The sa soothing feeling from earlier chased away most of the pain from his headache after a few minutes. He peeked up from the comforting barrier of his arms and saw Chitel standing next to him.
“You’re still recovering from everything that happened the other day, so take it easy, alright?” She bent down and peered into his eyes for a second before nodding. “Still no signs of a concussion, but that hit to your head didn’t do you any favors. The spell I cast just now helps with pain, so you should be alright for a while.”
“It’s like an Advil!” Cindy chid in, “You don’t want to take too many at once, but if you space it out, you can keep the pain down.”
Kay pushed himself upright, “That’s a good explanation, thanks.” He looked at Eleniah, “Any recomndations on sothing to do today? Our new healer here-”
Chitel bead at Cindy when she heard that.
“-Says I need to take it easy, but I don’t want to just laze around.”
“Talk to our new people,” Eleniah replied instantly. “That’d be the best option even if you were at full strength.”
“Aweso,” He leaned back in his chair, “Send them in to in whatever groups or singles you want to. I’m going to stay sitting down for a while.” He leaned his head against the chair and closed his eyes. He heard people moving away and opened one eye. “Oh, wait. New policy.”
Eleniah quirked a brow at him and waited.
“Since we need more people, unless we have a concrete reason to say no, let’s start accepting people who show up on probation as long as they sign the Agreents.” He gave a small shrug to her look. “It won’t happen right now, but eventually, people will find out we’re here, and then at least soone will co and want to join. Until we’ve got a decent population that’s self-sustaining, we’ll take anyone that’s willing to get along.”
Eleniah nodded slowly. “Alright, I can see what you’re thinking. We’ll go with that.” She gave him a small smile and stepped through the door. “I’ll start sending people to talk to you in a few minutes.”
Kay grunted a reply and closed his eyes again. A mont later, he opened his eyes again when he heard soone approaching.
Eleniah walked back in with a stack of papers and so pens. “We should get them to sign now. Also, I don’t know if leaving you alone right now is a great idea.”
“Sure.”
She slowly set down the papers. “Have you eaten?”
“Hmm?” He half-opened his eyes, “…No?”
Eleniah sighed and shook her head, “I’ll go get you sothing.”
“Mkay.”
Soone poking his shoulder made him jerk in place, and he found Eleniah standing over him. “Wha?”
“You fell asleep again. Eat this, then you’re going back to bed.” She pointed at a small plate of food she’d brought. “I’ll talk to the new people.”
As tired as he was, it took him a mont to process those sentences. “Oh. Alright then.” He swayed as he sat forward and slowly ate the food in front of him, barely tasting it and not really having any idea what he was eating. When he finished it all, Eleniah helped him stand and half-carried him back to the room he’d been sleeping in, and tucked him into bed.
She patted him on the head after covering him up with a blanket. “I’ll talk to you when you’re up again.”
Kay opened his eyes and sat up in bed. “Eleniah?” He glanced around, but the small one-room building was empty. There were a pair of Darten’s lightstones illuminating the room with a soft glow, but he couldn’t tell what ti it was since he couldn’t see outside. “Clocks are a priority.” He scrubbed at his face as he stood up, “Or at least tid candles or sothing.” He looked down to see himself half-naked. He didn’t rember taking any clothes off before he got back in bed, but there was his shirt sitting on the end of the bed. He grabbed it and put it on before walking over to the door and opening it. The gentle light of the moon and the stars shone down on him. His stomach rumbled, and lacking anything else to do, he started walking towards the ss hall.
He didn’t see anyone else while he had his short walk, but there were doors on most of the buildings now, made of the sa wood as the furniture Devon was rolling out. Only the governnt building and the ss hall didn’t have real doors, with hanging curtains of so kind of cloth covering the entrances.
Inside the ss hall, there were a number of new tables and chairs spread throughout the first floor, making it really look like a community eating area for the first ti.
Cindy, the other Outworlder, and wasn’t that a trip, was sitting at one of the corner tables talking animatedly with Karl at a low volu. They both looked up when Kay stepped in, and Cindy gave him a small wave.
“You’re awake again.” She comnted as he walked over to them, “You doing alright?”
“I’m good. What ti is it?”
“A little past midnight,” Karl answered.
Kay frowned. “What are you two still doing up?”
“I’m used to waking up around this ti for my watch,” Cindy told him, “I couldn’t really sleep, so I went for a little walk and bumped into Karl here.”
“Shit.” Kay facepald and groaned quietly. “We haven’t been setting watches at night. That’s so fucking obvious.”
“Oh, uh, well, you can always start doing them now? Or we can, I an.”
“I’ve been taking care of it.”
Kay glanced over his shoulder to see Eleniah stepping through the curtained entrance.
“It was and ten switching off until he left; I’ve been covering it since then.”
Kay scowled at her, “You haven’t been sleeping?” He demanded.
“No, I’ve been sleeping.” She smiled at him and slid up next to him, “Don’t worry, I’ve been taking care of myself. We talked about elves not needing much sleep compared to other races, rember? That plus being a tier five ans I take a nap during the day when I’m not busy, and I’m fine.”
“You promise?”
She laughed, “Yes, I promise, I’m fine.” She patted his shoulder and pulled over a chair to sit in. “I heard you walking around; you okay?”
“Yeah, I feel a lot better.” Kay shook his arms out, “Still a bit on the weird side, but not as exhausted now.”
“Good!” She turned her smile on Karl and Cindy, “So what were you two talking about?” She asked.
“Guns.” Karl grinned a satisfied gin, looking like the Cheshire Cat for a mont.
Kay chuckled a little and headed towards the stairs. “I’m going to grab so jerky and co back up.” He trotted downstairs and grabbed a few pieces of prepared at that were in the second basent level, and trotted back up. The turkey didn’t taste how he was expecting, but it was still good. The venison jerky was almost the sa as the last ti he’d had any and was also good.
He pulled a chair back over to their table when he got there and took a seat, still munching on a piece of at.
“So what I was explaining to Karl,” Cindy started, “Was that I was an SCA mber back ho.”
“Oh, what era?”
“Mostly Revolutionary War period and stuff in that general area. I did do so dieval and Renaissance period stuff, though. My favorite was antique guns, hands down, so that was my main focus.”
“Sounds like you have a lot more of the kind of information Karl wants than I do; I can only tell you random crap I picked up from books.”
Cindy shrugged, “Yeah, I guess, but I learned sothing really interesting from Karl here. I was wondering why guns haven’t really beco a thing. There have to have been enough Outworlders coming along with at least enough piece-al information to start people here developing guns on their own. And yet, there are no guns anywhere but one nation, and even then, no one uses them. The axe-guns this lot brought with them, Karl made himself! They didn’t have any other guns at all! Good job, by the way, Karl, those are nice work.”
“Thanks.” Karl glanced away bashfully, “I managed to find so journals from an Outworlder that hadn’t been destroyed, and I copied the designs from there.”
“And that’s another thing!” Cindy threw her hands in the air but still kept her volu relatively low, “They literally destroyed notes from people who told them how to make guns! Even if you can’t magic them, or magic is better, they’re still useful! Why would you do that?” She gave Kay a look. “So I asked Karl what the fuck was up.” She looked at Karl.
“There’s no Skills or Classes for guns,” Karl said.
Kay stared at him. “That’s…” He leaned back in his chair, “That’s interesting.”
“Right?” Cindy leaned her elbows on the table. “Tells you so interesting things, that does.”
“I’m guessing people found out that this new weapon system didn’t have Skills or Classes, and they decided that was a bad thing, then got rid of all of it that they could? Probably passed it down to keep doing that, knowing what I do of the Clans.”
Karl nodded, “Exactly. The three books I found about the subject looked like they got put sowhere else accidentally and survived because of it. The Clans use black powder for mining explosions when magic isn’t as useful, or they just don’t have the right mages on hand, but I’d literally never heard of guns until I found one of those journals. Ahthia helped hide the two I found and managed to find the third herself.”
Kay stared off into space. “So, The System has to be manually updated.” He stated out loud, “Why would they design it like that?”
“It could be a bug.” Cindy pointed out.
“That they haven’t patched in hundreds of years? Even if they’re so kind of god-like beings with a weird sense of ti, there’s no way they missed a bug for that long.”
Cindy shrugged, “We have no idea what they’re like. Hell, maybe the original programrs are gone, and The System is just running on its own.”
Kay groaned. “That would be bad.”
“Would it? Everything seems to be running alright.”
Eleniah raised her hand. “What are you two talking about?”
“The people that made The System,” Kay replied, “I was pretty sure that there was soone that made it and put it into place here, but this sealed the deal. There’s no way that The System would just not work for sothing if it was natural in this universe. Natural Laws don’t just stop for so particular items; they just are.” Kay rubbed at the back of his head. “I don’t think it affects us on a day-to-day basis, but it’s interesting.” He looked at the three other people at the table. Eleniah looked a little worried, Karl looked interested, and Cindy just looked back at him calmly. “Karl, you still want to ss around with guns and black powder?”
“Absolutely!”
“Then I’m assigning Cindy as your helper when you both have free ti to tinker with stuff. See if you can figure stuff out about the system while you’re testing things out, too.” He glanced at Cindy, “You know what I an.”
“Yeah, I do,” She started listing things on her fingers, “Test different skills that might work and see if there’s a difference, compare damage and other things of that nature, just basically see if the system recognizes that guns exist at all, or there’s sothing in there that resists them or whatever.”
“Exactly.” He bit off another piece of jerky. “It might not an anything, or it could be incredibly useful. I’d bet on the first one, but you never know.”
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