GrainfieldsDay 15 of the Grainworks Initiative
When Mark woke up, he went and grabbed his horse and headed to Wayrest. He figured he would eat breakfast there at the inn. He had not been there since the early days of when it was created, and he was interested to see what had changed now that real people lived there. Mark took the road out of Beaver Crossing that headed north to Southgate. As he traveled, he was surprised by how much had changed in just a few weeks.
The first time he visited Grainfields, there was only wheat to see in every place they looked. As he traveled, he could see that there were big chunks of the wild grain that had been cut out, farm plots now existed, fences were around fields, and multiple types of crops were growing. No one was yet growing grain, as they had more than they could deal with now, but it was interesting to see the variety of plants even if Mark could not identify their types.
The roads were busy; he passed many different wagons that were either coming from or going to Beaver Crossing. When he finally got to Southgate, he saw that they had moved the fence out and added a few more warehouses and a couple more cabins and longhouses; he would not be surprised if it was ready to be classified now as a village rather than just an outpost. He pulled out a slip of paper and made a note to talk to the council about that when he was back.
Mark continued to follow the road north on its way to Forest’s Rest and even thought about stopping there but did not want distractions today, as he really wanted to see what this new school Emily started would have as skill offerings. He needed a break from the grind he had been following and to do something fun, so his hope was for skills that sounded fun to be on offer.
When Wayrest finally came into sight, he was amazed at how much bigger the place was now than when he and Garrick staked out the original outpost. The original plans had been for a couple of bunkhouses and some cabins as overflow for the cave. But what he saw was different from what he expected. The cave was busy and noisy, with huge crowds always gathered outside talking. This place was quiet and lived-in.
The smell here was different from what he had been accustomed to. The Grainfields did not smell this way, and even Forest’s Rest smelled different; it was surrounded by trees, and their scent filled the air. This place had a marsh practically in its backyard, and that gave a different earthy smell he was not used to but enjoyed.
He could see people walking around and working on tasks. He saw someone putting things on drying racks, which he was familiar with from his time with Dale in the early days of Forest’s Rest. He saw a woman tending a small garden and many buildings whose purpose he was not sure of, as they were new since he had been here last. Being hungry, he headed for the inn to both secure a room and get a late breakfast.
Mark was about two-thirds of the way through breakfast when he saw Emily come in, and when she saw him, she turned in his direction and came over and sat down at his table. She waved to the waitress and ordered some breakfast and then turned to him to talk.
Emily said, "Mark, I am glad you got here. It was better than I had guessed it could be. I got the school started and already have six people enrolled and working on at least one skill each.”
Mark said, “That is great. Send me an invitation, and you will have a seventh person.”
Emily sent the invite and said, "Don't go signing up for skills yet. I want to take you around and show you a few things before you pick your first skills.”
Mark said, "I won't even open the menu until you're done showing me around. How about that?"
Emily said, “Sounds great.”
Mark and Emily finished eating, and then she took him for a tour around the outpost. They visited Hazel, who was the lady he had seen at the garden. They stopped and chatted.
Emily said, “Hello, Hazel. This is Mark; he came to try out our new school, and I am showing him around before I let him sign up for some skills.”
Hazel said, “Oh great, depending on which one you pick, you might be back to talk to me. We have set aside some of the plots for students that have skills requiring them; if you end up with one, just come back by.”
Emily then walked Mark outside the fence and near the marsh, stopping to look at two plants growing beside the water.
Emily said, “I started one of the skills yesterday and had to come identify plants; these are a couple that I learned about yesterday. Depending on the skill you pick, we might be out here doing this again for real.”
Emily then led him back into the outpost and towards the herb shop, where he was introduced to Ellis, the shop owner, who spent a few minutes showing him around the shop. Then Emily excused them and headed past the local clinic, where he met Miriam, who ran the place. After a short tour, he followed her past the herb racks and was introduced to a number of others when they finally returned to the inn.
Emily said, “Okay, now you need to go look at all the skills and pick some to work on.”
Mark opened the school interface and found the list.
[Wayrest School]
CoreBasic EducationTeaching
ElectivesHerbalismAlchemyMedicineGardeningForestry
After looking over the names, he already knew what Basic Education and Teaching offered so he skipped them and then opened each of the five electives.
Herbalism
UnlockedHerbalism Level 1Herb Identification Level 1
LockedMedicinal PreparationHerb CultivationPoison RecognitionHerbal Extraction
Alchemy
UnlockedAlchemy Level 1Reagent Preparation Level 1
LockedHealing InfusionsAcid PreparationOil DistillationCatalyst Mixing
Medicine
UnlockedStolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.First Aid Level 1Patient Care Level 1
LockedWound TreatmentBone SettingInfection ControlEmergency Medicine
Gardening
UnlockedGardening Level 1Soil Preparation Level 1
LockedSeed SavingCompostingIrrigationGreenhouse Cultivation
Forestry
UnlockedForestry Level 1Tree Identification Level 1
LockedSustainable HarvestingForest ManagementSap CollectionTimber Selection◈ ◈ ◈
Mark loved the choices offered here. Not because he knew any of them but because he did not. He was an engineer by trade, and knowing how things work was fun to learn. His eyes first locked onto Alchemy. He wanted to start there, but he was smart enough to realize that until he knew how to grow and harvest plants, there would not be much useful for him to make unless he bought everything. That would ruin it as a hobby, so he skipped Alchemy for now.
After looking over the screen for a full ten minutes, he selected Herbalism first. He did not know much about plants, and if he wanted to do something eventually with alchemy, that was the key.
[Lesson Generated]
Herbalism Level 1
Requirements
Correctly identify ten different useful wild plants.Properly harvest five herbs without damaging the parent plant.Correctly explain the primary use of three harvested herbs to a certified teacher◈ ◈ ◈
Next he looked down and picked Gardening. He knew that if you wanted good plants, you probably needed to grow your own, and he had seen what Mara had grown in her garden, and it was completely amazing, so Mark next chose Gardening.
[Lesson Generated]
Gardening Level 1
Requirements
Prepare a small garden plot for planting.Successfully transplant five herbs or useful plants.Demonstrate proper watering and care until the plants become established◈ ◈ ◈
He continued looking at the list and found the next one he wanted and picked Herb Identification. To his utter disappointment, he did not get a lesson but an error message indicating that he already had three skills in progress: Riding, Herbalism, and Gardening. He would have to cancel one before choosing another. Mark decided that the system would not let you run around to ten schools and work on a ton of skills at the same time. He figured that was fair and closed the screen.
When he was finished picking, he went and found Emily and showed her the skills he had picked and what he needed to do. She congratulated Mark on his choices and let him know that she had also picked those same two skills and already was working on them too. She then took Mark to find Elira, a herbalist she had met, to take him to the marsh and identify plants.
Elira looked over his list and said she would help him work on three of the tasks.
Correctly identify ten different useful wild plants.Properly harvest five herbs without damaging the parent plant.Successfully transplant five herbs or useful plants.
As they walked toward the marsh, Mark asked, “So, Elira, how did you become a herbalist?”
Elira said, “My team at the cave kept running into plant monsters, plants, and moss, and we did not know what to do with them, so we never collected them. We were talking to a team that just got back and found out that the system gave more in credits for some of the plants than the entire amount our team got in a full run. That’s when I decided plants were cool. I gained a few skills, and then when Level 8 rolled around, I got offered Herbalist, and I took it. Still trying to figure out what to do with it but having fun, and my plants help others.”
Elira started by leading him through the marsh, exploring and looking for plants. As they went, for each plant she found, she identified it for him and then explain a few important facts about it and a few uses that it had in medicine, food, or alchemy. They spent over three hours walking around. There were a few items she would pull up, explain they were edible, and have him eat them.
After the third nasty-tasting plant, he passed on the rest of her taste tests. Mark was pretty sure that she pointed out way more than twenty plants and herbs, and he could not remember them all, but eventually he could consistently identify ten different wild plants and was happy that his skill was checked off.
Next, she went and found wild herbs. He had to harvest five without damaging the parent plant, but before Mark knew it, he had seventeen different herbs in his inventory, and that skill also was marked complete. The last thing she did was pull out five small pots and hand them over.
They then went back, and she made Mark pick five that he wanted to transplant. The first one went well, but he mangled the roots of the next two, and he was told by Elira they were no good now, so he just harvested what he could and continued on. He had killed more than ten before he finally had five living plants that he could transplant to the garden.
Elira took him back to the inn and told him to keep an eye out for rare things. Pick them or, better yet, take cuttings or full plants that could be transplanted; she would pay well for anything new, rare, or different that he could find. It was more than an hour after lunchtime, so Mark gently put his five plants down and then went into the inn and got lunch.
After lunch he picked up his five plants and went to find Hazel in the garden. He showed her the tasks he had to do, and she found a good spot with just the right amount of sun and presented it to him as his plot to use as long as he was enrolled in Emily’s school. Mark thought he was done and went to grab his plants and plant them when Hazel stopped him.
Hazel said, “There are rules in the garden. Rule one, no picking or stepping on someone else's plants. Make sure you're careful and always have a clear spot to walk and turn and respect the others. Rule two, keep your spot clear of weeds. This world lets plants grow crazy fast and weeds even faster keep all weeds out of the garden. Oh yeah, and rule three, you must have fun.”
Mark laughed, “I am all about having fun. I am here to have a break and relax and learn something new and fun, so I am all over rule three.”
Mark thought he was done, but instead Hazel went around the garden, pointing out others' plots, how some of them planted things in clumps, others in rows, and some so haphazardly that Mark could not see a reason behind it. Finally, Mark stopped her.
Mark said, “Why is that one so disorganized?"
Hazel said, “Do you think plants only grow in a straight line or a clump?"
Mark said, “You have a good point.”
In the end she showed him where the community tools were stored, including buckets, wheelbarrows, extra soil, and even locations to dump unwanted or bad plants for compost. He thought he would never get to plant his five plants. But she finally left him to do his thing. Mark planted them all over the place just to mess with the next student to see the garden.
When Hazel walked by later, she burst out laughing, looking at his placement. He just smiled and checked his lesson progress again. He still needed to identify plants for a teacher; he would talk to Emily later about that one, and he still had to water and properly care for the plants until they were established, whatever that meant.
Going back to Hazel, she explained that plants in this world grow crazy fast if they're tended to regularly. She gave an example that if someone planted a seed and visited it once a day, the seed would grow fast. Visit it three times a day, and it grows five times as fast. If you spent the whole day with it, you could almost have a fully grown plant when you were done.
Hazel then gave Mark a dozen different plant species, three or four of each type. Not telling him what they were, she wanted him to experience them without knowing beforehand what they grew into. As he planted them, he thought about this garden. Would he be able to visit it enough to make it grow fast, or would it take weeks to grow what he wanted?
He spent the next few hours until dark tending to his garden. He was mildly surprised when almost every seed he had planted had bloomed. This was going to be fun. When he got back to his cabin in a few days, he was going to plant a garden and see if he had a green thumb or was too busy to get things to grow. He stayed in the garden until people started to put candles out around the village and then finally went to the inn for dinner and bed.