Category: One Among the Dead

Day 433:

I did manage to get up quite a bit of sand, but not all of it.

That’s because I spent a good amount of the day fighting underwater skeletons.

They’re just like not-underwater skeletons, which is a pretty bad choice fi you ask me. Not particularly living up to the whole “evolve to meet your environment” thing. For example, they still use a bow and arrow… it’s just that a bow and arrow is a particularly ineffective weapon underwater. Especially their bows and arrows.

My sword, on the other hand, while hindered by water resistance, isn’t nearly as hindered as their arrows. So once they swam up to a certain distance from me (since they had no choice, their arrows couldn’t reach me) I bashed them a couple times with the sword and went back to the sand gathering.

More than anything else it was annoying because usually I spotted the skeletons from a distance while I was in the middle of filling a sack with sand. So I had to keep an eye on them until they got close enough to be of some danger, then put the sack down, switch to my sword, swim after them (which, with a sword is no mean feat… maybe I’ll add something to the handle to make it more buoyant when I make the next one?) and hack at them… then go back to the bag of sand and try to re-scoop what the water currents had already removed and then begin where I’d left off.

It’s not efficient, is what I’m saying. And I prefer an efficient worksite.

Also one without homicidal undead maniacs would be nice.

Day 432:

I’m finally happy with the amount of fish I’ve smoked and dried to go back to mining. But I’m not necessarily going to go back to mining tomorrow. I’ve been looking at the far bank of the river-ish thing I’m standing on and it looks like there may be a sizable deposit of sand over there. So I think I’m going to check it out tomorrow. That way I can get some glass making in if I’m right.

Oh, and today I plucked another full-sized saddle out of the water. Maybe it wasn’t a cobbler at all but a leatherworker who just liked boots a lot.

Day 431:

More fishing today and by tomorrow I should have enough dried fish to put me up for a while.

Pulled in another bowl and another of those weird glowing books today, but that wasn’t the exciting part. The exciting part was when I pulled in two huge leather sheets — like I’d pulled off an entire cowhide, essentially — from the same area where I pull up all the shoes.

In my amateur hour archaeological mind, this proves that the site I’m fishing into is the underwater remains of a shoe store, or if not a store, than a cobbler’s shop. Something where making and distributing shoes was a priority.

The leather is very fine quality, I have to say. I almost hate to use it for shoes for all I tend to do to my feet here. I’m wondering whether they’d be good to use for my notebook covers instead. It might protect them slightly better and it’s certainly better than making boots to step in zombie ichor with.

Day 430:

Fishing again all day today and I pulled up two more pair of boots. I’ve gotten pretty good at repairing leather boots, even though I don’t frequently wear them. (The diamond-covered ones are more reliable, but they’re more reliable because of the time I spent learning how the leather ones worked.)

I owe these weird fished items; if I hadn’t had these boots from out of the river and the sea to take apart and repair I would never have puzzled out how to make my own boots out of better materials.

And I’m still pretty sure I’m sitting on someone’s lost shoe store.

But there must have been a soup emporium next door because I also brought up a couple more wooden bowls. They’re all similar styles and size as if from a matched set, though obviously hand-made as they’re not exactly the same.

The two pair I pulled out today are both small for my feet, but if I put their leather together I should have enough to make a pair that fit me, and are relatively sturdy too, so that’s what I’m doing before I go to bed. I use beef fat to soften the hides since they’ve been stuck in the water so long they’re, well, as tough as shoe leather to work with.

The light’s fading, and if I hurry I can finish these repairs tonight, so I’m going to work on the boots until I’m down to torchlight and go to bed.

Day 429:

I realized it’d be good to have more than just one batch of fish ready, so I spent my day fishing again. Brought in quite a haul too!

One trick to fishing is to always face west. That way if you’re good at losing track of time (like I am), the sudden sun blasting you in the face will remind you it’s time to go home and clean your catch before the monsters come out.

Not a lot of weirdness in this particular catch. Still not sure what to do with all the blowfish I’ve dried. I’m too chicken to try eating them, in case they’re poisonous like Earth blowfish, but at the same time I’m not real hot on the idea of them taking up a ton of storage in my cave. Maybe darts?