May You Tend the Earth (Sivan)

[Torin Kilvin]

30th Ash, 123

Stardew Valley, Astralar Mountains

It had been a long discussion, and more than one; what should the heart of the Golem's instructions be. There would be many, and those had been written out and passed back and forth between the two young mages a dozen times or more, but the heart needed to be more than just lists of how to plant seeds and harvest fruit.

There were sections of do no harm clauses for the farmers and their animals, as well as clauses that allowed harm to be done to predators who might attack, but those weren't a heart either.

Even as they were stretching out to feel their power for what was really the first time, in a place where they had room to grow without feeling they should make themselves smaller for the sake of others they were also realizing that they were, in fact, still very young. How did you write a fundamental core for a being that would be, even to a minor degree, sentient? Did they have the right? Were they foolish to imagine themselves wise enough to do such a thing?

These thoughts ran, plague-like, though Torin as he carved molds by hand. They worried at him as he poured molten metal and hammered plates into the shapes that would become, somehow, creatures with their own worries and hopes. He had never wanted to be a father. Which was a lie, he liked children and the idea of raising one conjured images of joy as fearful as they were bright. Entertaining such thoughts felt both selfish and evil. There was poison in his blood and no innocent being deserved the curse that might come out of him if he gave it a chance.

What was he doing undertaking an act of creation that was no less real than procreation?

It was different, not only because he couldn't hurt a golem in the same way his father had hurt him. Sivan was the difference.

See, Torin was allowed to live because Aurin would pull him back, hold him down, beat the bastard right out of him when it reared itself. And now, Torin was allowed to make something new, life that was new, because Sivan wouldn't let him accidentally slip something awful into them. Sivan would protect them, would protect him.

It was still scary, in a way that gave him a sudden and keen sympathy with the fear and love he saw in the eyes of Draisen, the young farmer when they looked as where his wife's pregnancy was just starting to show. Neither Torin nor Sivan would be giving birth in the same way, and it wasn't particularly dangerous for anyone involved to make a golem but they would still both sweat and labor and probably bleed for them before they were complete.

[Sivan]

While Torin crafted the body of the golem and kvetched internally over its mind, the bulk of the education - so to speak - fell upon Sivan and the pictography required to create the Circles of Mind. Here, his work appeared more esoteric than engineering. He knelt in one circle, the core in another, and he meditated upon the knowledge the golem would require. While he was rusty with more complicated minds, he was excited, too. These golems were being created in tandem with another artisan, but he wasn't being overseen by any master. This core would fit into the overbody he was inscribing upon each piece as Torin completed them, which would refine its aether and allow for the more complex thought.

If all went well, there would be the spark of sentience. It would be able to learn. Sivan knew a fair amount about agriculture, and he was teaching it, but the farmers would reinforce those patterns with hands-on training. The elf planned to be present for that with the first golem, at least. These colonists from Starfall - Gígurstjarna, they sometimes called it among themselves - were as accustomed to magic as the people of Kalzasi, or even of Silfanore, but not a one of them were the artificers he was.

Perhaps he and Torin would take apprentices someday who tended their workshops in the valley.

Sometimes he wanted to spend the bulk of his time there in Stardew Valley and only go to Kalzasi to tend to his tower and garden or ensure that Timon had the shop in order. There were fewer people here, and once he brought Rivin and Destyn, Laurevere and perhaps Master Jacun, the proportion of people he was comfortable would be exponentially higher than it was anywhere else.

With a long, slow inhale and exhale, he left behind the measured breathing of his meditations, rose from his hatha posture and stretched as he moved into Torin's workshop and sphere, watching with interest as he worked. When he was sure he wouldn't be interrupting, he spoke.

"How goes it, Agapitós?"

[Torin Kilvin]

While Torin was not ignorant in the ways of farming, his knowledge was almost all the second hand sort that one absorbed through a childhood spent in a community that was made up almost entirely of farmers and the professions needed to support them. His own hands-on experience was limited to his little kitchen garden, which he loved, but which he had also had significant assistance with.

Leaving the 'brain' of the golems to Sivan only made sense, and it also made him realize that, should he wish to make more he would need to employ the aid of people who knew the sort of work he intended for them to do. Assistants for his smithy he could make himself, he supposed, but anything outside of his own experience would require the experience of others. Thankfully, that part of the work was out of his hands for the time being. Less so, the part that was in his hands was giving him trouble that he couldn't seem to sort out. He tried to work through it by keeping his hands busy but that could only last so long before he ran out of things that realistically needed doing and started finding things just to delay what did. This was because what Torin was working on wasn't actually the brain of a being, but more its soul. Which led to a whole slew of uncomfortable questions which then expanded out from golems to people and made him deeply uncomfortable.

When Sivan wandered into his workshop he knew that the elf was there in the subconscious parts of himself but consciously he was so wrapped up in his tangled thought process that he didn't even realize his hands were carefully running a long file over the edge of one of the golem's chest plates, ensuring the angles would line up just so.

The sound of his dearest friend's voice, the comfort of his presence and the gentle term of endearment slipped right past any defensive hesitation he might have had so that his answer came directly from the heart of his turmoil,

"Why is it okay to have children?" It was all he said for a moment, not looking up from his work. When he did, seeing the surprise and confusion on Sivan's face and realizing what he said out loud he put his work down and tried to explain.

"I'm sorry. I just... I keep circling back to the idea that we're giving consciousness to a being that has no say in its own existence and isn't that... kind of wrong? If our golem decides it doesn't want to exist, of course we'd dismantle it but when you have a baby that isn't an option. Or..." He frowned in discomfort, "Even if it is, a baby doesn't know enough to make that kind of choice for a long time."

Running a hand through his hair and looking frankly distraught the smith swallowed and tried not to turn his eyes on Sivan because he knew they would be filled with a pleading for reassurance that the elf had neither asked for nor likely had an answer for.

[Sivan]

The elf had watched the man a bit before speaking, and knew he was troubled. It didn't truly matter if Torin looked at him; if he couldn't see his face, Sivan could still taste his soul even without touching him. His hand fell upon Torin's shoulder, then found his neck, giving it a few squeezes to ease out some of the tension. There were plenty of stock answers he had heard and could repeat back at him, but he didn't. He considered. He recalled his master's responses to his own questions of ethics. Even at his most misanthropic, Sivan had worried about these things as well.

"The golems will feel pleasure for a job well done," he explained slowly. "Its internal reward system is set up to make good behavior pleasurable to them. It is easy to create a relatively mindless thing, but they are dangerous when you make them big and strong. It is more difficult to create intelligence on par with a sentient creature. In some ways, the most difficult is threading that liminal space between them. I'm not teaching them how to write poetry. I'm not teaching them to worship the Gods or even their masters. I'm teaching them their work, self-preservation, the preservation of your people and your land. There are... hierarchies of needs and such... it is complicated. Perhaps if I am ever a father, I will learn better how to teach a golem after learning how to teach a child."

Sivan shrugged. He didn't know if anyone would ever want to create a family with him. Thankfully, he had built one for himself in a manner of speaking.

"As for children, well, there were plenty of times I was angry at my parents for creating me, but... is it unethical to make children? There is the imperative written into our blood: be fruitful and multiply. I think it is unethical to make children—and golems—if you are unwilling to bear the responsibility for rearing them and preparing them for life without you. I am not a philosopher... I don't know how much the conversation between artificery and procreation should overlap. But if these golems evolve, then I will feel compelled to help them realize their independent desires... barring desires to hurt people and such. You know?"

He leaned down to kiss Torin's hair. The fact that he worried about things like this made him love him all the more.

"I think the fact that you ask these questions is a good thing. It will make you a better creator, a better lord, a better parent."

[Torin Kilvin]

"I guess..." Torin took his time, speaking slowly as his thoughts worked themselves out, "I guess we can't know if a being wants to exist until it does."

Sivan's answers made sense, and they soothed Torin even more than the touch did. Knowing he wasn't alone in his worries, or anything else, always soothed him, helped him feel that he wasn't stupid.

His ease, and with it a confidence in their task, grew the more he listened.

"We can always unmake them, if that is what any of them want, or adjust them in ways that will help, if they want." Honestly, it would be easier for him once he had the golems to judge by. Not that these would be particularly sentient, they wouldn't be able to speak, but they could communicate if the need arose significantly. Nodding he leaned closer and bumped his head lightly against the elf's shoulder.

A flush crept over his cheeks at the suggestion that he would be a father, but, he had accepted, in a small way, that, as a lord, it was something that would be expected of him. If he decided not to have his own children he could always adopt, but he wasn't ready to make either choice and there was no need to hurry.

"Thank you for listening, for talking it out with me. Even when we don't find all the answers it feels better to look for them together. It's going well, other than my brain going all anxious."

There was a laugh to accompany the overdue answer to Sivan's initial question.

"Most of the plates are complete, cooled and filed. I put together the lower section of one. I knew how tall they were going to be but after completing the little test one I guess I didn't know until I saw it."

The height had been a practical thing, enabling the easy picking of fruit, the use of long scythes and any number of other tasks, but once the legs were together and came up to Torin's chest the reality hand sunk in.

[Sivan]

For a brief moment, his mind went on a tangent; he often found himself holding Torin like this, arms around each other as their minds wrapped around each other working on a project or working through an idea. He still worried after Urs' disappearance, and IX's ongoing dormancy. His friendships were few, and each of them different. Torin was a friend first, but it had bled into becoming lovers. If he hadn't been raised to the nobility, Sivan might eventually have asked him to wed. They would make good partners in life, though he didn't know how his redheaded master would feel about it. Now, no matter what his redheaded master might feel about it, Torin would likely have to marry a noblewoman to produce heirs, though that needn't preclude their ongoing relationship.

With Destyn, sex felt like play, natural, and sometimes, he worried, just a ploy to get to his noble neighbor. Sometimes he wondered how things might develop with Rivin, who shared a redheaded master with Torin. He didn't think himself like unto Torin's Bronze Fox and Rivin's Magus, but they did seem to share a taste for companions.

Back to the blacksmith in his arms, he smiled. Whatever the future, life was good in this moment.

"I might teach them to take threatening stances against interlopers," he mused, "though I don't want to teach them violence, even in defense. I am not certain that they wouldn't learn to like it too well. Not because they are inherently violent by any means, but rather... well, I also feel the weight of responsibility. But their scythes would certainly deter me if I were up to no good..."

Often the threat of violence was enough to deter violence. Torin looked quite capable of it and he was capable of violence in defense of those he loved, but he wasn't violent by nature. If only Sivan knew how to teach an artificial creature how to be like Torin, he would trust each and every one of them with his life.

[Torin Kilvin]

While he had accepted that, someday, he would be expected to wed, the thought that he might marry a noblewoman had never even tickled his mind. He had been raised at almost the lowest rung of of society; an orphan (thought whether he actually was one or not he did not know), apprenticed as a tradesman with no money, property of prospects of his own. Had he not shown such an aptitude for magic he would likely have spent his life working as a laborer under the blacksmith who had trained him without ever achieving a forge of his own.

The world had turned and now he owned multiple forges, land and a title. He could accept the changes, though he still sometimes forgot that the latter two were real, but in his mind he would marry in accordance to the station he'd been born to. Sivan even, was too high in standing to think about marrying, though he had struck out on his own and they were, or had been, before Torin had been ennobled, equals, socially speaking. Craftsman usually married in their own, much as farmers or merchants did.

"We'll have to imprint them on the people of the valley. Teach the words to say to each of our people so they can initiate new people when they marry or babies are born."

The idea of the people bringing their new babies to the golems as they tended the fields, speaking words and placing a tiny hand on the metal casings felt beautiful to Torin. The golems should last as long as there was anyone who knew how to tend them and they could be taught to tend themselves, or maybe they would make a couple golems specifically to tend the others. Even if all the people disappeared they might remain, sowing and gathering, rotating crops to keep the land fertile, for... ever.

Hopefully the people would not disappear and each generation would grow up running around the long-legged constructs knowing they were safe so long as they were near.

"Come," Pulling gently out of their embrace Torin laced one of his hands through one of Sivan's and tugged him gently towards the main manufacturing floor. "See what you think and help me put the torso together."

The words that kept the golems, the magic that fueled them, would be housed behind the strongest section of their chest plates. They didn't actually need heads, but it had felt too weird not to leave them without.

[Sivan]

Sivan's answer was a quiet laugh of delight at the idea, nodding. He would make it so. Their work-roughed hands clasped as they walked to inspect the rest of the pieces of the golems' bodies.

"In Dalquia," he began, "especially where populations are more sparse, the elves often bring family news to the bees if they keep them. It's an ancient custom carried forward... Perhaps some rural Hytori still do as well..."

fin.

[Finn]

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Experience: 10 xp for use at your discretion.

Injuries: N/A

Loot: N/A

Notes: Looking forward to the next leg of this journey,!