The Copper Rose

by David Lingard

  I was frozen for a moment, having not expected that kind of response, but I allowed it to pass as I knew what needed to be done.

  I analysed the breeding hut and was delighted to see that I had thirty-five food just sitting there available to be spent. I was like a kid in a candy shop! First thing’s first though I knew I needed a crafter. It wasn’t solely because of Bishook’s riveting conversation, but with the fall of the Sawblades clan, my route to new tools and equipment had been completely severed. I mentally queued up the crafter and turned my attention to the rest of the list.

  I wanted to spend another ten food at the most, not feeling the desire to blow my entire food wad in one go – it was always nice to leave a little something behind for emergencies. That meant that mystic, healer and cook were off the table for now, besides I had a cook, I now had a healing spell of my own ‘I need to practise that one’ and a mystic didn’t sound like something I was in particular need of at the moment. I examined the list mentally for my available options.

  A goblin worker would always be a good thing, they would aid in the tasks of every other member of the camp, no matter what that might have been. I could also progress them into specialisations like woodworkers. A feeder would provide food for the camp, but I felt as though the increased gathering that a well-equipped fisherman would provide would probably be enough to satiate our ravenous tendencies for at least a short while.

  A crafter I’d already queued up so there was no use there.

  Another builder would be a great advancement to the clan, as it would mean that presumably things could get build twice as fast. But would that mean I’d need to get a worker for the builder to boss around so that he could carry out his work effectively?

  A warrior spoke for itself. I knew that my campsite was vastly underdefended but at this point would a warrior have just been more of a nuisance that an aid to our efforts? Would a single level one warrior be able to withstand even the tiniest of raids?

  There was really only one choice that I could make and as I made it, my new crafter and worker emerged from the breeding hut’s small wooden door.

  First thing’s first, I asked the crafter (Puk) what he would need to get started making tools for the fisherman, then any other workers who required equipment. I was very happy to hear that he would be able to make do with the logs that had been collected by our woodworking efforts. I made a mental note to get back to replenishing that stockpile as soon as possible – it was of course the most important thing on my agenda. The crafter ran off with his new instruction and out of my sight. I liked watching goblins run – kind of like lanky green rabbits.

  Now what to do with my new worker… I smiled as a plan formed in my mind.

  “How would you like to be a woodworker?” I asked my latest dogsbody who’s name I noticed was Isk.

  The goblin smiled a toothy grin at me before turning away silently and heading for the small pile of logs that had formed near where Durr had been working on his lumberjack skill. It occurred to me that to have made such a pile already, he must’ve at some point increased in his skill. I was very pleased for my lumberjack teammate – I knew exactly how good that particular advancement felt.

  It had taken just a few moments since our return, but I felt like I’d finally got all of my ducks in a row, which was nice because it was just about time for dinner.

  The aroma that had hit my nostrils was tantalising. In fact, it was the driving force behind my immediate and unwavering hunger. I could see that by the campfire, Snafu was turning both fish and steaks over to ensure that they were cooked to the proper degree.

  “Snafu! This smells delicious,” I cooed as I approached the food cooking on the fire. She smiled at me and gestured to the fire before her.

  “Really need bigger kitchen. Or pot.” She added thoughtfully. I should’ve known that someone else would be asking for something more already.

  “Ooookayyy,” I drew out my answer in a stint of sarcasm. “How do I make a pot?” opting for what sounded like the easier of the two options.

  “Just big container not burn. Metal normally,” she explained nonchalantly. I liked the fact that she wasn’t being pushy about it, she was just stating the facts and I could do with them what I would.

  I made a mental note to see what I could do to make Snafu her cooking pot, but right now I just wanted to eat. I was surprised that I hadn’t been stricken with some kind of ‘hunger’ debuff, but as it was I could think of nothing else other than filling my face with the delicious surf and turf.

  You have gained the trait Balanced Diet. As you have consumed a variety of different foods for a prolonged period of time, the beneficial effects of a balanced diet are now available.

  Food types consumed: 2

  Current bonuses:

  When well fed, you will receive +(Balanced Diet level)% to damage and damage resistance.

  When well fed, your health and mana pools will increase by +(Balanced Diet level)%

  When well fed, your health and mana regeneration will increase by +(Balanced Diet level)%

  Sometimes I loved this game. As if out of nowhere I had managed to uncover a new trait, and although it only seemed to impart a minimal change to my stature for now, after I levelled it up (assuming this was done by eating different types of food stuffs) it could make a huge difference to my and my clans survivability in Freedom – and best of all, as a percentage increasing trait, it scaled with me all the way into the higher levels! I could only imagine what the benefit would be to a level one hundred player when the trait was up to level fifty, or one hundred. Frankly it sounded as though it was going to be one of my best long-term assets.

  My stomach positively bulged once I’d finished stuffing my face with the wonders that Snafu had bestowed upon me, and I couldn’t help but notice a new string of text in the periphery of my vision – it simply read “Well Fed” with a timer counting down from two hours. Well I knew that the buffs wouldn’t be permanent, and at least I could see how long they would actually last. I made a mental note to make sure that I would remain ‘well fed’ as much as possible not wanting to miss out on those juicy bonuses.

  Within a few minutes, I’d been surrounded by my fellow clan members each one of them looking hungry and happy at the sight and smell of the feast before them. I had to admit that having Snafu feeding the clan was a bit of a godsend, who knows how long it would have taken for a mutiny to arrive if I’d been offering them the horrible burnt fish over and over.

  To my delight, Grish sat next to me. It seemed as though he had been given some kind of preferential seating arrangement, presumably due to his higher level than the others. There was something I wanted to ask him as the previous leader of a goblin clan.

  I lowered my voice to just a hair above a whisper and leaned in close to Grish. “Grish, what happens when…” I searched for the correct phrasing but came up with nothing other than exactly what I wanted to say. “goblins die?”

  He didn’t answer me for a long moment. I could tell it wasn’t to finish the mouthful of fish he’d been working through, as before he answered he tore off another bite. Once he was ready to answer my question, he finally said. “Some say good goblin afterlife have many females.” I facepalmed. I wasn’t looking for the philosophical question of whether or not there was a heaven and hell, and how to get to each one. “No, no” I interrupted before he could continue. “I mean, if…” I lowered my voice even further “…Ushuk hadn’t come back to life…what would have happened?” It hurt me to think on the subject but I needed to know. Could Ushuk respawn like I could, or did my sprites get just the one life?

  Grish finally caught my meaning. “It possible to bring back. From breeding hut,” he nodded towards the hut that bore all of my new goblins. “it cost though. Most not worth while.”

  I sighed in relief. I could bring back my fallen compatriots should they ever fall. Ushuk, my friend, was immortal so long as I had my settlement. I couldn’t care less what the cost for
such an action may have been – it would be worth it. It would always be worth it.

  “Grish, I promise you that if anyone here were to fall while under my care, I will do everything I can to bring them back. It will always be worth it to me.” I announced in my still hushed voice.

  Grish seemed like he couldn’t give a damn as he took another bite of his fish and grunted. I thought it was a nice gesture anyway.

  That evening I turned my attention to what I would come to think of as the simpler things in life. I wanted to fulfil a promise I’d made to Snafu, having gained, lost and wanted again the benefits of the ‘well fed’ buff. I needed to get her a pot of some description so that she could properly make food for the clan in large batches and although I didn’t have the first idea of how to start working on such an item, I knew it would come to me.

  As much as I would have liked to whittle a pot out of wood, something told me that that particular material would turn out to be no good. #Fire plus wood equals ashes,’ after all.

  I decided that the easiest way to go about making a big pot would be to get a sheet of thin, malleable metal and force it into a giant bowl shape by hitting it with a hammer. ‘Hey when you don’t have the skills you can always rely on brute force and ignorance.’

  I had a hammer, so that was part one of my internal quest completed. All I needed no was a sheet of malleable metal. Amazing.

  Chapter Thirteen, Perseverance II

  M

  y goblins had done a wonderful job at stockpiling resources in my absence. In fact, amongst the growing piles of resources that they had been amassing, I found after sifting through the wood and stone that some of the stone that Matuk had collected had veins of different colours etched into it. It was pretty difficult to see at first, but as I examined each piece with a vein a little closer, I could tell that this wasn’t just ordinary stone my goblin miner had been collecting, some of it was actually metal ore.

  ‘Oh boy oh boy,’ how I loved finding ore. I’d spent so much time in almost every role-playing game I’d ever played mining that it was pretty much a second nature to want to find ore to smelt, ready to be used in some crafting process to make that legendary armour I always wanted. The cooking pot would kind of be the next best thing…well it wasn’t exactly legendary but at least it would be all mine.

  I had three pieces of what my analyse skill let me know were ‘Copper Ore’ by the time I’d checked out Matuk’s stone pile. I silently thanked him for either his lack of attention to detail or superior foresight, but who was I kidding – I doubted Matuk’s foresight extended past the end of his own pick.

  It seemed that the task “make a pot” now extended to, learn how make a pot, find out where metal comes from, find metal, find out how to turn ore into said metal. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘what’s a few more layers between friends anyway?’ I wasn’t too annoyed that my task had grown into some kind of milt-staged behemoth quest. In fact, I was a little pleased to have a direction to head in rather than just wandering around and deciding what to do next on a whim.

  The best idea that I could come up with for turning a piece of ore into an ‘ingot’ was the one that a plethora of role-playing games had instilled into me, which was namely to put it into a big fire. I didn’t want to use the cooking fire though, it just didn’t seem sanitary to me so I set up a second, smaller fire on the shoreline. Something told me that if I were to run into any…let’s say ‘issues’, then a close proximity to a large body of water could come in handy.

  This little fire I put a bit more thought into. I knew that smelting ore into metals (in the real world) needed a good high temperature – my memory failed me as to what that temperature might have been, but I know from a pottery class or two that a kiln made temperatures higher for its contents, so my best bet for high temperatures was to encase this new fire in a sort of mud pizza oven. It took me a little longer than I’d care to admit to construct my smelter in a way that it didn’t crumble and fall down on its own, but eventually I had a roaring fire feeding heat into a DIY smelter just metres away from the calm blue water of the lake.

  Tentatively, I placed the first of my three pieces of ore into the smelter and watched as it almost instantly turned to black smoke before my eyes. It hadn’t gone well and I didn’t know why – my piece of ore had disappeared. I placed the second ore into the smelter with high hopes and my fingers crossed, but to my dismay the same thing happened and black smoke billowed from the opening afront the smelter.

  I only had one piece of ore remaining, and without any knowledge as to why my first two attempts might have failed it was definitely not the smart course of action to blunder ahead and try again. I was reminded of the saying that insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

  I closed my eyes and pushed the ore into my smelter. I guess you could call me insane.

  When I opened my eyes again I was very pleased to see that no black smoke was billowing from the smelter, but instead I was greeted with white smoke and a rather long wait. After what seemed like forever, a notification appeared before me.

  You have created 1 x Coper Ingot

  Would you like to add this item to your inventory? Yes/No

  ‘Success!’ If there was any greater feeling than creating something yourself from scratch, then I didn’t know about it. I was positively elated. I only had a moment or two to revel in my success though, as a second message quickly followed.

  You have gained the skill Smelting

  Through determination, perseverance and sheer willpower, you have gained the skill Smelting. With this skill, you are able to use a fire to reduce material ores to their purified indicated ingot types. The success rate and speed of smelting is based upon your Smelting Level and the type of material that you are trying to smelt.

  I spread my fingers out before me, trying to visualise my newfound power coursing through them like some kind of devious supervillain – but physically I could see no difference. I felt the desire to be a lumberjack take another step back as a new desire started to burn away inside of me, the desire to smelt ore over and over till my fingers bled and although that may not sound like a particularly lovely choice, to me it had started to sound like heaven already.

  Without suitable ore to smelt however, there wasn’t much to be done. The last thing I did before heading to bed for the night was to ask Matuk if he was able to distinguish between stone and ore while he was mining. It came as a bit of a shock to me that at first he hadn’t known the difference, but after he’d gotten more used to it ‘or levelled up his skill’ I thought, he was able to separate any ore from the stone and leave it behind, as it wasn’t part of his remit to bring back with him – hence only having three pieces in the pile. To me this sounded like there would be a big old pile of ore just sitting there waiting to be collected, and after instructing Matuk to bring that pile straight to the camp before he continued mining his stone, I hit the hay.

  The next morning, I was very pleased to see that our food surplus had started to steadily grow day upon day, and if I wanted to I would be able to safely summon myself a new goblin or two. I thought hard about what our current goals were and decided that getting a labourer for Matuk was going to have to happen at some point, either to help him with his mining as I could already feel my insatiable desire to smelt burning away inside of me, or to otherwise haul his wares from his mining location back to our camp. With all that in mind I summoned a Goblin Worker.

  I made a mental note of the new settlement balances, that our maintenance level currently stood at thirty-six units of food but our generation had made it up to a whopping fifty-two – I still had some wiggle room before I’d need to look at addressing the food situation again.

  The new worker scurried off as I absent-mindedly pointed towards Matuk in a kind of ‘listen to that guy’ motion that was universally understood and I was so pleased when he came running right up to me no more than ten minutes later as I was about to make a start
on the day’s first tree, arms laden with blocks of stone about the size of regular house bricks.

  “Uk do good?” The goblin worker squeaked in an extraordinarily high voice as he dropped the pile inches from my cloth-wrapped feet. I really needed to do something about clothes at some point (I added that to the bottom of my mental to-do list).

  I picked up one of the stones and examined it closely. It was copper ore…’oh yes oh yes oh yes,’ my mind screamed as the desire to run to the smelter started to bubble away inside of me.

  “Uk, this is amazing! Can you get me some more?” I queried hopefully, which was answered with a grin, a nod, and a Buggs Bunny-esq bound away into the forest from whence he had appeared.

  I scooped up the ore, not placing any of it into my inventory – my arm carrying capacity much greater than the small goblins – and started to walk towards the pizza oven. It actually took some effort not to run, which meant that my walk was a little jerkier than I’d liked – the kind of walk you do in school when you’re finally allowed to leave for the day but the headmaster is right there watching you having just said ‘don’t run’.

  Ten pieces. I had ten pieces of lovely lovely copper ore to play with. All mine! I wasted no time in placing the first piece into the fire.

  I watched the flames dance around the piece of ore, turning a slightly greener hue than they’d been previously as they worked to release the metal from its encasing chaff. I watched and watched, completely mesmerised by the fire until I finally received the new message indicating that I’d had a new piece of metal to collect. Without stopping to read it I happily placed the next piece of ore into the fire with a smile.