Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

It was no secret that the Dust Quarter tended to get the rough end of the deal, and as the poorest part of the city, it hadn't seen nearly enough builders after the shadow attacks with most of the construction companies taking their business to areas that could pay more. Wendell had seen two men walk off the job in the last three days in favour of the working in the Glass Quarter. Money, however, did not drive the man who worked because he liked to stay busy and build things with his hands. He made plenty of gold working at The Hound which allowed him to take on less hours in his second job without feeling too much of a sting on his pocket.

“The coin is just too good, Wendy, you can't expect us to stay here,” Mothet shrugged. “Why do you want to help these good for nothing bums anyway? You think any of them would lift a finger for you?”
“Come on Moth, I can't finish a roof by myself.”
“I'm sorry, Wen, maybe once the work runs out in the Glass Quarter.”

He watched the man walk away towards the gates that led out of the Dust Quarter and threw his hammer down from the roof. What was the point. A woman appeared from inside the house and held out a glass of water to him as he climbed down the ladder. “Everything okay?”
“No,” Wendell grumbled, he always had been a softie when it came to the underdogs. “My team hasn't shown up for work, there goes the last of it,” he pointed before thanking the woman.
“Is there anything I could do to help?”
Wendell wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and raised it to scratch his head. “Not unless you're strong enough to hand those tiles up to me,” he gestured to the wooden roof tiles.
“If it gets me a roof,” she smiled.

Wendell went back up the ladder and waited while the woman passed up a handful of tiles, lifting what she could under one arm to climb the ladder while he held it sturdy from the top. He started at the edge of the roof near the bottom, working his way up so that the tiles overlapped and would keep out rainwater. Wendell looked around for his hammer, having forgotten already that he had thrown it down after his last coworker had walked off the job.

“Excuse me,” he called out to a passerby, “would you mind throwing that hammer up to me?”

Nell had been working the entirety of the trial. Her face was caked in dirt, and dust clung to her plain clothing and hair. She was frazzled, but looked happier than she had in arcs. As she moved to and fro, helping where she could, she hummed merrily to herself. Helping the people of the Dust had been nothing but positive for her, and it put her in higher spirits than she could ever have imagined.

Most of her morning was spent dragging wounded inhabitants and dead bodies out of the rubble. A few times, stones had fallen and cut her cheek, or smashed her hand. She swore, but found that the anger and pain subsided faster than she'd ever imagined it could. Nothing could dampen her mood, but hunger could try its hardest.

As she ate her lunch, she contemplated the rest of the trial. She was happy to help, but she was starting to tire. She knew that she only had a few more breaks of hard labor in her before she needed to rest. But with the energy from her apple and cheese, she could finish out the trial strong.

As she walked back to the center of the quarter, she passed by a house being roofed. Suddenly, the man's head popped over and asked her for his hammer. Nell's crystal eyes found the hammer and the ground, and she picked it up.

"This one?" Her voice was deep and strong, not at all matching her appearance in plain clothes. With a heft, she tossed the hammer high enough for Wendell to catch it. She watched as it soared up, hoping he'd catch it so she didn't have to make fun of him. She could only imagine his face if she started in on him, especially because she wasn't dressed at all like the warrior that she was.

“That's the one,” he nodded and reached forwards to snatch the hammer from the air, holding onto the exposed timber frame so that he didn't slip from the edge of the roof. There came a mighty crash then that saw Wendell just about jump out of his skin. He looked down the ladder to see that his little helper had dropped a pile of wooden tiles, breaking at least half of the ones she had been trying to carry.
“Are you okay?” He called from the roof.
“I'm so sorry!” She scrambled to try and collect up remaining good tiles. “I slipped on the ladder!”
Wendell left the hammer on the roof and climbed down to the ground to helped out. “You're bleeding?” He noticed blood on one of the tiles and the woman turned her hand over to find a cut there.
“Oh! I must had caught it on something, hold on, I'll go and wrap it in the house and be right out to help when I'm done.”
“No trouble,” the man waved, “go put your feet up, I can handle this.”

Wendell collected up the rest of the tiles and thanked Nell for passing the hammer up to him. “I don't suppose you have any idea how to lay a few roof tiles?” he asked, “I could really use a hand getting these repairs done. I've got some extra tools in that box over there if you feel up to it? I can't pay you anything but I could certainly buy a drink once we are done.”

Nell managed a tight smile, not accustomed to being asked to help. Orders are what she was used to, and when she didn't get them, she didn't know the polite way to react. Instead, she shook her head, causing her tight braid to fall over her shoulder.

"I don't know how to lay tile, but I'm a quick learner. I set out to help the Dust, and I'm going to do so. Here, I'll carry them up. I'm much less likely to cut myself."

Nell grabbed a bundle of the wooden tiles, stepping carefully around the broken mess at the bottom of the ladder. She hefted one bundle up, grunting against the weight, and put a hand on the rung of the ladder. One foot up, and she was climbing towards the roofer. She had to shift the weight of the bundle with every rung, and she knew now why the woman had dropped the bundle.

"Nell." She offered her name up to the man, who was undoubtedly back to work. As she crested the house, she hoisted the tiles up and over, setting them heavily on the rooftop. She waited to hear his name before climbing back down the ladder.

She considered trying to learn a few things from the roofer, but she had so much to do in the Quarter that she didn't want to get bogged down. She dropped the last few rungs on the ground, rummaging around through the shattered wooden tiles to grab another bundle. Grunting again, she lifted it to her shoulder and turned back to the ladder.

"Imagine this keeps you in pretty good shape?" Nell was not really one for small-talk, but her mood was considerably better than usual. She climbed steadily, ensuring that each step was solid and expected. She concentrated enough that she didn't ruin any more tiles, anyway. She climbed higher, the top of her head almost cresting the rooftop again.

Wendell kept a careful eye on the woman as she made her way up the ladder, but didn't make a point of staring. Nell was certainly good-looking, but she didn't come across as being overly girly, and Wendell pinned her as the type of woman one might see as just another one of the lads. He hammered in a few tiles, starting at the bottom corner and worked his way up from there.

“Wendell,” he smiled, “it's nice to meet you, Nell.”

A few more loads and Nell seemed ready to join him on the roof. Wendell stacked the wooden tiles just the way he liked them, putting every second tile off centre in order to make it easier to pick up. The wooden tiles used in the Dust Quarker were cheap and easily broken, so he was careful when he hammered the nails in, not to put the wood under too much stress.

“I start at the bottom,” he pointed out, “line the nail up with the wooden frame beneath it and hammer them in closer to the top of the tile so that the one you overlap it with covers the nail and keeps the rain off. This preserves the life of the roof considerably.” Wendell knocked in a few more nails before moving along the roof’s edge. “I've got a rope there if you'd like to tie it about your belt, just a precaution, you don't have to.”

Wendell didn't wear any safety gear, he had been doing this kind of work for the better part of ten to fifteen years now. “It keeps me in pretty good shape,” he agreed, “especially when the weather is hot and you're going up and down that ladder all day.” He supervised for a little while before getting back to work, inquiring about what it was Nell did for a living. “You just helping with the clean up down this end of town, or you work here?”

Nell had no same preconception of not staring. She stared at the man's lithe form and powerful arms as he hammered in the nails, watching his technique with the eyes of one who is practiced in observing. She watched as he hammered the nail in the center near the top, then shingled the rest of the wooden tiles over those, creating an overlapping network of roof tiles. With a nod of determination, Nell picked up a roofing hammer and aligned a nail in a tile, starting from the opposite end of Wendell.

She lined the hammer up with the nail and gave it a mighty whack! The nail went through the wooden tile, splitting it down the middle. Nell looked up at Wendell with a sheepish grin. She grabbed the two pieces of tile and tossed them off to the side, fearlessly grabbing another.

"Bit of both, I suppose. I handle what needs to be handled around town. Rowdy pirates, Aukari spies, helping the people of the Dust get back on their feet. I suppose of all the jobs I've done here, though, this is the one I like the most." She smiled tightly. It was strange for her to smile of her own accord, but she genuinely enjoyed helping the people of the Dust. They were simple people, as she was, and she understood where they came from.

"Not that I know a damn thing about roofing. In fact, before seeing you up here, I assumed there was some Immortal of Construction that people prayed to and it was just done divinely." She grinned. It was evident that Nell was not a fan of the Immortals. She didn't even care that they existed. And to her, Wendell with his muscular form and sweat-covered body was just as real, if not moreso, than some Immortal of Construction.

She realigned another nail, this time hammering it in a few centimeters at a time. The hammer head tapped the nail and drove it in, then she aligned another tile and did the same. She concentrated on the work and forgot that Wendell was even there, until he spoke to her.

“A bit of a wanderer, hmm? Nothing wrong with that.” Wendell wasn't quite as noble in his endeavours, he was being paid for this work, just not nearly as much as the rest of his teammates who had abandoned him for the glass quarter. Nell had smiled, and though he was sure the gesture was genuine, it seemed somewhat uneasy, as if it wasn't a regular occurrence. “Moved to Rharne when I was quite young, a teenager I guess you’d say. The dust quarter was the only area my father could afford to buy in after the big move from the desert, so I have a soft spot for this place.”

Nell took a mighty swing at her first attempt at hammering a tile to the roof and the material split, cast aside haphazardly. Wendell leaned over the edge of the roof to make sure the falling bits of wood weren't about it hit anyone before returning to the task at hand. “First couple of knocks need to be gentle,” he encouraged, without judgement. “These tiles are pretty flimsy, but easy to work with once you get the hung of it.” He didn't assume that Nell had never used a hammer before, she did manage to hit the nail on the head after all, which was more than he could say for some of the young apprentices in their ranks.

Between the two of them the roof would be completed before it got too late, and with daylight to spare, Wendell imagined they would be able to get that drink after all, and maybe even something to eat. Nell explained that she thought perhaps the immortal of construction had been at work here in the dust quarter, and Wendell couldn't help but grin, never failing to fall back on his questionable sense of humour. “Damn, you got me, I was hoping no one would recognise me,” he teased, words partnered with a cheeky grin, blue eyes narrowed with mirth.

Wendell returned to his work and went along the edge of the roof, hammering in the tiles all the way up to the peak. He had gone up and down the ladder a few times to collect more tiles, stacking them along parts of the roof that weren't started. The trickiest part of the build was tidying up the edges where each side met, but he chipped away until everything was done. The metal corner frames and the small, triangular dome for the top of the roof that would keep rainwater out of the remaining cracks went on last, and probably cost more than all of the wooden tiles combined.

After everything was finished the tidy up job began and the woman came out of her house to inspect their work and help pick up all of the broken tiles. She thanked Nell and Wendell for their time and remarked that the roof looked better than it ever had. With his toolbox in hand and his hammer held on a loop by his belt, Wendell dug around in his pocket to see what little coin he had left before payday and looked across at his assistant. “How about that drink, Nell? You sure have earned it, I'm really impressed, and thankful for your help.”

Nell returned his grin with one her own, an eyebrow arching up on her forehead. She did not say anything, not willing to humour the man's ego. She knew he probably thought he was tough shit, and he likely was. He was sure-footed and good with his hammer, and she commended him on his excruciating attention to detail.

And so they worked, making small talk as they went along. Nell hammered lightly for the first few swings, then finished them with hard blows that knocked them in and set them. She ran a rough finger over the head of the nail, ensuring that it was level with the shingle. With a smile after each one, she continued along the roof.

As Wendell went down and came back up the ladder, she reached a powerful arm out and grabbed a bundle of shingles, setting them where Wendell told her to. She let him finish up around the edges as she worked, knowing that she wasn't knowledgeable enough to ensure their utmost quality. As the trial dragged on, she sweat from the work and the sunslight. As they finished up, she followed Wendell down the latter, smiling warmly at the woman who thanked them. When she and Wendell left the job site, he offered that drink he promised.

"I don't see why not. As long as we don't go to the Bronze Boar. Anywhere else is fine with me." With a nod of determination, she and Wendell set off for the rest of their evening.