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Post by Noa on Jun 29, 2019 23:28:53 GMT -6
The tool that the gargoyle had brought Aster this time was the mallet, which was easier to explain. Aster hadn't really gotten much use out of it either, but at least it wasn't situational in the same way that the shovel was. It was also straightforward enough that Aster wondered a little at the gargoyle having brought it to him, but maybe it was just wondering whether there were any uses besides the really, really obvious one.
And in fact, there was. But it was better to get the obvious one out of the way. Aster took the mallet from the gargoyle, and swung it at the wall. It loosened some debris, but not much else. The pick was better for stuff like this by a mile.
The gargoyle inclined its head. Clearly it wasn't very impressed with this either. There were occasions under which it was useful, but this wasn't really one of them.
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Post by Noa on Jun 29, 2019 23:30:54 GMT -6
For the other main purpose of the mallet though, he needed the addition of a different tool. So this time it was Aster who returned to the buggy, rooting around in its contents to find something else. What he came up with was the chisel, which he returned to the gargoyle with. Holding out a hand so that it could see what he was holding, Aster gave the gargoyle a moment to inspect the new tool. It did so, picking the chisel up in its own hands and poring over it for a moment, before it seemed satisfied with what it had garnered, and returned it to Aster again.
Aster knelt next to one of the stone walls of the cavern and set the end of the chisel against one of the rocks. Then he swung down with the hammer, but in a much smaller arc, without as much force as he had before.
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Post by Noa on Jun 29, 2019 23:33:33 GMT -6
Control was going to be more important when he used it this way, since it wouldn't matter how hard he swung if he didn't manage to hit the chisel. Though perhaps more pressingly, it patently wasn't going to be good if he managed to hit his hand instead. There was a limit to human strength, and therefore to how hard he could swing anything whatsoever, but even then he was strong enough to hurt himself if he hit himself with a hammer.
It wasn't as though he hadn't done this before, though. He didn't need to take especial care, only sort of mind his aim a little. The hammer swung down, and the force traveled through the chisel and carved off a little bit of stone. He held up that little chip to show the gargoyle, who inspected it along with the little indent it had made in the face of the rock.
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Post by Noa on Jun 29, 2019 23:38:01 GMT -6
"It's not great for clearing out a lot of work, but sometimes you need a little more finesse, right?" Aster said. The explanation might not have done any good, and to be honest, the gargoyle probably understood more from seeing it than the explanation would give, but it still felt better to say it. Aster wasn't usually bothered by companionable silence, but something about the combination of being underground and knowing that his partner was human-smart made it that much weirder for everything to be quiet.
Maybe he just needed a distraction from the pervasive feeling that the tunnel was going to collapse any minute now, and he was going to die buried under the weight of a whole mountain, which sort of lived in the back of his head all the time. It didn't seize him with terror or anything, but it was still just always... there, waiting for him to think it.
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Post by Noa on Jun 29, 2019 23:41:47 GMT -6
He was sure most things that didn't live underground had it. He had to train his creatures not to freak out in the dark, as well as in tight spaces. He hadn't actually done it with a lot of them, because it was lower on his priority list as those situations didn't come up much on his estate. And it wasn't like he could reasonably take Grunty underground, for example--- and Avander had refused. Something about being both large and a creature of the air made him deeply uncomfortable with the concept, now that he had reached his full growth.
Well, Aster didn't disagree, so he never pushed the issue.
"That's it for that one," Aster said to the gargoyle. "Which one do you want to see next?"
As if right on cue, the gargoyle began looking through the buggy for more tools. It looked a lot like it had actually understood his words.
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Post by Noa on Jun 29, 2019 23:44:36 GMT -6
Of course, the reality was probably more that it had seen him stop moving, and taken that as its cue to find something else for him to show it the use of. Maybe it helped that Aster was moving towards the buggy too, to put these two tools back where they belonged. He did that, and the gargoyle ignored him as it looked for something else.
Not that there was a whole lot else to show. It had already seen the flashlight and torch in action, so he really doubted it was going to ask about those at all. What it finally produced when it came up with something was his hard hat, which Aster blinked at for a moment upon its emergence from the buggy.
"Oh... Thanks for the reminder, I guess," he said, a little sheepishly. He was sure that wasn't what it meant, but all the same, he was chastened.
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Post by Renathan on Jun 30, 2019 15:05:44 GMT -6
Certainly not a bad haul at all; there is a shiny black stone, a nearly effervescent crystalline one, and then a good ore of silver, too! [106-120]
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Post by Noa on Oct 17, 2019 21:18:45 GMT -6
He knew he ought to wear the hard hat since it was standard safety procedure, and the threat of rocks falling on his head wasn't an idle one in these caves. In the end, it was just a bad habit that he had formed somewhere along the way. He didn't even have a particularly good reason for it; he didn't like the feel of his feathers being crushed against his head, that was all. And at first it had been a conscious decision on his part not to wear the hat, but after a while it had simply become force of habit, and he had stopped thinking on the matter altogether.
In the end, he didn't really think the gargoyle had really been trying to chastise him, but all the same... Maybe this was a sign that he should start shaping up now rather than regretting it later, if something went wrong.
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Post by Noa on Oct 17, 2019 21:21:48 GMT -6
The gargoyle was probably just wondering what this thing could possibly be good for. If you thought about it from the gargoyle's perspective, it was kind of hard to intuit a use for something that essentially amounted to a hard plastic bowl, and one with no holes in it anywhere, at that. It wasn't something you could use to dig or sift for things, and as far as storage options went, they had better things available for that purpose with them already.
But that was because that wasn't what it was for. Of course.
Aster took the hard hat from the gargoyle and rapped his knuckles gently on the surface of it. The gargoyle watched him with an expectant air, waiting to see what he would do with it, and sensing that this wasn't the full explanation. Which, of course it wasn't, or else it wouldn't have been very much of one.
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Post by Noa on Oct 17, 2019 21:28:53 GMT -6
Aster then looked down at the hat with a sigh, and deciding to just get it over with, jammed it on over his head. Almost immediately, he felt the unpleasant sensation rippling through him and shuddered a little.
He noticed out of the corner of his eye that the gargoyle was giving him a funny look, and he shook his head quickly. "No, that's not it," he said. "The point isn't to make people uncomfortable. It's to... Oh, I'll just show you." Having said that, he grabbed a rock and rapped it on the outside of the hard hat, now that he was wearing it. "It's like this. If a rock falls on me, maybe I won't die," Aster said, smiling a grim little smile.
After saying that to the gargoyle, he did feel a little stupid for not having used it all this time just because it wasn't comfortable to wear.
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Post by Noa on Oct 17, 2019 21:34:06 GMT -6
The gargoyle seemed to be mulling over this development for a while. When it next moved, Aster watched it, not sure what it was going to do. To his surprise, the gargoyle picked up the rock that Aster had dropped, and moved to rap it against its own head.
... No, that wasn't quite right, he realized. What the gargoyle was rapping the rock against was one of its horns, to be precise. The horns... Aster hadn't ever really considered them before, but now that he did, he couldn't really tell by sight whether they were made from different material than the rest of the gargoyle. From here, it looked pretty much the same.
But still, with the context of all this... "Are you telling me your horns are what protects your head from falling rocks?" Aster said. "And here I thought you guys didn't worry because you were all made of metal."
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Post by Renathan on Oct 18, 2019 7:14:40 GMT -6
A geode glimmers with a pale internal secret. Otherwise, a small hunk of ruby is just waiting to be mined out of the wall nearby!
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Post by Noa on Dec 1, 2019 15:50:07 GMT -6
It had been some time since Aster’s last excursion to the mines. A lot of things had happened since then, and he hadn’t quite found the time to get away as much as he would like. But then again, it was a bit of a weird hobby, this whole spelunking deal. Aster wouldn’t have called it, say, relaxing or anything like that. You were shoving off into a dark, often dank cave for goodness knows how long, armed with only some tools and a single creature companion… Or more, but generally he found it was more trouble than it was worth to bring too many creatures down here with him. The more you had to keep track of, the slower your progress, and the less time you spent actually finding stuff to take back with you. Which was why he was down here with just the gargoyle again today. 1
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Post by Noa on Dec 1, 2019 15:50:31 GMT -6
He also figured he sort of owed it for not having had the chance to make any more trips since that first one, despite the deal they had made when they were last down here. Or, well, Aster didn’t know if it was a deal exactly… It had almost more of the air of someone seeking a strange favor, though he supposed the gargoyle had also offered its services in return. And since they’d gotten out of the cave in one piece on that occasion, Aster felt that the gargoyle had kept up its end of the deal fairly well.
Not that it had been a very eventful outing, but sometimes that was to be preferred. Too much excitement wasn’t always a good thing, especially in a place like this.
Still, their deal had been that the gargoyle would help Aster in exchange for Aster helping him find a… what was it now?
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Post by Noa on Dec 1, 2019 15:51:10 GMT -6
A Prismatic crystal, that was what it was; Aster remembered the conversation, and the pictures the gargoyle had drawn. It had wanted one so that eventually it could socket one inside itself. This seemed of paramount importance to the gargoyle, though Aster was also a little relieved to note that the gargoyle didn’t expect fast results. Those things were notoriously hard to find, and he felt that it would be some time before they managed to chance upon one.
Be that as it may, they certainly weren’t going to find anything if they didn’t look. And Aster hadn’t exactly been looking these last few months, caught up as he had been with other things. That had to look bad to the gargoyle, who was relying on him to uphold his end of the bargain.
Aster eyed the gargoyle sidelong as they made their way to a cavern entrance.
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