Celeste agrees with Siankiir, there is but one chance to impress the Dwarves in one of their big cities, the audience will be large and likely not so entertainment-starved as this small outpost.

"It makes sense," she says.  "Still I would not want to tarry, or miss the opportunity of the boat.  We will have to work fast.  Maybe split up.  Talk to Dwarves and see what they say about the do's and don'ts of entertaining Dwarves?  If they are like these dwarves, ribald is certainly not going to do it."

Those that know Celeste understand the satisfaction in her voice when she says this.  Ribaldry is something she has never accepted.  From her point of view it is crude, and interferes with the purity of their arts.

Marcos was not a fan of crude physical humor, it had its places like among the gnomes of his home land that enjoyed practical jokes or with the orcs who despite the attempts to civilize were still entertained by slapstick antics.

He had not had a tremendous amount of exposure to dwarves, but from what he read he suspected that the details of craftsmanship would be something worth paying attention to, as would a fair amount of cooperation between multiple entertainers.

I am as ready as i can be at the moment.

"I am ready", said Nwofia softly, indeed almost silently, her smile obsidian, her eyes glittering like veins of crystal.

"When we split up, I can translate and hopefully aid in gathering any pertinent information," nodded the elf.

They spend an evening in the inn at Tasgaetium.  It's an unusual kind of inn in many ways, one of them being the way it is built into the common structure of the Dwarven outpost, rather than as a freestanding building.

Dwarves like it that way, it seems.  Efficient.  Everything has a function.

And every function has its rules.  Dwarves do not stay up late, even when there is the novelty of strange performers in town.  Very quickly after their show the Dwarves of Tasgaetium disperse, headed back to their homes, which are also apartments built into the fortress.  Soon, the innkeeper is sweeping up, and only the night watch-dwarves are up and about.

Celeste tries to talk the boatman into holding the ferry for a day.  Whatever she tells him works, and she reports back that the ferry will wait tomorrow, giving the party a day to learn and plan before continuing on.

She suggests copying the Dwarven schedule: early to bed, early to rise, prepare to be.. productive... come the dawn.

"A peculiar people with their own set of values," she says.  "They have accomplished a lot, they have much to be proud of.  We have a day to plan, so let us make the best of it."

The party spends a night.  It's a very peaceful night, with very little noise.  If they are listening, every few hours they hear the ritualized change of the guard.  The Dwarves here take everything seriously.  Even if it is just one more change of the guard shift in the middle of the night with no one around to see or hear, they go through every word and motion as they should.

In the morning, there is a full Dwarven breakfast in the inn.

Marcos finds the ritualized nature of the daily schedule quite similar to his own. Given the chance, and assuming the dwarves don't find offense in his choice to turn down lodging in the inn. He much prefers to rest where he is able to see the stars. he has spent many a night lying on his back watching the stars make their march across the sky as he waits for sleep to arrive. in the morning he is one of the first rouse from his night's rest. he goes about preparing his spells.

At breakfast, Tahra reports that Klimmin found the night peaceful and filling. She also relays his impression of the dwarven guards being unbothered by bugs but perhaps bothered by his flutter-bys.

Alayna, as all know, is not a morning girl. But she awakes anyway, and though rested, needs something to wake her fully. Even her horse is a bit annoyed, snorting his displeasure at the early hour.

Nwofia still doesn't speak and now her eyes look as though she hasn't slept since the flood waters receded and the Sahara Forest became a desert.  She moves slow and steady though and whenever she can, she catches a catnap.

Her evening trance uninterrupted, Siankiir felt better prepared to tackle assisting with gathering any local dwarven gossip or politics about the city beforehand.  Carefully, she tucked into the breakfast, already trying to push aside her discomfort from the day before about trying to dance.

"How should we approach this?"

"My thinking is to be open and honest about it," Celeste offers.  "Find a Dwarf who appreciates what we do, ask questions, ask for...  no... that wouldn't really work, would it?  We'd end up with what Dwarves think is right for a show, but what we really need has to come from us.  My father has the gift for deciding on shows, but he's not here and I've never done the planning like that."

She trails off in thought for a few moments, eyeing breakfast as if expecting inspiration from it.

Perhaps there is.

"Well we shouldn't ask them, really, not as if we don't know what we're doing.  But we should make some observations on how they think, and what's important to them.  Things working properly, for one, that's obvious.  No mistakes!"

Introduce yourself, or selves, tell what you do to perform, show what your first attempts were like, then show you getting better, then as you are now. Finish, if all goes well, what you hope for the future. And remember what our purpose in coming here is.

Myself, I plan  to relate developments in the west and do some foretelling.

"So to begin with", says Nwofia, "I will dance like a child taking joy in the dodging of riverhorses and crocodiles, then like an adolescent, joining the winds and dancing in zephyrs and sandstorms, and finally as I am now, moving that dance into the third dimension, but how do I explain my hope to move into a fourth dimension when I do not yet know what such a dimension must look like?"

Marcos pauses for a moment before speaking.

I can tell a great story. I have many lifetimes of stories to tell. But few of these stories are mine alone. I was central to very few of the stories and merely an observer in most.

I can tell stories of great heroes facing vile foes, or of great loss and horrible tragedies.

Or i can tell beautiful lies, through the use of colors and tricks of the eye and ear.

With no set schedule for the day and no shows to do, breakfast easily fades into the rest of the rest of the morning, and they are free to explore the Dwarven outpost a little more.

It seems overbuilt for what it is.  It's compact, yes, but even so it easily has room for twice as many Dwarves as live here now.  In the morning, after a loud blast on the horn that tells the Dwarves its time to go to work, the outpost is noisy, with the sounds of Dwarves as work, and one might surmise that if it was more populated it would be noisier still.

The noise is not just hammering, though Dwarves seem to do a lot of that.  The island divides the river, and thereby forces the water into channels, and the channels are used to power water wheels that turn mills and grindstones.  The Dwarves have an elaborate mechanical polishing system, and that is a big source of employment here.  With water power they polish stone tiles and sharpen blades, and these are sent back to their cities (that don't have such a convenient power source, apparently) on the ferry the party will be taking.  Noise from the grinding reverberates through the outpost.

Dwarves set about their tasks surprisingly eagerly, even if it seems to be simple drudgery.  They seem to have definite attitudes towards work and play- curiosity and interest regarding the visiting performers is put on hold during "work hours".  That will have to wait until the end of day horn sounds.   Or maybe the lunch break horn.

It worried the elf at how lackadaisical the approach of the entertainers were about this.  That, regardless of what the dwarves might say or do, the troupe members would just carry on how they wanted to perform, dwarven tastes or comfort level be damned.

Internally, Siankiir sighed.  Hopefully, she was wrong and just paranoid.  For her part, she would gather what gossip she could about the dwarven capital and tell the others.  Whether they then chose to use it or not to tailor their acts was out of her hands entirely.

Topaz is, perhaps, the very embodied principal of Siankiir's concern.  He stays up late the evening before, enjoying such night life as the Dwarven settlement has to offer.  In spite of the omnipresent din of hammering, he sleeps late, arriving only to catch breakfast as it threatens to become lunch.  Despite the tardy arrival, the bard looks none the worse for wear, but appears quite well rested indeed.  But then, he's a Faun and occasionally revels in the overt opinions others have about his folk.

For his part, Topaz wanders where he's welcome, watching and chatting amiably with Dwarves at their work, listening to what conversation occupies them while they toil.  He knows little enough of them, other than stereotypes such as the very ones he enjoys playing to.  Still, do they gossip or sing, work in silence with only a minimum of conversation, or even sing and dance in time to their mechanical works?  There's a rhythm there and, with it, a story to be told.

No master of languages, the Faun listens attentively for sounds and phrases, quick ear turned to the sound of the Dwarven tongue.  The choice of each sound in a word holds meaning, can be used to convey a sense of time and place even if any particular word isn't present.  Still, it's plain it wouldn't be long before he had a smattering of helpful expressions and could conduct himself passably in Dwarven society.  As the remnant of the morning dwindles, he can be seen toying with the musical geist of the place, experimenting with instruments and percussion in attempt to capture it in a replicable way.

Nwofia too listens as Topaz does, but in her case, it could take several lifetimes until she masters their language.  The musical genius loci on the other hand is less a problem.  As she hears Topaz playing the music he extracts from the geist, she begins to dance, following his music, absorbing his music, becoming his music and from that music a new dance.  So with Topaz' help, whether intended or not, Nwofia dances with the spirit of this Dwarven outpost, and thus with the spirits of the dwarves.

Marcos endured Siankiir's derision, he was who he was.

Marcos spend his morning studying architecture and watching the dwarves work taking note of the fine details and utilitarian functionality of each and every thing the dwarves touched.

He found the system of aqueducts and waterwheels particularly intriguing. he made a point not to disturb the dwarves of get in their way.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:29, Tue 20 July 2021.

The Music (tm) just *is*.  The world speaks through both silences and sounds.  Some are quick and intentional, others eons in the making and incidental to existence.  Making something of that is what Topaz does.  In his way, he's perhaps no less the fabulist than Marcus Conner.  He can give the impression of a place or time with music, but it's only a suggestion.  Ultimately, the construction of idea occurs solely inside the mind of the listener.

While there's also composing from whole cloth, performing a new thing that hasn't ever existed before, his current composition in the Rhein River Suite is of the former.  This piece is rather more full of percussion than his usual music.  When Nwofia joins him, he lets her carry the rhythm while he plays no melody, but only complementary notes.  It makes the music strange, but in its absence of tonality the music of Dwarven industry speaks loudly of duty, community, and work ethic.

Alayna was blind to whatever the Dwarven language or work ethic was. They loved working, or at least loved their work, that was clear. She had just enough Elf in her to be oblivious to the joy of 'work.' And unlike her other members, she was not inspired to make her show reflect this. The young girl was truly oblivious to the fact that the many hours she spent with Angel working her routine was the same as what they did. To her, she was allowed to do what she loved, and she couldn't imagine others doing that as they toiled at stone and earth.

For her part, she stretched and worked with her horse. She felt the best she could do was show how hard she worked to make her craft its best. And the irony of that was fully lost on her.

As Nwofia dances, the rhythm grows more and more complex, as if the simple rhythms of work combined into something greater than the parts, until the collective is not a simple layering of the simple rhythms of individual effort but the complexities of Music as if the mines and workshops breathed together and those combined breaths became something new, became rock music, became metal.

Each in their own way, they spend a day in Tasgaetum.  Many of the Dwarves seem puzzled, at least during working hours, as they wonder about just what it is the odd visitors are doing.

Eventually it becomes apparent:  Aha, this is a trade, they are working on something, and this is how they practice.

Even that seems a little odd to them, after all, the troupe is all (apparently) professional and experienced at their craft, and you don't see experienced Dwarven craftsmen knocking out practice pieces.

Or maybe you do...  the characters overhear Dwarves debating this.

"True, True, not like an apprentice would, but when my cousin Obirin invented sour cherry bread he did practice loaves for a while before he'd sell one, and he's no novice baker!"

The entertainers become the subject of many a conversation in the little town.  It's how it often is- in such a small and remote place, there often isn't much to talk about.  Whenever anything novel presents itself, people are glad just to have a new subject!

And their discussions, at least when the characters overhear, reflect Dwarven culture and Dwarven ways. They focus on technical things, and on philosophy.  No comments on what the performers are wearing.

As the day progresses and the characters periodically regroup, Celeste points out a minor dilemma, having been put in a philosophical mood by listening to one too many Dwarves.

"You know, we really can't observe anyone in their natural state, can we?  What we see is their state in our presence, which can be different.  On the other hand, it would be even more disruptive with the whole caravan here.  In a way we get to see more of the normal life.  I'm so used to my father putting together the show... do we know yet what we'll be doing when we get to the Dwarven city?  It's a very important show, and it's... well it's just us.  This is the first time I've done anything like this."

Unaware of the discussions, and not knowledgeable about dwarven to follow it, Alayna, though sheer boredom, fell back on what she knew. Exercising and working out with Angel. She did both, doing her stretches, practicing tumbling, then working her horse through all of her routines. She worked hardest on the dismounts, the flip and double flip. She wanted to make those so second nature that she could do them without thinking, and worked them until she was dripping with sweat and unable to continue.

Then she rested, ate, slept, then did it again. The others in the troop knew her dedication, but she went beyond, pushing herself. If the Dwarves were perfectionists, then she would show them what hard work could achieve.

Marcos understood changing the over all performance to appeal to the audience. But the sentiment of not disturbing the dwarves seemed very out of place. The troupe were entertainers, being a diversion from the day to day life is central to that job description.

He understood how the terrain was the reason the entire caravan did not come with them. but in Marcos' view terrain was the only reason for that.

Diversions and distractions were fine if the idea is to get people to forget about their problems for a day or two, but the underlying issues still remain.

Marcos was a "gnome" covered head to toe in technicolor clothing. He is a master of illusion. Being distracting is his defining personality trait. But he kept his opinion on the subject to himself.