had been forced to learn just how much time and investment it all took. How much it took to learn, to grow, to adapt to a day and age in which the hard work needed to live was much higher than many would think to give credit for. Not all doing so out of maliciousness or willful 'first world ignorance', rather, but simply not sharing enough of that lifestyle to be able to grasp it perhaps. Well, at least that was the case in her mind.

Yet even then, to share meals upon a hide blanket on the soft grass. To enjoy a hot meal over a cooking fire within the home alongside family. To talk with others who lived in the village. It was a sense of community, it wasn't 'all work and no play' all of the time, it was a living, breathing place where the more she learned of it the more the people here felt just like those back 'home' to enough of an extent. In a sense....it was like an intangible connection to a place, and myriad people, who were infinitely far away from her now...perhaps forever so, really, at that. Yet the same threads of life, of laughter, of kindness, of distrust, of curiosity, and so many oother things good and bad and ugly that seemed to remain ever so consitent with the 'human condition' that it seemed to speak to something in her soul in ways left unspoken by any language or dancing of the tongue.

What had begun with Narasu listening to her stories as they labored on carving the logs had started as the curiosity of a youth had led to skepticism at times, though the more she'd talked of things regarding the craft she sought to attain the more he had seemingly become absorbed in those explanations and stories of just what it could achieve. Like he had a glint of something in his eyes that sought to look beyond what his parents and the others knew. Like a pair of stars in the open night sky, really, if she had to think of how he had come too look these days.

Yet this was not all.

Days spent eating with Iramande and Kunne and their family had become days feeling more like a member of a family despite the distance she could still feel between her and the other locals of the village. Kunne had given her somewhat more of a side-eye on matters, even lectured her off to the side for 'putting stories in the boy's head', though Iramande had spoken to her about how Narasu was also coming to work more alongside him. Woodcarving seemed to be the skill he was interested in, and his working with Eliza had been seemingly a driving factor to bring him closer to his father in this sense. It was in that vein that, well, she hadn't been as surprised when Iramande and his brother eventually began to pitch in with helping her and Narasu in their building efforts.

A woman, a youth, and two men working on this spot soon turned into one or two more helpful hands pitching in, whether it was in the tutoring, the teaching of how to find good wood, or even trying to ponder how to achieve the ideas Eliza had put forth to make her building as part off the group. What had resulted was the blending of ideas, ones familiar and yet foreign, into something of a side work project for some. Not everyone helped of course, two of them only really came because other men of the village they did know were involved, and others still kept an arm's length from her as did some of the women. Even so...it was progress, and it seemed to prove an utterly ancient adage from her time more than a bit true: It did indeed 'take a village', even if that adage referred to another matter entirely. Haha.

Yet now, now something great stood there. Four mighty corner pillars, and one taller central one, had come to form the main part of Eliza's self-planned home. It stood wider than the local buildings by a fair enough margin. It even stood taller than the local buildings of the average sort to enough of an extent as well. A similar thatch-y roof sat atop it, and a similar style of allowing air flow into it and out, yet an open doorway stood in two places as she had envisioned it to be. Walls of thatch did not form the sides, however, as she'd begun the work of finding stones to fit together that were both heavy and tightly-put together to form her new home's walls. It was an idea that had ooccured when watching some children use stones to make little towers and such in the grass one day, while helping one of the younger women watch the children as the older women took up with other tasks one fine day, and Narasu had been the fiirst and only one to help her at first before another younger man had taken up interest in their activity in kind and then one or two of the man (Iramande among them) had pitched in as well.

Now she was working on a raised platform for a bed, one to cover in thatch and a proper pelt fur if she could just learn to hunt, to make with stone. And perhaps finding a way to make proper 'doors' would be good as well. Yet all the same, the idea of doors would have to wait. She'd managed to get help due to some local kindness, and curiosity about her 'foreign ways of building a home', though she'd also begun looking for larger stones to prepare a space out of the back door of her home. Indeed....her goal remained the same in the end, and having a place to cook and eat and sleep was only the first part. It was one that she and the others had celebrated with a small party as soon as her new home was tentatively 'complete', one that had been not the whole village but more of it than she'd thought would come, but the matter of her goal to regain her ability to smith metal hadn't been forgotten along the way.

"Huff...huff..."

Today was yet another day of hauling stones in place to set up a potential forge area, something immune to fire and far enough from the house to be safe yet close enough to be acessible to her. But before she could even so much as smelt, or begin testing setups or more beyond that, she had to find the material she needed. Ore. Metal. It could be iron, it could be copper, it had to be something at the very least, and tales of 'strange rocks in the mountains' from the village hunters had gotten to her by virtue of hunter-aspirant Narasu and things Iramande and Kunne had heard by proxy.

*CLUNK CLACK*

Another stone in place in the fitted area where she wished to put a forge. A nice spot ringed in stones, to contain any potential fires and clear the space between the grass and future work area, just as her internal fire pit had been dug slightly into the ground and surrounded by enough fitted stones to help contain the fire it might hold inside. Though she'd been working on a spit for cooking as well for that matter, even if she still ate with Iramande and his family for the time being. Yet alone? Alone she could only do so much so far to get by even now. It was also another reason she....she wanted to at least try to help Iramande and his family yet still, and one reason why her goal of metalsmithing remained in her mind's eye even now.

One could not simply walk in and claim superior ways, they had to prove it as well. Places that didn't need a new type of government didn't adopt it if they didn't want to. Places that didn't want different tools didn't adopt them if they didn't want to. Same with various ways off doing things and the like. But people did take in what gave them advantages, and what they percieved as such. Things changed slowly, and yet to get such a change rolling it would take more than just one person and more than one lifetime to work hard at it as well. Perhaps more than the lifetime alotted to herself and the others in general, really, but maybe she could make life better in some capacityy for these people at least. Maybe.

"Where is he....andis he ok?" the redhaired woman muttered softly to herself, hands on her hips as she stood back up and stretched her somewhat sore back and her brows sliughtly furrowed in thought.

Narasu, speaking of the boy, had been absent for the last good few days. As if his attention to what she was doing here had been somewhat lost on him as of the last month. He had been semeingtly taking a fancy to one of the village girls, much like herself from the looks of things, but with the shifting seasons the need to hunt farther out as compared to fishing just off the shore had been made more visibly apparent for the local hunters. Hmm. Trips out there had also been taking a little longer as well, but she'd not persisted after the growing young man in any case over the matter.

He had seemed less focused and more focused at the same time, however, and evven his father had noted 'ah he's getting that age' when it came to his attitude as well during their last time spent training in woodworking. More conflicting. More rebellious. Yet at the same time, he'd been focused enough on helping her so far as well. Some days he'd disappear despite being visible around the village as well. Even his mother seemed to be more fed up with him, albleit also patient at the same time, when it came to his shifting behavior somewhat. Said he'd taken some more trips to the mountain with her brother, even, at that. It was...peculiar, but none of this was totally unexpexted either she supposed. Her older brothers were something she could reflect back on, really, when it came to such matters in hindsight as well. Er, at least to some extent, yes.

The sun sat just beyond the noontime point, to her eyes, but the days had become increasingly shorter and breifer. Not very good for hunting supplies and getting work in, but it had meant more time to rest. Time to do smaller tasks. But it did slow down her progress somewhat, as she'd been going at her goal and other daily tasks all as best as she could if nothing else. Meant maybe waiting for spring, then, before she could get in longer working days.

The redhead, however, would simpyl sit upon a larger stone she'd brought over. A spot to put an anvil, perhaps, once she-....if she....even got to making one for that matter. If. When? Her goal remained in sight, in her mind's eye, and yet even then it wasn't all simply as feasible as going out to purcahse supplies or find some junk metal to tinker with or something. Far, far, far from it. And, for that matter, thirst had begun the crawl up into her throat, the dry itch pairing well with the natural mental signal from her body to bring the matter to her attention.

Letting out a sigh, Eliza would force her legs to stand up once more before taking the steps into her house and through the back doorway, looking to a jar sitting near her firepit as she sat on a somewhat thatched floor beside it. Styled by corded rope, this jar was a clay pot in the local style that she'd actually made under Kunne's watchful eye. It had been hardened by fire, which she'd been learning how to do as well, and by now sat filled with water she had gone to the river to get at sunrise and then boiled in the morning for a few hours. It looked ever so clear, so refreshing, and indeed as she used her hands to cup up some of it and drink the woman felt the cooling slaking her thirst as it ran down like a smooth bit of Mei's stash had after a nice hot and spicy dinner at her place the night before she'd woken up here....ah.

Familiarity with the locals that was somwwhat growing between them thus far, though, she still had times that she wished she could-

"Oooooiiiieeeeeehhhh!"

A piercing cry, slightly voice-cracking with the bustling hormones of early onsetting pubescence, cried alound with a somewhat deepening but also familiar tone of voice. Wiping sweat from her face with her right sleeve, then, the readhead's eyes darted to her front doorway as a likewise familiar face brazenly wallked somewhat unexpectedly. A growing face. A younger face. Narasu, of all people, whose dark hair was cut shorter than some by a stone blade and who had a jar carried by cords on his back from the looks of it. A large enough jar for someone his age, actually, that he seemed to be carrying with a fair bit of effort as well as....a smile on his face?

"Narasu?"

"Yeah! And I've got something good for ya'!"

Eliza's left eyebrow raised up almost of its own accord, though she, motioned for the boy to come over. At that gesture, Narasu would walk in, the caked dust on his face from travel and the simple woven sandals on his feet seemingly more torn than they normally would be to her eyes. Even so, his smile didn't seem to diminish as he brought over the jar, sitting down with his back facing her and letting the jar loose on the floor with care before he turned about to sit facing her. The sweat running down his brows was enough, however, that she would move to hand the jar of water to him.

"Get some water to drink, please, you seem as if you've walked long enough to get here as it is!"

The latter would roll his eyes for a moment.

"Just like my mom, sheesh, but only after you see this! This comes first!"

The boy reached into the jar, not letting her protest even another word on the matter, before pulling out several...rocks? As he excitedly pulled out more, however, she noticed how different some looked from each other. One even bore a look of greenish-sorts, which looked a lot like...emerald? No, it wasn't a gemstone, more like...jade?

"So before, when we've been talking, you told me what idea you had about this 'ore' stuff, right? Stuff you need to make that 'metal' stuff, yeah?"

"I...yes, I did."

Wait. Wait wait wait. A thought clicked into her head Had the boy been-

"I've been hunting out that way with my mother's brother, and I've been looking for things that might match what you were saying. Maybe. Been looking for a while, even checked out some other places since we've had to hunt in other places farther out now before the winter. Asked some of the other hunters about strange rocks, but usually they don't look for that sort of thing, so eh.

You didn't have the best idea either, but I had something to work with still, but-"

He had been going out looking for metal too?! One part of her wanted to grumble that it was stupid dangerous, another wanted to complain he didn't take her along, and yet in the end she would take each rock in hand and place it down before her as he spoke of where each came from and what had drawn him to it. But raw iron ore? Even she had to think back on what that looked like, and only then she'd seen some pictures of what it could look like when researching blacksmithing in her own down time or out of a late night curiosity or so forth. But were any of these ore? Were any of these things potential ore for her to even attempt to smelt? Beyond that there were other concerns like fuel, like she'd have to make charcoal just to help begin fueling the idea of a smeltery and such, and if he did find anything she'd have to double up finding ways to get this all to work and-

...and...

...

...

And after a few moments of listening and focusing on thumbing through the rocks and stones before her, it clicked. Narasu had gone and done this fool thing for her, of all people. A growing, increaisngly hormonal, and story-fascinated kid who had piutched in to help her with this. With something that was so far out of his wheelhouse, so far out of the minds of his peoples' understanding, and yet he had believed her enough to do something this this.

It was also then, as her eyes widened somewhat, that a particular rock caught her eye. It didn't seem even, as if it had been paintaklingly taken out of the dirt. It had a grey-ish hue, yet much of it sat in a singular lump. It seemed...similar to metal? Seemed familiar to old images of ore at least, as her memories continued to be sifted through like a fine sand for ideas, that she'd seen before in the past online or something of the sort. Iron was held in other minerals, yes?

"Where did you say this one came from again?"

"Eh, Eriza, that one was sitting at the top of some dirt and rocks, had too work on that one to get it out of a hill over thataway-"

Narasu pointed in a roughly eastern direction, as far as she had managed to get the idea of thus far in this place if naught else thus far, which she responded to with a nod.

"Not many rocks like that one that I found. But I kept this one and some of the others till' I got back from the mountains with the rest, then I threw it all in this jar to carry over!"

The kid looked like an excited puppy as she went back to thumb through the rest of the rocks again, with her setting two more aside for the moment being alongside the one that had caught her eye first. It was as if he was lookiing for something, for praise, or-....heh. That thought had hit home a bit closer than she expected. Even so, and looking into the jar for further examples, Eliza would likewise find an amount of peculiarly-dark sand at the bottom of it as well. Raising another eyebrow at the matter, she reached in and ran her hand through it. It felt...fine, but peculiar, all the same. Not normal sand, that was for sure.

Sitting back once more, a small smile began to creep into the woman's face. Small, but one that was certainly present as she looked back at the growing younger man all the same.

"We...I...there's a chance some of this might be usable, actually."

The boy's grin seemed to lessen a little as she noted only a few of his rocks, at least initially, seemed to be potential candidates for 'metal ore' of some kind. But even so, his smile didn't disappear either, seeming to grow as she follow up with-

"You did a good job. I mean that...and thank you."

"So ca you make stuff with this? The tools and things you talked about? Stuff that's better than stone?"

Ah. He did seem a bit eager and excited about the matter, and yet she would lightly shake her head side to side.

"I can't be sure yet. I'll need to find a way to test out these rocks here for sure, and look at the others more later to try to get an idea. But to do that I'll need something that burns a lot hotter than a normal fire, and I do know how to do something like that at least."

Excxitement soon turned to a rapid bit of frustration on the boy's face, a sigh of definite exasperation coming from his mouth. And yet-

"Once we know what the right rocks look like, that'll make it easier to get more. It takes steps, like it took to make this home, or like it takes to make a tool or carve a piece of wood."

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh..."

The teenage moan of complaint rang out regardless, but despite sitting cross-legged in front of her the boy wouldn't storm off or anything. At the same time, however, he would finally move to get some water after this-...and dip his dirty hand in there to do so. Well, there went the whole morning's effort. Yet at the same time, once he had a good amount to drink and sat for a little longer in quiet thought, he would look back at her with a glint in his eyes. Softer than his prior excitement for sure, but a glint there nonetheless.

"So we just need to find the right type, yeah? Like gettin' the right kind of berries, or findin' the right spots the deer like too travel through?"

"Yes. Some might be easy to find on the surface, if we're lucky, but most rocks like it are found under the ground. Sometimes really deep, though where I came from they usually got the stuff closer to the surface and used it a long time ago. Here might be different, though, potentially."

The boy seemed to go into a state of deeper thought, almost like the day he had first approached her to offer help on her home if she explaiined her ideas to him, before looking back up and giving her a curt and short nod. Not that all the wiggles in his system seemed to leave either, if his hands on his knees were of any indication.

"Alright! Then we just need to get this figured out is all. Sooner than later I'd say."

That...was fast? And yet at the same time it left the smile on Eliza's face unfading all the same. In fact, a small laugh would emerge from the back of her own throat now, a chuckle she attempted to stifle as the boy in front of her raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Tch? What's so funny about what I said?"

Her laugh only grew in response, the sound of Kunne in his voice for a moment only making her laughter even greater, and everything just tickling her pink for reasons she hadn't a single clue about. And, perhaps, she didn't want to fully grasp it right now. A peal of laughter. Narasu's confused look and questioning. The smell of cooling, fresh air as they sat on the floor. And now...possibly, maybe, impossibly, some metal in her hands in what felt like thin air.

Perhaps she was coming to understand her mother more by the day, and to understand Narasu's a bit to boot!

---

[Summary - Eliza and Narasu began working on making her new home, though as she is giving part of her time to help with the villagers some of them eventually came back to also help her in turn. Finding wood, moving it, carving, and between her and the others they've worked out how to get the place built and how to make it work. She has even used fitted stones for the walls and such, an idea of hers inspired by village children playing with some rocks to build little things on the ground with, and has been using stones to also prepare an area near (but not too close to) her new home for some sort of far-flung future blacksmithing endeavors.

Her preparations, her aims for her goal, all of thiis goes on bit by bit....and yet after a time of the now-teenage Narasu not hanging around her as much for one reason or another she'd been surprised by him visting her home out of the blue. Turns out, at least part of the time if nothing else, he's been looking for what she described as 'metal ore' of some kind or another, and he might have lucked out on a few pieces being among the samples he's gotten from the local area and the nearby mountains. Maybe.]