greenpower | Rubilykskoye Inbox

Where you want to spend your time is none of my business.

Then I think we'll work well together.

Have you drawn up any plans for the settlement?

Not yet. We have some notes, but it was only fairly recently we narrowed down the construction site.

At this point, I'm trying to clear as much space as I can on my own.

[Unfortunately, there will have to be some traditional logging and clearing. Ivy doesn't like it, but if they can keep it to a minimum and make the thinning strategic, she's willing to accept it.]

Ah. Are you a druid?

[ They really haven't run across each other before. >> ]

Like, new age-y pagan environmentalism?

Er...like druids. People who draw their magical abilities from nature?

Not magic powers. I have... you could say a spiritual connection to the collective consciousness of all plant life.

...I see.

[ That still sounds like something in Keyleth's bag of tricks, but it's not like Percy would really know, would it? (And Keyleth isn't limited to the plants anyway.) ]

Well - that must be rather helpful right now. Do you need any assistance with the clearing?

Can you make trees uproot and move to new locations?

No, unfortunately - I don't work with magic.

I'll focus on clearing for now. I know we'll need to chop down some of the trees, but we can do that after I do what I do.

[Okay, Ivy, play nice.]

Do you have any plans in mind? An idea how much space we'll need to start.

That depends entirely on what you hope to gain from this endeavour - how self-sufficient you expect to be, how many people you'll have with you, and so on.

[ He's content to leave the actual forest-clearing to her, after all - that's nowhere close to his forte. But she has, unfortunately, woken the desire to talk a great deal about the sorts of things he finds interesting, and that is among his strengths. ]

At bare minimum, we'll need shelter, storage for food, and access to clean water. In theory, you could start with a single building and expand from there. But if you've got grander plans than that, we'll want to account for the basic tasks of a small village. I'd imagine a blacksmith's [ of course he would ], stables, a carpenter's, healers of some sort, homes for people living there all the time...and whatever other industries you expect to see. I haven't visited the region, but I understand it's a different sort of environment?

Very different biomes in almost every respect. Normally I'd say they shouldn't even be next to one another. The village and most of the surrounding region at least seem to be northern mixed deciduous and coniferous forest, and the "jungle" is subtropical and tropical broad leaf forest.

[He's not the only one who likes to talk about his special interests.]

Though both of them have some notable deviations from normal presentation. The environments around here are definitely not entirely natural. A lot of the plants growing side by side here shouldn't be on the same side of the planet in the wild.

[But here it is.]

Clean water is going to be the highest priority.

[ He follows along less out of knowledge and more out of respect for knowledge. Special interest game recognizes special interest game, even if that recognition isn't accompanied by total comprehension. (Total, he decides, isn't necessary. He needs to be able to keep up, and she can be in charge of glancing around an open space and spotting every plant that seems out of place.) ]

Do we have a source of potable water we can work with? Or will we need to locate one?

[ This isn't the first time he's missed Keyleth, but it's the first time he's missed her specifically for her knowledge of the natural world. ]

There's access to water—there's a stream nearby and the water table is high enough it shouldn't be hard to sink a well if we need, but potable water might be a stretch. I'd say it needs to be boiled if we don't want to get giardia at least.

[Excepting Ivy, who doesn't have to worry about that. Obviously.]

Some kind of filtration system is going to also be on the to-do list.

Hm.

[ He doesn't know giardia, but he does know he'd rather not get horribly sick in the jungle...or subsist off boiled water forever. ]

We'll have to do some experimentation - I've never tried to filter water. Are there methods used where you're from?

Some. I'd rather lean into physical filtration over chemical for, like, obvious reasons.

[She assumes it's obvious though.]

If there's a magical option, someone else will have to speak to that.

We'd have to solicit recommendations for anything magical.

[ Nothing chemical, he can work with. Make it magical, though, and he'll have to pass the project off to someone else.

Anyway, he's thinking back to home, what little he might know about water purification, but nothing in particular comes up. So he's limited to the theoretical possibilities, ways of ensuring good health in general. ]

If we passed the water through something else - say, charcoal or sand? - that might help. But we'll need a way of testing it for impurities first.

Charcoal filtration could work. I'm not sure what making them looks like with this tech level.

We can figure that out as soon as we have a way to tell if the water's likely to poison us. For that, we might need some magic.

Now that I can tell you, especially once I have a chance to get a lab set up.

Toxicology is my specialty.

Perfect.

[ That solves that problem. ]

In that case, as soon as we have water samples, I can begin testing our options.

Hm. Otherwise, getting an idea how many people are interested in staying full or part time, at least to start with. Then we'll have a better idea what we're looking for in terms of living accommodations and facilities.

That seems like it'd be best accomplished over the network, if we trust it for these purposes. [ A little wryly: ] And so far, we have.

[ They're talking through it, after all. ]

I can ask, if you'd prefer.

I am very happy to let someone take all of the public facing jobs.

[Ivy is not what one would call a people person.]

I can't imagine it being more than a dozen or so, especially at first.

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pathography - 2025-09-06 01:13 (UTC) - Expand

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greenpower - 2025-09-06 01:31 (UTC) - Expand