Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

As we finish eating, I notice that there are dark looking clouds forming, and while the basement is mostly closed off, the stairwell down is exposed if it starts to rain.  It seems like the leader goblin wants to talk with me, but I really need to work to get some temporary cover over my stairs.  He follows me over to my pit but waits outside as I go down the stairs.  For right now, I just want to get cover up, so I cut thin sheets of stone out to build a simple roof over the stairs, just enough to keep the water out.

When I come back up, the leader goblin is still waiting there patiently, so I set the sheets over the stairs to keep rain out and turn to the goblin.  He looks at me before uncurling both of his hands.  In one hand he has the pebbles that I gave to that other goblin.  In the other hand he has a second set of pebbles that haven't been marked.  He holds his hand out with the unlabeled pebbles and gestures for me to take them.

I do so, and look back at him.  He pokes one of the labelled pebbles on an unlabeled pebble.  I guess he wants me to duplicate it, so I do so.  Then I make a duplicate of each of the pebbles.  He then seemingly wants the pebbles back, so I give them to him.  He looks them over, before giving me a nod, and going back to his hut.  Whatever that was, I guess I'll find out.  I do hope he gives back the original pebbles to the other goblin though.

Not long after, it starts raining again.  All the goblins go into their huts, and I climb down into my basement and close it off.  I'm missing my cave even more now, because it is pitch black in here.  Without crystals lighting the walls, I'm almost as good as blind.  At least that isn't the worst thing in the world, I do have tectonic sense to figure out where I am in the dark, and I'm out of the rain.  I'm not quite ready to sleep yet, so I may as well use my mana up.  I use tectonic sense to find where I was cutting from the floor before, and start using stone shaping to cut out blocks for construction tomorrow.

The next morning I'm glad to see that both my hp has refilled, and I'm not sleeping in water.  I use tectonic sense to figure out where exactly in the room I am before slowly making my way up the stairs.  I'm disappointed to see that it is still lightly raining as I leave the basement, so I place the cover back over the stairs as I leave.  It's still early morning, and there are only a few goblins over at the stream drinking water.  The stream is also quite full again today.

It doesn't seem like the goblins want to go and do much yet, so I head back to my basement, and haul the blocks I cut last night up and out from the basement.  When I'm done, all the goblins seem to be taking shelter from the rain in their huts, so I go back down into my basement to use my mana cutting blocks out.  Honestly, in a few days I should have the upstairs finished if I keep up at this pace.  That said, a stone door is going to be quite heavy, but making a wood door is more of a hassle than it would be worth.

As I'm carrying the new set of blocks up, the leader goblin approaches me again.  I finish hauling the blocks up, as he patiently waits in the rain.  He waves me over towards his hut, so I follow him.  Again, I can't really get in to the hut, but I can at least stick my head in to see what he wants to show me.  When I do stick my head in, he seems to be fiddling around with some rocks he's piled up.  He brings over a few flat rocks, and shows them to me.  On them, it seems like he's scratched something on the surface.

One looks like a crude drawing of a man.  He points to it, then himself, then says, "Ruddaka."

I'm not entirely sure if he means he's called Ruddaka, or if goblins are called ruddaka, but he looks at me expectantly, so I'm going to just guess he means the general form, and I say, "Goblin."

He looks somewhat delighted, and pulls the next one out, which looks like a long stick.  He gestures for me to move back, so make room, and he goes over to my pit, and points down to the basement, so we go down, and he points at my spear, "Akkalah-rah."

"Spear,"  I reply.

He seems delighted that he's able to communicate to some degree, but I'm still not particularly interested in learning another language.  He hurries me back to his hut where he shows me a third stone with a crude circle.  "Mukuku," he says.

I stare for a while, and I can't figure out what it is.  I shake my head, and don't say anything.

He looks at it and me, and seems a little disappointed as he puts that stone down.  Then he picks up the spear stone again, and points to me.  "Akkalah-rah, derin zoru."

Something with the spear.  Ok.  He shoos me outside, and then leads me over to the forest edge.  We start walking along until he finds what he is looking for.  He finds a long stick that is fairly straight.  Then drags me back over to my basement, "Akkalah-rah, derin zoru."  He repeats and hands me the stick.

Is he telling me to make a spear?  I mean, I don't have everything I used to make one before, but I should have enough mana to make a knife to start working on it.  I make a stone knife that I can use to work on the stick, and start working on the stick in the light rain.  The leader goblin just sits there and watches me as I work on cleaning up the stick, carving a handle, and making a hole near the top of the stick to attach the spearhead on.  When my mana is nearly full, I've completed enough of the spear to attach the spearhead using stone shape, so I go ahead an make the spearhead, and start whittling the wood some more.  

The goblin gestures to hand him the spear, so I hand it to him.  He holds it and moves it around in his hands, then he gestures for the knife I've been using, and tries his own hand at whittling...  Which imminently results in him holding the spear and shaving wood towards his hand, and cutting himself.  Well, I suppose he'll probably learn how to handle it better soon.  I go over and try to show him how to properly hold the spear to work on it, while he nurses his wound on his hand.  After a little while, I think I've shown him all I can, so I give him the spear and knife again.  He takes both and goes back to his hut.

I'm honestly starting to feel quite hungry at this point, but it seems like no one wants to go hunt in the rain, and I don't really want to go hunting myself, considering I don't have anywhere to cook.  Instead I'll just work on my house as best I can.  I start laying the blocks around the edges to become inevitable walls, and then stone weld them to the floor.  For good measure, I also extend the central pillar from the basement up further into the new room.  Eventually, I'll need to support a roof, which invariably will be made of stone, so the support pillar should help with that.

When I'm out of mana, I look about in the light rain, and there doesn't seem like there is much to do, so I decide to go check on the leader goblin.  When I peek in, it seems like he's mostly finished with the spear, and also looks like he's cut himself at least one additional time.  I'm sure he'll get used to it eventually.  He was facing away from the entrance to his hut, but turns to face me as he puts the spear down.  He seems to be thinking about something, and then says in a slightly different tone than normal, "Akkalah-rah, derin zoru baan."

Well, it seems like the first bit means I should make a spear.  What he means with the extra bit could be anything, but I have a feeling I'll find out soon enough, because he's standing up right now.

Sure enough he leads me back to the forest, and begins looking for sticks again.  We look together for a while, and we find three sticks that are good enough to make a spear out of, and we head back to the camp.  I have a feeling that he's asking me to make more spears, and although it will probably help the goblins with hunting, it takes quite a bit of time, and uses a bit of my limited supply of mana to do as well.

When we get back, he takes the sticks back to his hut, so I hope that means he only wants me to make the spearheads, but I guess time will tell.  For now, a decent chunk of my mana has refreshed, so I start work on my house again.