Engineered Magic

Alex

Grandmother cleared out a nest of spiders in a multi-room suite, with a couple casts of chain lightning. Alex wasn’t certain what tier the spell was, but it jumped to at least six targets. This was the first room that made Alex think twice about coming out here alone. Grandmother negated the threat in a few seconds. Usually she made sure the rest of the team did most of the fighting. She called it gaining experience. This trip she treated the animals as a nuisance that just needed to be disposed of.

The main room looked like it contained the remnants of high desks, or tables in two rows. One of the desks along the left wall appeared to be intact. After confirming the room was clear, Alex and Grandmother headed directly over to it. A variety of stuff covered the surface of the desk. Mixed in with chunks of glass, stone and slivers of metal was a set of needle nose pliers. Alex knew they were pliers from his time doing maintenance chores on the Speedwell. He couldn’t remember seeing a set in the structure before. He wondered which crafting tree used them.

“Look at that,” Grandmother declared.

“What type of crafter uses them?” Alex asked.

“Them?” Grandmother asked.

“The pliers,” Alex replied, thinking that was obvious. He pointed at the tool in the pile of metal filings.

“Oh,” Grandmother said, as if what he said was a revelation, “the pliers.” She shifted her gaze and Alex realized that for once he saw something before Grandmother did. “Metal workers,” Grandmother replied. “I think they use them to work with wire. They are rare.” She reached out to snag the pliers and slip them the collection bag she was using for small tools. She started picking up the bits of glass and stone and putting them into another bag. “Ellen might be able to do something with these stones with her new stone crafting tools,” Grandmother commented. “There was a prize altar a couple rooms back, I’m going to check if this glass is scrap.”

“Wait,” Alex said, “what were you talking about?”

“The workbench,” Grandmother said. “I haven’t seen this design before. I think this top might be made out of ceramic.”

Alex took another look at the ‘workbench’. The structure was made out of dark iron, but the surface was a bright white. Alex felt the surface, it was cool to the touch like stone or glass. He thought it might be ceramic. There was ceramic integrated into some of the abstract sculptures that appeared in galleries or grand staircases. It did resemble that.

“That might be another surface over there in the corner, so maybe we can piece together another one,” Grandmother observed.

“Piece together?” Alex asked.

“Yep,” Grandmother said. “I was hoping we would find a complete example so this is perfect. It is time for your modular lesson.” Grandmother dug around in the remnants of a couple other tables before she came up with a length of iron tubing. “Here we go,” she said. She went back to the workbench and knelt down in front of it. She waved Alex over to take a look. She rotated the tubing in her hand and held it up next to the brace between the front and back legs. They were identical.

“Huh,” Alex said. “So this table is put together from parts?” he said.

“Yep!” Grandmother replied. “Once you have a pattern you can build it out of any of the materials. There are about twenty or thirty parts in the set. Some of them are so rare they are almost unique, like the top on this workbench. The hardest common ones to find are actually the small bits, because they do convert to scrap so they have the longer respawn timer. Interestingly enough a complete unit like this usually shows up on the base Furniture time table, even though parts of it will convert to scrap.”

Grandmother stood back up and ran her hand across the surface. “This is a real find.” She did some quick math in her head. “If I were you I wouldn't accept less than seven or eight silver for it.”

“That is almost the rent on the shop for a month,” Alex said with some surprise.

“Think of it this way, there are probably about fifty tier two or higher crafters in the square. The workbench will last them about 3 years, call it 36 rent payments on the shop, or 360 silver. If we divide 360 by fifty, we get 7 silver and 10 iron,” Grandmother explained.

“That seems too high to me,” Alex responded. “You're telling me, to price it like it is the only thing I will ever sell to a crafter.”

“Yes,” Grandmother responded, “because it might be. Obviously this is your shop, so you get to decide. It also might not sell at all. I priced each item like it was the only thing I sold and I expected each buyer would get a replacement in a year. My prices ended up way too low. Especially when you consider you actually need more than the rent. You need money to pay your workers. If you are doing it yourself you need to pay for your room and board, since all your time is spent gathering stock or minding the store. You don’t have time to make money another way. When I price it just for rent, I am assuming you will find other items that will also sell to cover all those additional expenses.

“This one ends up especially high because I think the audience for it is small. Your chair I would price differently. There are about 800 residents in Home Square. For every adult there are a couple children. So we can consider there are about 270 adults. Each one could buy a chair. So 360 divided by 270 is….one silver twelve iron, I think. Now since it is a unique piece, and after the remodel you might never find it again, I might double that.”

Alex thought about his chair. Could he part with that for only one silver twelve iron? He wasn’t certain he could. Maybe he would feel differently after he collected several of them.

“If something didn’t sell I lowered the price if I ended up with four or more of them. Towards the end I realized that if I couldn’t keep the item in stock I needed to raise the price on it. I should have done that earlier,” Grandmother commented. “I did it on the unique pieces, but I never really kept track of how fast the modular stuff went out. I should have. If you sell more than one six days, it is the same as not being able to keep it in stock.”

“What about the type of material it is made out of?” Alex asked. “Shouldn’t that be a factor in pricing?”

“Yes, now you’re thinking. If you can offer the same item in iron, steel and bronze you should mark them up for each material type. You can go check how much more the blacksmith wants for a steel spear versus an iron one. People love wood. I would charge more for wood than steel,” Grandmother observed.

“This is getting complicated,” Alex murmured.

“Ha!” Grandmother laughed, “That is why I came up with my simple ‘divide the rent by how many I might sell’ method to determine the price. Don’t worry about it for now,” Grandmother said. “Let's go through this suite and gather up all the parts we can find. I’ll show you how to take this table apart for transport. We can head back after that. I think it will take multiple trips.”

Alex agreed. They split up to cover the different rooms in the suite.

“This is the best room ever!” Grandmother called from a tiny room in the back of the suite. Alex rushed over to find Grandmother beaming at the cracked and dirty remnants of what looked like a mop bucket.

“You want that?” Alex asked with a shutter. He knew what it was from his time on the Speedwell. The ship was occupied by an army of little crawling robots that cleaned the floors of everyday dirt. Alex learned about mops and mop buckets when someone didn’t warn him of the ‘outside the structure’ experience of a ‘hangover’. Grandmother handed a mop to him and told him his mess was too much for the floor cleaners. He now held a firm rule not to drink on the Speedwell.

“You don’t realize how rare they are,” Grandmother declared. “I gathered furniture for years before I found one.” She flipped the bucket over. Four caster wheels were revealed underneath. She twisted, pushed, twisted and pulled the first wheel free. She held it up in the air triumphantly. “With this we can make a cart,” she announced. One of four didn’t roll quite as smoothly as the other three. A quick clean spell from Grandmother fixed that problem.

Grandmother left the rest of the suite to him, while she went out and picked through the parts they collected and left in front of the last three or four rooms. They were still in the same hallway they followed from the back gate of Home Square. They traveled down several jogs in its path so the guards couldn’t see them anymore. The structure loved to put small offsets into the hallways so the player couldn't see very far. That way danger could have an easier time catching a player unaware.

“This isn’t the optimal solution,” Grandmother said, “but it will work.” She set twelve pieces of steel tubing out and four sheets of iron. She walked him through how to align the pieces and click them together. The wheels clicked in through a set of holes in the tubes. She used the sheets to form a kind of deck on the platform. There weren't enough sheets to cover the entire platform and they weren’t locked down. There was a special piece that would clamp the sheets into place. They found some earlier but there weren’t any in the near piles.

When the cart was finished, they went back into the room and deconstructed the workbench. Grandmother tied the bundle of pieces that formed it together. “Believe me this will help when we put it back together. Knowing exactly what pieces you need is half the battle,” Grandmother commented.

They loaded the cart. They put the two ceramic bench tops on first. They covered the hole left by the missing iron sheets completely. Grandmother laughed, remarking that she wasted her time with the iron decking. They set the tied bundle of parts on the cart against the vertical riser for the handle. They loaded everything else with less care. They started rolling the cart in the direction of the square, loading each pile as they passed it.

They cleared the chair room again when they reached it. It was refilled with four badgers in their absence. The pile of ‘stuff’ on the cart was getting rather large. Grandmother added uprights along the edge to help stabilize the load. Alex carried the chair in his off hand instead of trusting it to the load. Grandmother tied the badgers to the top to keep them from sliding off.

The cart was difficult to push by the time they loaded the last pile onto it. The guards at the gate watched their approach with a keen interest. Alex saw the hungry looks they were casting his chair.

They rolled the cart down the back hallway, around the corner and into his shop. Alex was grateful Grandmother told him to get the shop closest to the back door.

“I think we need to bring less back next time,” Alex commented as he surveyed the load. He carefully set his chair down in a corner of the showroom.

“There is definitely a lot more usable stuff here than around Londontown,” Grandmother commented. “Let’s sort the pieces by type as we unload them.”

Alex agreed and they started taking pieces off the cart. They stacked the tubes into separate piles in a line across the floor, roughly from the longest to the smallest. A second line held the sheets in different widths and lengths. When they got down to the tied bundle, Grandmother sorted it out onto the floor in a completely different section. Together they picked out another set of pieces that duplicated the first set. With a lot of trial and error, Alex put the original set back together, while Grandmother put together a copy from the gathered pieces. When they were done, Grandmother cast clean on each of them.

The white tops shimmered, while the black iron supports almost absorbed the light. Alex could see the beauty in them. Alex couldn’t tell the difference between the one they found complete and the one they assembled.

“Although unique pieces are nice, these modular pieces are completely functional. I think you could replace that workbench top with two of the shelves. There would be a seam in the middle, but it would work. I built desks that way and no one ever complained.”

“Is that what these other flat pieces are?” Alex asked. “Shelves?”

“Let me show you,” Grandmother said. She started pulling out parts.

Grandmother headed out for a late lunch leaving Alex to look over his new stock. She promised to help him out with how to use the shop interface later. Grandmother showed him how to put together shelves, benches, low tables and a desk, (with a seam in the top). She made a chair frame, which she said was what she started with to make the stuffed green chair in Londontown. She only made it after Alex asked. She warned him again how she hadn’t been able to sell it. When he asked why she replied, “It has too much real cost in it. I paid for yards of integrated cloth, integrated leather for the seat and back supports and fiber debris for the stuffing. You would not believe how much fiber debris it takes to stuff a chair. I used all integrated products to increase its lifespan, but it ended up with a cost greater than crafted furniture. If I sold it for less people would just take it apart for the scrap value. Giving scrap away was not the point. If you buy some rope I can show you how to weave a seat and backrest onto it. It doesn’t look as nice, but it is functional.”

With all the parts now laid out, she turned their jury rigged cart into a beautiful finished product. Everything but the cart were copies of things she found in the structure before.

“I’ve seen people make all kinds of stuff out of them that they just made up, but I was never that inventive,” Grandmother admitted.

Alex carried all the extra components through the workroom door and laid them out on the floor there. He needed to come up with a shelving or container system to hold them. The stockrooms on the Speedwell were equipped like that. He would put something together from the parts. He was surprised at how many components Grandmother’s constructions used. There was still an overabundance of some pieces while there was nothing left of others.

Alex rearranged the pieces until the display pleased him.

He loaded the six badgers onto his cart and rolled them over to the leatherworker where he sold the hides. He took the skinned carcasses over to the butcher. Normally he would now be sweaty and covered in blood. He tapped out the cleaning spell on his cart and the steel of its construction shined. It was still built with dark iron sheets on the top, but there were now enough of them to perfectly cover the area and they were locked into place.

Ellen caught him rolling the cart back in the direction of his shop.

“Where did you get that?” Ellen demanded. “Although with wheels that small it won’t be easy to get up the stairs…” Ellen mumbled.

“Grandmother put it together to help haul back inventory for my shop,” Alex responded.

“Your shop?” Ellen asked in a shocked voice. In her mind only crafters rented shops. The only thing she’d ever seen Alex craft was a pan flute out of reeds.

“I decided to sell found furniture,” Alex explained. “I rented a space over by the back door.”

“You have a space already?” Ellen asked, surprised again. “Can I see it?”

“Sure,” Alex replied. He rolled his cart forward. He was a little insulted by the small wheels comment. It rolled forward silently across the smooth floors with very little effort. He knew how much load it could carry and that was impressive. He loved this cart. He opened the door to his shop and pulled it in behind him. Ellen helped steer it from behind so it cleared the door. Alex parked the cart by the shop counter as Ellen looked over his little furniture display.

“You have so much!” she exclaimed. She ran her fingers across the desk surface, trying to feel the seam she could see. The fit was so tight it was barely noticeable. She pushed on the side of a set of shelves. It stood firm. She moved around a bench that was put together with wooden planks over an iron frame. Ellen reached one of the workbenches. Alex put them at the back, one on each side.

She tapped the surface as if trying to decide what the top was made out of. She pumped against it judging how solid it was. She stood directly in front of it and set her hands on the top surface as she considered the height.

“How much do you want for this one?” Ellen asked. Alex looked at his friend and teammate. The crafter of their party. She was trying hard to keep a straight face, but he could see the desire in her eyes. He couldn’t charge her for it.

“Consider it a gift,” Alex said. He could always sell the other one.

“No, Alex,” Ellen said, her face serious. “Let me give you some advice. Gifts are fine, for family, at celebrations or times of need out in the wild. But every cra… shopkeeper,” Ellen said as she shook off her prejudiced belief that all shopkeepers were crafters, “will tell you, once it is in the shop the only way it leaves is if someone buys it. So how much do you want?”

“7 silver 10 iron,” Alex announced. Ellen was looking at him like she was daring him to give too low of a price so that she could correct him again. Under the pressure of her disapproval Grandmother’s value slipped out before he could think about it.

Ellen gave him a quick nod of approval. She turned and considered the piece. “I’ll take it,” she announced. She turned to look at him with a carefully blank expression. “Do you deliver?” Alex looked closely at the crafter, but he couldn’t read anything beneath her trading face. Although the fact she was using it meant she thought they were still negotiating, even though she didn’t make a counter offer on the price. He remembered her comment about his cart not going up stairs well. She didn’t know he could take the workbench apart to make it easier to move. The thick ceramic top was heavy. Grandmother moved the tops around easily enough, but Alex felt their weight. Ellen and Sarah’s place was two flights up above the courtyard.

“Yes,” Alex said with a smile, “for the low service charge of 21 iron.” That was three iron per silver which worked out to about a 8 percent markup. He picked that number because it was easy to calculate.

Ellen smiled and clapped her hands. “That was great,” she said quickly. “You learn fast. You need to premise that with the constraint that you only deliver within the square. You never know when some crazy person will show up and expect delivery to Chicago.”

“Has that really happened?” Alex asked.

“I don’t know,” Ellen replied. “It is what my father told me once.” She stepped away from the workbench and headed in the direction of the shop counter. “I'll take delivery too,” she said.

“Umm,” Alex said following it over. “I haven’t actually entered the inventory yet. Grandmother said she’d come by later to help with that.”

“No need to bother her,” Ellen responded. “I used to do it for my father in his shop all the time. I will show you how.”