Checkmate (Solo)

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

54th Day of Spring, 512 AV

(Beginning late afternoon after Minerva gets her fortune told. Posts will most likely span multiple days in-character due to the length of time required for her to complete the work. She will be working on the project little by little after her university classes are done each day.)

Minerva 'Tock' Zipporah always had multiple projects in mind. She was somewhat disorganized, never being able to fully settle on a single project at a time. Even now, her backpack was filled with broken parts she'd been salvaging here and there, wherever she could find them. She'd been around the city, searching for abandoned or lost parts, digging through garbage, and checking various workshops in the city for scrap they didn't need. It wasn't a way to get GOOD materials... but it was an effective way to find stuff to practice with. She had found a decent collection of little used and broken gears, springs, and other clockwork parts that she could use to practice putting together, though when it came time to actually make something, she'd want to make sure to get some proper materials. Most likely by making the parts herself.

Yet today, those clockwork parts were suddenly vanished from her center of attention. She had the urge for something else... a game of chess. She figured she could find someone down at the university to play with, but she didn't have a set to play with. Sure, maybe if she asked around the university, she could find one, but where was the fun in that?

She decided to carve her own set from scratch. Ideally she wanted one made of stone, with finely polished pieces of white marble and black onyx. But, she didn't think she'd be able to do a good enough job carving the pieces yet, and decent pieces of stone like that were a lot harder to find. So she had decided to start off making one out of wood.

On her way back from her fortune telling, she stopped by a few carpenter's shops and asked about scraps. It was pretty easy to find some; most furniture makers had no real use for a piece of wood that was only a few inches long. When they cut a small piece off the end of a larger piece of lumber, it either ended up as firewood or scrap to be hauled away. After stopping at enough shops, she had a nice big sackful of little wooden scraps to work with. None of the pieces were bigger than her hand, but they were just right for carving some chess pieces out of.

She headed home and lit a lamp to see by, since she'd be working into the night. The sack of wooden blocks were upended over her table, blocks spilling out all across the table and onto the floor. She sat down and started sorting through them, holding each piece up and examining it for flaws, cracks, or knots.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Minerva had her scraps of wood sorted out into three piles. One, the smallest, was the 'perfect' pile; pieces of wood that had no visible flaws, that she would use for the final product. The second pile was filled with 'adequate' pieces. These would do well enough, but she mostly expected to use them for practice. If she managed to get any of the carvings perfect with the pieces in this pile, she'd use them in the final set, but she expected to have to go through a few flawed tries before she got things right. The last pile was the stuff that was badly flawed, cracked, or chipped. Those might end up as firewood, or she might figure out something else to do with them later on. She wasn't quite sure yet.

Now that she had the wood piles sorted, she paused. She had her grandfather's chisel in hand, tapping it against her lips. She wasn't quite sure where she wanted to start. There was the 'classic' design, with all the pieces in their most recognizable shapes, but there was something a little bit boring about the classics. She felt like she wanted to personalize this set a bit, though she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do.

She set the chisel aside and pulled out some paper. Sketching out some ideas would be a good place to start.

She started with the pawns. First, she just sketched out some basic, simple designs. She wasn't working on drawing anything to scale just yet. She dipped her quill in the ink and carefully drew designs for the shape of the piece, outlining the ridges and the round little bald head. That was boring though. She moved on from that into some brainstorming. She etched out a couple of designs that looked like real people, but she was completely unhappy with them. The faces looked misshapen, and she didn't think she could properly carve hair or clothing. She ended up scratching out the drawings and starting over.

She leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and tapping her quill to her lips. She needed something... simple. Basic. Yet something with that 'Tock' touch to it. Tick, tock, wind the clock, she thought, humming softly. Then it hit her with a flash. "Ahah!" she cackled, leaning forward and starting a new set of sketches.

She sketched out a simple clockwork gear. It was free of frills, simplicity itself. The gear stood on a little base so it would stand upright, and the entire thing would be carved from a single piece of wood. She went through a few etchings of different shapes and designs for the gear until she found one she was satisfied with.

After the basic design was decided, she settled on figuring out the exact dimensions. She would need to make a total of thirty-two pieces, and sixteen of those would be pawns. They all needed to be identical. That meant careful precision.

She pulled out her rulers and measured out the design. The entire piece would be two inches tall. The base was half an inch tall, with the gear an inch and a half diameter. It was a simple gear, with only six cogs, but that still required careful measurements and precise lines. Half of the paper ended up covered in mathematical equations as she calculated the correct angles, and measured the width, length, and height.

Some time later, she had a pile of discarded drawings, and one final blueprint. The gear-pawn was etched out in scale size and 200% size, with the dimensions laid out in neatly printed numbers. Her fingers were smudged with ink, and she had a few ink stains on her lips from where she'd absentmindedly tapped her lips a few times when she was concentrating. But the drawing was complete.

Now she just had to come up with designs for the Knights, Bishops, Rooks, King, and Queen...

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Minerva was hanging upside down in her chair. She had her legs up over the back of the chair, the backs of her knees hooked over the top. Her back was stretched across the seat, and her head was hanging down until her hair brushed the floor. She was thinking, and for some reason, she thought best upside down.

Maybe it was because it let her see the world in a different way from everyone else.

She needed to decide on the designs for her other chess pieces. It didn't seem like it should be that hard of a decision. Yet she was being picky, picky, picky. What to make the Knight? Her first thought was a spring. The Knight was the only piece that could 'jump' over other pieces, so a spring seemed appropriate. Yet somehow, a spring didn't seem... Knight-y enough. Knights had horses, and swords, and armor. Those would be a bit outside of her ability to carve right now. So how could she capture the essence of a Knight in a clockwork chess set?

Her mind started running in circles, trying to decide what would look best. Knights... swords... armor... she thought, picturing them in her mind as she hummed, her eyes closed, quill stuck between her teeth. Clocks and horses, tick, tock, springs and gears and jousts. Wind the clock, ride the horse, tick, tock, tick, tock, swing the sword and win the day, the Knight wins a kiss from the Princess... church bells ring and choirs sing, tick, tock, the Knight rides off...

An image appeared in her mind. She twisted herself around, trying to sit up in the chair... and fell when the chair toppled over. "OW!" she cried out, banging her head on the floor. Muttering and cursing, she grabbed the chair and righted it, climbing back into her seat (right side up, this time). She grabbed some paper and started sketching.

After a few discarded designs, she settled on the one she wanted. A simple Knight's Shield, mounted atop a small spring. A shield was the easiest piece of a Knight's armor to sketch and carve, being much simpler in design than a helmet or sword. The shield would be carved from wood, with a small wooden base, but the spring would be metal. She just had to scavenge a decent set of four springs that were identical in size and shape. That shouldn't be too hard.

Once she had the finalized design for the Knight, drawn to scale just like she had done with the pawn, she set the page aside for the ink to dry. Two down, four to go. Though she already had some ideas for what to do with the remaining pieces.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

The Bishops had been easy to figure out. She was going to carve them in the shape of winding keys. She had a set of sketches added to the pile with the others, showing the results after several more discarded attempts. The winding key would be two and a half inches tall, so that it would stand above the gear-pawns. The base had the same shape and contours as all her other sketches though. The bases had to be uniform to make a sense of continuity among all the pieces.

Now she was working on the Rooks. She'd decided they should look like pendulums. She'd measured out the height to match the Knights and Bishops, with the same base again. It had taken her some time to decide on the shapes of the pendulums, since they could vary from round to square to fanciful. She had finally settled on basic round designs, since they would be the easiest to make.

The King and Queen were the most obvious. The hands of the clock. She sketched up the Queen as the minute hand, and the King as the hour hand. Each one was taller than the other pieces, the King at three inches, the Queen at three and a half. She kept the sketches fairly simple. Carving an elaborately shaped hand wouldn't be easy. So she just sketched a design with a simple, thin shaft, and an arrowhead at the tip. She took great care ensuring symmetrical precision, even though the design was very basic. Even with simplicity, there was plenty of room for care and perfection.

Finally finished her sketches, Minerva gathered the papers together and looked them over. She had six distinct sets of blueprints, all carefully calculated and perfectly proportioned. She also had a huge pile of old notes, numbers, sketches, and doodlings that she had decided not to use.

Now it was time to really get to work.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Sketches done, Minerva set to task on beginning the real project of working with the wood. She already had her pieces of scrap sorted and set aside, ready to be worked. She gathered them and lined them up, sorting them by size. The larger pieces needed slightly longer pieces of wood, so she set them aside first. Then she sorted through the rest, setting the smallest pieces aside for the pawns, and sorting out the others by each piece.

She then began the careful process of sketching the basic shapes on the wood itself. Using her drawings as a guideline, she drew the shapes as precisely as she could. Careful measurements were taken at each step, and she double and triple checked each drawing until she was sure it was perfect. She then used her finest-tipped gouge to etch the designs into the wood, carefully tapping the handle of the gouge with a hammer to dig out the tiny lines that would guide her through the rest of the process.

With sixty-four pieces to create, quite a few hours went into this basic preparation process. Tock was infinitely patient, however. When she was working on a task, time ceased to have any meaning for her. She often missed a lot of sleep when she was busy working on a project, and had a bad habit of skipping meals too. All through the long hours of the night, the sound of her humming could be heard, accentuated by the gentle tap tap tapping of the hammer on the gouge, the floor of her home soon becoming covered in little flakes of wood.

Each step had to be completed before the next, and thus all sixty-four pieces were etched and gouged before she began any cutting. She had them all lined up in rows across the table, sorted piece by piece. Once the last one was ready, she started back at the beginning of the first row, ready to start cutting.

The block was carefully clamped down, Tock still humming to herself the whole time. The lines were etched to show where she had to cut, and she pulled out her grandfather's saw to set to work. The cutting was the easiest part of the whole thing. It wasn't nearly as precise of a job as what would come later. She merely had to cut off the excess, leaving enough space so that she didn't risk cutting into the main body of each piece. Her cuts were clean and precise, though that was easy when you didn't need to do anything fancy. By the time the sawing was complete, the piece was cut into a basic rectangular shape, just a bit larger than what the final result would be. Shaping would come in the next stage.

Little by little, bit by bit, the sixty-four pieces were cut and readied. Each one was returned to its place in the rows, as she patiently moved through them all. Her floor was now covered in sawdust and fragments of wood, which got kicked about as she moved, though she didn't much care about the mess. She'd clean up... eventually.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock's stomach was grumbling. Someone should have TOLD her before she came here that there was a food shortage in the city. Of course, she hadn't really asked. She hadn't bothered to check any of the stories or news from travelers who had come from Zeltiva. She had just heard 'University', and decided THAT was where she needed to go.

She'd brought a week's worth of food with her, and since she'd missed a few meals (due to being distracted by her work), it was likely that small supply would be stretched out a bit longer. But it was proving difficult (and expensive) to find food in the city, and she didn't much like being distracted by a grumbling stomach.

She wondered if she could build a hunting machine to go out into the wildnerness and bring her back a deer. Lying in bed, she pondered the problem, considering how hard it would be. First, she'd need parts... a LOT more parts than she had. Second, she'd need another few months (minimum) of education in gadgeteering principles in order to have the background needed to pull it off. Third, she'd need a wolf or something to use as the soul template to animate the new hunter. Then there were tools, prototypes, trial and error, and lots of time before the project could be complete.

Grumbling under her breath, she was forced to admit that this was not the solution to getting dinner today.

She pulled out some of her remaining rations, separating what she had left into smaller portions. Enough to satisfy her current hunger, though not quite enough for a filling meal. It would have to do, for now. While she ate, she worked on sketches for an animated wolf. They were crude, for now, just jotting down some ideas that had flashed in her mind. She compared to the drawings she'd made of the Kelvic the other day, which included some basic anatomical details. She'd need a lot more planning and work, but it was a start.

After a few hours of drawing outlines of mechanical wolves with iron teeth, and making a rather long list of the parts she'd need, the principles she'd need to study, and the gadgeteering techniques she'd have to learn before she could even start such a project, she had another huge pile of notes. It was around then that she remembered she was supposed to be working on her chess set. "Right!" she said to herself, tossing the wolf drawings in the corner, forgotten.

Minerva had a bad habit of getting distracted like that.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Humming softly, Minerva fetched her Grandfather's hand drill and set to work. The gear pawns all had to have a small, perfectly round hole in the center. It was purely for show, but a real gear would have a treading hole there, and she wanted her pieces to be accurate. When she was done, the chess pieces would be detailed enough that they could, in theory, be used as actual clockwork parts.

Clamping the first pawn in place, she chose the right size drill bit, and slowly and carefully set to drilling the hole. The wood ground and cracked, and Tock pressed her teeth together in deep frustration when the entire piece snapped in half. "Stupid, worthless, bloody splintered piece of greasy garbage!" she shouted and cursed, throwing the offending piece aside. That one would need to be started from the beginning again.

Backtracked a bit, she set about etching and cutting a replacement pawn, and readied another few extras, just in case. Better to have them done now and have spares in place, instead of having to go back to the earlier stages again. With the replacement and spares cut down to size, she made her way back to the drilling.

"Now, listen 'ere, you!" she growled at the next pawn she placed in the clamp. "I dun' want no trouble, y'hear? Bloody little bugger..." She picked out a smaller drill bit so that the wood wouldn't crack again. It would mean more work during the next stage, since she'd have to manually file and sand the hole until she got the size and shape right. Better that, though, than risking cracking another piece.

Awhile later, she had a full set of pawns with a few to spare, each with an identical hole right in the center of what would be the gear face. Of course, the blocks were still nothing more than roughly rectangular shapes. Now it was time to get down to some serious carving.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Minerva sat on the top of a marble statue, nestled in the crook of the muscular, stone arm. The statue was of some historical figure, though she had no clue who it was. History wasn't really her thing. The stature was holding up a trident, as if in battle or defiance of some unseen danger. If she bothered to research the figure in the statue, or even read the nameplate, she would probably know who or what the figure was supposed to be battling against. All she did know, was that the arm made a very comfortable perch.

She had a pack full of wooden blocks nestled in her lap; the incomplete pieces of her chess set. Her vest and belt were bristling with chisels and gouges of various sizes, some large, wide-headed tools for the rougher work, others narrow, precisely tipped ones for detail work. She was working one piece at a time, slowly chipping and scraping away the unneeded bits of wood, as the pieces gradually began to take form.

Lines were etched on each piece of wood, marking what the final shape would be. Every once in a while, Minerva took out a ruler and measured the piece, comparing it against her notes and drawings. She wanted each piece to be identical an properly proportioned. She hummed softly as she worked, enjoying the feeling of the spring sun on her skin. She usually worked indoors, but it was such a nice day out that she had decided to get outside for a change.

Of course, she wasn't going to take a break from her work, just because it was nice outside.

The statue was littered with little wood shavings and sawdust. If she knew, or cared, who the statue was, she might have realized this would be offensive to some. Though more likely, she would just shrug and say, "It's just dust..." Even if this was a statue of some great hero or religious figure, that didn't mean it couldn't be cleaned.

She blew off the dust from the figure she was working on. The base was complete, and the finely measured lines of the cogs were nicely shaped. She held it up to the sunlight, peering through the hole in the center. It needed to be sanded out a bit more.

"Mommy, look!" a voice called out from down below. Tock didn't even hear it. "There's a lady on the statue!" A small girl was pointing up at the strange sight of the gadgeteer, perched on the statue, carving out a wooden gear chess piece. It probably wasn't the sort of thing one saw every day.

Minerva was too busy putting the finishing touches on the first piece, though, to notice. She had finally sanded out the center hole of the gear to her satisfaction when a gruff voice called out, "Hey! You! Get down from there!" She didn't realize that the voice was talking to her. The person moved closed and shouted again, "You there! You deaf? I said GET DOWN!" She finally looked up, glancing around curiously, wondering who the man was yelling at. Probably some kid was getting into trouble somewhere. She didn't see anyone nearby who was someplace they shouldn't be, so she returned to her work.

She felt a hand clamp down around her ankle and give a tug. "Oy!" she cried out, grabbing the statue's neck to keep from falling and breaking something. A few of her blocks spilled out across the ground, and she had to grab the bag with her free hand to keep the rest of them from spilling out. "What's the big idea, eh? Ya could kill a girl, roughhousing like that!" She cast an angry glare at the man, who seemed to be wearing some kind of guardsman uniform.

"The Statue of the Hero is NOT for climbing!" the man shouted, red in the face. Tock slid down off the statue, shoving the man away angrily, and kneeling down to recover her lost blocks.

"Oy, bugger," she muttered, shoving the blocks into her pack. "If just ONE o'these 'as a chip on 'er, I swear by the gods..." She held up one of the pieces that had hit the ground hard, examining it with a critical eye. There was a ding in the wood, though she might be able to sand it out. "Oy, ya see?" she shouted, waving it in the guard's face. "Lookit what you did, ya blimey dodger! I worked three days on 'at, I did! Whassa big idea!?" The man looked off balance, trying to figure out what to do. A moment ago, he'd been yelling at Minerva, and now she was screaming in his face. He didn't seem to know what the gear-shaped thing she was waving in his face was, or whether it was something valuable.

"Go on, shoo!" Tock shouted, waving her hands at the man in anger. She shoved the rest of her stuff back in her bag. "Git! I ain't got time fer ya!"

The guard ground his teeth in anger and leaned forward, "Miss, you were--"

"SHOO!" Minerva shouted, waving her arms at him frantically, and turning and stalking away. She stomped through the city, heading back home, leaving the guard sputtering in anger, and no doubt wondering how he'd lost control of the situation.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Minerva had a few pieces completed, and decided it was time to take her chess set on a preliminary trial run.

"Will you stop doing that?" the man across from her asked. She looked up at him in confusion, pausing in her work of filing down the edges of one of the Bishops. They were sitting in a city park, under the shade of a tree, engaged in the middle of a game of chess. The man was winning, because Minerva wasn't really paying attention to the game. She was more focused on finishing the detail work on the pieces. Most of them were still wooden blocks with etchings on them, but quite a few had been shaped and sanded.

"Seriously? Stop," the man said again.

"Stop what?" Minerva asked, looking down at herself and wondering what she was doing wrong.

"That filing is distracting me..." he told her. She looked down at the piece she was working on, wondering what the big deal was.

"But you captured this one three moves ago," she protested. Once the piece was off the board, as far as she was concerned, it was fair game for working on. Besides, this guy took forever to pick his moves. If she had to sit here and stare at the board the entire time while waiting for him to decide what he wanted to do, she would go crazy. She started filing again, fine-tuning the shape of the piece and blowing off the bits of sawdust that were covering it.

The man grunted in frustration and made his move. Tock glanced at the board and made hers without a second thought. She was planning her moves ahead in her mind, and had plans for everything the man might do. But she wasn't paying enough attention to really strategize beyond the first couple of moves. So she was losing, but only because she didn't really care. This game wasn't about winning. It was about seeing the pieces on the board, feeling them in her hands, and checking how it all worked. The balance was good; she'd been worried about whether some of the pieces would be too top-heavy. The wide bases helped with that, though she might need to put a weight on the Kings and Queens, because of how tall they were. A small hole drilled in the bottom could be filled with a slug of iron to add some weight, if it came to that. So far, the main issue was the pieces falling over from a strong gust of wind. The extra weight would help keep them standing upright.

"Check," the man said, moving his incomplete Bishop into a threatening position. She held the Bishop in her hand up into the light, checking the lines and angles. She was happy with it. She looked at the Bishop the man had just moved. It was one of the incomplete ones. She wanted to work on it, but the first time she'd tried to start carving a piece that was still on the board, he'd threatened to leave the game.

She moved her Queen to capture her opponent's Bishop. The man laughed... from any strategic viewpoint, it was a foolish move. Her Queen was now exposed, and the man quickly moved to capture it. "That'll cost you, little lady," he gloated. She shrugged... capturing his Bishop meant she could get to work on it, and that was more important to her than winning the game. With her Queen now captured, she glanced at the board and moved her Knight to a random position in the general vicinity of her opponent's King. That would keep him occupied for awhile, wondering what her ploy might be. Of course, her real ploy was buying herself more time to start scraping off the excess wood of the Bishop in her hand, ignoring her opponent's mumbling about the flakes of wood that were landing on the board.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Minerva was wandering the city streets, looking for someplace quiet to work. Once again, she could have stayed home and worked there, but sometimes she needed the fresh air and sunshine. She wanted someplace where she wouldn't be bothered though. She'd tried sitting on a bench off one of the city streets, but kept getting interrupted by little children coming up to ask her what she was making. Little kids annoyed her. She hated constantly being asked why, why, why? Sure, she herself often asked those questions, but that didn't mean she wanted to answer them.

She'd wandered around for a bit, her head lowered, her attention focused on her work. She was sanding one of the Rooks, putting some finishing touches on it. Every once in awhile she bumped into someone, and shouted at them as if it were their fault (since in her mind, it was!). She was tired of so many people, and glanced up every now and then looking for someplace she could get some privacy.

Her eyes fell on a tree, and she grinned. Tucking the chess piece into her bag, she strolled forward and examined the tree with a critical eye. "Easy 'nough," she declared, grabbing hold of a low hanging branch and pulling herself up. "Oof!" she grunted, slipping a bit as she tried to get her footing. She wasn't usually much of an outdoorsy, physical exercise sort. She wasn't weak by any means; working with hammers and saws all the time kept her muscles in good shape. But that was hardly the same thing as running, climbing, or any other athletic sorts of activities.

A few scrapes and snagged clothes later, she settled herself into a nice perch among the branches. She let her legs dangle down on either side of a thick branch she was straddling, adjusting her seat a bit here and there until she was comfortable. Then, nice and isolated from the people down below, she pulled out her files again and got to work finishing up the smoothing process.

Awhile later when the sun started to set, she frowned and realized she'd forgotten to bring a lamp of any sort. Grumbling, she tucked her pieces and tools away, and looked down. She swallowed a lump in her throat as she realized she'd climbed up a bit higher than she realized. "Great..." she muttered, shifting around carefully to try to lower herself down. She adjusted her leather gloves, then started to climb, squealing when her boots slid and she lost her footing. Tools fell down to the ground below, planting themselves in the loose dirt around the base of the tree, as Minerva dangled by her hands from a branch. She wasn't QUITE so high up that she might seriously hurt herself, but even a sprained ankle would seriously hamper her productivity around the workroom.

"Heeeelp!" she called out, kicking her legs and trying to hook her ankle around a branch. "Stupid tree, worthless piece of tinder, I'm gonna cut ya down, see 'ow ya like that, then, huh? Oy!" She swung her legs up, and managed to catch her toe on a foothold. "Ha!" she said triumphantly. A little wiggling and shifting later, she managed to pull herself over and get herself secure and stable again. She slid down the rest of the way, landing a bit hard and falling on her rump. She brushed her hair out of her face and glared up at the tree, grabbing one of the chisels that had landed in the dirt beside her. "Oy, now ya done it!" she declared, standing up and advancing menacingly on the tree, ready to chisel it to pieces.

"What's going on here?" a voice called out behind her. Minerva looked around, and saw the same guard from the statue the other day. She looked down at the chisel in her hand, then at the tree, then back at the guard again. She didn't know if it was illegal to hack up a tree in Zeltiva, but she decided that she'd lost enough productivity already. Best not to risk getting herself thrown in jail. She'd never get ANY work done that way!

"Oy, nothin' mate, just fine I am," she told the guard, gathering up the rest of her discarded tools. She stalked past him, heading home to put the finishing touches on the last of her chess pieces.