Tailor Archive

Charin set down her cloth with a sigh. Looking at the olive skinned Rodian anxiously waiting in her workshop for her new outfit, she realized that this was the part she was going to miss. The challenge of finding the perfect outfit for a particular person, the thrill of seeing a client's eyes light up when they tried on their new clothing for the first time....these were the things she would miss.

But it just wasn't possible any more. Over time the demand for her services had declined, and new opportunities beckoned. The Council of Aventine had grown larger than she'd dared hope, and the loosening of the Imperial restrictions on new settlements meant that they could begin to make their vision a reality. To forge out of this land a new beginning. A place where those who struggled to fan the flames of freedom could come and find solace. A place of respite, of healing, and of hope. A place where the weary could be renewed, the weak strengthened, and the hopeless restored. This was to be Aventine, the city of hope.

Such hope never came without its price, she mused. Guarding and safeguarding the dream of Aventine would be a full time job in itself, and would leave little time for her first love. It was true, of course, that when she'd started down this path, it had seemed that tailoring was a means to an end, a way of overhearing the most interesting of conversations concerning Imperial plans, and of offering what little aid she might to the Rebellion, but it had become so much more. But such things were not to be any longer. The needle and thread would be replaced by a pen and paper, in the hopes that they might provethemselves an ever more effective weapon against tyrrany. "The Force will guide us..." she murmured to herself.

"What was that, Ma'am?" the young Rodian girl asked her. "Did you need something from me?"

"No dear, just thinking aloud. I'll have your dress done in just a few moments," Charin said as she turned back to the task at hand. There remained a little work to be done.

(ooc: This isn't, of course, the real reason why I'm ending my career as a tailor. With the last big patch I said that I would give the devsone more patch to introduce a workable decay solution for clothing. Unfortunately, the new decay limits on TC are simply too low to be of assistance to tailors, and don't actually address our primary market of entertainers. Over the course of my months tailoring, the demand for new clothing has fallen sharply, and the number of tailors has risen as well. I'm afraid that I simply can't afford to have this many skill points tied up in something that's a break even gesture at its best moments, and a loss at its worst. With the patch coming to live in the next few weeks, I will begin selling back my tailoring skills in favor of something more useful. I will, of course, honor all orders that I presently have, but as of Monday, November 3, 2003 I will no longer be accepting new orders for clothing. I do want to thank the loyal customers I have had over the months, and express my sincerest gratitude for their patronage. I'm not leaving the game, of course, so I'll continue to remain hopeful that there will come a day when tailoring is so appealing that I can't help but make a few thousand ribbed shirts to take up the task again.

Unfortunately, the end of my tailoring career will also mark the end of publication for the Graceful Clothiers Catalog. I know many use it as a resource when clothes shopping, but I simply can't maintain and update something for a profession I'm no longer a part of. I'll leave the "kit" for making your own copy up on the web, under the GPL, but you'll need your own host and a working knowledge of PHP/MySQL to use it. You can find it at:

http://www.aubereanjourney.com/catalog/tailorsitekit.zip

and

http://www.aubereanjourney.com/catalog/images.zip

I hope this remains of use to you, and I apologize for any inconvienence the shutdown causes. May the Force be with you.)

Good Luck in your future ventures.

Be well.

Thank you, Zahr'Ina. :-) As I said on the Kett boards, a better subtitle might have been Genesis, because ends always bring new beginnings.

Just a reminder that the GC site will be taken down on Monday. The kit will remain, and if you have questions or comments about the code therein, I'll be happy to help where I can. Thanks! :-)