Acquiring the Taste of Kelp Beer (Open)

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on May 1st, 2012, 1:29 am

Yells and commotion started across the tavern, with some people rising from their seats to cheer the brawl on, others ducking away and slipping out the door to avoid getting drawn into the trouble. Minerva didn't care... she'd been pinched, and called 'Red'. She hated that name. Plus she was still angry over the way Eavin had been treating her at work, and this bloke in the tavern reminded her of him. He needed a good beating.

Of course, he was also twice Minerva's size.

The man staggered back with a bloody nose, but mostly it had been a lucky shot because the man had never expected Minerva to punch him in the face. Yell at him, slap him maybe, but a punch? Ladies didn't punch. Well, Minerva was no lady.

He backhanded her across the face, and she winced in pain as she felt her cheek swell. A coppery taste in her mouth announced the presence of blood, and she stumbled a bit. She hadn't been hit like that since she left her father behind back home. Now she was really pissed.

She swung at the man again, but he easily blocked. She didn't know how to throw a punch. She tried to jab him in the gut, but he just knocked her back, and she slammed into the table. She growled, and pulled out the heavy mallet on her belt. She almost swung for the man's head, which might have done some serious damage. But whatever remaining sliver of sensibility in her head convinced her not to go for a potentially fatal blow, and she swung it at his gut. He doubled over and groaned, but managed to grab her by the shirt collar, and was about to break her face when her coworkers finally managed to pull them off each other.

"Tock, what the hell?" her friend James asked. He'd been sitting at the table with the others, drinking and singing, and hadn't noticed how the fight started. He pulled the screaming, flailing redhead back and held her still until she stopped struggling.

"Did ya see what 'e did?" she asked, though by now the tavern owner had arrived, and his shout cut everyone off.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" he shouted, banging a cudgel on the bar. "The lot of you, out! One more person throws a punch, and I'm calling for the guards!" Tock glanced at the man and growled, then turned back to the drunkard she'd been fighting with and spat a mouthful of blood onto his boots. She grabbed her pack and turned to leave, leaning heavily on James. Her face hurt, and her back was sore from where she'd been slammed into the table. Added on top of a long working day, she was not feeling good.

But she was still eager to talk shop with Kaeson.

"Oy, 'at were a tussle, aye?" she said to Kaeson with a giggle once they were outside. "Ya ready ta go?" she nodded her head in the direction of her home. She wasn't going to let a bruised cheek keep her from tinkering with her gadgets.

by **Kaeson Dakano** on May 1st, 2012, 4:30 am

Still pumping with adrenaline, Kaeson couldn't believed he had just been in a bar brawl. "It was a lucky thing the bar owner came when he did," he said with a slight smile. Having been raised by a herbalist, he never had been much of a fighter. If anything, Kaeson considered himself relatively lucky he got out with just a hit to his left eye.

Clutching his eye, which he had managed to hit himself with the plate he been swinging around earlier, Kaeson couldn't help but laugh at his foolishness. "What was I thinking?" he wondered, still giggling at the idea of what he must've looked liked. "Swinging that plate around like an idiot, it's a wonder I only hit my eye."

Laughing, Kaeson agreed with Tock saying, "Yeah, it certainly was. Y'know that's the first proper fight I've ever been in?" Seeing some seaweed collecting by the deck where Tock and him were standing, Kaeson remembered something his grandmother had said about the sea plant. "Something about reducing swelling and...maybe helping stop the blood flow from an open wound?" he said to himself. Grabbing a couple strands from the water, Kaeson couldn't help but smile. What would his grandmother say, probably something along the lines of "I told you so." She had always been trying to get Kaeson to understand the importance of herbalism, something he had constantly ignore when he was younger. "You were right, Gram. You always were. Carefully, he placed some seaweed on his eye, hoping it would help with the swelling. Kaeson sighed with relief. The coolness of the seaweed felt so good against his swollen eye.

Giving some seaweed to Tock he explained, "it's cool, so the seaweed should help with the swelling. If you chew it, the salt water left on the plant should help with the bleeding...I think." He grabbed a waterskin out of his backpack, adding "but just to be safe, wash your mouth out with this water before and after chewing the seaweed.

"Yeah, I think I am...," he said, checking his backpack to make sure his toy soldier was fine. The toy soldier seem unharmed, so turning back to Tock, Kaeson nodded and said "alright, let's go."

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on May 1st, 2012, 4:48 am

Minerva grinned, then winced and carefully touched her swollen cheek. James shook his head at her, a disappointed look in his eyes. "You've got to learn to watch your temper," he told her. She looked up at him, hurt, and shrugged.

"'E 'ad it comin'," she said. James ran a hand through his hair and sighed. Minerva stepped up to him and gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Leave 'er be, mate, aye?" she said.

James just nodded and turned to go. "Be careful going home, all right?" he told her. He nodded to Kaeson and said, "Nice meeting you..." He gave the stranger a guarded look, clearly not too happy about leaving Minerva alone with a strange man she'd just met in the bar. She shooed him off, though, and he headed off towards his own home.

Minerva frowned when Kaeson started plucking seaweed. Of course, she didn't know the first thing about herbs. She listened to the explanation, taking the strange, slimy little weed with great hesitation. She held it between two fingers, certain that she really didn't want to put it on her face, or in her mouth.

She touched her fingers to her cheek, wincing again at the pain. She sighed and asked, "Ya sure 'bout 'is, mate?" She took the waterskin and rinsed her mouth out, glad to be rid of the taste of blood. But just swishing the water around in her mouth hurt... enough that she was willing to try the seaweed remedy.

"Oy, seaweed beer... seaweed medicine," she said. "Is 'ere anythin' in this city what ain't made from 'is stuff?" She held her breath and followed Kaeson's instructions, breaking off a bit to chew, and holding the rest against her cheek.

"Awight," she mumbled around the mouthful of seaweed. "Les'go, mate!" Still a bit buzzed from the beer, and dazed by the fight, she led him through the city streets towards her home. Once they got there, she let him in and lit a lamp. It never occurred to her that she shouldn't invite a total stranger into her home. After the way he'd fumbled about in the fight, she was quite sure she could kick him out if he got fresh.

The small cottage was covered in Tock's work. Every inch of available wall space was covered in pinned up drawings and blueprints. The table was covered in wood shavings and little gears. She sat down and brushed her arm across the table, pushing everything off to the side in a haphazard pile. She pulled out some fresh paper and, still chewing on the seaweed, started a new set of sketches. "Gotta start 'er off a lil simpler, I think," she said. The ideas she'd been working on in the bar had been proving too complex. She needed to think simple. That was NOT something she was good at.

But she tried. She started sketching out a diagram of a humanoid figure, trying to figure out the best way to make it walk.

by **Kaeson Dakano** on May 1st, 2012, 4:41 pm

Closing the door on his way in to the small cottage, Kaeson's eyes widened as he realized what he was seeing.

Wall to wall, blueprints and intricate designs adorned the small cottage. The papers completely and totally covered the walls from floor to roof. Admiring a couple of the blueprints that had caught his eye, Kaeson decided he would be going to the General Store first thing in the morning. Having just arrived in Zeltiva himself, Kaeson had only enough foodstuff to last him a week and would be needing to replinish his supply, along with buying a couple other things. Admiring the designs before him, Kaeson made a mental note to buy paper and ink as well.

Hearing a slight scracthing noise, Kaeson turned around to see Tock deeply invested in what appeared to be another drawing. Curious, Kaeson walked over to the desk where Tock was working. Carefully, he moved some wooden scraps closer to the wall, making room enough for him to kneel by the desk.

Looking at Tock's design, Kaeson realized she was working on the same project they had started on in the bar. Hearing her mumbling something about walking, Kaeson suggested,"Wouldn't orbs work?" Thinking back to an animation he had seen in one of his previous apprenticeships, Kaeson added, "I think if the limbs were connected in the front, the orb should allow some flexibility, mimicking the knee rather nicely." Kaeson used his fingers two trace where he believed the orbs should be placed, saying,"So if we placed the orb as the substitute for the knee and heel, the animation should walk well enough...I think." While Kaeson wasn't entirely sure his idea would work, he felt confident enough to speak it aloud.

"Besides," he thought "I know I've seen a design like that somewhere and I can't think of a reason why it shouldn't work. "

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on May 1st, 2012, 5:34 pm

"Orbs?" Minerva asked, looking the design over. "Hmm... aye," she nodded, closing her eyes for a moment to sort through the pain and alcohol and try to find a clear image. She should probably wait until morning to do this... but nawwww.

"Gonna make 'er a lil bigger," she said, jotting down some numbers next to her drawing, indicating the scale. "I ain't got the tools what fer ta make somethin' too tiny. Makin' 'er 'at small, 'at's a lot more fine tunin', careful instruments, and all 'at what I ain't got. Kiddie sized, 'at'll work best..." The numbers she added up would make the new animation the size of a child's doll. Bigger than Kaeson's little toy soldier, but still far less than a man-sized golem. Making the parts for something this size would be much easier, since she wouldn't need to make tiny, precise things that she didn't have the equipment for.

She also didn't have the skill to make a fully functional humanoid gadget yet. So she focused just on the legs for now. She sketched out the feet to be a bit wider than a real person, to give extra stability and compensate for the amateur design. Wooden orbs (since wood was what she had the tools to work with) formed the heels, and would fit into the backs of the feet carefully, allowing limited mobility. The wooden leg would rise from the heel and end in another orb at the knee, the joints crafted the same way a doll's would be. Then the upper leg would have a connector at the bottom to snap onto the knee orb, which would create a smoothly mobile joint that would let the leg bend.

The hard part, though, was the hips. That was where the main motion would come from. She sketched out a design that would connect the leg to the hips on a simple pivot. Gears would be attached on the inside, and their motion would rotate the joints on the legs, giving them their back and forth motion. The orb-joints on the knee and heel would allow the lower leg to adjust with the motion. But the power behind the walking motion would come from the hip gears.

Then she needed a mechanism to power those gears. She cut out the winding key, since animation magic could provide the power without the need to manually wind it. Instead, in the hollow body of the doll, she sketched an escapement mechanism attached to springs and gears that would transfer the energy of motion into the legs. As the wheel of the mechanism rotated, it would create the periodical motion that would power the legs. She started a second sketch to show the rear view, so she could draw in a second mechanism, housed parallel to the first, so that one could power each leg. The tricky part would be getting them to work in unison, so that the motion of the legs would alternate. It would take a little trial and error, and a few adjustments here and there, but she was pretty sure she could pull it off.

It took her awhile to sketch out the design, adjust the measurements, and be at all sure her numbers were right. She had a line of numbers down both sides of each page, calculating the height of the legs, the weight of the moving parts, and the speed the wheel would need to turn in order to make the mechanism move the legs at the right pace. She sat back and rubbed her eyes, feeling quite tired.

"Oy, maybe we should pick back up in the mornin'?" she asked Kaeson.

OOCIf you want, you can post a time skip in your post. We can say good night, then fast forward to the next morning, in order to start on the serious work with fresh minds. And bring coffee!!!

by **Kaeson Dakano** on May 1st, 2012, 10:04 pm

OOC :

60th Day of Spring, 512 AV

Kaeson yawned, stretching his arms behind his back. Kaeson winced a little as his back popped, but let out a sigh of pleasure at the instant relief that always accompanied it. Letting out another yawn, Kaeson pushed his hair back and rubbed his eyes.

"Ouuuch!" Kaeson groaned. The pain from his left eye served as a reminder, a souvenir even, of the previous night. Gently and as softly as he could manage, Kaeson began to poke and prod the area around his left eye in an attempt to assess the damage. Frowning, he realized it was likely that he had a black eye and there was little to nothing he could do about it. "I know I heard something about an infirmary on the University grounds..." Kaeson recalled, but he knew his injuries were minor and in all likelyhood his black eye would be gone in a week. "Besides," he reminded himself, "They wouldn't be able to do anything for it, and it really isn't that serious. Just a bruise."

Grabbing an apple and his eating knife out of his backpack, Kaeson made his way to the small table for breakfast. Popping bits of apple into his mouth, Kaeson suddenly remembered he had made plans with Tock to start work on the automan today. Grabbing some chalk from the small bag he had bought earlier yesterday, Kaeson stuffed it into his backpack and started off towards Tock's house.

Having finally reached Tock's house, Kaeson knocked on Tock door and loudly announced himself, "Hey Tock, it's me Kaeson. Ready to get to work?"

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on May 1st, 2012, 11:33 pm

OOCWorks for me!

Minerva had slept off the booze, then gone down to work the next morning, slightly hung over and still sore from the fight the night before. Luckily she could do a lot of her work sitting down. Most of her carving was done from a stool by her workbench. Jacques had asked her about the bruise on her face, and looked disappointed when she had told him it was from a bar fight.

After work, she had stopped by the University to show her sketches and plans to her professors. They had offered some invaluable critiques, as well as some corrections to her math and her blueprints.

She ended up being a little late for her meeting with Kaeson, and found him at her house already by the time she got home. "Oy, 'owzer, mate?" she greeted him. "Let's get 'is show on the road, aye?" She let him in, and unloaded the armful of scrap wood she'd brought home from work. One of the advantages of working for a construction crew was that any small scraps they were going to throw out, she could scavenge for herself. They were all little end pieces cut off larger pieces, but they would do for a doll-sized automaton.

She showed him the adjusted blueprints with the suggestions from her professors. "Ya ever do any carvin'?" she asked. "If not, ya can start assemblin' the gears." She immediately set to work measuring the wood for the leg pieces. The lower legs had to be cut to length with room for the ball joints on either end. The feet and upper legs had to have connections on them to attach to the ball joints. The upper body would actually be four pieces, two for the front and back of the hips and abdomen, and two for the front and back of the upper torso. There were no plans for movable arms, so for now those would just be plain lengths of wood with purely decorative hands carved. The head, too, would just be a carved block of wood with a motionless face carved in it.

She set about making her measurements, then cut the pieces, sorting them in small piles of the table. Once the main cutting was done, she started etching the designs on the wood for the detailed shapes of the joints, connectors, and decorative touches. Those would have to be carved by hand.

by **Kaeson Dakano** on May 2nd, 2012, 1:50 am

Kaeson quickly looked over the blueprints Tock had showed him, not really understanding much of anything. Squinting his eyes, Kaeson stared at the blueprint. Praying, hoping, willing the drawing to instantly become understandable, Kaeson frowned at his continuing confusion. "Damn it," he thought angrily, "I should know this stuff!" Rather then admit defeat, or worse ask for help, Kaeson decided to go and wing it. Surging with a sudden confindence Kaeson silently chided himself,"Ask for help? No, it can't be THAT hard. I can put a couple of gears together, easy."

Constantly referring back to Tock's design plans, Kaeson began to fiddle with the various gears Tock had laid before him. Small gears, large gears, long silver gears, and stunted black ones Kaeson looked around desperatly for some kind of starting piece. After what seemed like an eternity, Kaeson's eyes began to widened as an idea formed in his head. "It's like...like a puzzle," he whispered to himself. Feeling as if his mind had FINALLY decided to start working, Kaeson quickly began to start assembling the gears before him and soon he began to see some similarities between what he was building and the blueprints Tock had drawn.

Continuing to build, whatever he was building, Kaeson couldn't help but smile. Never, in any of his apprentiships had he learned to actually build a shell for an animation. The odd apprentiship he had apprenticed for a blacksmith had him working more as a live in maid, cleaning most of the time and watching the blacksmith melt and manipulate the red hot metals and Kaeson certainly never built anything alongside his animation masters. He snorted as he remembered that they had much preferred to order their shells pre-made, insisting that such work was beneath them. Vaguely remembering one of his masters scoffing at the very idea of building the shell, smugly saying, "We create life. They build."

Well, Kaeson decided he could create and build. He liked it better this way, helping build the shell made him feel more like a creator. Fumbling with the gears, twisting them every which way and that, Kaeson wiped his brow as he struggeled on. Finally happy that the mechanism looked enough like the one Tock had drawn, Kaeson turned around to show her. Noticing some gears beside him, Kaeson dismissed them as spares.

Kaeson felt confident with what he had done.

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on May 2nd, 2012, 3:11 am

Minerva saw Kaeson struggling a bit with her blueprints. She was tempted to say something... since it definitely wasn't his fault if he couldn't understand them. She had never designed something like this before, and had doubts about whether it would work. It had taken advice from her professors to have it have a chance of working. Though she wasn't sure if the part he was having trouble with was because her designs were flawed, or because the advice from her professors was above his head. She had needed them to walk her through the advice they gave step by step to make sure she could handle it.

Well, either way, failure was just a chance to try again! She was confident they could get the automaton walking, even if it took a few tries to get it right.

While Kaeson was assembling the gears, she focused on the carvings. With the wood cut, she needed to chisel away the excess material, then smooth it down carefully. The main lengths of the legs she left as straight blocks; they didn't need to make them look realistic just now. Getting the joints working was the important part. So she carefully chiseled out the shapes, working slowly so she wouldn't damage the joints. Once she had cut away the majority of the excess wood, the joints were mostly round, and the connectors shaped to fit around them. Then she brought out the finer tools and worked on smoothing the edges, working with care and regularly checking the measurements to make sure she didn't shave off too much.

Every now and then she checked the ball joints against the connectors, to make sure the size was right. After awhile of filing and sanding, she had the two ball joints rounded off into nice little spheres, and the connectors smoothed out to fit (hopefully) without jamming.

The body didn't need as much work. The pieces just had to be cut and smoothed until they fit together, with enough space left in the torso to make sure the gears would have plenty of room to move. Once those pieces were cut, smoothed, and ready, the assembly could begin.

The top of each leg joint fit into the body, connecting to a gear on the inside. She had to pull them back out after the first fitting, to chisel away some more wood to make sure there was room for the gears to turn smoothly. Once the second round of chiseling and smoothing was done, she tried again, and fit the pieces together cleanly. The upper legs were then snapped onto the ball joints of the lower leg, and the feet snapped onto the bottom.

Then, with Kaeson's help, the gear assembly was inserted. This took more careful adjustments, making sure everything lined up properly, and when it didn't, there were more adjustments still. The final assembly didn't quite match up with the original plans, after they had adjusted the alignment of the gears by hand to compensate for mistakes in the blueprints. Eventually, though, they got everything moving. Tock then attached the upper half of the body to cover the gearage, and attached the crude head and arms. If they managed to get the whole thing actually working, then maybe she'd carve a detailed face on it. Better to take care of the important parts, however, before they worried about the purely aesthetic details.

"Oy, awright," she told Kaeson. "Mobility looks awright. She's standin' straight..." Well, more or less straight. The doll was tilting to the side a little, but she figured that once they animated it, it would be able to hold itself upright. "See 'ow much better 'ese legs move?" she asked, giving them a couple of twists to take them through the walking motions. "An' since the power is in the torso, it'll distribute the energy of motion all throughout. Should make 'er more balanced. 'Least, 'at's the 'eory, anyway. Should make 'er walk more fluidly, an' 'en she can walk 'cross rough surfaces without fallin' over. 'Opefully..."

She went over everything one last time, making some little tweaks and adjustments. Then she said, "Ya ready ta fire up the magic?" Of course, this was the part she wasn't so confident in... actually sculpting the soul to make the little bugger move...

by **Kaeson Dakano** on May 2nd, 2012, 7:21 pm

"Yeah," he said, looking at the doll. Kaeson was glad to see the doll completed, happy to have contributed something. Now, Kaeson was ready to give the doll another gift. He was ready to give her a soul.

Grinning, Kaeson turned to Tock and said, "She'll be alive soon, y'know? Or at least as close to being alive as I can get her."

Clearing a space on the floor, Kaeson began to trace a set of circles with some chalk he had grabbed from his backpack. The larger one, had been drawn specifically to accomdate himself in a seated position while the second circle, being much smaller than his own, had been drawn to accomdate the doll comfortably. Finally Kaeson linked the circles together. Smiling, Kaeson couldn't help but admire his work. Sure, the circles didn't line up exactly and the circle he would be sitting in was probably better described as an oval, he didn't care. The circles weren't going to give the doll life, he was.

Quickly going through his backpack, Kaeson grabbed his eating knife. As he walked over to the animation circles, he mentally made a note to buy a tack or a needle. Kaeson couldn't keep slicing his hand open every time he wanted to animate something. Shaking his head, he realized it probably wasn't that hygienic either, using the same knife he ate with.

Sitting down within the larger circle, Kaeson focused on the task before him. Having created multiple soul cores before, Kaeson had always found it best to focus on the object he was animating. Closing his eyes, Kaeson thought about what makes a doll a doll and how the creation of its soul core would change its behavior. After several minutes had passed, Kaeson decided he was ready.

Using his eating knife, Kaeson made a small incision on the tip of his index finger. Wincing at the pain, Kaeson squeezed his finger, forcing the blood to drop a little more quickly then it would have naturally. He watched as the chalk blushed an opaque pink as the blood dropped to floor, slowly deepening in color till it matched the deep scarlet of his blood. Kaeson knew the color change well, and understanding it as the signal to continue, he began to craft the soul core.

Closing his eyes, Kaeson began to mumbled a mantra taught to him by his first master. "Viicthe poure mim. Kaeson repeating the mantra at a growing speed, while never saying it louder than a whisper. Focusing only on the doll and his own soul, Kaeson began imanging the two mixing together, unifying. Feeling like he had suddenly been submerged into a warm pool of water, Kaeson opened his eyes.

Remembering Tock, Kaeson turned to face her saying,"Done. Now all we have to do is give her some directives, and then establish a persona. Then she'll be walking."