Water, wood, and fish! -- what more could you ask for? [backdated to 11/22]

[so_dark_a_road]

[ Curufin stands on the frozen surface of the lake in front of a small wooden shed the size of your average ice-fishing shack. The door is open, and through it you can see a three-foot-wide hole in the ice with water and slush oozing out. It is easily large enough to dip a bucket in, maybe a washtub, too. There is a shelf built into the back wall which holds pails, plastic bottles, and other useful containers that he and helpers found in the shops. ]

I've got a couple of announcements. The Fire Brigade and the Elfhouse have collaborated along with some of our other friends on three projects to provide some useful supplies:

1) I've chopped a hole in the ice here, near the north bank of the lake. There's WATER available for anybody who wants to come down here and get it. If you come down through the city center past the Sewing Shop and head straight for the lakeshore, you can't miss the kiosk. You'll see it sitting on the ice, not too far from shore. We're going to come down every day and make sure the hole doesn't freeze over, so water will always be available. If you're having a hard time with the weather or are not physically able to tote heavy buckets or containers, let one of us know, and we'll fetch the water to you wherever you live.

2) WOOD for fuel purposes. Heat your house or cook with it. My brother Maglor and I and the Firefighters ripped up the planking of the piers before the gods moved us here. We dried it out and stacked it in several places for distribution: the currently empty units in Delight's Housing; the Firehouse; and in my forge shack. Let us know if you want some of this lumber for fuel or building, and somebody will meet you and help you carry it home. We also burned some of it to make charcoal, which is easy to use for cooking purposes, and that we put into sacks to hand out. My boat is drawn up on the shore of what was South Island a few days ago, and I'll offer it as fuel, as a last resort. Otherwise, I'm saving it for building purposes.

3) FISH for tasty, nourishing food! The Elves and Sansa Stark worked hard for a week preparing my last few boatloads of fish from before the move. Two fish products are therefore available. We salted and dried some of it, which you can pop in a pot of boiling water and make soup of. The rest we smoked, so it's cooked and you can therefore eat it as is. Come and get it at Delight's Housing #06. We'd also be happy to offer some of this cache to anybody who wants to help distribute it -- the Bakery? The Speakeasy? Anybody who'd be interested.

[OOC: And anybody who wants to say their character helped with any of these projects can let me know at tangyminx and I'll edit your character into this post. Also, any character in the aforementioned list of collaborators can respond to those who comment here, if they feel like it.]

Comments

audio

[completelycrazy]

Uh, I'd just appreciate if someone would take some damned responsibility instead of expecting an ass-kissing.

[hot_mes]

[well hi Newt, what an auspicious meeting.

also switching to voice to be snarky in public]

And how would you like them to do so? Say meaningless words, make a blood sacrifice, wave a magic wand over the forest? Offering a resource that we desperately need right now in order to not die of hypothermia isn't good enough?

[completelycrazy]

[Yeah, Newt has this weird habit of meeting people by way of argument... A true mystery.

He scoffs.]

A resource we desperately need? Sure, burning lumber is definitely the only way to generate heat. But, hey, not once have I seen any of you idiots actually own up to stealing all the resources for your pet project in the first place. Did you cut down the orchard, then?

[hot_mes]

Me personally? No. I left the actual building to the shipwrights. I don't know who laid axe to which trees. If you must blame me for anything, blame me for not supervising until after three boats and a pier sprang up. Fine, you got me there, I was so intent on gathering supplies that I didn't pay attention until it was too late.

[completelycrazy]

Oh my god, see? This is what I'm talking about! This right here! You decided to build not one, but three massive ships and didn't stop for a second to consider, hmm, maybe this rinky-dink archipelago doesn't have the resources to accommodate that plan!

[hot_mes]

Maybe so. What do you want me to do about it four months later in another world?

[completelycrazy]

Are you even listening to me? Take responsibility for it instead of throwing your hands up and claiming you're blameless because you didn't personally punt the Lorax into the ocean.

[hot_mes]

I am listening. What do you mean, 'take responsibility?'

If you're looking for regret or remorse, I have none. Apologizing won't bring the trees back, and I wouldn't mean the words anyway. I will do whatever it takes to get us home, and if that makes me the local pariah, so be it. I don't have feelings you can hurt by being angry at me anyway.

[completelycrazy]

Jeez, dude, at this point? I'd settle for admitting it was your fault. Because, you know, it was! It doesn't matter who actually touched the trees. You had to have known you'd need a majority of the city's trees to build three damned boats. Offering up your defunct ships for kindling isn't some generous good deed. It's recompense, at best.

[hot_mes]

[a soft laugh. He might be enjoying this exchange more than he should]

I only signed off on one. I only take responsibility for one. I don't care which wood ended up where or who did it, because in the end it doesn't matter. The journey was worth it, my crew's lives saved in the storm were worth it, beating the Null to the fragments was worth it. The Door works. We can end this torturous bullshit and get out of here, and if the sacrifice is a little fruit? So be it. It's not like anyone is going to die without those trees.

Be upset if you like, you clearly enjoy it. I find that reacting on emotion rather than logic is exhausting and pointless.

[completelycrazy]

[Newt grumbles.]

Okay, you just built the one. The biggest one by a large margin, but fine, I'll give you that. It was one.

[It's not often that Newt is willing to concede a point, but Law's made a good argument.]

But eeeveryone else who went out on the other boats came back just fine. The god-provided boats held up and cost us a whopping zero resources. Meanwhile, you chose to sacrifice a renewable food source which wasn't yours to sacrifice. Yeah, yeah, I know, you didn't touch the orchard, you're innocent, blah blah. The ends doesn't justify the means just because it looks like we've made some progress.

[hot_mes]

And that's where our views differ. [he's quite impressed, finally some logic] I believe the ends do justify the means. We couldn't know at the time how it would turn out, I did what I knew would work. Others just crossed their fingers and hoped. Hindsight is, as they say, twenty-twenty.

What happened was unfortunate but it's over. Long over. Brush yourself off and get over it. I'm only interested in getting out of here and if you are, too, then work on it.

[completelycrazy]

[Welp, whatever respect Newt was starting to drum up for Law is immediately demolished by those orders at the end. His anger flairs right back up again.]

Where do you get off telling me what to do? You don't get to decide when it's time to get over it. The orchard sure isn't over it! Check back in once it's grown and then maybe we can talk about getting over it.

[And now Newt is married to never getting over it... Sorry, Law. At least this is just getting added onto the long list of things Newt will never get over.]

[hot_mes]

[he doesn't mind. It's a fun game to play. Poor Newt, though.]

Check back with me in a couple months of this freezing weather and tell me whether the trees have survived.

[completelycrazy]

[Jeez, could this guy be any smarmier?]

Go check yourself. There's been, I don't know, druids or frickin' fairies or whatever speeding up the growth process. They probably have some way to protect the trees from the cold, and even if they don't, temps aren't in the danger zone yet.

[Admittedly, while he's a biologist, botany is about as far from his specialties as you can get, but he knows enough. He knows enough to make it sound like he knows enough, at least.]

If they do die, that's just one more reason why your little boat trip wasn't worth it.

[hot_mes]

[yeah medical science isn't botany either, they're in the same boat there. Making assumptions]

Oh, right. Relying on magic. [his voice practically drips air quotes] Sure, whatever. I still haven't been convinced to give a shit, so if you want to waste energy on being mad, that's on you.

[completelycrazy]

Yeah, magic. You know, the shit that can start fires and generate electricity and conjure boats without depleting an entire natural resource. Lucky for you, it's what's gonna dig us out of the hole you and your idiot friends put us in.

[Newt is not an expert on magic either, but two of those things he's seen happen and the other is something Kyna claims is possible, so... It's enough to found an argument on, probably.]

You should be glad we have some way to salvage the orchard. Do you know how long it takes to grow a tree?

[so_dark_a_road]

In addition to having no sense of geography, you have no sense of proportion. The ships were not massive, as anybody who actually took a look at them could see. My boat and Floki's were narrow Viking-style, shallow-draft open boats. Mine was twenty feet long and his was even less. Law's was a miniature of the original brig-sloop design -- twenty-five feet in length, with a forecastle and an aft cabin, each about the size of a coffin! It did not take massive resources to build any of these watercraft.

[completelycrazy]

Oh my god, I wasn't even talking to you. Stay in your lane.

[...But, well, since they're already here and shockingly Newt's found something to argue in this little clapback, too.]

Uh, if Law's ship was 25 anything, it had to be 25 meters. In other words, roughly 82 feet, you loon. And for the record, that's still three unnecessary ships, plus a pier. The gods provided us with plenty to get the job done.

[so_dark_a_road]

[ Grin. ] Oh, right, excuse my ass for mixing up your metric and your English measurement system. I myself base everything on the Elvish system and convert to one or the other of your systems when describing. Yes, Law's boat was roughly 82 feet in length. But mine and Floki's were still 20 feet and something less than 20 feet, and even Law's was not massive by shipwrights' standards. Haha, don't tell him this, but we cut corners a bit in order to conserve wood. Not on the structure, but I'm afraid the cabin was a bit flimsy.

The gods provided us with absolutely as little as they could get away with. And that's after we busted our asses to give them the energy they demanded. As I said, I wouldn't go out on the open ocean in any boat that was made by them. They'd probably think it was funny to have the boat fall apart in the middle of a storm, preferably while there was a large carnivorous creature swimming underneath, eagerly waiting to pick the sailors' bones. What a bonanza for the gods!

Never mind. You're not interested anyway.

[ CLICK OF DISCONNECTION. Since there was never any possibility of connection in the first place. ]

[ OOC: The image above is the kind of boat that was provided by the gods, linked in the 8/12/18 OOC Event post: Across the Seven Seas. Dunno about you, but I'd swim before taking that one! XD ]

[so_dark_a_road]

Nope, Law did not cut down the Orchard. He's completely innocent. But neither did any of the rest of the builders, so far as I know. And the reasons I believe so are as follows:

(1) Because I was there the whole time.

(2) Because carpenters do not use fruit tree wood for boat-building purposes nor for any other load-bearing structure. As my brother Maglor points out, fruit tree wood rots in the water. And even if it didn't, you can't get decent planks out of it because it is too gnarly and knotty. You won't find a single plank of fruit tree wood in any of the boats or in the pier.

(3) Even if the wood were usable, I wouldn't have used it, nor would I have allowed anybody who was assisting us to have used it. We have too much respect for trees that provide the community with food.

(4) I find it very suspicious that the Orchard disappeared two months AFTER the timber was cut and prepared for our projects. I didn't hear anybody yelling on the network about the Orchard's fruit trees being gone in May, which is when I cut my last North Island tree. And I'm sure somebody would have noticed; so many people spend time tending or enjoying the Orchard.

[completelycrazy]

[...Oookay now Newt's just laughing.]

Are you high, buddy? Did you get a little lost, maybe? Stumble into the weed garden while you were razing the island? Just because no one called you out immediately doesn't mean the gods stole it in the night. The orchard was on the east island, anyway.

[But then he pauses for a long moment, and then lets out a little gasp.]

But, hold on... Wait wait wait... Are you saying the gods twisted your arm into building a pier—since that's where a pier goes, you know, in the water—and then they took all the orchard trees... Oh my god. You might be onto something here, now that I think about it. Hold on a minute.

[He pauses to bang out a quick sketch, and then turns on his video function to show Curufin. He's like barely biting back a smile when he does so.]

Have you been seeing this symbol around town lately?

[He holds up a doodle.]

[so_dark_a_road]

[ Grins skeptically in response to Newt's laughter. ]

No, are you high? Because you are making no sense. In fact, you're making my point for me. I do know my geography. I only cut wood from North Island, and the Orchard was on East Island. So, whatever happened to it, it did not fall to my axe. And again, you make no sense -- nobody who cares about the Orchard would have kept their mouth shut if they had found that the trees were disappearing. It would have been all over the network.

And as I said, you're ascribing words to me that I never spoke. That is a poor way to argue. I do not claim that the gods forced me to destroy the Orchard. They did not need an agent of destruction, as they are perfectly capable of wrecking things themselves. And they did.

[ He gives the sketch a glance. ] Care to explain the symbol? It is not one used in my world.

[completelycrazy]

I can't believe you're seriously trying to pin this on the gods. You know the trees in the park weren't free game just because they didn't bear fruit, right? Deciding to steal all the resources for yourself was still a crappy thing to do, and you're too caught up in this grand conspiracy to take note of that.

[He will admit that it's odd that no one spoke up on the network until after the fact, but citing it as evidence for a timeframe doesn't make sense. Anyone with eyes could've seen that the orchard was disappearing. He didn't get off of his own island much, but even he knew it was happening. He just didn't figure anyone would be stupid enough to deplete the entire food source.

And yet, here they are. Maybe he'll bring this up, or maybe he won't. He's not sure there's a point since clearly this guy is hellbent on ignoring hard evidence. He'd probably just claim it was a god-based illusion, or something.]

Convenient, too, that you're only bringing up the god theory now that they aren't watching over the network. Once a coward always a coward, I guess. You gonna claim someone stole your phone and mimicked your voice when they come back to see all this?

[so_dark_a_road]

You didn't absorb a single thing I've said, although I've been listening to you. I just told you that I'd never cut a fruit tree down, for moral reasons first of all, and second, it doesn't make sense in terms of craftsmanship.

[ If Geiszler saw the Orchard disappearing in May, then he must have been picking and smoking somebody's weed. There is no hard evidence. ]

It doesn't matter if the gods are watching or not. They're perfectly capable of divining what goes over the network whenever they please. And who are you calling a coward? Trolling the net is a coward's way of upping his self-esteem.

[ This conversation having not a single useful function, he clicks off. ]