What Can I Do With It? is an introductory piece of fiction for Silkgift: The City of Sails, one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara, which is available in versions for 5th Edition and Pathfinder.

Ella was working late in her lab when she heard a familiar sound from down the hall; a low hiss followed by a kind of strangled growl. She cocked her head, waiting to make sure there wasn’t an explosion, and then climbed her step stool to get down her can of tea. She put the kettle on over her corner burner, and waited for it to heat. She took it off just as the pacing started, pouring two cups and adding the diffusers, along with cream and a little bit thistle dust for sweetener. Then she took the cups and walked down the hall. She was slower these days, but Garrick’s workshop wasn’t far.

Ella didn’t bother knocking, she just edged the door open with the toe of her boot. The long-haired shipwright’s apprentice was standing in front of an assembly that Ella recognized. He rounded on the sound of the door opening, the shout swelling up in his chest transforming into a long sigh as he saw it was Ella.

“I thought you went home a few hours ago,” he said. For him, that was the same as an apology.

“I don’t sleep much these days,” Ella said, holding out the much larger mug toward him. “Is that lubricant formula still not cooperating?”

“No,” he said, taking the mug. Garrick held it close to his face, but didn’t drink. He ran his calloused fingers through his hair, and stared at the results of his latest attempt. “Something’s going wrong. I don’t know if it’s the heat, or the sand quality, or-”

“Have you asked the important question?” Ella cut him off, sipping at her own tea.

Garrick stopped, frozen still as a statue. After a second he blew a sharp breath out of his nose, and took a sip of the tea. “What can I do with what I have?”

Ella nodded, and stepped past him, getting up onto a step stool to look at what was in his pot. It was a thick, oily sludge with bits of grit in it. She took a stirring stick, and prodded it. It was thick and heavy, almost like tar as she lifted some up.

“Is it tacky when it dries?” she asked.

“No,” he said. Then he took another sip of his tea, his eyebrows meeting.

“And the grit?” Ella asked. “Does it make for a solid grip?”

“Fairly,” Garrick said, a frown on his mouth as well as his brow. Ella waited, but for all the sparks she could see going off in his brain, nothing was catching just yet.

“You spent two years tooling a shipyard, Garrick,” Ella said, sipping her tea. “What would you do with it?”

He opened his mouth, but whatever words he’d been about to speak in haste were belayed as his brain caught a grip. He glanced over at the resin, and his eyes narrowed. Finally he said, “If it seals better than tar, it would be a godsend for a deck in a squall.”

“Start with a gangway,” Ella said, climbing back down and smiling at him. “Then work your way up from there.”

Growing the City is a piece of fiction for Ironfire: The City of Steel, one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara, which is available in versions for 5th Edition and Pathfinder.

“Space” said Shenara Locke as their assistant, Marak Colthon, entered the room. Marak was used to these seemingly apropos of nothing comments from the seneschal, and waited until she could be a little more forthcoming.

“Space” said Shenara again, staring at a map of Ironfire that had been unrolled out on the table and weighted down with several paperweights made from polished slag. She pointed at the small communities outside the main walls of the city, near the gates at Oak Gate and North Ward. Both had a few buildings there, beyond the protection of the city’s wall.

“If we build a wall around these two areas, and have another dividing it in two, we will have space to expand the city and can also increase the security, ” Shenara continued, now making more sense. “We’ll need to consider whether or not it would be a good idea having the warehouses at Oak Gate inside the walls, though. Given what they store, it may be better to keep them outside.”

Looking at Marak, Shenara told him, “I want you to look into the matter and come up with some preliminary estimates as to the cost of construction. One you’ve come up with these, and any recommendations as to how best to go about it, I’ll look them over, then present it to the Iron Council and see what they say. I doubt this will be an immediate priority, but it is a potential plan for the future, especially as parts of the city inside the walls are getting heavily populated.”

Marak sighed inwardly, as this looked like it was going to be a lot of work with no immediate use. Still, the idea did have merit, and it wasn’t as if they couldn’t find the stone to make the walls from. That should reduce the costs of an expansion, he mused, as he left to start the planning. And perhaps there was a way of dealing with Oak Gate’s warehouses after all.

Putting in the Hours is a piece of fiction for Moüd: The City of Bones, one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara, which is available in versions for 5th Edition and Pathfinder.

It’s not uncommon for the more junior members of organisations to do the less pleasant or tedious tasks that said organisation needs doing, and the Silver Wraiths, despite their more unusual nature, were no different.

Amalia al’Tiran was bent over a workbench in the cooler depths of the College of Bones in Moüd’s North District, scrimshawing the bones of a skeleton with arcane marks in Hausfaran. Essential work, as it identified that the undead bearing the marks was created by the guild, but no less tedious for it. The Silver Wraiths prefer working with the corporeal undead and, given the choice, Amalia preferred working with the raw materials of skeletons to those of zombies. It’s cleaner work, as all the meat has been removed from the bones, and that’s not the only benefit.

The guild has preservative methods to keep the flesh of those bodies intended to be zombies fresher, and the bodies were often kept chilled as well but, even with those, the dead bodies had a tendency to smell like, well, rotting flesh and, should those preservative methods fail, the heat of the desert could make smells rapidly far more unpleasant, not to mention that the flesh itself would be revolting to work with.

Amalia finished scrimshawing the bone she was working on, and moved onto the next with a quiet sigh. Essential, but boring, work, and she couldn’t wait to be finished with this stage of her apprenticeship so that she could move onto the more interesting jobs. But the time needed to be put in first, and doing the job she was given efficiently and competently ensured that her superiors would consider her worthy of ascending in the guild. Scrimshawing the bones of skeletons it was, then. And at least it wasn’t zombies.