Solo Staff and Stone: Izentored

[Terag]

3rd-5th of Winter 515AV - just after dawn Terag yawned as he made his way through the woods, enjoying the light as it showed through the tree tops. The snow crunched under his boots as he wandered deeper through the woods, taking familiar paths that looked more than unfamiliar with the snow across the ground. He trusted his memory, running his hands against the trunks of trees as he passed through, trying to enjoy it. The cold didn’t shake his body nearly as much as it did others due to how dense his skin was as he was an Isur. The chill made him think of home, it wasn’t as damp as the caves of his city but the chill was definitely there more often than not. He began to sing to himself as he walked. Not his usual softly humming but rather at about the volume he would when speaking to a friend. He didn’t hear his voice echo back nearly as much, or perhaps he wasn’t paying attention enough. As he sang his focus was elsewhere, at every branch that poked up out of the snow or any low hanging pieces of wood from the trees. Today he was going to get two of items that Clyde had requested of him: A palm sized stone and a branch that was about a foot shorter than he was. His singing didn’t last this time, it died out soon after he had started as he had become too focus on the task at hand. Many branches and pieces of wood were pulled up out of the snow and one or two pulled off of trees, using the power in his left hand to ease the process and damage the tree less as he removed the wood by focusing his energy and pushing his hand straight through the wood, pulling it and breaking off the branch as if he was pulling off a piece of clay rather than wood. It wasn’t until he was almost to the usual clearing he stopped in that he had found a branch that was what he was looking for. He had pulled it off of a young tree, barely old enough to survive the winter, but the branch was closer to four and a half feet and nearly entirely straight if you ignored the smaller branches coming off of it. This was the first he needed, albeit it needed to be worked on. The stone should be easy enough.

[Terag]

The clearing still had a few marks of his presence here. There was part of a stone spear still lodged in a tree at the edge of the clearing and he was sure the ground was still uneven from where he pulled up the stone using reimancy. However, if it wasn’t for that bit of rock lodged in a tree than he would have sworn that he had never been here. With the snow, everything looked new and untarnished. He smiled, and with the sun overhead the cold bite of winter seemed a bit farther off. Either way he pulled his cloak a little tighter, let his humming begin anew as he dropped his pack and branch on the ground, and set to work. He outstretched both of his hands, palm down. With a steady focus he began to let his res seep out of his body through his palms. His usual white ethereal mist was nearly unnoticeable against the white snow. To make it easier on himself he forced it to take a slightly darker form, though purely cosmetic the act seemed to make the focus that much easier, even though it would soon be irrelevant as the res floated gently through the snow and into the ground. He felt it move beneath the ground until it was about a foot in front of him. From there he pulled it up, pulling stone up with it. Slowly he pulled it up, trying to keep the strain easy on his body. After a few long moments the stone mound broke through the snow, he did his best to make the stone look natural as well. He wouldn’t really know if it worked until the snow melted, but for now it seemed fine enough. With a smile he then used his res to pulled off a very thin layer from the stone, pushing it outwards to clear the snow from the ground around before the pieces melded back into the ground.

[Terag]

He kept humming, an old tune from his childhood. If he remembered correctly it was another honoring Izurdin and reminding them that they were his children. He was their father and he loved them so, and it used such language as any Isur would use with their own father rather than they would that most people would expect how you would talk to a god. Informal and like family though, that was the way they thought their god preferred it, and it was the option Terag preferred as well. Terag picked up his gear and moved it to the base of the stone mound he had made, just big enough for him to take a seat on. However, an idea occurred to him. He took a long moment to focus the energy into his left arm again, and using the power given to him by his race he pushed his hand into the stone and pulled off a chunk of stone, just too big for his palm – just as if the stone were wet clay. The chunk of stone was held in his right hand as he continued to shape the stone with his metal arm, rounding off the sharp corners and spikes that appeared as he had pulled the stone out and whittling down the stone to something that would comfortably fit in his hand. When he was done he couldn’t quite get his fingers to touch as he held it in his palm, but it felt good there. He tried to ignore the fact that it wasn’t a perfect sphere and more just an irregular rounded mass, he was sure it would grow on him. Eventually.

[Terag]

Finally, Terag took a seat on the stone mound he had made – taking the moment to stop humming to himself and switch from the rock, which was set into his pack, to the branch he had taken earlier and the small knife that he kept. It was meant for eating, but as far as he needed it for the non-serrated blade would work just fine. For a long moment he considered the branch, looking it up and down. He did his best to imagine the final product, similar to what he did when he was smithing, though it wasn’t quite the same. He couldn’t flatten the branch; he couldn’t shape it outward. He had to carve into it, take the item out of the wood in front of him and make it take shape that way. He had thought that creating a staff out of wood would be simple enough, but already the process seemed a lot harder than he had thought. Wood didn’t shape the same way metal did. With a sigh he set to work by first using his left hand again, and invoking the same power he had with the stone, to strip the branch of the smaller twigs and leaves and with a second pass pulled off the bark as well. Now he had the bare wood in front of him, now it was time for him to set to work with his knife. For what seemed like bells Terag worked at the staff in his hands. First he took the entirety of the branch and cut off the two ends to make them smoother and used his left thumb as the sandpaper for the corners to keep his work smooth. Along the length of the staff he whittled it down until the wood fit comfortably in his hand all the way down, not much thicker than a weapon hilt. He based his estimates on what a spear should be, and used that. As he continued to whittle and try to even out the entirety of the staff he began singing softly to himself again. He sang of the beauties underground as he carved over the knots in the wood, areas that gave him an especially hard time. He sang of the cities as he whittled down the staff trying to make it straight. His song finished about the Isurian people as he finished the staff. The finished product was not impressive, but bells of work did pay off. For the most part it was straight and the wood even, though it was easy to tell it wasn’t perfect. He hadn’t worked with this sort of material to make a staff before, but he was impressed with his own work despite it’s obvious lack of quality compared to shaped hilts and spear shafts he had seen at his work.

[Terag]

With his pack on his back, his cloak pulled tight, and the stone and staff in hand he made his way back to Syliras. Along the way he started a new song, this one of love as he made his way back through the woods and into the city. The song was more than a little risqué, but that’s what he liked most about it. He sung louder this time, feeling good about his work his voice carried through the woods much farther this time. If he had paid attention he would have noticed the birds flying away from him and his voice, but he cared little. He could swear his singing was improving, his voice not cracking as much as it did in his youth. To his untrained ears it was good, and that was what mattered – despite others not agreeing. He waved to the guards at the gate as he made his way inside, the sun had begun to come down but it had yet to set so there was no issue. The one good thing about waking up so early was that he rarely had to worry about being back too late. On his way back to his room, he stopped by the market to pick up an engraving kit. He was going to need this for the stone after all. Once in his room he sat down his gear by the door, locking it behind him and putting his cloak along the bottom of the door. If he was told correctly, this next step might attract attention if he wasn’t careful with the light. He took a deep breath and picked up the staff, leaving the stone on top of the engraving kit for the time being and sat on the bed cross legged. He was going to need to focus, he sure hoped he was ready. Ledger : Engraving Kit: -50GM

[Terag]

He set his left hand on top of the staff and focused on the gnosis gifted to him by his god, on the mark that sat on his left shoulder. He thought about the staff he had made and how he wanted it to be stronger, to be able to use it as if it were steel. He needed it to be tougher, to withstand more, to be a tool he could use not just wood for decoration. One moment he felt nothing, nothing more than how badly he wanted this to work. For that brief moment he became scared, that he was a misfit and had managed not to gain the blessing of his god. As that thought popped into his head he could have sworn he felt his left arm shake as he saw the black metal of his arm was covered by an explosion of color. Blues, greens, and reds danced from his shoulder down to his hand with his tattoo marking glowing even brighter. For a moment he saw the colors dance through the room around him before he felt the strain on his body and was forced to remember to do one thing: focus. And that he did, for many bells he sat that with his hand on his staff. His eyes were shut as he continued to focus on his work, remembering what he wanted from it and what it was to become. Despite the immense strain on his body, a feeling stronger even than the few times he had come close to the sweet whispers from djed and reimancy, he felt happy. He was not only a conduit of the power from his great father, the god Izurdin, but he was creating something new. Something incredible, something amazing. This was it, this was why his people made their items this way. It wasn’t just for the money, but the thoughts and feelings behind it were something he felt he would never be able to explain. After several bells the colors faded as the process finished. For only a brief moment he was able to see his staff through blurry eyes. After that moment the strain came crashing down onto his body, and he could think of nothing else than falling back and falling asleep on his bed right there, not that he could have done anything else if he even wanted to. So he did sleep, and he slept well into the next day.

[Terag]

When he finally came to, he knew it was a good idea he had warned Ros that he would be taking several days off of work now and another section down the road. His body was still tired, though at least he could get up and move now. Groggily and slowly he got up from the bed, stretching as he did. Every muscle in his body was sore, though he wasn’t sure that wasn’t just all in his head. Even his bones felt as if they ached. However, all the pain was forgotten when he looked down and remembered why he had done it all. At his feet laid the staff he had spent painstaking bells over, working to as perfect as he could and then bells again imbuing it with his gnosis. He picked it up, and knew in that moment he would never forget his work. He could swear he could even feel the staff in front of him. As he moved it he could feel it move as well, a feeling in the back of his head but he was sure the feeling was there. However, with his one mark he knew that if he got even a few steps away from the staff he was sure he wouldn’t feel it anymore. It was a good thing the staff was the first item he made, as he needed it to navigate from his room and out into the hall. His stomach was rumbling loudly, and using his staff as his aide he got some food. When he was outside he noted that the sun was already high in the sky, he had been asleep for a very long time. Before too long he was back again in his room, putting his cloak beside the door rather than at the base this time. He could feel the tiredness seeping through his body still but he had work to do. He wasn’t going to imbue again tonight, but he was at least going to engrave into the stone. Even if the marks didn’t mean anything, it would be something to do until his body felt better.

[Terag]

He rummaged through the toolkit for a moment, pulling out the smallest etching instrument. He sat on the chair and put his work on the table in front of him with the kit on the table beside it. For bells he sat there and etched first a line around the entirety of the stone, the marking only going perhaps a millimeter deep. The markings to the side of this line got wavier and wavier, though they also encircled the stone. By the end his markings almost seemed like simple swirls, nothing overly complicated but as far as Terag was concerned still looked nice. The smallest of these rings were about the width of his pinky. The rest of the day was spent eating, resting, and finally sleeping when night came again. He was much too tired to do anything else, but once he awoke he was ready for his second item, the stone that he had made first from his own power with reimancy and then by his own hand. Two items should be enough to get things started with Clyde, Terag hoped at any rate. He wasn’t sure if he could take imbuing two more items right now anyways, he wasn’t even sure he could survive one more but he was sure going to try. Two nights ago he had done it once, now he was trying again. He sat cross legged on his bed, which had turned out to be a smart choice as it seemed he couldn’t move once the imbuing process was done, and stared down at the stone. As he looked he could feel his muscles already getting tired at the memory, though it was quickly replaced by the joy and wonder for what his gnosis could do. It would work on this too right? An object he had made himself through magic and etching, it should hold the magic just the same. That’s sort of how the powers were explained to Terag, it had been so long ago when he learned about them after all. He focused on the stone for a long while, just as he had with the staff. There was no moment of fear, he had done it once and his confidence did not waver. His arm, once again, burst into brilliant color that flashed across the room and danced across the cloak against the bottom of the door. If he had been paying attention he would have noticed his body undergoing a calming, as it always did when he crafted. His breathing slowed, his heart rate steadied, and his body became motionless except the changing of colors across the entirety of his left arm. However, he didn’t. The only thing he could think of, the only thing in his focus, was the stone in his left hand. Again the process took ages, bells went by and he did not move. When the process was done, Terag didn’t even have the energy to open his eyes again this time. As the colors faded from brilliant blues, greens, and reds back to his softly glinting black, Terag fell back and was asleep nearly immediately. The strain of the process had knocked him out, though his rock was finished. It rolled off of his hand and cluttered onto the floor. Slowly it rolled until it laid against the staff he had made two days earlier. Two projects down, two steps closer to his goal, and only two days until he would be able to function like a normal Isur again.

[Nivel]

Terag : XP Award: Land Navigation 2 Singing 4 scavenge 1 Observation 1 Reimancy 1 Sculpting 1 Construction 1 Planning 1 Etching 4 Carving 2 Organization 1 Meditation 2 Endurance 2 Lore: The cold reminds me of home. Snow fall can drastically change an environment. Reimancy: changing the colour of ones Res Singing: The old tune honouring the god Isurdin Wood doesn’t shape the same way steel does. Singing: A song of Cities Singing: A song of love Rewards and Penalties: Carved inzentored staff Etched inzentored stone Engravers kit Notes:Nice job. Additional Comments: If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to message me.