The Power of Ten

She didn’t know what the odds were that she’d be brought back to a life on a farm in Idaho, of all places, but just counted her blessings and got to playing the precocious yet very serious little sister.

She had been bluntly told what would happen to her when she reached the age for the Hag Curse. Hag transformations weren’t just of the mind, but the body. So she’d get a static equivalent of whatever a Rantha Hag was, probably get somewhat older, have the exact same physical ability scores all of them did, and pick up those Class Levels.

So, any Class Levels she picked up should not be those, although that was pretty hard, as those were the Combat Classes she definitely wanted... but at the same time, she wasn’t exactly fighting anything, so the need for them wasn’t there.

No Psychic Warrior here, either...

Thus, her choice to focus on was Rune Chemist and Rune Smith. It gave her access to Weird Science, which could be nothing but helpful to her family.

Her choice would have utterly shocked her parents, who naturally had no clue that one of their kids was taking Class Levels like that. There was no knowledge of the Forsaken here, and the non-magical Weird Science variants were unknown. Runesmiths were what most people called dwarven and gnomish Artificers.

One of the things she was doing was pushing her siblings into Forsaken, denying the magic that was useless to them, strengthening their willpower, raising their pride in what they could do, instead of what they couldn’t.

They were already a farming family, coming from the salt of the earth. None of them had been born Powered, of course. Everyone was tested, and while it was a great thing for a child to be born with Powered potential, there was a lot of training and expectations for them, too. They became the special people, and everyone else became everyone else.

But the world didn’t run without normal folks. A Cleric might bless the fields, but they wouldn’t take the time to plant or harvest all of them themselves. They still needed hands and people to do so... and technology didn’t need magic to do what it had to do. Indeed, it could be said that magic spurred technology on in many ways, as proud and smart people who couldn’t use magic exerted themselves all the more to find alternatives to it.

Her parents were good, steadfast, hard-working people, working the farm and the food that was sorely needed, what with the Haze’s cloud having a definite negative effect on how well all plants grew, not just crops.

Naturally her parents noticed how smart she was, but she wasn’t Powered, and never would be, so being so bright didn’t mean becoming a wizard, just maybe an engineer, or doctor... until she disliked going to school so much because it was boring that she was officially home-schooled, always passed the tests with ease, and just worked around the farm doing stuff.

Her father Darrin was bemused when she starting working around with his father’s smithing stuff, but his amusement became interest, and then gratification as she started making stuff. He became even more interested when she bought a basic chemistry set with the money she made from making custom chicken coops for other farmers around the place, repairing tractor parts, and otherwise fixing stuff on the side.

She also made really nice knives on that old forge. Watching a kid pounding away with a hammer at her age was really strange, but she could do the work, and if she needed some real muscle, she just got her dad, Josiah, or one of the farmhands to work with her.

----

“What’s the problem, Mom? You look very tired.”

Karen Piotrowski looked up as her precocious daughter sat down across from her, and sighed despite herself as those blue eyes regarded her calmly.

Her daughter was very smart, she knew it for a fact. She breezed through textbooks in no time at all, and then never touched them again. ‘Home-schooling’ her little Samantha meant dropping her off at the library early in the day on Monday and picking her up in the late afternoon, while the rest of the week she spent working around the farm on little projects that somehow managed to make money for the family.

Why someone so good at numbers had no ability on computers, definitely the wave of the future, was mystifying, but the computer always seemed to fritz up when she was working on it, so the rest of the family had come to an agreement that she was to stay away from it and any video games, lest Zombie Raid II burn out and no one be able to play.

“The numbers are bad this year. If we don’t have a good harvest, we might have to sell the farm.”

Samantha’s eyes narrowed, and Karen was startled to find that she’d actually said that. “Which numbers? Is that prick Johnson at the Bank overcharging for the financing loan again, or did the prices of the seed and fertilizer go up?”

Karen paused, unsure how to answer an eight-year old being so serious. “Both,” she admitted, and not quite believing herself, waved her daughter over next to her. Samantha grabbed her PB&J sandwich, ignored the jelly at the corners of her mouth, and munching it happily, scampered over to look over the paperwork.

Karen was surprised that she didn’t have to do much of anything, or explain much. Chomping away messily at her sandwich with one hand, Samantha went through the paperwork one by one, reading them all very quickly, little fingers lingering on some numbers that she scowled at.

“I had Nancy look up the rates online. He’s a percent over baseline. It’s time to get a new banker, and spread the word. He’s padding his feathers at our expense, Mama, because he’s the only farm lender in the valley. If I can get another lender, would you be willing to move your business?”

Karen eyed her daughter, as usual not knowing what to make of her. A little girl who could shoe horses so easily, and do long division in her head, and read through a history book faster than she could... having a daughter this smart was intimidating.

But it was also something that benefited the whole family.

“Yes,” she agreed. “What about the feed and fertilizer?”

“Let me check the prices with Nancy, and see how much it would cost to get them shipped in. Big fat Glocken’s been squeezing the farmers at the granary for years, too, so he can go gamble it away at the Indian casino. If we can get a couple cars in on the train from downstate, all we’d have to do is find a way to unload them fast, and we’re good, right?”

“If the money works out...” she trailed off.

“As for the fertilizer... Mama, there’s another way, but I’ll need all the kids for it, and it’ll take me a bit.”

“Oh?” Karen blinked at her daughter. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s a way to make Light-Capturing Fertilizer using Natural Alchemy, not the finger-wiggle stuff of the Powered.” Her jelly-smeared mouth emphasized her disdain. “It takes time, and a bunch of flowers and weeds and grass and stuff, which all has to be collected by hand, and I’d have to carve out the patterns for it on the flat rock in the back twenty. But if we do it, it should improve the yield by fifty percent when mixed in with any basic fertilizer, not just the chemical-laden stuff they are using for fighting insects.”

“If it’s a bad year for bugs...” Karen hesitated.

“Then it won’t matter what pesticides get used. Make the plants stronger, they fight the bugs themselves.”

“What do you need to do?” Karen finally asked.

“We have to gather up a bunch of green plants from the wild, lay them out on the formation to soak up light as they dry, then mortar them to pulp, mix it in with the fertilizer, and let the Natural Alchemy do its thing.” Samantha sounded very sure of herself.

“Does it work like the Blessing of the clerics of Flora?” Karen pressed.

“They are completely different things,” Samantha shook her head, blonde locks flying. “So, they will work together. Have the Cleric do it later in the season to ward off any bugs, and we’ll be fine. Just buy the basic fertilizer.” Sama beamed. “We’ll have a very good year, Mama!”

Karen just shook her head, and dared to hope. “Show me this miracle recipe, and I’ll do what I can.”

-----

Idaho was hill and mountain country, so plugs of rock coming to the surface were anything but unusual. There was a section of windswept stone at the back end of the property where nothing was growing, with lots of exposure to the sky.

Sama took Bowser out there to stand guard on a cold and blustery day, the old dog still faithfully happy to accompany her around and make sure nothing snuck up on her as she worked.

She dropped her pack to the ground, and brought out the hammer and chisels that she had made for herself, the Runes she had oh-so-carefully pounded into them glowing slightly if you had The Sight to see magic. She paced out what she had to draw and where, smiled as she sat down, and with focus completely out of the norm for her age, began to chip and chisel at the gray stone slowly and carefully.

The +2 Bonus from the basic Bloodbond Runes was all she needed to reach QL 20...

------

It took her four days to carve out the Pattern, marking it off with chalk and gradually extending it out. She didn’t smooth out the surfaces at all, as marring them was not in accordance with Natural Alchemy, and this thing had to charge itself up. So, no matter how irregular the stone was, she compensated and kept going.

The field trip that weekend was a little weird, but when their mother told them they were gathering things for some alchemy, all the kids were very attentive and willing to help.

They had to gather as many different kinds of wild-growing plants as possible, or at least parts of them, and nothing could be more than a tenth of what they gathered. Weeds, flowers, vines, leaves, tubers, ferns, pine cones... it was all good, all usable, but it all had to be harvested by hand for the alchemy to work.

It took longer than they thought to fill up the bushel bags with stuff, and they actually went to three different places to make sure they had enough greenery, before driving home and shaking out everything on top of the stone that Sama had carved up. Nobody had really seen what she was doing out there, as it looked pretty boring and she hadn’t asked for help, and they all kind of gawked at the circles and Runes that seemed to hold a quiet, flowing power in them.

The picked plants and parts were scattered all over the stone as evenly as possible, and then a cheap fishing net was used to hold it all down against the wind.

“How long should we wait?” Darren Piotrowski asked, not knowing quite what to feel about all this.

“How much extra sunlight do you want the crops to get, Papa? An extra month? Two?” Sama asked.

He thought seriously about that, looking up at the ever-hazy sky. A month’s extra time worth of light? Two?

“We don’t have two months to work with. Let’s figure a month.”

“Okay. I’ll get the mortars and pestles ready to grind everything. That is gonna suck the most, as we gotta mash and cut and crush all that stuff up to like porridge, then mix it in with the fertilizer. But the effect will be amazing!”

Her mom and dad looked at her, remembered the intricate circles and carvings in the stone, which had definitely held some sort of power in them, and chose to hope for the best.