4338.241 · August 29, 2018 AD
Steel and Stone from Stewartshire
The groundbreaking ceremony gave the sanctuary a moment. Now it needs a building. The first structure on Grant Ironbach's project plan is the least glamorous and the most essential — a storage shed. Without it, every tool, every bag of cement, every roll of fencing sits under tarps in the dust. Adrian Pafistis has the drawings. Five tradesmen from New Edinburgh have the skills. The portal network has the materials. Fourteen days. One concrete slab that insists on curing at its own pace. And a peacock that considers the building site its personal concern.
The Sanctuary Supply Depot is not the kind of building that inspires speeches. It is a steel-framed shed with corrugated iron walls, a concrete floor, and shelving. It stores tools, fencing wire, bags of cement, and animal feed. It has a walk-in freezer powered by rooftop solar panels. None of this sounds like the beginning of a wildlife sanctuary. All of it is.
Grant Ironbach's master project plan lists twenty-two facilities across four construction phases. Every one of them depends on this building existing first. Without secure storage, materials degrade in the dust. Without cold storage, perishable supplies spoil within days. Without an organisational backbone, the ambitious construction schedule that Grant has mapped out across the coming months collapses into improvisation.
Adrian Pafistis brings the engineering. Five tradesmen from New Edinburgh — a settlement with over 250 years of building expertise — bring something Adrian's drawings cannot capture: generations of practical knowledge about constructing in Clivilius. The concrete specialist reads soil by touch. The foreman levels formwork by eye. The welder carries an Ironhold metalworking tradition in his hands. Together, they will build a shed. It will be the most important shed in Bixbus, and nobody outside the sanctuary will notice it exists.
