Verja Gloves

A Pragmatic Solution to a Dangerous Problem

In the mega-city of Caledonia where the remnants of humanity live hand to mouth existences, the many dangers of the deteriorating city is a fact of life for the scroungers, the masses of young poor who form tribes to help each other survive on the carcass of the dead city.

With the city structures in decay, the daily hunt through the ruins poses an ever present danger as getting cut or having your skin pierced on sharp and rusted objects poses a grave danger of infection or poisoning. Scroungers also have a high likelihood of getting bit by feral animals or half-breeds who compete for the remains of a wealthy civilization long gone. This has led to the scroungers adopting a practical solution for personal safety - Verja (protective) Gloves.

The primary function of verja gloves is protective during the search through trash, and most implementations are exactly that, heavy leather or hide gloves that protect the hands and wrists from whatever the scrounger is searching through. The originals of these items were apparently made by the ancients themselves who did some manual labor that required hand protection. The gloves they left behind were very useful, and did a very good job of protecting the wearer from all kinds of puncture and slicing wounds, ensuring that any rotting or piles could be investigated without risking touching something filthy, disease ridden or unexpectedly alive and armed with fangs.

Economic Impacts

Verja gloves became extremely valuable as they enabled scroungers to do the work necessary to keep themselves and their villages
alive. One did not lose their verja gloves - they were necessary, and expensive to replace. Children were taught to keep track of them from very early childhood, and were disciplined severely for losing them. Parents passed their usable verja gloves and protective work gear as part of their wills to their children to avoid infighting over these items after they died.

Verja gloves found in the abandoned dwellings and stores of the ancients were worn across several generations until they wore out. At that point, enterprising glove owners took their holey gloves apart at the seams, then started to replicate them. At first, they used the leather from the furniture of abandoned houses which they scavenged to provide materials. Very rarely a fortunate scrounger would find an ancient attaching device called a Singer that would sew two pieces of material (such as the leather) together with very thin cording. These items typically used magic to power them, and were often sold as scroungers had little access to magic. A few of these devices operated without magic, and were extremely valuable finds, and some very talented scroungers who evolved into the profession of Tinkerers, were able to convert the magic utilizing devices into non-magical functional devices. Typically however, gloves were simply sewn by hand. The scroungers used the old verja gloves as patterns, and made new ones, cutting scrounged leather into the correct sizes and shapes and using tiny stitches to sew them. A good business could be had by creating and selling a verja gloves, and business people soon expanded their lines by designing and selling other leather protective gear such as boots, pants, vests and aprons. Soon the old leather sofas and armchairs of Caledonia had disappeared due to aggressive entrepreneurship. At that point, glove makers learned to treat skins to make hide to feed the demand for leather for their verja goods.

Social Status and Dynamics

Interestingly, gloves took on a life and function outside the very pragmatic purpose of sorting through acres of dangerous trash to find edible food and usable products. Scroungers wore verja gloves so much that they began to feel uncomfortable if they were not wearing something on their hands. But this was a problem. The verja gloves were too rough - and contaminated with dangerous filth - to wear in social settings or in one's abode. So the scroungers began to create social gloves. These ranged from clean form fitting gloves made of soft supple leather, to heavy cloth items to keep one's hands warm in the winter, to fabric gloves that had purely social and comfort functions.

Gloves and the cleanliness and beauty of the hands in them eventually became an instant identifier of social status among the different socioeconomic classes. Persons without gloves were the poorest of the poor - unable to afford the heavy work gloves that were an important part of the scrounger profession. Heavy gloves with a lot of staining indicated a scrounger who was a member of the lower class. Clean verja gloves and gloves with other functional purposes indicated relative wealth among the scroungers, or a member of the middle working class which included farmers and seamen. Clean verja gloves indicated an individual with sufficient resources to have spare or multiple sets of gloves. Those in the working middle class - traders and skilled craftsmen might have verja gloves that they wore for specific tasks, but they wore them only when doing those tasks, and wore social gloves of leather or cloth at other times. Social gloves took on importance as fashion items and expressions of individuality and wealth. Those with the means had entire wardrobes of gloves, and the selection of gloves for different occasions was a decision people spent significant thought and time making.

The wearing of gloves also became an indicator of trust and intimacy. Even among partners in a village, social gloves were worn virtually all the time with the exception of small children. The removal of one's gloves indicated that the person was very trusting and comfortable in the context in which they found themselves, and it was a deliberate act. Most people did not even take off their gloves when they went to bed or even during sex. To take off one's gloves and give them to another was an expression of supreme love, devotion, and commitment and was extremely rare. To forcibly strip someone of their gloves was tantamount to rape.

The use (and non-use) of gloves and the condition of the hands even became a subtle indicator of status and profession amongst the fyrir bjod (above race). When in the floating cities, the fyrir bjod did not wear gloves at all, and even owning them implied a lesser class status among them. They were however, extremely careful with the cleanliness and beauty of their hands. The representatives of the fyrir bjod who met and dealt with tradesmen and scroungers at the meetingplaces wore always gloves when meeting surface dwellers. The type of gloves worn (by all parties) during these interactions were a very pointed but unspoken means of establishing status, expectations, and control in the trade dynamic. Typically the soft leather gloves of social settings was used by all parties. Wearing stained or dirty verja gloves was a direct insult and was extremely rare and used only when relationships were badly deteriorated. When items of negotiation were critically important to a fyrir bjod, they would come to meeting places with their representatives who would speak for them. The fyrir bjod would not wear gloves at all, and would not speak to the surface dweller directly, but would speak to the representative who would speak to the surface dweller.