Chapter 14: Chapter 14 – Describing Classical Constraints

You can go ham with new things and major changes, I’d said to my System; but I’d asked for anything that didn’t change to be in a compressed form.

My System, proving Kelly’s advice to be spot-on, delivered.

 

Your Divine Flame Shapes Itself To Your Will!

You Are: Sophie Nadash | 39 | Kibosh, Shem

You Cleave To: Pantheism (Faith), YHVH (Culture)

You Look To: Artemis (Least), Hephaestus (Minor)

Your Skills: Learn, Read, Study, See, Inquire

Classes and Attributes: Worker (10/10) | Hale

Feats: World Traveler, Godtouched

Your Future: No Path; Requirements Met for 21 Classes

Your Boons: Traveler’s Rest, Hearty Breakfast, Strong Foundation, Hasten Recovery

Behold! Look Ye Upon Your Maluses, Which Number Naught!

In These Matters You Approach Mastery Ever More Closely: System Communion

 

It wasn’t perfect, I thought to myself, grinning. The writing was… well, it was serviceable, but unstructured, and it didn’t make great use of the available space. But it was a written representation on an imaginary page, displayed without ever touching my eyes; did it actually matter whether it took more vertical space than needed?

Well, I supposed I was something of a perfectionist in craft, which went fantastically well with my terminal incompetence at graphic design. So yeah, it mattered, but this would do for the time being.

Though, there was something of an open question, wasn’t there? I focused, finding the exercise easier, the System somehow closer to hand. Remove all combat Classes from consideration, please, and display Classes that I meet the requirements for.

 

Your Divine Flame Answers Your Query!

And Lo, These Apprenticeships May Someday Approach the Sublime: Alchemist, Druid, Clerk, Examiner, Agent, Singer, Cyclist, Cleaner, Artisan, Explorer

None May Gainsay These Respectable Journeyman Professions: Scribe, Traveler, Rabbi, Mathematician, Cook, Scientist, Hedonist

Surpass All Ordinary Expectations And Rise To Glory Through Your Expertise As: Technician

Choose, And Transcend Mere Mortal Bounds

 

“Huh.” I tried to say it levelly, but my hands were clenched on the table, and I was shaking in a way that I was pretty sure was visible. “That’s. A thing.”

“Sophie?” Kelly was at my side, and she put a hand on one of my hands as though to still it. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s…” I took a deep breath, imagining my anger flowing through me and away. It helped a little. “There’s a Class option that’s very upsetting.”

“I—”

“It’s from a gendered language, you see.” I interrupted her without caring about the rudeness, speaking more to the air than to anyone in particular. “It’s the word for a theologian and sage, a community leader and cantor, a judge and counselor. The option I’m being offered, Rabbi, it’s a masculine word. There isn’t a better word for a woman who takes that position, not really, because the feminine version—rabbanit—means the rabbi’s wife.”

“Oh.”

The pain in Kelly’s voice… helped. So did her hand on mine, and the fact that she’d so instantly recognized that I wasn’t okay and moved to comfort me. “I’m not going to take it,” I said bluntly. “It’s a part of who I am, a huge part, and I once thought it was my vocation. But I’m not going to take it.” And it’s not even the right word, I almost say in a fit of absolute pettiness. It should be Rav; it should by rights be in the liturgical tongue.

“Okay.” Her voice was calm and kind, and so very nice. “Nobody is ever going to tell you to take a Class or not take a Class. Let’s strike that one off the list. What else do you have?”

“Ten that are Apprenticeships, six others at Journeyman, and one… my System was ambiguously wordy.” I quoted them all what the words had been, and the stunned look on Kelly’s face did a lot to cheer me up. I could tell the difference between different kinds of disbelief, and this was definitely the you must be cheating kind. “There a problem with that?”

“Sophie…”

“As words appear to be failing my compatriot and dear friend,” Kan interjected, “perhaps I might interject on her behalf: what is your Expert-Rank Class, and might I also ask, has she been so good as to explain the implications of such a thing?”

“It’s Technician,” I said slowly. “It’s… I don’t know if you know the word. It’s someone who maintains the systems others build and design, or who executes plans that others have written. It was my profession, and I was very good at it.” I looked at them levelly, forcing my shoulders to go down, to relax. “I’m not wasting a new start by going back to it.”

“Then it’s off the table.” Her words weren’t heated or firm. They were just… calm, quietly certain, like she was making a totally banal observation. It was a tone of voice suited for saying That ocean is large or The DOTA2 community has toxic elements. “Do you want an explanation of why an Expert Class as an evolution of Worker is surprising, or would you rather move on?”

“I…” I stopped myself from saying let’s move on or possibly I want to leave, and stop talking about this. I flashed back to a skeletally thin figure with slow-beating wings, and his… advice, or command, or exasperated complaint; I had no idea how to interpret it. “Explain it, please. And thank you for your patience and understanding.”

I did my best to make that last compelling and true. It came out closer to the target than I’d expected, and by Kelly’s smile and the tension easing in Kan’s wrists, it was the right thing to say.

“I began my career,” Kan said contemplatively, “as an Apprentice Stone Shaper. My wife began hers as an Apprentice Mage. These were the fruits of our tiering up, our Class Evolutions from Worker, which is the universal Tier One Class and arises out of what we consider the zeroth-Tier Child. 

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“From these, I became a Stone Shaper, and she a Geomancer; and upon reaching Level 10 in those Classes, we grew further. Our second Classes came to us, respectively Engineer and Stone Shaper. In time, so did our third, in which we kept with custom and departed from the domain of what we had.

“In time, we may, with no more than expected diligence, tier up our second and third Classes, and at the likely end of our paths possess one Journeyman Class and two Expert Classes.”

He paused, looking at me as if to gauge whether I was listening. I wanted to yell at him that he was using ten words where one would do, that I had other things to be doing. I wanted to snap at him to get to the point, to explain why this mattered.

I did neither of these things. Instead, I nodded at him, and he continued.

“The first time one reaches a given Tier, one gains an Attribute, one suited to the Class. I gained Attuned and Rooted; the first is the lesser, as it was an Apprentice Attribute. They complement each other, they synergize; but were I to have begun my career as a Stone Shaper in full, and become from there a Shaper of Stone? Even should the same Attributes have manifested, they would have been stronger.

“It goes further than mere Attributes. I do not wish to burden you with the long history of my Skills, but each Evolution, each time raising a Class to its next Tier, is a consolidation and likewise an evolution of your Skills, a step upon the path to perfection. They will advance farther, tailor themselves closer to your needs, and become more…” Kan snapped his fingers together a few times, frowning. “More magical. Easier to use, easing more of what you already know, empowering you to learn yet more.”

“So if I start with a Journeyman-Rank Class,” I said slowly, “I’m, let’s say, ahead of the curve. But not as much as I would be if I started at Expert. And Journeyman is… it’s not exactly entry level, but it’s professional; I rank in at Expert as a tech because it’s fifteen and more years of…”

I took in their nods and their understanding expressions and straightened my back against the chair while they waited patiently.

“Of becoming an expert in the trade, the art, the work,” I said after spending a moment collecting myself. “Okay. It’s still struck.”

“There is no—”

“Kelly, I know there’s no need to justify it to you. I’m justifying it to myself, just out loud.” I gave her a side-eye, then cracked a weak grin. Like I’d just given her permission to, which I guess I had, she giggled, and Kan sighed in mock exasperation. “Anyway, like I was saying, I had this rule, this principle. Got a good option? Don’t hype the bad choice. Just strike it, and don’t come back.

“It’s different if you have only bad options, or only good options. But fuck going back for Technician, even if I could be a better Technician than I could be a Scribe or whatever. I want to… create, to design, to be independent. So, yeah! That’s the most… me-iconic two down. What’s next?”

“We categorize what other options you have.” Kelly’s voice was suddenly fully confident and assured, like we were finally on solid ground again. “What were your other choices?”

Smiling at her burst of professionalism, I told her, and she took on a thoughtful mien that looked practiced. And maybe it is practiced, I thought to myself, smiling.

“Now we break it down by categories. Static versus traveling? In Kibosh, leaving for the wilds, or a city—or at least a town? Creation, study, or… services?” She frowned. “Writ, Crafts, and Tower, I guess.”

“Static, and staying in Kibosh.” That didn’t require any real thought. “I want to relax and make connections, to just sort of chill out and work at my own pace in a context that supports that. I want to have a routine that I fill with the fantastical, and it seems really nice here. I like the people, I like the village itself, and it’s… convivial. And even if I could make friends anywhere, I like the ones I’ve already made here.”

For some reason, that made her blush, which I was counting as a definite victory. “And for the last? You can just pick one to take out, if you don’t want to pick one to settle on.”

“Drop the services, I guess?” I shrugged at her raised eyebrow. “I don’t know. I liked singing as a hobby, okay? I don’t think I would want to do it as my main thing. And being a cog in the paperwork machine for a place I don’t even know seems like a ridiculous proposition.”

Kan and Kelly traded a look, and she frowned a little, lost in thought. It was a good look on her, which was tremendously unfair; when I frowned it inevitably became a scowl or a sullen glower, but on her it was just this cute look of concentration.

“We should keep all of Hammer and Crafts in contention for now.” She traded looks with Kan, and shook her head when he did something subtle with his body language that I didn’t understand. “Don’t be silly. She can unlock a Journeyman Class for anything she’s suited for; we don’t need to be constrained by what she has unlocked now!”

“Much of Hammer is not suitable for the requirements Scholar Nadash has provided.”

“Well, sure. But we’re not talking about setting her up as a blacksmith, and anyway, we have one, and an apprentice, and she doesn’t need strikers.”

“All those involved in leathers and fabrics are one step in a chain. These, we should—”

“—not bother with, because she wants to work at her own pace.” Kelly waved a hand dismissively. “And she wants to work on her own, so that double rules out the Stone Team. Triple, because you’re fully staffed.”

“No such thing exists.” Kan’s grin was distinctly impish. “However, you are without a doubt correct with regards to the other two reasons.”

I sat there and half-listened, tuning out their banter. As much as I wanted to pay attention to them, as much as it was heartwarming to hear them take my preferences so very seriously, it was hard to follow. They were going exhaustively through a list of dozens of professions, and most of the reasons they wouldn’t work out were either obvious or incomprehensible.

Kibosh already had two carpenters and an apprentice, which was one more carpenter than the village needed. A brewer was part of an extensive production line and getting me qualified for a Journeyman slot would take months. The village simply didn’t have the raw materials or the demand to support a jeweler. The list went on.

“Alright.” Kelly’s voice jolted me out of my reverie, where I’d been meditating and trying to draw closer to my point of connection with the System. “That’s that side of the list. Glass, alchemy, inscription, enchanting, herbalism. Nothing in Delve, nothing in the Thousand, you’ve ruled out Writ. Tower… well, I guess enchanting is already a little bit Tower.”

“It is not certain that she may grasp the flow of mana and shift it.”

“Stitch it! Doesn’t matter, this is my first pass. There’s all the Magus lines, obviously, and the divination stuff, and whatever Scientist means. Is that another Koshe word?”

“She speaks Koshe?”

“Yes, I speak Koshe,” I interjected, rejoining the conversation. “And yes, it’s another Koshe word. No divination, I both find it ridiculous and hate the very idea of prophecy.”

“Struck! And last, Mathematician. Eight Classes, plus maybe Tower stuff. Unless you want to change one of your other constraints, this is what you’re looking at, but even if you can’t move mana—and that won’t be hard to figure out, like, it’s really easy to check—you can unlock any of these at Journeyman today, except for Enchanter, with an already-unlocked Class list like that.”

“Wait, how’s that? I’ve never done any glassblowing. If I could do it in a day, why would any kid growing out of Worker bother with an apprenticeship?”

Kelly gave me a thoroughly unimpressed look. “You’re already Artisan-qualified and have twenty years on that kid. Maybe you can’t handle the heat, but if you feel like you really want it, we get you the Class and you’ll get either an Attribute or a Skill that’ll make it work. But that kid? That kid doesn’t have the focus and broad base to pull it off.”

“And if the crafting is through Artisan, the herbalism stuff I guess is through Druid. That doesn’t feel right, but okay, I’ll take your word for it.”

“Good! Because now,” Kelly said with a wide, toothy smile, “I bet you’re tired of listening to us talk, and you want to do something.”

I paused, looking at her with some suspicion. “You’re not wrong,” I responded dryly. “No offense.”

“Kartom can’t test you this morning, he’s busy. We don’t have reagents, you don’t know how to channel—if you even can—and we can’t ask someone to teach you glassblowing or herbalism, not till this afternoon. So what do you say we borrow a workspace and do some alchemy?”

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