Turn 5 Results:
-[X]The Sisters You Love: Miriko and Makoto have been through so much that you want to make sure they can do anything you can ask them. Rolled:
D20 => 20
-[X]The Sisters Who Work: You need to teach them how to forge. Failing that will lead to even worse things for you… and them. Rolled:
D20 => 12
It was something you had wanted to say to them before everything began. Before the lessons. Before the forge. Before the calluses would form on their hands and the heat would make their skin sting.
They had been forced into this life, entirely through no fault of their own. Forced to become nomads, to live on the run, to settle in a place that wasn't home and take up a trade they had never asked for. The forge had never been their dream. It had never been part of their plans.
But it was the family business now. It was survival.
And they would have to learn, not because you wanted to force them, but because the world would not wait for them to be ready. Because if they didn't, they would be left behind in a life spiraling beyond your control.
Still, even as you began to teach them, how to stoke the fire, how to temper steel, how to shape raw metal into something useful, something powerful, you never forgot one truth:
They had suffered just as much as you.
Perhaps even more.
You, at least, had memories of your mother's voice and your father's strong hands. Of laughter at the dinner table and learning from your mistakes. Of safety. They had none of that. Nothing but fragments, shadows of what once was, glimpsed through your eyes, remembered only through your stories.
To them, you were the only constant. The only family they had left. The only memory of what life had once been.
And that was why, one quiet evening, as the forge finally cooled and the sounds of hammering gave way to silence, you sat them down. The firelight flickered across their young, tired faces as you asked "Are you okay?"
It wasn't just a question for them. It was for you too.
Because you didn't feel okay. Not really. You hadn't in a long time. You had simply kept moving, kept working, kept doing anything, everything, to drown out the memories. To silence the screams. To forget the smell of burning wood, the sound of falling blades, the echo of the past clawing its way through your chest like a second heartbeat. Not knowing what your parents looked like as they finally died. Not knowing if you could only see their faces, or nothing left.
You were exhausted. Numb. Hanging by a thread that was just about to snap in two.
And at first, they said nothing. Miriko looked down, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Makoto blinked slowly, the shadows under her eyes darker than before.
But then Miriko looked up, right into your eyes, and whispered, "What can we do to help you?"
The question hit harder than any hammer ever could.
You felt your throat close. Your chest tightened. And for the first time in weeks, in months, you felt the sting of tears press behind your eyes. You hadn't cried. Not once. You didn't think you could. You had been too focused on surviving. On protecting them.
But in that moment, you realized how utterly alone you had felt. And how much you had been carrying, silently, for their sake.
So you didn't cry. Not yet.
Instead, you smiled, tired, broken in a thousand places. But genuine and filled with the only hope you had left… and said, "Then we start tomorrow."
And you began to teach them.
Reward: You have gained one workshop action thanks to your sisters helping you.
Unknown Effect on their development as engineers and weaponsmiths.
Will be able to autopass one workshop action for the next turn.
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-[X]Refine Materials: Improve the quality of your raw materials through tempering and careful craftsmanship, increasing the durability and effectiveness of future weapons. (can only make Iron to Steel) Rolled:
D20 + 3 => 20
The Steel was shit. Well that was mostly because you didn't have the time nor the patience to make it better.
But than again, you had to show your sisters the way of making the steel great. To make it whole.
So you made Iron into Steel.
Reward: Gain +20 steel. -20 iron.
+5 to High Grade Steel.
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-[X]Learn from Local Blacksmiths & Artisans: Visit nearby blacksmiths or craftsmen to learn their techniques and gain new insights into their toolmaking or weaponry methods. These techniques may improve the aesthetics, efficiency, or strength of your own designs. Rolled:
D20 => 4
How was it that no matter where you went, no matter how far you traveled, you were always surrounded by the same kind of men?
Old men. Traditional men. Gatekeepers of ancient knowledge who clung to the past like a sacred scroll, yellowed and cracking with age. Men who saw imagination not as a gift, but as a threat. A dalience. A weakness.
And every time, every single time, you sought to learn something new, to broaden your knowledge under the so-called great masters of smithing and weapons-making, you found yourself shackled by their narrow vision. Their world was one of repetition, of rigid rituals and outdated methods handed down like scripture, never questioned, never touched.
There was a reason for tradition, yes. You understood that. You respected it, to a point. Tradition had preserved knowledge, had carried wisdom through fire and famine and war. But it was not enough to survive.
You wanted to thrive. You wanted to create something new, something that had never been seen before. A blade that could change the way men fought. A rifle that could be built faster and fired cleaner. A mechanism that could redefine the balance between precision and power.
You weren't arrogant. You simply believed, believed that the art of the forge didn't have to end where the old scrolls began.
But belief, it seemed, was a crime.
You questioned them. Challenged them. You dared to suggest that their way was flawed. That there were better ways. More efficient alloys. Refined techniques. Tools they refused to try simply because they weren't handed down from their fathers.
And when you stood before them and said the words "You are wrong. This is backwardness, not wisdom. It's stagnation disguised as reverence."
They looked at you not with anger.
But with pity.
Then they threw you out.
Not with a roar, but with silence.
With cold eyes and turned backs.
But your mind? Burning.
Because if the old masters would not teach you...
You would have to teach yourself.
Failure.
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-[X] The Enigma of Sakamoto Ryōma: He doesn't come many days, but when he does… he comes with books, from the foreigners. Dutch and English books about… government, and law. And firearms. Rolled:
D20 => 20
Sakamoto had started bringing you more books, dozens of them, in fact, and teaching you how to read them. In Dutch and in English. At first, it was jarring. You hadn't expected him, a warrior with blood on his sleeves, to be a scholar as well. And learning the languages alone were enough to make your head spin. You wouldn't know to speak it, but you could read it.
And honestly, you didn't know what to say. Not to him, not to the words on the page, not to yourself.
They weren't just books on weapons, schematics, or the intricacies of gunpowder. Those you could handle. Those made sense in your analytical mind. But among them were strange volumes, magazines from foreign lands, adventure novels filled with fantastical heroes, and technical manuals written in the clipped language of engineers.
And then there were the ones that disturbed you most. Or rather confused you.
Political treatises. Writings by thinkers with foreign names that sounded silly every time you read them. Locke. Rousseau. Voltaire. Men who spoke in riddles about liberty, contracts between rulers and the ruled, the balance between freedom and order. Their words stretched the boundaries of your understanding, threading ideas through your mind like hot iron through silk.
It wasn't that you couldn't read them.
It was that they left you unsettled.
"Why are you making me read this?" you asked one day, frustrated as the ink blurred before your tired eyes.
Sakamoto glanced up from his own book with a faint smile. "I would've thought you found them entertaining."
You gave him a long look. "They're not."
He closed the book with a soft thud and leaned forward. "Then tell me what you think of them."
You hesitated. "You expect me to understand this?"
"I expect you to have an opinion," he said simply. "A man can live his whole life chasing after what he thinks will make him content, safe, happy. Is it freedom? Loyalty? Stability? Or something else entirely?"
You stared at the open pages, the unfamiliar script that now felt like whispers trying to wake something long asleep in you.
"I barely understand it," you said, quietly.
That was a lie.
You understood more than you wanted to. You understood the fear those authors had of power left unchecked. The hope they placed in common people to rise. The dangerous beauty of the idea that governments are bound by a contract, and that when they break it, they forfeit their right to rule.
But what unsettled you most wasn't the philosophy.
It was the question behind it:
What if those in power don't care about the contract? What if the people below them don't have the strength to fight back? What if justice was only a word meant for those who could afford it?
What if there was no point, in trying to change the world, if you didn't have the power to do it?
Those questions didn't have answers in any of the books.
And Sakamoto… he was waiting for you to find one.
What do you say to him?
[]Write in
AN: Enjoy.
