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westwhere2021-06-14 05:51 pm
sergeant_slick) wrote in westwhere2021-06-14 05:51 pm
Living in the night
WHO: Slick and whoever, plus Eleven!
WHEN: 12th until the night before the siege event on the 16th, day and night
WHERE: Around the farm
WHAT: Preparing defenses as previously planned here and being a bit of a nuisance.
WARNINGS: None yet!
Don't follow the voices at night, he'd been told. Alright. He hadn't quite understood what was going to happen, though, nearly jumped out of his skin when something started begging to be let in.
Alright. That's what the voices sound like. Why was inside safe, then? It felt wrong to just sit there, trusting that nothing's gonna come crawling through a window. Hells, Archeval said this place already came under attack. He's not just gonna sit around and wait for that to happen again. He needs to get armed, and this place needs to be turned into a proper redoubt.
1. Daylight- Gearing up
Wood's a terrible material for defenses. It's soft, flammable, and instantly turns to shrapnel if it encounters anything with a blast radius. But it's what he's got to work with, so he'll just have to suck it up.
So he spends his day in the farmhouse's woodshed, chopping and sawing things into shape. It's a bit of a struggle at first, getting the feel of the tools this place has got. But soon enough, he's making passable lengths of lumber, wooden wedges, and posts.
There's only the occasional outburst of swearing.
2. Daylight- Setting up a roadblock
Partway through the day, he hauls the wood and some of the tools into the closest common room, bleary-eyed. He was up most of the night.
Better not to get caught flat-footed if things got bad--he's not trying to sleep during the night again. He was bone tired after all that'd happened to him in the past week anyway. If he tried to stay up for a watch tonight, he'd probably doze off. There was an easy fix to that, though, while there was still some daylight left.
He sits down in a corner somewhere and falls asleep, propped up against the sack he's stuffed his armor into. Is he in the way of something? Maybe. Is it comfortable? Definitely not. But it's sleep, and that's the important part.
Catch him early enough, and he might be shiftable. Wait too long though, and he might be hard to rouse, muttering something unintelligible and angry in his sleep.
3. After Sunset- Putting it all together
Once night falls, he's awake and working again. This farmhouse is falling apart. Sure, you can bar the doors and windows, but what's the point? If this place is going to hold up against an attack for even a minute, it needs reinforcement.
Beyond that, there's only so many nails to hang the boards with, so he's fashioning a load of treenails to split the difference. And he needs to prep the doorways inside the house, so they can be barred from either side, and make barricades that can be moved into place after that. All skills that got stuffed into his head during training, and bits of it had come in handy a couple of times in the field.
Is it probably going to annoy people that there's hammering and sawing through the night? Yes. Does he care? Nope. This needs to be done. And anyway, it drowns out the voices.
WHEN: 12th until the night before the siege event on the 16th, day and night
WHERE: Around the farm
WHAT: Preparing defenses as previously planned here and being a bit of a nuisance.
WARNINGS: None yet!
Don't follow the voices at night, he'd been told. Alright. He hadn't quite understood what was going to happen, though, nearly jumped out of his skin when something started begging to be let in.
Alright. That's what the voices sound like. Why was inside safe, then? It felt wrong to just sit there, trusting that nothing's gonna come crawling through a window. Hells, Archeval said this place already came under attack. He's not just gonna sit around and wait for that to happen again. He needs to get armed, and this place needs to be turned into a proper redoubt.
1. Daylight- Gearing up
Wood's a terrible material for defenses. It's soft, flammable, and instantly turns to shrapnel if it encounters anything with a blast radius. But it's what he's got to work with, so he'll just have to suck it up.
So he spends his day in the farmhouse's woodshed, chopping and sawing things into shape. It's a bit of a struggle at first, getting the feel of the tools this place has got. But soon enough, he's making passable lengths of lumber, wooden wedges, and posts.
There's only the occasional outburst of swearing.
2. Daylight- Setting up a roadblock
Partway through the day, he hauls the wood and some of the tools into the closest common room, bleary-eyed. He was up most of the night.
Better not to get caught flat-footed if things got bad--he's not trying to sleep during the night again. He was bone tired after all that'd happened to him in the past week anyway. If he tried to stay up for a watch tonight, he'd probably doze off. There was an easy fix to that, though, while there was still some daylight left.
He sits down in a corner somewhere and falls asleep, propped up against the sack he's stuffed his armor into. Is he in the way of something? Maybe. Is it comfortable? Definitely not. But it's sleep, and that's the important part.
Catch him early enough, and he might be shiftable. Wait too long though, and he might be hard to rouse, muttering something unintelligible and angry in his sleep.
3. After Sunset- Putting it all together
Once night falls, he's awake and working again. This farmhouse is falling apart. Sure, you can bar the doors and windows, but what's the point? If this place is going to hold up against an attack for even a minute, it needs reinforcement.
Beyond that, there's only so many nails to hang the boards with, so he's fashioning a load of treenails to split the difference. And he needs to prep the doorways inside the house, so they can be barred from either side, and make barricades that can be moved into place after that. All skills that got stuffed into his head during training, and bits of it had come in handy a couple of times in the field.
Is it probably going to annoy people that there's hammering and sawing through the night? Yes. Does he care? Nope. This needs to be done. And anyway, it drowns out the voices.
no subject
Her eyes narrowed briefly at him in jest before she had another sip of tea. "How long until you've finished?"
no subject
"But it isn't going to be finished tonight. This place is too big." He gestured to the windows. "I'm not even sure I can cover the whole compound with what we've got. But if I can harden up this side of it, it'll be something." This side of the compound was closest to the forest, and therefore was potentially the more vulnerable to approach.
"If this place gets attacked, we could seal this bit up. Easier to defend, and still has some fallback options if barricades fail."
no subject
"Just point me at what needs doing." The timing of his toiling was probably not the best, at least for the people on the farm trying to get a good night's sleep but she was confident sorting things magically would ease at least some of the noise.
no subject
"First pass tonight is reinforcing the doors and shutters--adding on extra boards cross-wise from the pre-existing stuff, plus a diagonal or two over the top of that if it still needs more." Which made everything about twice as thick and heavy as when it started, but it'd hold better and probably still open and close alright.
"Thing is, we don't have much to hold this stuff in place. I found some nails, but there's only so many of those. That means making wooden pegs," he gestured to a pile of tree nails on a nearby table, surrounded by a halo of wood chips. "Then drilling holes in the boards at the right places and hammering them in."
It'd been a hell of a job for one person to work on, especially when he only theoretically knew what he was doing. "Any part of it you want to help on would be appreciated."
no subject
At least the process of making tree nails looked simple enough, and keeping whatever he meant to board the windows with would be easy enough. Already forming a plan of action Lily's gaze returned to Slick.
"Pick a window. I'll hold the wood to it while you nail?"
no subject
"I'm working on that one right now," he pointed to a set of shutters that was partially reinforced. "Just cut these for it." There were a couple of planks and a growing pile of sawdust nearby.
"I wanted to just board over these things, but this place doesn't have proper lights, right? Just fire and daylight." Candles and lamps and all sorts of burning stuff. It was primitive. "So if we really tried to harden this place up, we'd be running through more resources we don't have, or stumbling around in the dark."
no subject
Following after Slick when he moved on to the business at hand, Lily looked from the planks he'd cut into shape and the window he meant to secure, nodding studiously.
"It's a bit mad, isn't it? The lack of electric light." It had taken some adjustment, but so had everything else about this place.
"Right, so, ready to hammer?" Lily lifted her wand, turning her attention to the wood as she moved it over the cut lumber, making it lift into the air. Carefully she steered it across the room, moving her wand as she guided it up to rest against the window.