Tanth opens his mouth to speak, and then closes it again.

"I don't think," he begins to say.

Perkre elbows him in the side.

"Hey, do you think I can get this orange bit in there? Otherwise I think I might have to start over," he comments, pointing at the partially solved puzzle.

Tanth glances at him, but switches places without complaint.

"Couldn't you just take it through this corner," Tanth says, dragging the orange marker. "Oh. No, I guess you can't. Hmm."

"It's a tricky one, isn't it?" Perkre asks. "Makes you think."

Oh boy. Loaded conversation, this. But yes, good job, Perkre, Tanth was totally failing at subterfuge and did in fact need to be saved. This veneer of not knowing what the conversation is really about is protecting her, too, don't go puncturing it like that.

"Honestly it'd be more work to gate it behind a puzzle than to just fix it myself," she explains. "These are kind of hard to make?"

Perkre nods. "That makes sense. Every craft takes effort if you want to be good at it," he agrees. "There's a lot more to smithing than people think. What goes into making a good puzzle?"

Ah, someone's trying to get at her underlying psychology to understand the risk factors at play. She continues to like Perkre. Yes, absolutely, she is more than happy to display what sort of person she is.

"So a lot of it's a balancing act," she muses, "because while I can just arbitrarily decide that this is the one true solution to something, and you're all stuck until you figure it out, that's not really. ... Fair? And I mean, dungeon, right, I don't even see things the way you do. Kose had to tell me that it would be better to make glasses that can see magic instead of the weird thing I actually came up with. So making a puzzle means a lot of putting myself in the Adventurer's shoes and thinking of how would I solve this? It's. It's sort of backwards of just figuring out something myself? Not a bad kind of backwards, it's also kind of enjoyable figuring it out, just. It's a significantly harder problem than just.... 'How do I cram this into this,' or 'How do I arrange this for strength,' or something."

"Hmm. So it's more about crafting the idea than putting it into practice?" he muses. "That's appropriate to what they are, I suppose. Why use puzzles if they're so much trouble in the first place, though? Most dungeons seem to do just fine with monsters, and that still lets you make magic items."

Tanth curses as he manages to back himself into a corner again, and resets the puzzle.

"Yeah, pretty much. As to why no monsters..." Safe sane and consensual? No, no, can't go with that, it won't make sense, so: "... it seems like it could go really badly, really easily? I can't... put people back together? I guess I might be able to make a healing artifact, maybe, but natively, I can't put you back together like I can with a wall. If you break, that's kind of it, I have broken something and it might not be fixable, possibly ever. If I fuck up a puzzle, someone will be frustrated for a while, or I'll need to step in and help them out, or something, but if I make and throw literal murder monsters at people, then, uh. That could go so very wrong, so very easily, even with safety precautions in place? It's higher risk than I'm comfortable with.

"I'm also not convinced what I'd gain from that would even be worth it? It'd be easier on me, I guess, but. ... I want people to trust that they can come in here and be okay? That seems better long term, having a positive working relationship with Adventurers. And, hm, if everyone is expecting that... at any point in time, I might drop spiders on people, or something, then only people that could handle spiders-or-whatever would ever come in. So. Open to people that can't deal with spiders being dropped on them. Or the equivalent. I don't really know what things other dungeons do, that just seems like how you all act when you come in here. Like at any time, spiders could be dropped on you."

"Heh. I suppose we do, don't we? I think it's a rare dungeon that cares to foster a ... positive working relationship with other people. Which in turn means the people who have had spiders dropped on them probably don't make the best first impression," he says.

He claps Tanth on the back.

"Tanth, I don't think I need to watch your back in here. I'm going to go try and get me one of those water-sticks for Rona's distillery."

He walks over to the ring puzzle and begins fiddling with them.

"She's been pretty excited about the water-sticks," he explains. "Accidentally set my apprentice on fire with one, not that that's uncommon. Young love."

“Set your apprentice on…” she says, sincerely surprised. “How? The… using it to pull water out of air and pointing the end blowing out air near coals or fire?? Is that what happened??”

Oops, she displayed too much intellect, probably, but no seriously how.

"Ooh. That's a good idea! I should try that on my bellows. But no -- she used it on a pint of beer. Apparently nearly pure alcohol is flammable enough to go up just from the temperature of the air, and he wasn't expecting it," he explains, heaving the rings into position. "There isn't much alcohol in beer, but it was enough to set his tunic alight."

"Rokat made her give it back, but she wanted one of her own to experiment with. She thinks if she does it when it's cold enough it might not catch and she can make something strong out of it," he continues.

Aestrix can't help it. She cackles. It's funny, okay. And they want to use it to make stronger liquor!! Humans!!! Humans are so themselves, wherever they are!!

"I see. Well, not the intended function, but sure, why not. You've already figured out that you can rig up something else to press the little thing to activate it, right? I didn't key it towards needing a person to do it. I'm pretty sure you can absolutely set it up to use it to blow air from a distance."

"Oh really? I don't think we had figured that out, actually," he replies. "That'll certainly make things easier."

He and Tanth finish their puzzles at almost the same time.

Tanth takes the scroll and turns it over in his hands before peering through it at the dungeon around him.

Perkre takes his water purifier and tucks it into a pouch.

"I'm glad I got a chance to talk to you," he says, moving to re-group with Tanth. "I'll be sure to come back and let you know how well the water-stick works as a bellows," he promises.

"Yeah, it was nice to meet you, too. Have fun. Let me know if I should maybe work on making something that can put out fires sooner rather than later, I. Admittedly did not expect making a water purifier to maybe result in pyromania." She envisions this, then snorts.

Dungeon: still really innocent! There's some magic, but it follows the archways and really is just for structural stability.

"Oh! Wait, before I forget. Could you or someone else bring back seeds of something for Kose? I am going to try to set up a place where she can grow stuff."

"I can bring some up tomorrow," Tanth offers, tucking the scroll away. "I'll bring a bit of everything, although I don't know how well it'll grow underground."

"Thank you! I guess we'll just have to see."

Is that the tone of voice of someone who is absolutely sure that she will 100% make some plants grow underground, come hell or high water? Yes. Yes it is. Her tone is very clear, like that.

Perkre waves, and Tanth follows him out.

"That went well," Kose remarks. "This is a lot of Adventurers in a short time-frame. I think your all-puzzle approach is paying off."

"Thank you! I'm glad," she says brightly. "Is Tanth the designated dungeon guide for Adventurers? He's been with every group so far, if I get too popular will he be run ragged?"

She cannot with any credibility pretend that she hasn't noticed, okay, she's playing dumb, not literal vegetable.

"Probably!" Kose agrees. "It's usually pretty common for an experienced Adventurer to help guide initial exploration of a dungeon, because they have more experience with what kinds of things they might find inside."

She sits back down against the wall.

"Usually, the Adventurers end up rotating through without a designated guide after a few days. I'm not sure whether that will hold in your case, though. You might get people coming individually, instead of in groups, since most of your puzzles can be done solo."

"Gotcha, okay. Well, we'll have to see, I suppose. Until then, I should go finish the glasses. They're really tricky, and I got... kind of distracted playing with materials and how they'd accept magic. Ahem. Relatedly, is there anything you want before I inevitably start blowing all of my budget on materials yet again? I want to make sure I have all of the necessities squared away first."