Gertrud Johnson's page

Gertrud and Randolph sit down on a fur and start feeding each other with the offered fruits.

Gertrud gets a nervous twitch in her left eye. The core element of her faith "to each their own" gets put to the test here. She's too young to get pregnant anyway. she tries to calm herself down.

"Well, we're about to find out, aren't we?" Gertrud replies with a smirk and a wink.

Sense Motive: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (2) + 3 = 5
It's a pity Gertrud is no CHA build. Making that roll, not commenting on it, and once it blows up in Tarjun's face telling Will and Shelly, "Sorry, he told me that you agreed." :P

Gertrud's face shows a mix of surprise and appreciation for Erastil's farmer's open mindedness.

"It's more or less just different names for the same thing. And no, fauns are not dangerous, as long as you are no woman or keep your pants on. Otherwise you might find yourself pregnant giving birth to a halfgoat that they then come to collect."

"But they sure know how to party!"

"And what besides the usual curiosity that kills the cat is your reason to go there?"

Once on the way Gertrud takes Clara's pants off Jewel and inquires from Tarjun "You told your parents too? And they agreed that you go there?"

Gertrud ignores the kids for now and approaches the Faun. "Hello. I'm Gertrud and this is Randolph. I hear there is a celebration. Does the invitation extend to us too?"

"You going alone into the woods to a faun celebration? Forget it, I'm coming along." Gertrud replies and drops everything.

"Randolph, get over here stat, we're going into the woods with the kids."

"Nah, I'm good. I don't need another hobby."

"You can try. Make the ring, check that it is the right size for your bucket. Then you carefully cut the fur an inch larger than the ring and sew the ring in."

"You'll need a sharp knife and don't you dare cut into my table."

"Clara, you know where the sewing kit is. Fetch it." Gertrud delegates.

"I don't know where she went, she didn't say."

"They are off to find a willow branch. Supposedly at the river." Gertrud shrugs.

"For the ring you best look for a straight flexible willow branch and make a ring of that. Clara knows where thread and needles are." Mrs. Johnson answers.

"The first fur is for free. For the next one you have to learn how to get it off the rabbit."

"Hey Tarjun. Wanna do the cabbage cooking for us today? That'll be new and exciting! The kitchen is all yours." Gertrud offers.

"I tell any of you to go out to the garden to fetch some cabbage for lunch you're all like 'I don't want to. Work again, how boring.'" Gertrud comments in a mocking tone.

"But for a handful of nails, you'd travel three days there and three days back and be excited about it? I don't get it."

"I see irony is lost on you boy." Gertrud comments patting Tarjun on the head.

"I'd try a cobbler. The next one is three days travel down the river." Gertrud answers.

"That could work too and be more durable if you sew in a ring and then attach the strings to the ring to tighten the fur."

"If it needs a fur on the other side too I don't know. We can try if it works with one and take it from there."

"Small enough for a rabbit skin. That's usually done with special nails. Or you can punch holes in and try to get tension on it with a weave of strings that pull it down."

"I'd say we wait til the corpus is finished. I don't want to waste a good fur for Tarjun to 'cut off excess skin'." Gertrud replies.

"If it is that small a rabbit skin might be enough."

"Maybe we should tell Tarjun to make it really big and craft it over there in the woods. About two miles in this direction I saw a big tree that toppled over that he could carve it out of." Mrs. Johnson replies with a smirk.

"Okay... how big will that drum be?"

"Oh, that sounds interesting. What instrument will he make?" Mrs. Johnson inquires.

"I have no plans yet for in two days. Come when you like."

"First this needs to hang for a while. In two days this will be turned into meat and saussages."

"Don't look at me. I didn't ask for these two and still you brought them. I just wanna make sure that if you do it again, you do it right."

Gertrud rolls her eyes. "Maybe pay attention? For the next boar you hunt."

"It is not that heavy. If you gut it, what is left you should be able to drag. Of course it is not as easy as flying it home. But you can't really bring a horse and cart. Your prey would hear that and run away from you before you even notice it."

"Salt, dry it, or eat it before it turns bad." Gertrud replies. "And you don't cut it up further, you can't transport that without a cart."

"You need either a special knife like this here" Gertrud shows a curved knife that has has a ball at the tip "Or you take a regular knife that is only sharpened on one side and put your finger on the back covereing the tip."

"Then you cut open the belly from here to here. And remove all the intestines. And you want to be really careful here to not cut into that, or the meat will taste of shit."

With one smooth cut with the finger and knife inside cutting up and outwards the belly is opened, with the other hand everything swiped out and then two cuts and the colon, stomach and some other organs are removed. "You can turn some of that into sausage but you usually don't bring that from a hunt. You leave that for the foxes."

"Nothing. We waited for you." Gertrud replies.

As the flying pig delivery arrives Gertrud greets them. "You're in for a lessong in hunting and butchery. You're supposed to follow proper procedure with the necessary craftsmanship. Not massacre the animal and risking to ruin the meat."

"Yeah, no. You're not taking paddington alone into the woods. I don't want a gnawed upon boar."

"You can build a simple sled with two branches and some rope. That should be enough to pull a boar without magic."

Gertrud draws her knife and starts gutting the boar. "I'm busy here for a while. I can't help you now."

"It looks like you didn't gut it, so drop it just over there." Gertrud replies pointing at a spot a bit away from the house.

Gertrud comes out and watches in astonishment. "What are you doing?" she inquires in disbelief.

"Clara voluntarily helping with work? That'll happen when pigs fly." Gertrud is heard out of the butcher work shop.

"It didn't work, did it?" Gertrud asks.

But anyhow, getting up doesn't look like the best option at the moment and ignoring roosters and sunshine is a thing you can master with practice. And practice she has.

"Ewwww, you stink. Get yourself and that pocketrat of yours into the tub. If you manage to get yourself clean and into a clean set of clothes, you can ask me again after breakfast." Gertrud barks at the kid. Then she buries her face in the pillow.

"What about you Randolph? Want a side of bell peppers to that existential crisis for breakfast?"

"Shut up and go to bed." comes the answer from the parents bedroom.

To make sure not the whole butchery disappears Gertrud picks which pieces leave this night. A dried saussage for everyone, a thick slice of smoked bacon and three steaks. "Make sure you leave no food out there. We don't want to draw any predator near the village."

"Within a week." Gertrud replies to Tarjun. "And I don't care who brings it. But I have my ways to make sure someone will pay."

"Oh, did he? That wouldn't help any. I can't buy more for any money. You can have some meat, but the price is that you pay me back with a boar or deer. Or a lot of hares." Gertrud replies.

...

"And even though no follower of Erastil comes forth to confirm it" she adds with a glare at Jewel "we slept together, so we are now married."

Gertrud ponders the last sentence for a moment and shakes her head. "No Clara. Sleeping together to get you married is not just lying in the same bed."

"But sneaking over at night to give Tarjun the scare of his life? High five!" Gertrud holds up her hand. "Just don't do it again. Now you know that it's not ok, and they know that you know it's not ok, and you won't get off that easy a second time. Now go to bed."

Gertrud looks at her kid and then watches Shelly leave.

Once Shelly is out of sight she scolds "Clara, it is not ok, to break into the Branston house at night and into Tarjun's bed to force a marriage."

"Now get inside and tell me what gave you that crazy idea."

"She's for sure somewhere around." Gertrud replies.

Seeing Jewel come back empty handed a while later she wonders if she gave up, but doesn't comment.

"That is a lesson I could teach you, but most of the options that might look appealing to you - so not hard work - your parents wouldn't approve of. And they won't work in Oakstedt."

"Also high profit comes usually with high risk and the chance of really painful failure. How about you ask my mum. She can tell you for sure."

With that last suggestion you notice the hint at a joyful smile that comes with mischief.

"You bring it here. You as a follower of Erastil shouldn't have problems following simple instructions. We take it one step at a time." Gertrud replies. "And patience is a very important skill when working on a bow. As it is when working on the field."

"The one I currently have, I made myself. But things that take a lot of time to make cost a lot of money to buy. What do you have more - time or money?" She inquires.

"Trees are alive. If you cut them, they bleed - resin. And that needs to dry. Without getting really wet by water. With that you get rotten wood. Even for furniture you take seasoned timber. And for a bow you need to be much more careful." Gertrud explains.

"As for steel, I'm no expert. But you have to start with wood, that you dry, and then build a huge pile of firewood that you cover with earth and then let it burn for a while to turn it into charcoal. And with that you can then melt the ore in a furnace to make cast iron. And from there, you go and do more stuff to make that into steel. That you then have to forge to form the arms of the crossbow."

"Where do you want to start? Wanna make the steel yourself?" Gertrud replies with a grin.

"It takes the wood that time to dry. You don't want your bow to change every other day, because the wood is still drying."