Triple Strength

33. Gem Sense: Wiremu

The morning dip raised my Cold Resistance to 12. It was getting harder to level. I don’t know what Tabitha’s problem was this morning. Maybe she has a hangup about nudity or something. It was more than her normal fuss over the dip in the stream anyway. The morning spar showed how out levelled we are, but I did learn a new hold and a throw. A lot of levelling of Unarmed Combat now was just practice and muscle memory.

After breakfast Tabitha and I went for a walk with Erik and Thyrrni. Erik started the discussion in a typically dwarven blunt way.

“Ok, out with it lad.” he said. “We can all see you want to stay and train with us, but what is in it for us?”

Thyrrni spoke up before I could reply. “Now Erik, let's not be hasty. Let's talk about classes and skills first. He probably doesn’t know what we might find valuable.” She turned to me, “So, when you got the Prospecting Specialisation, what skill did it come with?”

“Doesn’t the specialisation always give the same skill?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you have the same as me?”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “I got the Earth Mapping Skill where I can make maps of the earth and the different rocks and ore deposits and mines. I made sure I had a well developed drawing skill when I got the class hoping for this Skill. I have a map of our travels so we can return to rich deposits, or we might sell parts of the map for a good price. With what we have found to date selling the maps to different deposits will pay for the whole trip. What we have mined is pure profit. We probably won’t sell the key deposits, but will come back with the equipment to mine more ourselves. What about you?” she asked.

“I didn’t know any of that.” I said. “I really have been disadvantaged without a master. I got the skill, Sense Treasure.” Their eyebrows rose at that, which was good for me? I shrugged, “I have a lot of sensing skills.”

“That sounds promising,” Thyrrni said. “I am betting your Mineral Lore is too low for you to make use of it though. Look at that hillside and tell me what you see.”

I looked at the other side of the valley and identified the Granite formation I saw.

“I thought so,” she said and then went on to explain what she saw. The Granite formation was just the start and what other minerals would likely be found around it. She saw where there had been old rock slides that now had trees growing on it and what that told her about the underlying rock, and it went on and on. Mineral Lore levelled just by listening to her. When she came to an end she looked at me and said, “Your Mineral Lore just levelled, didn’t it?” I nodded. “Tell me about your Granite Sense,” she said.

I described it to her, the range and detail in Granite and now it was at apprentice level the same for other rocks.

She just nodded and then said we would need to run some tests before she could judge better. Then she looked at Tabitha. “What about you, lass? I am guessing you come as a set and if Wiremu stayed, that you would also want to stay?”

Tabitha reluctantly nodded. “I wouldn’t be able to get to a town on my own,” She said.

“So tell me about your skills.” She said.

I could see Tabitha hesitate in thought. “My Shadow Predator came with the skill, Intimidating Aura. This was strong enough to halt a Field Troll.” They looked impressed at that. “I have three other Shadow Skills all around Embracing, Projecting or Manipulating Shadows. I also have a short range sensing skill that can penetrate most things.”

“Penetrate how far?” asked Erik.

“It depends what I am trying to penetrate through, but approximately ten metres.”

“I don’t see much we need there,” Erik said bluntly. “Where do you think you could add benefit to the team?” he asked.

“I was helping Ashby last night and I could do more of that so he can concentrate on his herbs more.” Tabitha replied.

“You want to be the camp cook?” Erik asked with doubt in his voice.

“Well, it is something I can do to pull my weight,” She replied.

Thyrrni spoke up, “I want to go and test Wiremu’s sensing skills, we will grab some tools and be back tonight. Is that OK Erik?”

He nodded. “For today Tabitha, spend it helping Ashby, but talk to the others too. They each have their areas of responsibility and there might be something where you can be increasingly useful. Ashby does not need full time help.”

We all headed back to camp, Thyrrni and I picked up some tools and headed to the Granite formation across the valley. As we went we talked about Granite and what gems were typically found in Granite. She had some examples with her and as she talked about them she handed it to me and had me use my Granite Sense and Treasure Sense on them. She was trying to get me to know them to try sensing them in the Granite formation.

Tourmaline was a dark gem whose light properties changed depending on where you look through it. I also changed when you passed small bursts of lightning through and were in demand with the tinkerers and a good one by the rare Lightning mage.

Beryl was quite common. She had a piece of Emerald which is the green version of it, but it comes in yellow, pink, red and a clear version. It is often used in decorations, but can also hold simple enchantments.

Topaz is a very hard gem, but can be quite fragile. The dust can be added to various metal alloys to add hardness and make enchanting easier. Zircon reacts to heat and is also used as additives to alloys, but has a focus for earth mages and may also be useful for me and my affinity. Finally, there is Apatite where the focus is on growth and nature enhancements and it is often used in alchemy.

When we got to the formation she had me move around and try and sense what was there, just using Granite Sense. Then to indicate to her where I thought I might sense a gem. She would mark the location on her map.I had moved around at ground level and marked three possible gems, I wasn’t sure what gems they were, but I did have a feel for the size. They were all small.

She then had me focus on one of the gems I had felt on the way over and use treasure sense. It was Beryl that triggered one of the spots and so Thyrrni handed me a hammer and told me to go for it. It was about half a metre in at waist level. I used Granite sense to checks for cracks and the best places to hit and took a swing with a hammer for the first time since leaving the quarry. My Journeyman level Hammer was still on point and it didn’t take many swings before I had to use a smaller tool. Shortly afterwards I was holding a small red Beryl. We went through the process twice more and I had small Topaz and Zircon. The Zircon was the largest being about half my thumb nail in size. I wasn’t going to earn my fortune with these gems, but it was a start and showed the reliability of my skills.

“Good,” she said, “Now let’s try it on something that is not granite. We hiked up the valley for a couple of hours and approached a rock formation. This time she gave me no background or gems and just told me to try. Granite Sense didn’t go as far. And I had to concentrate harder to sense the differences. There were four places quite close together so I tried using treasure sense to determine which was the most valuable. Then I started with the hammer. I found the most valuable, according to treasure sense, was a diamond. The other three were a gem called Pyrope. The Pyrope was a deep red and according to Thyrrni was in demand by Alchemists as it was inert to most chemicals. They liked to use it in their mixing tools and bowls.

Thyrrni had one more test for me. We climbed up the side of the valley where there was an exposed rock face. When I looked down I saw the evidence of an old slip, which must have exposed this rock face and the dark, almost black, rock. She had me sense the exposed face. It was very different from the other two. Not as easy as the Granite, but not as hard as where the diamond had come from. It was different, it was like Granite Sense needed more Spiritual power to penetrate it. I couldn’t sense any key points like Treasure Sense had pinpointed like the last two places. It was like the skill was saying the whole rock face was the treasure.

When I described this to Thyrrni, this was in fact the case. This was something called Deep Iron Ore and was very valuable. It was normally buried deep underground, but the slip had obviously exposed it. She asked me to keep sensing to see if anything else was there. After a minute or so I felt movement in the rock. It was like a small worm about the size of my finger was moving through the rock. When I described it to Thyrrni she nodded as if it was expected.

“They are Rock Worm elementals,” she explained. “They congregate around rock and metals with Spiritual affinities like this Deep Iron. They range in size from my little finger to the size of my arm.”

“Do you know why they like this type of metal?” I asked.

“No,'' she replied. “But when we come here to mine the vibrations in the rock will draw more of them and they will swarm. They inflict a Spiritual Attack that feels like being bruised or pierced by a rock, but it attacks your Spiritual Constitution, and Dwarfs are quite weak in that area. We would get maybe 20 minutes to half an hour of mining before we have to back off and wait for several hours for them to calm down. I took some samples back to Ulfhildr yesterday so she can check the quality and then she and Snøfrid would come and try to see how much is here.”

“I can tell you there is a lot here. It goes deeper than I can sense, and higher and lower as well.”

“Wow,” she said. “I will tell Erik and we will probably stay and mine until everyone is exhausted from the Spiritual attacks and then move on.”

“How much would you get doing that?” I asked.

“Lets see, working in pairs, three shifts, probably 45-60 minutes each.”

“Wait up, I thought you said half an hours work?” I queried.

“Ah yes, but Snøfrid will have an alchemical solution we can put on the rocks to repel them for a while. Then standard practice is a four hour cool down to let them disperse before the next shift. So four and a half shifts in a 24 hour period. Three shifts each before we need a longer recovery period, standard practice is a weeks recovery. So two days mining and then Erik will probably have us move on and we will sell this location for top dollar. That will probably get us two mule loads worth of ore for ourselves. Everyone will be pleased with that.”

“Would it be beneficial if we could lengthen the time we could work?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” she replied. “But how? Do you have a skill for that?”

“Not me,” I responded, “Tabitha. She has a skill called Intimidating Aura, which we will have to test but may significantly extend the work time. We can also do four shifts, because I can swing a hammer, even though I don't have the mining Class.”

“Oooh we have to test that!” she was getting visibly excited. “We might be able to load all the mules. We can dump the cheaper stuff like the silver and gold ore. We have to get Tabitha out here and run some tests!”

We then headed back, Thyrrni explained some more things as we went, but she was obviously distracted.. Granite Sense, Mineral Lore and Sense Treasure all went up once. Thyrrni thought I could be more helpful if I got my levels up in the three key skills that I levelled today. I was surprised that Prospecting didn’t level, but apparently they aren’t as easy to level as the early levels of the Basic classes.