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Post by Noa on Jun 17, 2020 22:32:24 GMT -6
Eventually, the gargoyle came up with its prize: an unassuming looking rock, which actually seemed quite dull, but which Aster took from it nevertheless. Aster knew better than to judge a rock by its first impression at this point, after having mined on and off for so many years.
By now, he was able to pretty readily identify the rock too. It only took a moment or two of him holding it under the light of the torch, turning it this way and that, for him to conclude that it was a garnet. "Huh, this one's pretty big," he said, genuinely impressed. Most weren't, and this one frankly wouldn't have been considered big for a specimen of some other stones either, but for a garnet it was really not bad.
The gargoyle inclined its head as though to say, 'right?' which got a quiet laugh out of Aster when he noticed.
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Post by Noa on Jun 17, 2020 22:35:05 GMT -6
"We've got to get you a collar of speech or something soon," Aster said. He didn't think he wanted the gargoyle as another voice in his head, but a collar of speech would be just the thing. After all, that way the gargoyle could speak to other people too. Since it had the capacity to form coherent, sentient thought, it must have wanted for conversation among the folks of the city. Aster hadn't seen many gargoyles at all, let alone the runic kind, like this one was. He was sure some of them existed out there somewhere, but he had never met one personally until this one came into his company.
"Let's keep going," he said to the gargoyle. "Unless you've got anything else?"
The gargoyle didn't immediately respond, but seemed to be thinking on the matter. Maybe there really was something else here that it hadn't dug up just yet.
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Post by Noa on Jun 17, 2020 22:45:34 GMT -6
The gargoyle returned to the spot where it had originally been digging, and poked around a little more, before scrabbling at the stone again in earnest. Aster watched, waiting to see what would happen, and the gargoyle eventually came up with another rock that was rather smaller than the garnet. It wouldn't have made a showy brooch or anything, but Aster thought it might have made for some earrings, if he was careful about the cutting. He supposed the size must have been why the gargoyle didn't pay more attention to it earlier. The gargoyle must have decided that this wasn't really worth its time, until Aster had asked it that question.
"Wow, I don't think I would've been able to find this on my own," Aster said, taking the stone from the gargoyle. A cursory study of it revealed a purplish color that he identified as belonging to an amethyst.
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Post by Fiera Ferella on Jun 18, 2020 16:25:59 GMT -6
You hear a clattering noise from further down the cave- is something else here?
[Nothing happens.]
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 20:11:23 GMT -6
(+ Havoc & Velvet as whelps, I no longer have the images) It had been a while since Aster had last made a foray into the mines. Caving had sort of taken a backseat to everything else that had been going on lately. It was kind of a shame, since gems were pretty useful, and he had made that promise to the gargoyle... But there had just been other things to do, like raising whelps, preparing for a contest, raising whelps, training Avander, raising whelps, entering that new Sarane tournament... ... There was definitely a pattern here. After a while, whelps sort of just took over your life. Even when Aster finally found the time to actually come out with the gargoyle again, it was with two whelps in tow. The three of them had shown up at the designated meeting place in front of the house, and the gargoyle had given him a truly interesting look. Well, Aster supposed that was fair, considering he probably did look ridiculous the way he was, with one whelp under each arm, and both whelps squirming to various extents and seeming not very happy with their current situation. Somehow they had managed to make it to the cavern entrance in one piece, but the gargoyle didn't stop giving him weird looks the whole way there, glancing at him every so often, as if it was still kind of in disbelief that this was actually happening. Which was... also fair, considering the gargoyle mostly did its own thing and didn't interact much with the rest of Aster's household. 1
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 20:16:13 GMT -6
That wasn't due to a lack of invitation, but after a while Aster had sort of figured out that the gargoyle preferred to be left to its own devices. Aster supposed that came with the territory of a creature who had had its own life before it came to him, and also the sentience to... well, be its own person, more or less. Of course it made sense that the gargoyle would have its own goals and aspirations, and possibly its own hobbies and pastimes as well. Besides which, it still had no real way to communicate with Aster or any of his creatures, save for the exception of Rhys. Rhys, being telepathic, could talk to anyone. And the two of them did occasionally look as though they were having conversations.
But if they were, it wasn't terribly deep, and they didn't seem particularly close. Nevertheless, despite his apparent aloofness, the gargoyle showed up whenever Aster made it clear that he intended to go out to the caves again. Even if he did show up with some weird companions. It was just that the gargoyle didn't know what was going on in Aster's life, so it wouldn't have known that Aster had been spending most of his time lately raising Sarane whelps, which would have probably given it a little more forewarning about the sight that had greeted it earlier today.
... So far, Aster was of the opinion that two whelps were definitely easier to manage than three, as far as transport.
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 20:20:57 GMT -6
Maybe it would be less efficient to raise them this way, but he definitely couldn't manage all three along with the gargoyle in the mines, and the more he thought about it, the more Rici did seem sort of... small, compared to the other two. He didn't want to set her up to fail, so he had opted to just take Havoc and Velvet with him this time around, and leave Rici with her biological siblings. Those guys had all been born around the same time, and they were growing up to be roughly the same size, though if Aster had to say, he rather thought Castor was a bit bigger than Rici or Pollux.
But all of them were smaller than Velvet and Havoc, who had hatched earlier. And the two of them had been growing pretty steadily. Havoc wasn't small for a first tier drake whelp, but Velvet wasn't small either, despite her delicate name.
... Maybe it was because she was so sedentary. It was probably easier to hold onto fat if you didn't move around, huh?
Aster caught the gargoyle looking at him again, so this time he decided to heft one of the whelps under his arm. "It's a Sarane whelp," he said by way of explanation to the gargoyle. "You've never seen one before? I know they have them in the mines, you know, the black ones." All the non captive bred black Sarane specimen that he had ever heard of had come from these caverns.
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 20:30:50 GMT -6
Hell, he had even gone and caught one himself, though it had been a big brute of a drake who wouldn't have listened to Aster no matter how much work he put in. Something about feral creatures and not having grown up around humans... Honestly, he didn't know.
It had been too much to deal with. Aster wasn't a collector in the sense of just having display animals to look at, even if he didn't invest in heavy combat training for all his Sarane. Some were just breeding stock, if he was being entirely honest, but even then they had a purpose, and he liked the option of being able to do something with them someday if he so wished to. It kind of depressed him after a while to look at that drake, snarling at him all the time, so eventually he had sold it to someone who was more of a collector type than he was.
He wondered what it was doing now. But he didn't wonder very hard.
The gargoyle knew enough Common now, in terms of passive understanding, that Aster's words were more than just him talking to himself. And at his explanation, the gargoyle's brows furrowed into something like a frown, and it shook its head carefully and slowly. Then it pointed to Havoc, and then to Aster's hair, and inclined its head. Aster blinked at the gargoyle, not quite understanding what it was trying to get at with the gestures that it had just made.
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 20:53:20 GMT -6
The lack of comprehension showed plain on his face, and more or less spoke for itself, so it didn't take long for the gargoyle to try a different tack. This time it pointed at the whelps, and then at the depths of the cavern, and then cast around until it found a dark rock, and thrust that at Aster. After that, it pointed to the red whelp, and then Aster's hair; and then the white one, and... At a loss, it cast around for a while, before pointing to Aster's pick. And finally, it made an exaggerated shrugging gesture, which still looked awkward, so Aster supposed it hadn't improved its shrugging game since the last time they were here. But then, Aster supposed that was probably not a priority for a gargoyle like this one.
Well, as long as it got the message across, it probably didn't matter. And it was recognizable as a shrug, even though Aster was a little uncomfortable with the impression that doing it was costing the gargoyle something. But Aster thought on all its gestures for a moment, and realized what it must have been trying to get at. "Ah," he said. "You've never seen one that wasn't black, is that what you're trying to say?"
The gargoyle nodded once, slowly. "Right, right, that makes sense," Aster said. Now that he thought about it, it felt kind of stupid of him not to realize it any earlier. The only Sarane that lived down here were black ones.
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 21:07:41 GMT -6
So of course if the gargoyle had any experience with whelps, or with Sarane in general, it would have only encountered the black breed before. It didn't seem to be visibly recoiling from them, so at least it wasn't scared, but Aster wondered what it thought of these colorful specimen. Or, well, Havoc was colorful, anyway. Havoc was also twisting and hissing up a storm, so maybe it was time to let him go.
"These guys come from different places," Aster said. "There's lots of different Sarane in different parts of the world, apparently. We get their eggs imported. If I'm being honest, it's probably poachers. But since they hatch here, they don't know any better, and then you can raise 'em up the same as any lab critter, more or less. The drakes take a bit of breaking before they listen to you... Wait, no, it's not like that. Don't look so horrified," Aster said. While he spoke, he deposited the wiggling Havoc into the buggy. It was mostly used to store their finds, but it was empty right now, and their finds were just small rocks anyway. Short of the whelps trying to eat one, there wasn't a whole lot the rocks could do to the whelps if there were only a few of them.
The word 'breaking' must have left an unpleasant impression on the gargoyle though. Aster wasn't an expert on reading its expressions, but this particular one was so vivid that he knew it to be shock right away.
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 21:13:08 GMT -6
Well, if he was learning Common as a foreign language, Aster supposed he would have some similar problems. And the gargoyle wasn't in the business of raising or training creatures, so there was little possibility of its ever having come into contact with the word in the context that Aster was using it in right now. Laughing a little, which probably didn't help his image as a sudden sadist in the gargoyle's mind, Aster said, "We're not taking a pickaxe to them." Now that he had said that, he supposed the gargoyle might be thinking of the gem dragons, to whom a pickaxe was sometimes literally taken when they were harvested for their parts. Aster couldn't remember ever having requested such a thing himself, but it was a service offered in the city... And presumably something like it was possible in the wild too, through accident or predation or enough force used in a conflict. Maybe that really was what the gargoyle thought was happening to these Sarane.
... Well, the process of harvesting animals for meat wasn't dissimilar, he supposed. And a lot of creatures down here did eat rocks and minerals in some form. Maybe it wasn't so strange to interpret things that way, if that was the context you were working from.
"It's really not that kind of breaking," Aster said, depositing Velvet in beside Havoc. They didn't fight with one another unless one or the other was provoked, so he felt comfortable enough having them next to each other.
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 21:21:54 GMT -6
In fact, compared to the last batch of whelps that he had raised, these two felt relatively laid back. Now that he was a little older, Aster could see that Havoc had something of a temper on him sometimes, but if he was left alone, he seemed generally content to get on with his own business. That wasn't a bad temperament to have in a drake, all things considered. Maybe he would make a better fighter than Roland, who really didn't seem to be cut out for that kind of thing.
But then, Aster wasn't sure he necessarily intended to fight either of them to dominance, so maybe it didn't matter. Either way, it was convenient that he wasn't constantly having rows with Velvet. Not that Aster thought Velvet would put up much of a fight, since it was becoming more apparent that she was, if not lazy, then at least relatively more passive than the other whelps Aster happened to be raising right now. With so many in one place, it was easier to see the differences among them, both in size and color, as well as in terms of behavior.
"When I say 'breaking'... Well, when the males get to a certain age, they get pretty territorial, you know? Won't listen to a thing you say, even when you've been raising them from this age." Aster briefly picked up Havoc again to show the gargoyle, before setting the red whelp back down. It was brief enough that Havoc didn't have a chance to protest.
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 21:26:28 GMT -6
Aster was sure he would have kicked up a mighty fuss if he had managed to process what was happening in time, but by the time his brain had caught up with him at that stage, he was already being put back down. He settled for hissing vigorously at Aster, but he didn't scuttle away either when he was placed back into the buggy. Aster supposed that Havoc must have either lost his fear, or accepted Aster in the pseudo role of a parent in some capacity. Maybe it was both. Or it could have been neither. After raising them for this long, he did know how to deal with them, but how they saw the world was still a bit of a mystery to him.
"When that happens," Aster said, continuing in his explanation to the gargoyle, "there's a process we go through where we... Well, we get up on their backs, strap ourselves in, and let 'em throw as big a tantrum as they like until they tire themselves out. That gets it out of their system, apparently, and after that they're happy to listen to you again. Or at least as happy as they were before, anyway." Which was still sometimes 'not very', but at least it was on the level of an ordinary creature, rather than what the drakes were like before they were broken.
"It only works for you though. If someone else wants to handle them, they've got to do the same thing themselves."
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Post by Noa on Jul 1, 2020 21:33:18 GMT -6
Aster gave a shrug of his own, a much more human looking one, because he was, well, human. "It's a huge pain in the ass, to be honest. But fighting and breeding 'em is a big thing, and once you've trained one up, you've got a creature that listens to you, and pretty much just you. No one else is going to take the trouble of breaking your drake just to get at you, right? They make good guards that way, if you're a single human household, like I am." How people with roommates contended with having Sarane on the property was something Aster didn't know. He was sure there were ways around it, just the same way as there were ways to keep Sarane together even if you had multiple drakes, but there had to be a certain extent of space and avoidance involved.
He was fortunate enough not to have to consider these issues though, and he really didn't see himself welcoming any sort of humanoid roommate into his household anytime soon.
"So you don't need to worry. Besides, I wouldn't be putting all my effort into these guys just to off them, right?" Aster said, dusting off his hands and straightening back up. Now that the whelps were situated, they could get on with the actual mining expedition portion of their... mining expedition. Or rather, the part where they hunted around for any shiny rocks, or rocks that at least appeared to be sort of useful, if not particularly lustrous.
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Post by Noa on Jul 2, 2020 19:14:40 GMT -6
It was a little harder to read the gargoyle's expressions when they weren't quite so overt, but Aster thought it looked relieved. At least, it no longer looked quite so alarmed as it had a minute ago. Aster hoped that the explanation would suffice, but he also hoped the gargoyle wouldn't take too close an interest in the process of raising Sarane. The whelps were one thing, but if the gargoyle indicated that it wanted to watch a breaking, that would present its own set of problems... It probably wasn't possible, but still.
Fortunately the gargoyle didn't seem the type to take an interest in that sort of thing. Aster didn't really think he had much to worry about in that department. Still, he reminded himself not to make it sound too... interesting. He was well aware that he had a different view of Sarane than would generally be considered reasonable, and most folks, human or creature, would do well to steer well clear of them unless they knew what they were getting into. Aster made sure to lecture the Hara in his household on the topic, and Summer had seen enough of them to know better--- though in her case being ethereal helped. It just hadn't occurred to him that he might need to take precautions with the gargoyle too.
Nevertheless, they set off, and after a brief moment of surprise as the buggy started moving, the whelps settled down in the buggy without much of a fuss, all things considered.
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