After all the earthquakes across Charon, some of the smaller villages on the border of Dragon’s Cradle and The Ash Lands have been particularly affected, especially with the continued volcanic activity spewing more ash into the air. It’s created plenty of problems for Sky Peak and Stormgale having to accept an influx of refugees, but the smaller villages could help support more people if they had the infrastructure.

Arriving in one of the outskirt villages with Blue Raspberry, Astrid surveys the area with Arcus and sees the caked ash everywhere. It makes it challenging for people to traverse the streets, and some of the already damaged buildings have started to buckle under the additional weight. There’s quite a lot of work that could be done here, and Astrid and Blue are here to help with it. They’re both plenty strong and capable of moving material, and this time Astrid brought a few blueprints along that she worked on with the civil engineer in Sky Peak. Plenty of supplies have already been sent ahead to help since Thadda has managed to stay on top of things around the region.

There’s a new task to accomplish this time, however: Astrid is going to tech Blue Raspberry how to build things with tools.

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SPOILER: Click to show

Quest Name: Rebuilding and Remodeling
Participants: Requires exactly two people (you and one other, if the other participant does not qualify, they will not gain the reward)
Location: Anywhere (Can be repeated for a different region)
Post Requirements: 5 post per person, 200 words per post
Reward: +10 Security for selected Region (+10 more if your home region)
Description: Defending and protecting your region is important, but so is ensuring your fellow citizens have a safe, dry and sturdy place to call home. You can help your region by lending your skills to our construction workers, carpenters and builders. Simply assist the region in its construction of infrastructure, defenses, or residencies to help increase the safety of the region.

Blue took one long, sweeping look across the village and could only think one thing: Wow, this place is ashy. It was even more ashy than the volcano they'd walked up with ash falling down from the sky like snow. It was ashier than the Ashlands, and that place was really ashy. It was like a heavy snowfall had coated the place, but the snow was all black and grey and not nearly as pleasant to play in. As people stepped across the ash caked on the road, a bit of it puffed back up into the air like small clouds of dust.

Blue and Astrid come here on a mission to do some rebuilding and repairing, but the first thing they'd need to do would be remove all of this ash that was in the way. It would take quite a while to clean all of it up. Some villagers were already out, trying to clear paths using shovels and brooms, cloths wrapped around their noses and mouths to keep from breathing it in.

Blue waited for Astrid to return to the entrance of the village with them after she surveyed a bit from the sky on Arcus. They reached behind their back and under their black-furred cloak and then pulled out a shovel from seemingly nowhere, handing it to Astrid.

"I think we need to do some cleaning first. We can probably get it done pretty quick! You know I'm great at getting rid of stuff. This should be easy." Blue smiled and gave a thumbs up, ready to start clearing away the ash the best way an ooze knew how.

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Space Pocket

Taking the shovel from Blue, Astrid smiles a bit. “Aye, yer good at gettin’ rid of stuff. We’ll clean up the road ta help move the supplies ta our work area then I’ll get ta showin’ ya how ta build somethin’ proper.” She taps her shovel against Blue’s armor gently, a little sound ringing out into the air. “Let’s get ta it!”

With that, Astrid starts scooping up piles of ash with her shovel and collecting them into a couple of pails. Whenever they find a moment, she quickly dumps it into a gap in Blue’s armor so they can eat all the ash they could ever want. Hopefully, everything inside of Blue doesn’t get totally covered in ash, but she’s not really sure how the inside of Blue works, and she’s not brave enough to try to get swallowed up to find out. Some of the villagers are confused when they notice pails of ash have been emptied, and they can’t find where exactly the ash went off to, but somehow Astrid manages to play it off that she and Wolfe are “awesome adventurers with all sortsa ways ta solve problems!”

Even if Astrid was up to trying to see what it was like inside the ooze, Blue wouldn't have wanted to risk it either. They didn't know what they'd do if they accidentally dissolved their best friend. Just thinking of the time Ceena had shoved one of Astrid' duplicates into the ooze with a kick scared them. What if that had been the real Astrid? What would they have told Cantio when they got home!? No, there was no way they'd ever try it. Everything that went in there still alive didn't stay that way. They knew from probably a bit too much experience than they'd care to admit, some of it accidental and some of it not. They still hadn't even told Astrid they ate an Origin Matter. Or some devils. Or some of that cursed tree...

Cleaning the ash up went quickly with the ash pails mysteriously being emptied somehow. Blue was enjoying themself. Soon, the roads were cleared well enough to haul the materials to the sites to build. Blue was ready to get to work learning about construction. They'd helped out on construction sites before, helping to build more housing in Sky Peak Village, but they'd just done heavy lifting mostly. They didn't do any of the skilled labor or detailed work. They left that to the experts before, but now it was time for the ooze to become the expert!

They found a private corner and changed into their construction worker's outfit, absorbing their ash-covered armor and donning some overalls and leather work boots and gloves with a white shirt.

"I'm ready! Let's build something proper!" Blue announced excitedly to Astrid.

Once they finish cleaning up the ash, Astrid hands her armor off to Blue for storage and changes into a pair of coveralls that she usually wears while working along with her disproportionately large leather gloves. The fit is complete with a toolbelt added to her many pockets in her coveralls.

“That’s the spirit!” she cheerfully says to Blue. “First, lemme show ya what all the tools are called an’ how they work!” With that, Astrid starts pulling tools out of her belt. The most important ones are the hammer and the nails, and she finds a scrap piece of board to teach Blue the proper technique for basic carpentry. They’ll use those the most. She follows it up with showing them chisels and small, manual wood drills. Then she makes use of her special magic poster to show Blue some of the basics of what kinds of fittings they’ll use when building the braces for the walls.

While she keeps it as simple as possible, she decides nothing beats experience, so Astrid leads Blue over to the lumber pile and the two of them spend a little while practicing framing together. She makes sure they have all the basics before she looks at the bigger project. Time to test their skills!

This was hard! Blue wasn't the most detail-oriented person and cutting the wood to be the proper length and measuring everything so the joints fit correctly, that was a lot of detail to be oriented about. It took them a while to get the hang of correctly cutting the wood with the saws and chisels. Their gloves looked like they were meant to be fingerless after a while with all of the slips and accidents. Thankfully, Blue's hands didn't stay looking so damaged. The ooze just stopped for a moment to concentrate on closing the cuts and then went back to work.

It was a good thing the ooze had plenty of strength and stamina to keep trying until they got it right consistently, Astrid checking all of their work until she was satisfied they had the basics down.

Then they finally got to learning about framing a building. Putting the beams together to make the frame was at least a lot easier than cutting all the joints to fit properly. And lifting the frame into place they'd already gotten plenty of experience with back in Sky Peak Village. That was probably their favorite part since it was the simplest.

"Okay, so what's next?" Blue asked Astrid, looking around at the practice pieces they'd done.

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Meditate

Watching Blue struggling with measuring, Astrid decides that it’s best to use scrap wood for practicing those kinds of specifics. They haven’t gotten to work too much on numbers and reading as much as she would have liked to. In fact, she wasn’t even going to make Blue do anything that complicated, but they insisted they’d be good at anything, and she’s not one to stop them from trying.

It’s a good thing they can heal themselves.

When they get to properly building frames, Astrid makes sure that Blue understands how to square the joints and can put the nails in the most effective places. That seems to be something they have a much better time picking up than measuring, so she takes over the measuring and cutting while Blue assembles the pieces according to the plans they have laid out on a nearby table. Once their section of frame is built, Astrid inspects the quality of Blue’s work with a discerning eye. There can be no missteps when building the support framing of a structure people might live in!

“Looks pretty good!” she says cheerfully. “Let’s go put it together with the rest of the frame fer this wall over there!” With that, she lifts their section with Blue and heads over to the other group.

Measuring is a lot more difficult when you don't know how to read numbers, but Blue did their best. At least that part was done with. Surely, building a house wouldn't take any more measuring anything at all.

The group looked up at the approach of Blue and Astrid. The other builders who were on a break from their work, a mix of humans, Dwarves, and one Elf. The one who looked to be in charge was an especially burly Dwarf with a bushy black beard and a thick head of curly black hair that struggled to be contained by a leather strap pulling it back into a puffy ponytail behind him. He turned to them both, his arms crossed in front of him. With a grumpy attitude, and a gruff voice, he began to speak.

"So, you two are the noble lord and lady from Sky Peak, huh? Heard you do a lot of building and good little deeds around. I'm Fergus, the builder in charge here, so you two will be working under me." He said and turned away, looking some blueprints up and down carefully. He seemed to really take his job seriously and wouldn't stand for any mistakes.

One of the others stepped forward and leaned in to whisper to them both.

"Sorry about him. He's actually really nice, he just gets a bit... territorial. And he's not a fan of nobles. Don't take it personally."

Fergus’ demeanor doesn’t put Astrid off one bit. In her time, she’s dealt with plenty of dwarves, especially the territorial and superstitious ones. She finds that the best way to deal with them can be one of two things: either being sugary sweet or spitting their gruffness right back at them. She decides to be nicer today.

“Aye, good ta meet ya, Mister Fergus,” Astrid says with a big smile, setting their frame down with the others ready for full assembly. She dusts her hands off and offers a handshake, but he’s already turned to look at the blueprints. “Hope the prints I brought from Sky Peak are up ta yer standards,” she continues. “Worked ‘em out with the architect there. Thought the steeper slope on the roof with the bigger gutters fer collectin’ ash would help a bit given the current circumstances. Hopefully, folks can make good use of all the ash fer fertilizer an’ whatnot.” As she speaks, she holds a hand out and catches a few flakes of ash in her palm before turning it over and letting it fall to the ground.

Astrid puts her hands on her hips as she looks around. “Anyway, lots of work ta do still! I think the place will look real spiffy, an’ if the roof works, we can start addin’ onta the rest of the buildin’s around here ta set ‘em up fer ash collectin’! If Mister Fergus approves, I mean.” Dwarves prefer when people respect the pecking order.

Fergus's grumpy attitude softened a bit as Astrid played by his rules and showed him some respect. Not something any visiting nobles often did. Still, he wasn't going to immediately become friends or invite them to dinner! They were still strangers moving in on his territory. Their designs weren't bad though, he had to admit to himself. They would help with the new ash problem plaguing the village. He looked over his shoulder at Astrid, his arms still crossed in front of him. When he spoke, it was just a little less standoffish than before and less grumpy.

"Aye, we'll give this design a shot. Fields will be doing well, if only the sun could peak through all the blasted ash in the sky." He muttered. Really, one of the things making him the most upset at the moment was the hardship his village was facing thanks to the ash spewing in the sky from the volcano and now he was taking his anger out on everyone. The two nobles just seemed like the best target.

"Alright everyone, back to work! We got too many houses needin' repairin' to be lazing about. We'll see what you two can do first hand." He called to everyone and then looked to Astrid and Blue specifically.

The work went smoothly with everyone pitching in. Astrid and Blue helped a lot, to Fergus's chagrin. Blue still wasn't exactly the best with the detail work, but they tried their best when they were asked to and mostly just did heavy lifting, carrying materials around and helping to lift things into place. Progress was fast.

After just a few days, the new houses were finished and Fergus was a lot less grumpy when he waved Astrid and Blue off. Once the results were clear on how well the new roof and gutter designs worked on the new houses, he promised he'd see to updating the rooves of the old houses while they were repaired.