Completed [Sultros Blades] Of Maille and Shield

[Eanos]

83 Summer, 513 AV, Sultros Blades Forgelight flickered against the stone of the ceiling, stone that was the upper levels of the Castle. Faint voices came through the still open door of his shop but it was rare indeed for anyone to actually come in at this time of the night. The door stood open as much for ventilation as anything else and night was an abstract concept for the smith since it was always dark indoors; something that was comforting to the Isur. He had been working with the Magecrafter on what his next steps were in learning to Shield, but there was only so much that could be done with the Mage holding his hands. Sooner or later those first steps alone needed to be made and Eanos was already a Mage with some experience with manipulating djed, both on the personal and World levels. It had been their joint decision that Eanos it was time for Eanos to make those faltering steps, to fall if need be and pick himself back up for theory needed a base of practice on which to build. With a last glance around the shop to check that there was nothing that needed his attention he pulled over the wooden stool and sat at the workbench. From a box at the back of the bench he took a small metal ring that was intended to be worked into chainmail. A length of wire had been bent into a circle and the end riveted shut. As such it represented a work in progress for it had not been pressed into a form to allow other rings to sit more tightly and nor had it had other, as yet unclosed rings added to it. As such, it was perfect for his needs and he laid it on the bench in front of him between his elbows. As a weapon smith chain had not featured heavily in his training or work, though of course he was familiar enough with it. It had occurred to him recently however that chainmail was a simple way to incorporate the effects of magic into his trade. Mail could be simple or complex in construction depending on the intended use, but always it was made out of simple rings, each of which was whole in itself and yet a small part of the whole. With weapons on the other hand, on a gross scale there were few parts and all featured large in the whole. On a micro level the metals could be blended and yet still be identified by his arcane auristic vision. The chain was a learning tool. Potentially at least, one which he hoped, if it worked would allow him to transfer the lessons to the micro. Whether it would be possible he wasn’t entirely sure as the magesmiths of Sultros had not seen fit to reveal their secrets to him and there was no one here in Syrilas who really knew either as far as he was aware - and if they did he wasn’t especially interested in advertising his lack of knowledge.

[Eanos]

With practised calm the Isur looked within and accessed his own store of djed. It was a practice that was not without risk as any mage knew yet Shielding was relatively benign in the after effects and Eanos had suffered enough from overgiving to have been exceptionally careful in the run up to this experiment to avoid any use of it that could be avoided. He teased out a strand, judging it and keeping it as small as he could based on what he intended for it. He could judge well enough how much he would need to examine the aura of the ring, to look inside to see how well it had been heat treated or if the crystals within were still fractured from the bending but he avoided that and instead kept the djed whole and untransformed. It was slightly strange to use it like this, though he’d in the past drawn it out and then held it whilst being distracted by something else, but now he faced a slightly quandry as to how to apply it. He wanted to use the ring as a template, to have the djed flow around the ring but how? Some mages he knew painted it on, others breathed it like a fog but somehow he had always visualised it as a strand and now wondered if that was a mistake. He squirmed a little on the stool and sought to control his breathing, to allow the uncertainties to drain away and focus instead just on the task. His eyes closed and he breathed deeply. With his focus calmed and a little distracted he realised that the form of the djed had wavered and blurred. Confidence returned and he breathed more deeply, recalling that in fact, though he rarely thought about that this happened normally as he transmuted the djed for his auristic vision. With a return to objectiveness and with the mild attack of nerves restored he moved the djed with his mind and allowed it to settle on the ring. It sat there like a large droplet of water and then under pressure from his mind flattened out and ran over the ring. The coverage was a bit uneven and some ran down onto the desk for it was hard to control. He felt a slight strain inside his mind as though he was attempting to use a muscle long forgotten and tried to think past the feeling. So what to do? He needed to set a task, that much he knew, knowing also that he had few options available and wasn’t entirely clear how to do it. He also realised that he didn’t really know how he used the djed for auristic vision and that his doubts and need for explanations was limiting what he could do. He ‘set’ in his mind the shield as such as it was to repel djed and to keep the form of the ring in much the same way that he manipulated it for Auristics. The djed shifted a bit, pulling back from the desk and settling more properly on the ring, though it was far from patchy and he was sure it did not cover that part of the ring which was in contact with the desk. He poked it tentatively with his finger. The ring moved but aside from that there was no other reaction. He picked it up and looked closely but with his normal eyes it looked just like any other riveted ring, so he put it back down again.

[Eanos]

He rested his chin on his hands and stared closely at the ring. There was still nothing to see but the ring had a significance that it had not had before, even if no one else knew. If he put it back into the box then it would at some point become part of a mail item. At some point, in the brief period before the shield lost it’s charge it might come into contact with djed and block it, or more likely be overwhelmed. He wondered what the extend of it’s ability to block was. Was it just restricted to the ring, would djed pass through the centre untouched? That seemed logical to him, in the same way that a single large ring would not provide protection against a rapier blade. Of course, depending on the design, chain did not always sit flat, reducing the apparent gap and increasing the likelihood of contact with the ring. If he used more than one ring then there would be overlap of the individual shields, especially if he didn’t restrict them completely to the surface. He rubbed his chin against his fingers. Of course the shield could be applied against the whole chain and that would makes sense for a single tasked shield, or multiple tasks could be applied to the whole. But. But, he sorted his thoughts, individual shields could be tasked differently. Would chain made of individual shields be different from chain with one, or stacked shields with the same multiple tasks? What would happen when different shields interacted? Would it matter if they had different tasks? A smile creased his face. Always questions when he was facing the unknown. Experience told him that most would prove irrelevant, but it was an interesting exercise anyway as it meant that he was considering the problem from more than one angle and a problem anticipated was a problem half solved. He pulled free another strand of his djed, the smallest that he could manage and transmuted it so that he could feel the auras around the ring. He avoided the ring itself at first and then tentatively brushed against it with the lightest touch he could manage, much as he might if he were inspecting a snowflake with a red hot poker. In places he could feel the touch of iron, a taste almost metallic in his mouth, in others there was nothing, an absence of anything, which was odd. He focused on the absence and then felt a slap in his mind as the shield unwove and peeled off the ring, evaporating under the pressure of his probe. He pulled back, aware that out of habit he’d focused in too harshly, a habit formed by the need to get deep inside the structures of metals which were as resistant to his mind as they were to a saw.

[Eanos]

Unsure of the remaining effects that might linger on the ring, Eanos tossed it into the pile of scrap and dug once more into the box of chainmail links which sat at the back of the bench. He sorted them into closed and open rings for he wanted to test in his mind how the shields might be affected by the manipulation of the rings. If it worked, and he hoped that it would then it would be time to move on from the riveted rings. Riveted rings he felt were not really worth the time of an Isur, they were the province of lesser smiths who were unable to work efficiently in the heat of the forge. But if the test failed then there was still the fallback of applying the shield to the whole piece and in general that was likely the most common way to proceed for it would certainly be less time consuming. Taking a closed and riveted ring from the pile he laid it down in front of him and repeated the process of applying a shield to it, this time not attempting to pull the shield tight onto the surface of the ring but allowing it to simply base itself around the ring in a more loose form, more akin to a heavy morning frost which has grown out in the cold and darkness. The process seemed to him to have worked much as it had before, but he hoped that this time it might be a little more even and have better coverage than before. Practice, he smiled to himself, this was practice, and one day he might be able to produce armour or weapons which could shrug off attack either physical or arcane. He took out a second ring from the box. This one had been formed and pierced but as yet it had not been riveted shut. Once more he concentrated and drew forth a fragment of djed which he then spread around the ring, creating a shield. Because the two ends of the ring overlapped and were touching, held closed by the slight spring of the metal, the shield flowed all around the ring as it had the first, if just as imperfectly. Now the two rings sat side by side and he stared at them, each surrounded by a shield of sorts to block out djed. There was nothing physically stopping him from joining the two rings as he had not the ability to create a shield capable of such a thing. But, equally neither did he have the ability to create stacked or multi tasked shields. The one thing that these shields could do was to block djed, and of course that was exactly what each shield was made of. He had imagined that the shield on the second, open, ring would form with the ends open, he hadn’t anticipated the closure. Now if he attempted it then he suspected that the two shields would attempt to block each other, and likely one would fail and the other be damaged. It wasn’t what he’d expected and he smothered the mild irritation. He could test the theory and it would be a useful lesson, but this gave him the opportunity to perform a different test instead. He reached into a smaller box and removed some rivets which he then laid on the table and then unhooked a set of riveting pliers from the rack and riveted the open ring closed. He set the tools aside, rested his chin on his hands and relaxed. Controlling his breathing he reached with his mind for the shield on the newly closed ring and examined it well as he could, trying to do so with his shielding vision rather than his auristic one.

[Eanos]

He breathed a small sigh of relief as he realised that the shield also now flowed over the rivet and nodded to himself. The rivet was now a part of the ring and the shield had been cast loosely over the shield with no blocking ability to prevent the rivet from entering. He had wondered if it would have been necessary to repower the shield, extending it and strengthening it, but it seemed in this case that it wasn’t necessary. Now he had two closed rings so it was time to make the next test. Before he did that though he checked his notes carefully and snorted with mild amusement at the failure of his own memory. The djed that was blocked was foreign djed and now that he considered the matter this made much more sense. He’d seen nothing to suggest that shields had to be rigid, though doubtless many were, merely that they had a three dimensional physical structure that was tied to an objects structure. If every time that one part of a structure came in contact with another the whole shield died then it wouldn’t work very well. Similarly stacked shields would have the same problem. That thought made him pause for it was clear in his notes that he was not advanced enough to stack shields so was overlapping them on different objects the same thing? He puzzled over it for a short while and decided that it wasn’t. There was a difference between attempting to put a second shield over the same physical object and putting shields over two similar objects and then putting the objects close together. The thought however made him cautious as he was unwilling to move too far down this particular path without confirmation. He had almost exhausted his intentions for this particular exploration in any case so he would finish this and then turn his attention elsewhere. He took one of the rings and dropped it on the other. There was a metallic clink but as far as he could tell there was no effect on the shields. It gave him pause though. If he were to shield rings and then pass them onto another smith to make into something, would the act of smithing break the shields? From what he’d read it might well do and it made a degree of sense. So he needed to avoid that and if other smiths were involved ensure that the shielding was done after if possible. He took another unclosed ring from the pile and threaded it through the two shielded rings. He considered riveting it shut, it certainly would be the logical time to do that, but then again he wasn’t actually making anything so it would just be a waste of rings. Sitting his chin on his hands again he relaxed his shoulders and made the familiar disconnection in his mind that allowed him to access djed. He was starting to see his shields easier now so he first ran his mental eye over the two on the rings and then brought forth a new fragment of his personal djed which he wove between the existing shields, following carefully the new ring until it was covered as were the first ones. The shields were rough, even he could see that but he could also see, at least he hoped that he could that they were getting better.

[Eanos]

The linked rings were set aside for the time being and he drew out a new ring from his pile, setting it in front of him. As before he rested his chin on his hands and considered the ring. So far he’d created shields around rings and those shields were the most basic that was possible for him to make. However he should if he tried be able to make one more step and that was what he wanted to do before he left off for the day and went to rest. The shields he made might be small, certainly they used little djed but they still required a good deal of concentration and he could feel the tug of tiredness at the back of his mind. Reflecting foreign djed was part of the nature of the shield, he could not alter that aspect as yet to make it absorb djed, and clearly that would be a very useful feature for some shields, yet he could still task it. He considered the possibilities, wondering which would be the one to choose, aware that he was procrastinating for no particular reason given that any was as good as another. There were senses that he could block - sight, sound, touch and smell. The latter seemed pointless for the current project whilst blocking sound and touch were also hard to envisage a reason for during the test. Sight it would be then, and in truth this was one, along with sound that he had imagined at an early stage for his shop. His shop was different from the Ironworks largely because of the customisation of work, but also because of the potential to produce weapons with a magical flavour. So far he had not really managed that aside from some gnosis enhancement and that was not flashy enough for the shop display. Something that hung on the wall and could not be seen properly, well that was more what he had in mind in order to pull in the customers who were willing to spend serious coin, even if the effect was mostly decorative at this stage. The ring sat on his workbench, teasing him with it’s presence, waiting with an infinite patience for him to decide what to do. He cupped his chin on his hands once more and closed his eyes to think about what he was going to do next. Extracting djed from his personal store was simple enough and he was starting to get the hang of using it in a different way from the way he used it in Auristics. He’d begun to get the feel, there was no other way to describe it, of spreading out the djed around an object so that it formed a whole and had three dimensions. Getting it spread smoothly and evenly with just his mind was something that he had yet to master and suspected that it would take considerable practice to achieve. It was another level however to task the djed with blocking a sense. Still though he had an intuition as to how to proceed and there was no reason to delay. He concentrated on his breathing, for this was a new level of control, not just doing what he was already familiar with. He breathed deeply, evenly, pausing his breaths so that he did not become light headed. As he did so he took his focus off the sounds around him, the thoughts in his mind. All these were still there but they passed him by; aware of but not distracted by. When he felt ready then he extracted djed, his eyes still closed for now in contact with the djed there was an echo of the auras around him and he could feel the ring. Still though, his eyes flickered slowly open and he breathed again. Now he moved the djed, transmuting its form and telling it to block the light. The djed darkened in his mind and in his eyes as he floated it over the ring. Now it was easier to see what he was doing for he could see with his eyes and not just his mind as the details of the ring became harder to see, as if a shadow were pouring over it. He shifted the djed and made it more fluid so that it moved more easily, then he locked it in place, though he could not describe exactly how that worked. A black ring now sat on the bench, it’s details obscured to his eyes. When he picked it up and examined it then it was odd for his fingers touch told a different story to his eyes, but even so there were hints where he could see through the slightly patchy and uneven shied. He placed it at the back of the bench and tidied up, for it was enough for the night.

[Radiant]

Eanos :

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Observation	+2 XP
Meditation	+1 XP
Auristics	+2 XP
Shielding	+3 XP
Blacksmithing	+1 XP

Lores

Lore Earned

Chainmails Are Made Up Of Rings

Shielding Rings

Shielding: Blocking Sight

Loots

Notes :

Very descriptive solo on Shielding, I love it, Eanos.

My radiance is not bright enough?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, beam me a PM and we can work it out.