The kid and I walked over to the last area, the TAILORING section. There was nobody at this station but the trainer when we arrived, and he seemed happy to have something to do.

“Good to see someone wanting to learn to craft their own clothing! I have put in a support ticket with SCHEMA, though I don’t expect it to go anywhere, asking them to change the name to ARMORER. I think we’d get a lot more people interested in learning, though of course everyone would still have to start out by tailoring cloth and leather.

“Normally, if you want to learn the TAILORING SKILL, you do have to start off with cloth and then move on to leather on your own. However, in the BEGINNER TUTORIAL, the powers that be have not provided much in the way of cloth supplies, so we’re making do with leather goods.

Like all of the basic SKILLs that are available here, TAILORING has two ABILITY requirements: HUNTING, which can also be met through the HUSBANDRY ABILITY, and TANNING. Since you have already acquired the HUNTING ABILITY, we can move directly to learning to tan the hides that you brought with you from your COMBAT TRAINING. I understand that you have a few rabbit skins, as well, from COOKING, is that correct?”

The kid pulled out his rabbit skins and then both of us unslotted our rat skins. The trainer took a moment and selected out the best of the bunch. “OK, here’s where things get interesting, and how this station differs a bit from the others. Rabbit skins aren’t very useful for much other than moccasins and gloves. Often people will use them to line cloth or sturdier leather goods for cold-weather wear, but few people would use them for their main clothing.

“There is, however, a market for them. Custom artisans use the rabbit skins and fur for decorative fashion aimed at the lower-end of the market, so what skins you decide not to use, I can sell. I can also arrange to trade or register some other of your goods, even some of the food products that you have left from your COOKING SKILL acquisition. Additionally, I can register all of your items. This could work out well for you, if you have no other use for these items, because all items must pass through the system in order to be recognized by SCHEMA. Of course, the items that you have acquired so far are minimally recognized—enough that you’re able to slot them in your inventory—but only as CRAFTING supplies. You can sell them as such, but you’ll only get the craft value.”

Seeing the look of confusion on our faces, he explained. “I know, for example, that you gathered some gold, silver, and gems gaining your MINING ABILITY. Those items are counted as crafting supplies and have a value much lower than they normally would. The value of crafting supplies is one of the few items that have a standardized value in every system that becomes part of SCHEMA. That is why when you view these items in your INVENTORY, you don’t see an associated value. The values by law are posted at every MERCHANT stall and are not subject to negotiation. Only values that you can see using your INVENTORY are open to negotiation, because the value that you will see, with your charisma and any MERCHANT SKILLs or ABILITIES you have will be weighed against the same of the buyer’s. So, if I see a gem listed at 3 gold, you might see it listed at 1 gold or 10 gold, depending on your scores. Once the items are registered, they automatically convert to their full value and you can see that value in your INVENTORY.”

“That seems unnecessarily complicated,” I said with not a little frustration at yet another example of government bureaucracy.

“That’s as may be,” he allowed, “but there’s little either of us can do about it, and once you become familiar with the way the system works, you’ll see that, like every system, it has its benefits as well as its detractions. One clear benefit is that until you register, say, an ounce of gold—which is the same amount as one gold coin contains—will be listed in your total INVENTORY value as about a quarter of that amount, or 25 silver coins. While nobody but SCHEMA and you can see the contents of your INVENTORY, a person with the right SKILL can see the value of it. If a bandit waylays you on the road and you have 100 ounces of gold, but that gold has not been converted to coinage and has not yet been registered with SCHEMA, then instead of showing that your INVENTORY is worth 100 gold, it will show that it is only worth 250 silver.”

I’m sure my face showed the shock I was feeling at the thought of a thief knowing from a distance how much I was worth, but also at the unfairness I felt in the whole system. Whether he noticed or not, the trainer went relentlessly on.

“Even if you manage to cut and polish your stones so that they would normally sell for a great deal of gold, they would not. They would only sell as basic gem crafting supplies. That’s you selling them, of course. If you sought to buy them, it would depend on your charisma score against the charisma of the merchant as to how much you’d actually have to pay, but whatever the amount, it would be guaranteed to be much lower than if you had converted them and they were recognized by the SCHEMA system.”

‘I still don’t understand,” I said, “If we craft an item using a SKILL or ABILITY learned through the SCHEMA system, doesn’t that mean that they’re automatically part of the SCHEMA system?”

“Unfortunately not. They are only minimally recognized. Enough that you can slot them in your inventory. In order for them to be fully recognized, you have to do one of two things. You can sell the items at a reduced rate to a certified SCHEMA merchant, or you can present them at a MERCHANT stall and have them evaluated and registered for a fee. The evaluation is handled exclusively by SCHEMA, not the MERCHANT, so that you can be assured that you are receiving a fair evaluation for the area or system you are in. You will pay that value to the MERCHANT, of course, but the MERCHANT is then required to pass it on to SCHEMA. Minus his standard holding fees, of course.

Consider it a method that SCHEMA uses to tax items. Instead of taxing the sale of goods, SCHEMA taxes their registration. This costs you more initially, but if you sell the item for over the listed value, you are not taxed on the excess. This can be a considerable amount, though it does tend to favor MERCHANTS over producers, and the larger MERCHANTS even more so.”

That seemed to be one point that got the trainer’s goat. It was petty of me, but I was happy to see that something about the system got him.

“The system is not without benefit to the producers, though. If you make a piece of gold jewelry out of that ounce of gold, and that gold has been legally registered via SCHEMA, then you will not be taxed on the value of the resulting jewelry, but only on the weight of the initially registered gold. The same with gems, if you register all of your craft supplies before you use them to craft, then whatever you make will be tax free. You take the chance that you won’t have to sell the raw goods before you craft them, because even if you have registered a CRAFTING supply, as long as you haven’t actually used it to CRAFT anything, it still has only its CRAFT value. As I said, there’s good and bad in every system.

“So, as a certified SCHEMA MERCHANT, what I can do is the furs and skins that you do not decide to use, I can buy them from you at a fair craft value cost without requiring you to register them, first. Many MERCHANTS do require you to register the supplies before they’ll buy them, so that they don’t have to. The rest of the items that you decide to keep, I can register for you here in this area, and SCHEMA will waive the registration fees. This is why I don’t have to worry about buying them without requiring you to register them and pay a fee, first. No fees will be deducted, either way.”

In the end, I decided it was fruitless to argue about it with someone who was to all appearances as much a victim of the same system as I. I had no real way of knowing if he was cheating us or not, but I supposed if he was, I could always file a support ticket with SCHEMA and see if I could get some kind of recompense. The kid didn’t like it any better than I did, but he decided to follow my lead. We laid out what we had planned on crafting with the skins, and the trainer bought the rest. I decided to register my metals and gems as well, but we both decided that we’d keep the food for ourselves and not worry about selling them on down the line. My staff, I discovered, had been registered as its initial wood value, and my slingshot as well. The kid’s original short bow was registered, but the one he’d crafted for himself, and all the arrows and arrowheads, along with the bronze accents that he’d just made at the SMITHING station, had to be registered. I also registered the wooden shoe soles. Even if I was making the boots for my own use, I figured I might have reason to sell them if I found something I liked better.

Even now that I think back on that day, I can’t escape the anger at how SCHEMA has arranged this whole system in which we are, in every way that matters, slaves and prisoners. The kid didn’t feel that way at all, having read a lot of stories that spoke about similar systems, he only saw the opportunities, but I think he was starting to come around to my way of thinking after the arbitrary and, really, illogical way that SCHEMA taxed items in order for them to be “real.”

So, while we did gain the TANNING ABILITY, and we did craft ourselves leggings to replace our homespun, jackets to go over our tunics, new belts, a new set of buckled boots for me, and a set of moccasins and two quivers for the kid, the whole day pisses me off so much that I can hardly recall much else about it other than that conversation we had before we even started the training.

Two things of note that I do remember. We were surprised to learn that ounce for ounce rat skins are almost as tough as elephant hide. They’re thinner, so not as tough as a similar garment made with elephant, but they ought to be tough and last a long time, even though they weren’t as nice looking, since we had to piece them together in order to make them fit.

The other thing of note is that the trainer traded me some troll hide to use under the wood on the soles of my boots. I traded him several of the flawed garnets for enough to make my soles and the soles for the kid’s moccasins. He explained that while the rat hide was almost as tough as the Troll hide, Trolls had regenerative magic built into their very beings, and that carried over even after they died, so that as long as the soles of our shoes didn’t wear completely away, they would eventually regenerate to like-new condition! When the trainer had first mentioned how many of the garnets he wanted for the scarp of hide, I thought for sure he was cheating me, but after finding out about the regeneration, I knew I had to kill me some trolls to make the rest of my clothes!

Finally, we were finished with all of the available CRAFTING stations. After registering my gold, silver, and gems—and paying SCHEMAS tax, of course—we had enough to go to each of the stations and buy basic craft supplies. While we were promised CLASS supplies as part of our BEGINNER kit, both the kid and I knew that we weren’t going to choose to be a SMITH, or a COOK, TAILOR, or WOODWORKER. We would certainly find use for the SKILLS, but neither of us were interested in making any of them into careers.

Each CRAFTING kit took up one slot in our inventory. When unslotted, it appeared as a box that contained a basic kit. The TAILORING kit consisted of a small box, like a tool box, that held a small mallet, an awl, several types of needles from leather needles to fine needles used on silk. There was twine, cord, and 10 spools of various colored threads to use to bind the materials together, as well as an assortment of buttons, a thimble, a pin cushion complete with pins, some samples of the chemicals you can use for tanning hides, a knife to scrape them with, and a few basic patterns on spelled paper.

The WOODWORKING kit was larger, like a crate. Even so, it still took up the same amount of space—one slot—as the tailoring kit. Inside there was an axe for chopping trees, a hammer, an assortment of bronze nails, a draw knife for debarking and rough shaping, , a wedge for splitting the wood, a plane for smoothing the planks, a saw for cutting them, a coping saw for finer shaping, three sizes of chisels, and even some knives for decorative carving. There was also a book containing a few patterns for things like basic furnishings and even a blueprint for a small house.

The COOKING section contained two nested pots with a pan for frying that served as the lid. Inside the small pot, there were twists of paper wrapped herbs and spices, and a small book containing easy recipes for beginners. Between the tops of the pots and the pan lid, there was a meat fork, a ladle, and a stirring spoon. As a bonus, the kit came with the choice of a flint and steel for those without magical abilities, like the kid, but for me, I got to learn my first CANTRIP, which I discovered was a very minor spell, called “spark” that created a spark enough to start a fire if you had good tinder. There was also a magical water filter that we both got that would filter up to 2 liters of water a day, turning even raw sewage into drinkable water.

The SMITHING kit was the largest one, since it had a small, wheeled travel anvil and inside the bottom of the anvil was the forge. You attached a leather bladder between the handles, pulled a pin out that held the near handle in place, and extended the bladder to the forge, and that made the bellows. The metal of which is was composed, I learned, was called Ship Steel, because it had been created to use for hulls of space ships. It was tough enough to act as a ship’s armor, but light as aluminum. I was amazed. There were two sizes of hammers and tongs, a set of draw tongs and a plate with various sized openings for drawing wire. We got some molds—including molds for coins, there was no such thing as counterfeit coinage under the SCHEMA system, it seemed, where each item showed its base value to everyone, so anyone could make their own coins, if they knew how. There were also plans for making nails and other small items, like our boot and belt buckles, but also household items like hinges and door bolts. It also had schematics for various knives, swords, shields, spear points, and arrowheads, and notions like buttons and small jewelry items.

After all our purchases, we considered ourselves fully kitted out, and even had enough left over that we still had all of our original 10 starting gold, plus the kid doubled his with the gold he mined, I tripled mine with 30 gold worth, plus I had 500 silver, the kid had 200, and I had 10 gold in various kinds of uncut, but registered gems. We would only get that estimated value if we converted the metals to coins, or made them into useable items. We were assured that those who took the BEGINNER TUTORIAL were offered these kits at sharply reduced prices, since SCHEMA could only count on each trainee having the original 10 gold, each kit had to be priced accordingly.

So, while the whole pricing system still pissed me off enough that I don’t even like remembering about acquiring the TANNING ABILITY and TAILORING SKILL, gaining those kits at good prices and being able to leave the CRAFTING area in new clothes that I’d made for myself was quite satisfying. With that in mind, we slotted all of our kits and extra supplies into our INVENTORIES, got directions on which way led out, and left the area for the last time.