Completed Restocking

[Kuvarakh]

75th of Summer, 513

"Here is the list of embellished items depleted, I will go and pick up the items that require no activations." Wanda gave him that 'sucks to be you' grin and waved with mock sympathy as she headed toward the door to begin a day of recouping stock. Kuvarakh didn't really begrudge her the leisurely jaunt. There was no attempt by either of them to deny that fact that, since her trek would take her through a number of booths and kiosks in 'The Bizarre', Alvadas' fringe market, she would add an element of shopping to her efforts.

But she deserved it. No one knew this better than he. And he truly wished her well. She had hired him on at Alchemia Alchae, and he and she made a classic team. He providing the innovation and creativity, she providing the experience and stability. He knew there were times she wished she didn't have to be the 'stick-in-the-mud' all the time. He kidded her that being such a one was a "dirty" job, but someone had to do it.

Now she was going to indulge her shopping bone and leave him stuck in the mud. 'Justice served...' he thought with a grin. He cared a great deal about Wanda, and their flirtatious relationship wanted more, but he was a walking corpse with grave-breath. His strict regimen of cleanliness notwithstanding, there was ultimately no way that intimacy would ever occur.

He sighed and let his thoughts shift to the list. Most of these things would be pretty basic items to generate. Quite a few would need some of the things Wanda would be bringing back. 'Along with a few new blouses, hair accessories, pet supplies, housewares and most likely some new shoes.' Kuvarakh smiled at the numerous similarities Wanda shared with his long-dead wife. The burst bubble of the illusion at the end of the last season had nearly broken his heart. Yet Wanda had shared it with him, and the thought now lingered with her as well. He hadn't heard her actually declare the belief that she WAS the reborn spirit of his old wife from Zeltiva, before he became a Nuit, but it was not something she laughed down as preposterous.

Again, he shook off that line of thinking. He needed to actually get started on generating these items. He decided to start with the flexible glass.

[Kuvarakh]

When he was in Ravok...'gods, it must have been eighty years ago now'...his master had made flexible glass. At the time, Kuvarakh had thought it was an incredible feat. But his expertise had grown to the point that an activation involving only a single filter and two chargers, was downright mundane. And, in truth, the second charger, a single piece of glass, was only to fortify the smooth pane quality, and he could most likely do without it, since the receiver itself was also a pane of glass. It was only to back-up that quality. The other two items were small squares of leather. One to imbue the flexibility quality, the other to remove the texture and opaque nature of the leather, allowing the glass to prevail

Back in Ravok, it had been made to allow a break-in. A single pane of glass in the door of a magecrafter's shop had been conveniently broken. It was to be replaced by the flexible pane so that it could be pushed in easily, without breaking. That little incursion had ultimately gone horribly, but adventurously, wrong. But the stolen property, belonging to Kuvarakh's then-master, hidden in that shop, had been spared the destruction and recovered, so HE considered the operation a success. Fortunately, the year that Kuvarakh spent turned to stone, passed in a flash, for him.

Now though, the activation was a quick deal, and done. Kuvarakh marked off the item from the list. It was going straight to the stockroom. There was no current account requiring the use of it. Some artists and architects employed it in their constructs, enjoying the "living" look of glass that could pulse and sway slightly. Figures in stained glass windows appeared to breathe or wave. Things like that.

'On to the next thing,' he said to himself, 'glowing resource.' He chuckled at the use of the word "resource". He knew that all Wanda meant was to use anything there was a surplus of and get it to glow. It didn't matter if it was glass, wood, leather, metal or what-have-you. Just as long as there were equal samples of the same stuff to use as filters. If you used a piece of glowing wood as a charger to make, say, metal glow, then you needed NON-glowing wood as a filter, or you might turn all that metal into wood. Not the desired result.

There was the option of using the remaining "Ionu's Stars" that had been floating around Alvadas a couple of seasons ago. They glowed nicely, if not brightly, and could be used easily for this, but their other qualities were far too unique to allow them to be used for an activation that could be accomplished easily enough with a candle.

In the charger was the lit candle, in one filter, one UN-lit candle, to eliminate all but the light and heat. And in the other three filter founts, pieces of heated metal. With enough combined heat, it would equalize the heat of the flame. So only the glowing brightness should remain to be imbued into the receiver material. The last time, he had used cloth, but that had yielded less-than-optimum results. In fact, the stuff had began smoking and gone up in flames. But he had only used two filters for the heat and he'd thought that the mere defined "concept" of heat would be enough. But it appeared that gradients of heat had to be accounted for.

Well, this time he would employ three flats of metal, each heated red-hot. Given that they would be cooling during the activation, they would probably still not retain enough heat to filter ALL the heat out. it would probably require a second activation to finish. "Well," he clapped his hands, "the sooner we start..."

[Kuvarakh]

The surface of the water in the whirlpool, which was his meditative representation of the accelerated djed stream, gave off consistent levels of steam as it spun. Visually, there was a spinning tower of it, rising in a column from the funnel, and dispersing in the air. Beneath it, the water was bright, as if lit from below, the color strangely purple.

Kuvarakh maintained the acceleration until no more steam rose and the water looked relatively normal. There was still a small bit of steam rotating with the movement of the water, but it no longer rose to disperse in the metaphoric sky above. He took this to mean that he was not going to get any more heat filtered from the receiver.

For that, he had chosen a fairly large stack of the odd "chewed stone tubes" that the captured mutant termites had created. These were the survivors he had found stuck to magnets in the storeroom. Their metal bodies had left them helplessly stuck when all the others had been thrown into a random body of water Ionu had conveniently placed outside the shop, the day the bugs had devoured a critical portion of his last body.

He had held no true grudge. He suspected that the entire fiasco had been his own fault, regardless of how unintentional it had been. As if in reward, the bugs still performed the typical termite function of chewing and discharging "tubes" of matter they devoured in the construction of their "mound" structures for their nests. Even though these bugs were kept in jars, they still instinctively chewed and "tubed" the stone he fed them. He had piles of these little stone tubes, stacked like mini-firewood. And he still had his beautiful carving of the black feather, complete with the touch-responsive rainbow swirling effect. He had certainly paid a stiff price in suffering for it, but it was something he was truly proud of.

Actually, he had made two, but one of them had turned out to contain the nest. At any rate, having completed the activation, he carefully tapped the tubes one at a time. he didn't know how hot they might still be and didn't want to just grab them. Burns were the worst for a Nuit to keep clean, and Kuvarakh was meticulous about hygiene. It was fundamental for Nuits.

The tubes glowed a bright flaming and flickering red with yellow highlights. He scowled slightly, not having considered that the glow would encompass the flickering quality of a candle's flame. Actually though, he liked it. And the tubes ended up with a perfect "hand-warmer" level of heat. If he needed to steady the flickering effect later, he would deal with it then, as well as make any necessary color changes to the glow.

For now, he had gained two different positive ends, glow and warmth. He considered this task now done, and placed the stack of tubes in the storeroom, away from anything that needed to be kept cool. The next several items were mundane, aroma based cloth concerns, for people wanting lilac-scented tablecloths and the like. This would be quick.

[Kuvarakh]

Quick or not, it was quite a number of activations before Kuvarakh finished and he needed a break. It was basically quitting time now anyway. It wasn't as though he was doing nonstop transmutations. Wanda was still taking orders and seeing to those matters. It was just good sense to be sure one of the two of them was unoccupied to keep an eye on the shop.

Of course they had a lock box for miza exchanges, but any thief could come in and place a bogus order, watch where he or Wanda put the money and then wait until they were both caught up in the meditative distraction of transmutations and either pick the lock, or grab the box and run.

They had discussed various traps and glyphed surprises to punish an unauthorized touch, or just making all but the lid weigh like lead or be glued to the floor. But there were also safety issues to urge them to alternate their activations. What if the place caught fire? What if they were both caught up in transmutations at the time? Or what if one of them needed to move the box? No, rather than bother with setting up some elaborate safeguards over what was rarely more than a few hundred mizas anyway, they would simply take turns keeping watch on the place.

The next day was scheduled for "refreshening". Wanda liked to kid him that it meant he needed to go take another bath, but what it truly referred to was protection against loss of imbued qualities due to half-life lapse. More than once, Kuvarakh had gone to the stockroom confident in the knowledge that a specially embellished item was there for use in an upcoming transmutation, only to find that sometime during the last few seasons, the stock had sat past its half life and lost its quality.

The last time, a woman had wanted her drapes to have the warmth and light of a sunny day, and the sound of birds singing, radiating from them. They had, in fact, been in big demand a year ago when Ionu had, in a fit of mischief, decided to bless Alvadas with all the warmth of an Avanthal winter. As long as folks kept their windows closed, the sunny drapes and inherent summer effects were a real boon to those that didn't feel like a second bout of winter-wonderland only two seasons apart. The Spring in between had not exactly been Eyktolian in its heat.

So "refreshing" was all about cross referencing dates of old activations on stored items, seeing what was running into its last season of effect and "resetting" the half life. This was done by simply placing the item in a charger fount and transferring the desired property to a new receiver. Often, it didn't even matter what the receiver was. If a piece of wood was stored because it glowed, it didn't matter if the "glow" was transferred into an old boot.

First on the list was a sample of cloth that had been rendered into possessing the armor quality of chain mail. But it could not be counted on for more than another forty or fifty days. In this case, the quality clearly needed to be retained in cloth. It had not been that difficult a quality to obtain from scratch, but it was far simpler to take this sample and use it as the charger in an activation with a pile of a few dozen similar samples of untreated cloth as the receiver.

The quality would be taken into the new cloth and the half life term would be reset. You could not do this too many times before the imbued quality would begin to weaken. If a sample possessed more than one quality, you might have one single quality fade more quickly than the rest, or they might all fade at the same rate. The chain mail/cloth, for instance. It also was made to be lightweight as normal cloth. It could be that it would become noticeably heavier, or noticeably less protective, but it might also lose both qualities at a less noticeable rate.

There were only a few items in the storeroom that needed to be refreshed this way, so Kuvarakh still had some time left when he was done with that.

[Kuvarakh]

A woman came in and waited at the counter. Kuvarakh came up with a smile. "Yes Ma'am, what can I do for you?"

"Well, I have a booth at The Bizarre where I sell lamps and oil. I've had a problem with my oil supplier. I have not been able to get any stock. I have a surplus of lamps, many of them quite lovely." she said encouragingly, lifting a couple of samples onto the counter.

Kuvarakh had to admit, they were of exquisite design, fluid and graceful, elegant fluting with efficient flaring bulbs, sure to magnify the light of the flame profoundly. He particularly liked the twin finger holds. So many oil lamps had only a single ring, accommodating only a single finger. He had never felt this system was steady enough.

He nodded with appreciation, but looked questioningly at her. "And just what is it that you would like Alchemmia Alchae to do? We really don't sell off-the-shelf types of stock. We only need small supplies of such items as lamp oil, and I'm afraid we wouldn't wish to sell it."

"No, I understand that. To be honest, not being able to get the oil I need, got me to thinking. I looked around, asked some people, and realized I may not need the oil at all! What I wanted to know was if you could treat these wicks so they'd glow like they were lit, without actually having to be.

Kuvarakh held up one of the lamps, noticing how long the wick actually was, how it extended well into the oil reservoir. "Well that would probably work, with some adjustment. But consider, the flame only encompasses the last bit of the wick and then the flame itself extends well beyond the actual wick, into the bulb of the glass. You adjust the light by raising the wick to align the flame itself with the bulb, not the wick. If the wick glows it will glow all the way down here into the reservoir. In fact, I rather think it will be brighter there than up here where it should be."

The woman studied the lamp, seeing the point the Nuit shopkeeper was making. "Hmmm...yes, I see what you mean..." She pursed her lips in concentration. "Well, a person could simply cut the wick off below the...mechanism that raises it, to remove it from the reservoir. Then the bell would still be the most prominent source of light."

Kuvarakh, already getting creative ideas, gave her a level look. "Yes. But what if you removed the wick as well. What if the glass bell itself simply glowed? What could be simpler than that? It would be 'alight' all the time, but since it's neither generating heat nor consuming a wick, that shouldn't make any difference."

The woman's eyebrows rose in realization. "Oooh, that would be even better!" she held up a finger, "And could you add fragrances...and colors? That would be perfect!"

Kuvarakh knew he needed to rein in the enthusiasm now, but not too much. He raised his hands up in the fashion of showing someone you are unarmed. "Okay, okay, let me give you the BAD news now before we go too far. I don't want to throw any unpleasant billing surprises at you after we've come to an agreement. This can all be done, but it will require more than one activation, AND each activation will require the use of more than one fount. And we charge for each fount required beyond the first"

"First thing is to consider is that each fragrance and color applied will require a separate activation. I CAN combine color and fragrance IN each activation, but every separate combination is a different job. By this, I mean if you want red tint with rose fragrance, that's ONE job, blue tint with lilac is another. But also red with lilac would be a third, even though I used them both in other activations. Do you see what I mean?"

"Oh yes, and that's fine. I would want the fragrances color-coordinated anyway. Can you do violet? The color I mean?"

Kuvarakh thought about what he'd restocked the last couple of days. He had blue and red that could be gleaned from colored stones in stock. Transferring them to glass would be part of the initial activations. But if he wanted violet, that would take a separate activation of its own. It was best to have the colors already on glass if he could. The fewer changes you made to the nature of the receiver, the better it worked and the longer it lasted. He made a spot decision. He would charge her for the inclusion of the color in founts during the initial step. But he would do the creation of violet glass for free.

He smiled at her. "Of course we do. It's Wanda's favorite color."

[Kuvarakh]

"Okay, let me get an idea of the cost..." Kuvarakh got out quill and parchment and began making notations as he muttered along with them. "One activation to make the red colored glass, requiring one charger and one filter...another just like it for the blue...one more with a second charger but no filter for the violet..." While he knew it was true that they didn't need to do the activations for the red and blue glass, it was not unfair to figure cost on the basis of having none of the materials already in stock.

"Then, let's see...the second phase activations...one to make the red lamp bells with...which scent? Rose?" he looked up questioningly.

"Well, actually, I was thinking for the red, I would use cinnamon." the woman stated. "The violet ones will be the lilac-scented, and the blue...hmmm...I'll decide that when I come back with the bells. Wait a minute, let's do green instead and make it mint!"

Kuvarakh liked both the idea, and the woman's decisiveness. But when he informed her that it would be an additional activation to make the green, she decided to forget the green. She would decide whether she wanted the blue to be opal berry or gorst scented. "I'll see which of the two I can get hold of by the time I get all the bells together to bring in. If nothing else, I could make it Vanilla." she laughed.

Getting back to cost estimates, Kuvarakh continued, "Okay, so one activation to make the red bells. This will require...let's see...four founts. Then two more activations just like it." he looked up at the woman. "To be honest, it would be best if you can find a perfume you like for that last scent. if I try to use an actual plant sample, it may be difficult to, uh, 'weed out' the plant aspect and may require an additional 'purifying' activation. Something specifically made to give off a scent makes it so much easier. I'm just trying to save you some mizas."

"Well, maybe I should just forgo the scent altogether. I mean, I'm going to end up with a bunch of wicks with no oil. Maybe people could just put a few drops of whatever scent they like on the wick and let it sit inside the bell."

Kuvarakh was nodding before she finished. "That's a very good idea. That'll save you the cost of one fount in each of three activations! And the bells themselves will be warm, that ought to help a little to spread the scent inside a home."

They found themselves smiling at each other with satisfaction. Then the woman got a serious look, "so...what are we looking at, for me to restock my shelves?"

[Kuvarakh]

Kuvarakh and Wanda had previously established that six activations was a reasonable day's work. So for Kuvarakh, who made 24 mizas a day, it meant that each activation was worth 4 mizas, as a base figure. This could, of course, be altered for something particularly strenuous, and with him not needing sleep, he could do more activations than that in 24 bells. But it was reasonable to figure on the basis of what a regular human could expect.

Since it was going to take him six activations, in theory, her base figure was 24 gold mizas. Additionally, since it was logical to accept that there MUST be at least one fount used in any activation, the first fount was free in each one. But all others were a multiple to the base figure. There initially were three activations to generate the needed materials, each using two founts. Only one fount from each would be considered as a "cost fount", so that made three to start.

Then in the final phase, there would be three more activations, each with three founts, meaning six more "cost founts". So all together, there was a base figure of 24 gold mizas, multiplied by the 9 cost founts, resulting in a total sum of 216 gold mizas. He then doubled it, as per standard business practice, and decided to round it down to an even 400. After all, he only had to actually DO ONE of the first three activations.

Kuvarakh laughed apologetically when he informed the shocked woman that this was not the "per item" cost. She heaved a sigh of relief when he clarified that this was the cost to make three "batches" of bells, in the three colors of choice, the quantity being limited only by the number that could be placed inside the ring without crowding. With the size of Wanda's new ring, he figured that 100 could be fit inside easily enough.

"THREE HUNDRED? for only 400 mizas?" the woman beamed. "For magically lit and colored lamps, that don't get hot or run out of oil? Why I could sell them for only 5 each and make a grand profit! I'll price them at 6 and then have a sale! Thank you very much, sir. I will be back tomorrow with the bells, Ionu willing."

"If not, then the next day or the next. It's all good." Kuvarakh chuckled, infected by the woman's enthusiasm. Another contract concluded. Another satisfied customer. 'Return customer,' he predicted, silently correcting himself. These activations would be quick and easy, since he was able to imbue the color from a charger made of the same substance as the final product, it would be smooth and long-lasting.

It was great when things turned out well.

[Elysium]

Kuvarakh

Experience
Alchemy +2
Negotiation +3
Rhetoric +1

Lore
Recipe: Flexible Glass
Recipe: Eternal Glass Bulbs
Negotiation: Making a Sale
Negotiation: Making a Repeat Customer

Notes
Very nicely done. I must admit, I enjoyed the socratic brainstorming between Kuvarakh and his customer. If you have any questions, be sure to let me know!