|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 7:54:46 GMT -6
NoaEncounters: Off Agriculture lvl 3 Berry Picking Toxin-Wise Plant Lore Expert Gardener Rabbit's Luck Currently WithRhys Level 96, Familiar Loyalty 13 (4/5, 0/10) Stamina: 2 Strength: 1 Resistance: 0 Dexterity: 4 Mentality: 3 Special Abilities: Fly, Refined Senses, Survival Instincts, Iron Will, Telepathy, Psychic Resistance Moves: Sweet Song, Illusion, Mind Soothe, Rapid Bloom, Healing Aura, Cure, Sacrifice, Telekinesis, Sleep Finds: none ResidentsLevel 11, Loyalty 11 STA: 3 STR: 2 RES: 1 DEX: 2 MNT: 2 Special Abilities: Thorny Body, Cold Resistance, Fire Weakness Moves: Healing Berry, Claw, Winter Gust
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 8:10:18 GMT -6
Aster… wasn’t really the gardening type. If you took a good look at him, it wasn’t all that hard to see why.
Well, actually, maybe there were a few red herrings too, come to think of it. Maybe looking at him wasn't really the solution. The red hair and all--- where he had come from, his people had been associated with the firebird, which was what made it so funny and interesting that he had ended up with Summer, whom he had only had the pleasure of meeting and bonding with after the fact. None of his other creatures were fire-aligned either, so it was a bit of a misnomer after all. So it wasn’t really the threat of pyrotechnics that was the problem, the reason why he didn’t go and busy himself with plants.
Though it would certainly have made his current job a lot easier, come to that.
(1)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 8:10:46 GMT -6
Clearing land was no joke in terms of the sheer amount of labor it required of a person, and despite not having been at it for all that long, he was beginning to feel very tempted by the idea of razing everything down to the ground.
But the problem with him and gardening, such as it was, was more one of… the amount of nurturance required. He wasn’t really the nurturing type. Sure, he had a bunch of Hara living with him, but that was a little different. The Hara were his companions, and by now they were old enough that they were mostly looking after themselves and giving him attitude, like tiny teenagers with wings.
Lants couldn’t look at him. Or, well, regular plants anyway. Give him a plant creature, maybe, and he would do better. But toiling away in the dirt for a harvest of tomatoes? Forget about it.
(2)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 8:11:24 GMT -6
He couldn’t pick up on the cues or needs of something that wasn’t present to give him a good solid bite if he messed up.
Maybe he just lived on excitement. Or maybe, as Summer kept suggesting to his deep chagrin, he was just lonely, and plants didn’t quite ping enough on his living things radar for him to want to have anything to do with them.
But that strange trader was opening up their shop again in the city, and they had something he wanted, and what they wanted in return for it was plants, which he didn't really have. So here he was, toiling away. There was a government assigned patch of land waiting for you if you ever felt inclined to discover your horticultural side, or something--- your tax dollars at work, he supposed, though it was funny that this was how they should choose to spend those.
(3)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 8:11:48 GMT -6
No free public health care unless you were in the Pit, but everyone had their own gardening land. But then, he didn’t pay much attention to the local governance, beyond a cursory familiarity with local laws just so he didn’t break anything really dire.
And speaking of plant creatures. Aster had one with him, just because it didn’t seem like the kind of undertaking he should be having with one of his usual companions, and because he feared he would be bored to pieces otherwise. It wasn’t, as he understood it, entirely mandatory, the way that having a mining familiar with him in the mines was all but required by this point to get around and have any good finds. But he supposed he was just as glad he hadn’t brought Summer after all, or else this little grove of overgrown thorns might have been burning by now.
(4)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 8:12:04 GMT -6
Sometimes Aster wasn’t very good at breaking laws that weren’t dire. But prevention is as good as anything, he supposed.
The creature he had with him was sort of a funny thing. They weren’t terribly new, but he hadn’t ever seen a lot of them around, so it was new for him, anyway. Maybe it wouldn’t have been if he gardened more, but he had been peripherally interested years and years ago, and these guys hadn’t been in the garden shop when it opened…
It looked kind of like a person, actually. Maybe not a human, exactly, but somewhere between an old wizened man and a kapper. It stood on two legs, anyway, hunched over some sort of cane. It might not have been so bad--- there was an obvious snout, and it had a tail that was certainly very creature-like. But on the other hand, it also had hands.
(5)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 9:18:58 GMT -6
The hands were what did it for Aster. The sense of uncanny valley was increasing all the time. It didn’t help that they weren’t, as far as he could find out, actually sentient. Close, but no cigar, according to a few encyclopedias he had dug out of his old study. Speaking of your tax dollars at work. Other cities had yellow pages, but this one had bi-annual deliveries of a biology catalogue. Local Monsters and How to Cope.
To give credit where it was due, this was a lot more useful to him than yellow pages would have been. Sure, there were times that he needed to look up a local business and lamented the lack of easy reference, but more often than not, the creature encyclopedias were more valuable. Creatures, rather than people, tended to be the ones causing the problems in Aster’s neck of the woods--- or piquing his interest, as it were.
(6)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 9:19:08 GMT -6
He’d moved here at least in part to get away from people, after all. Specific people, yes, but also people in general. Especially after he found out that you can get on perfectly well without them around, so long as you had something else to talk to.
“Guess in this case I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” he said to the wizened thing.
How old was it anyway? It didn’t look young, but he was pretty sure it had bark for skin, and that wasn’t doing it any favors from a purely human spectator perspective. It looked entirely too much like wrinkles. And then there was the matter of its fur… leaves… Whatever it was, the green stuff covering its body. King of the Evergreens, was that what they called it? King of what?
It just stared at him. This didn’t make him feel any better about what he was doing.
(7)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 9:19:51 GMT -6
He sighed. “Are you not going to respond unless I call you Your Majesty? Is there a… respect thing that you want?” How did one show respect to something like this anyway? The books hadn’t mentioned anything about that, but then, they weren’t always comprehensive. In fact, if you asked him about the creatures he worked with relative to the information that was given out in those books, Aster might be tempted to say that they were never comprehensive.
But then, they were mostly meant to give you a starter’s guide, and keep you out of the worst of the mischief you or your new pet could get into. And that possibly only for reasons of legal liability. The rest… You were on your own.
He already felt ridiculous, and there was no way he was going to kowtow to a plant. “Suit yourself,” he said, and began slashing away again at the mass of growth.
(8)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 9:20:06 GMT -6
Maybe it felt offended that he was clearing the land to begin with. These were its fellow plants, after all. The trouble was that they were brambles, a great horrible lot full of almost nothing else, and they had carpeted his little government assigned land plot so thoroughly that he couldn’t have grown anything else here if he tried. At least, not without clearing them out first.
“Don’t suppose you’re interested in giving me a hand,” said Aster, though to be honest, even as he said it, he knew what the answer would be. That would be way too convenient. It wasn’t as if they knew each other all that well. This creature had only joined Aster’s holdings recently, even more recently than his mining companion as of late--- that gargoyle, speaking of things that looked a little too close to human. Actually, this King and that gargoyle had a lot in common.
(9)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 4, 2019 9:21:18 GMT -6
They were both generally the same shape, give or take wings and foliage cover. There was actually a lot of resemblance in the general face shape too, though the gargoyle's features were definitely sharper. The evergreen couldn't be hiding some sort of weird collar under that bush, could it?
But he’d had it on good authority that the gargoyle was at least as smart as a person, and once it had established that Aster was willing to parlay with it, it had been pretty earnest about trying to communicate with him. This one... Well, the jury was still out on this one, but Aster had his doubts.
Maybe the two of them would get along, the gargoyle and the evergreen thing. He’d never had the two of them get acquainted, but it was conceivable. At least the evergreen had eyes, so it was a little less disconcerting to look at from that perspective.
(10)
|
|
|
Post by Renathan on May 5, 2019 11:12:54 GMT -6
There are some rather strange cherries hanging over there... Why are they purple? But all things aside, the wheatgrass seems to be doing well! [1-10]
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 6, 2019 14:43:28 GMT -6
Though, on second thought, how he felt about eyes staring out at him from a face skinned with bark… Well, the less he thought about it, the better off he was going to be.
Besides, there were plenty of other things to occupy him in the meantime. Like hacking away at the brambles. Aster was making do with an old machete that was, at this point, almost more of a bludgeon than a cutting tool. It was one of those things that had come with the property when he had bought his house, a crumbling mansion situated on a wide, sprawling property that had at one point been a farm.
The machete had been moldering away with a bunch of other assorted odds and ends, much of it broken, in the basement. The machete had been intact enough, if inclined to be a bit old and battered looking, and therefore not terribly sharp.
(11)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 6, 2019 14:44:19 GMT -6
Aster thought it would have been better than nothing in the fight against an overgrown lot… and he was right, but only just. And only because this would have been beyond impractical to do with his hands, even wearing real thick gloves, because of the number and length of the thorns involved.
This wasn't making him want to burn it any less.
"I don't suppose you could help with this," he said to the King of Evergreen. These weren't evergreen shrubs, but maybe they would respect his authority anyway. Was it even a he? How could one tell? Plants… had sexes, but it didn't always work like, say, mammal sexes, and anyway… No, he wasn't going to think about that kind of thing.
Some creatures did have a measure of control over plants. There was an injection you could give them to give them the power too, for that matter. He was pretty sure one of Rey's creatures could do it, though he wasn't sure if this one could.
(12)
|
|
|
Post by Noa on May 6, 2019 14:44:57 GMT -6
If it could, it didn't offer. It was apparently content to watch him suffer. Aster sighed. Well, it wasn't a novel concept to him either. If Avander were here, even he probably wouldn't have been inclined to help out, in the interest of prolonging Aster's discomfort, so he could observe and be amused by it.
But Aster could have ordered him to do something, in the end. And in the interest of their continued partnership, Avander would have done it. Aster wondered briefly if encasing the whole lot in ice would have helped, but considering the kind of ice Avander could make… No, probably not, would it? If anything, that would just make this stuff harder to cut through.
The thought of finding anything useful in this mess was enough to discourage Aster, but then, it wasn't as if he had no experience with difficult things. It was just unpleasant, that was all.
(13)
|
|