Welcome to Gaia! ::

kero follows tam about town as he goes from shop to shop.... looking for something which seems very important but makes no sense... after a bit, tam gets a set of written instructions and leads the cat on a twisting path through a series of alley ways until they are standing before the door of an overflowing pawn shop

tam looks at his paper, then at the shop sign and nods with satisfaction, before going in.....

this is yer atypically typical back alley pawnshop (ye know the kind ye see in all the old oriental movies)... and it is filled with a wide assortment of curios... from elephant foot umbrella stands to monkey paws behind locked glass cases... an assortment of rare and unusual amulets are displayed beneath the counter, and weapons of every shape and size are displayed on the back wall...

tam begins to speak to the elderly shopkeeper in a language you barely understand, perhaps one word in ten, so what they are talking about bores ye... see anything ye like?

tam sees him looking at the weapons and asks the proprietor to pull it down... hmmm... nice... i've not seen this set up before... how easy is it to handle he asks the elderly man, who goes into a badly accented account of how he had acquired the piece from a traveling neko who was down in his luck and that he had no idea as to the ease of it's wielding... then he asks if tam would like to try it out on a dummy in the back... tam nods and he and kero follow the man into a blocked off garden, filled with even more wonders... in a back corner they find the dummy... but rather than try it himself, he surprises the man by handing it to kero....

the proprietor nods... so that's how he used it... i was wondering... the blades are so long and the handle so short, i thought he was selling me a piece of crap... but it showed enough wear and he really didn't want to part with it... still love does funny things and he turned around buying a lovely ring for his ladyfriend with the money i gave him....

tam chuckles and nods... then he looks at kero and asks if he wants it....

tam nods and asks for several pieces of scrap leather as wel as his original requests... the man nods and they all go back in... beggin his leave the man climbs up into the rafters, brings down a wooden box, adds to it several small brushes and a jar of turpentine, then he wraps everything up so they can carry it through the streets as this is a weapons banned area... all swords and any blades over the length of the standard hand dagger are to be honor tied with a red cord if worn in town...

tam thanks the man and hands over the necessary amount of coinage, then they head back to the inn.... where tam digs out his sewing and leather repair kit and gathering up the scraps he had bought, begins to craft a carrying harness for kero's new weapon....

his nap is interupted ever so often as tam makes adjustments, but in the end he thinks he's got it right and helps the cat try it on...

it clips on, kero... like this... and it should stay secure until ye pull this... he shows ye a short red cord at the front of the harness... it looks like a decoration but ye soon realize it runs back through the harness to where the blades clip on...

ye can reach it with yer teeth.. right... good... once ye do that, says tam proudly... ye can grap the blades and pull them free... i thought about using magic but ye know... i've been in tight places where magic just didn't work and if ye were in that kind of situation ye'd still want to be able to get to it iffin ye needed to...

give it a try, he says proudly....

no problem, little guy... we may need that someday... especially since bez has managed to track me down again....

now why don't ye go play... maybe go fishing or something... i have something i want to work on... says tam taking out the box, brushes and turpentine