[Ironworks] Crystals in the mist

[Eanos]

oocUpdated for overgiving but crudely. Future threads will take account of current status Fall 34, 510 AV For some time now Eanos had been waiting for a chance to further experiment with his techniques for blade construction. Whilst he had spent a good deal of time on it, there were things where he could do a good deal of improvement. So far he had created blades of simple iron and with patterned iron. It had all been good practice and necessary to for it had allowed him to begin honing his skills and without it he certainly wouldn’t be able to making the next steps that wanted to do. Stillness and darkness had descended upon the forge as the night closed in. Not that it mattered in the darkness of the castle but still most people kept to the rhythm of the sunlight. Ordinarily Eanos might have done the same, but brought up as he was in the caverns of the Isurian citadels he was comfortable in the darkness, a darkness his sight was well adapted to. The forge lit the walls around him with its ruddy glow and lanterns were set about his workbench and above the anvil to give additional light as he needed it. So far those lanterns were unlit and would remain so until the time came that he needed them. As it was he moved around in the gloom with ease arranging his tools and checking them before the work started. A craftsman might be able to produce good work despite his tools but only a fool would think that the tools would not have an impact upon the work, especially when it came to the finishing. It was easier to file a hammer face flat than to have to file out the imperfections caused by a hundred hammer blows, each imprinting the flaw into the working surface. He ran his hand over the surface of the anvil, the thing which was most iconic of his trade, his roughened fingers caressing the smooth surface and he nodded in satisfaction. Glancing around to ensure that he was still alone and undisturbed, he relaxed and closed his eyes in preparation for the start. ”Lord Izurdin, bless this work which I dedicate to you. I thank you for the skills which you have granted to me. I thank you for the heat of the forge and for the light it gives so that I can see your work. I thank you for the air which brightens the coals and gives me the control over that heat. I thank you for the water which quenches and allows me to set in place the changes I have wrought. I thank you also for the iron, for the coals and the tools. I thank you for the sight you have given me that allows me to see the spirit of the iron so that I can see its nature and the changes that can be made.” He opened his eyes and walked over to the workbench where the iron for the task in hand had been placed. ”Bless this iron my Lord and give me the knowledge to work it to your honour so that all may know that you have blessed the Isur in whom your blood runs.”

[Eanos]

The iron had been milled already into strips but it was not of a quality which as it was would make a good blade, and it was at this which he needed to excel. This was the foundation for his magecraft; his way of being able to have the finest control over exactly how the crafts combined, and if he was right in his theories then perhaps also his way of overcoming some of the limitations which faced him. This iron was still soft, at least as iron went. It would make an excellent spine for the blade he envisioned, its softness allowing the blade to flex under load. What he wanted for this blade was to attach to it another strip of iron which would be the cutting edge and this iron would be much harder. It was an age old technique but it was one he needed to master because it required a very high degree of skill to get the two slightly different composition pieces of iron to weld together well enough. In many ways it was not unlike the pattern welding he’d practiced often before but this time the weld would be larger and flaws in it more obvious and more fatal to the finished product. Added to this the rates of hardness and the temperatures at which this occurred would vary and the end result was something which only an expert could produce with any reliability. He took four of the bars and slipped them into a clay jar around which he packed in charcoal ensuring that there was an even amount around each of the bars. That done he carefully placed the jar into the forge and allowed it to heat through. It would take some time for the effect that he wanted to take place, a process where the charcoal would be absorbed into the iron, hardening it. Now though he took one of the remaining bars in hand and transmuted some of his own djed to activate his auristic abilities. As he did so the iron bar came to life, no longer merely a thing of hard metal but instead a thing of flowing djed. Though it now had life it was also quiescent and that was something he intended to change and he did so by placing it on the coals next to the jar. Leaving it to heat he took another bar of the iron cold iron and explored it with his fingers, allowing the feel of the djed to seep into his soul. As he did so, he kept an eye on the bar which was heating on the forge, reaching out with his left hand to caress it, feeling the differences develop as the djed on the heating bar absorbed the energy of the fire. He needed to learn this iron so that he could start to really understand how different irons felt. How their souls were changed by the workings of the forge. How harder irons were different from softer ones and he wanted to understand what it was that made the change, why and how did the soul of the charcoal enter into the heart of the iron and change it? He knew that it did, he knew it in the same way that he knew liquids mixed, but there was a difference between knowing and understanding. He could not be the smith he wanted, he could not be the magesmith he wanted unless he could read iron at a glance and know its heart. Even as he reached for the knowledge though, there was a barrier across his sight, one which just blurred slightly what he was seeking. A voice whispered in his mind to transmute just a little more djed so that he could see more clearly, but for now he ignored it.

[Eanos]

He pulled the bar from the heat and placed it on the anvil to cool. He knew this iron now, but the other irons would not be ready for some time now so he made himself busy with other tasks. Every now and again he pulled one of the bars out of the jar and opened himself to the vision of it so that he could follow the progress as the charcoal started to absorb into the iron. At first it was a clear transition for the charcoal had a different energy to it and the djed was also black in his vision against the red of the now red hot iron. As the hours passed the djeds mixed and it became harder to tell on the surface which was iron and which charcoal. Of course the iron still dominated but now the djeds merged in the heat to create a new one. This was the point at which he removed two of the bars and laid them aside on the anvil to cool. As they did so he compared them again to the bars of virgin iron, absorbing into himself the feel of the iron and the understanding of how they were different. As the dawn was lightening the sky outside the castle he pulled the last two bars out of the jar and stood it all aside to cool. Now he had three different irons, each with different properties and once more he transmuted djed so that he could study the details more closely. This iron was darker in his vision, but it was not just in colour for he did not rely just upon the colours of the djed as it shifted inside the metal but he could also feel it in the fingers of his left hand as he held the bar which was now just cooling down to a dark cherry colour. The flow felt stiffer somehow, though he worried that was not reality but just him imposing his expectations upon the somewhat strange feelings that the sense of touch engendered. While he could see the djed with his eyes and understand what he was seeing, the more direct sense of touch was harder because it was something unique to the auristics. It was almost as though he had fingers which could reach into the iron so that he could feel it from the inside. Darkness once again was falling outside the citadel when Eanos prepared his work space for the task ahead. Once more he did not stint with just the physical for the Isur were the living embodiment of their god. He gave them the unique abilities to work with metal when i’s djed was activated, an ability the other races could only hope to attempt to emulate. Soon it would come the time when he would have his own forge and then he could start to create to bring to life the crafts of his race. The Ironworks was a splendid place but it only used a small part of what was possible. Only his clan truly understood that metal and its djed were one and the same and soon he would be able to put into action the things of which he had so far only dreamt of. But he would only achieve that with the support of his god, that was a certainty so deeply buried in his heart that he did not have the smallest of doubts about it. ”Lord Izurdin, this night I ask your blessing on the iron I prepared yesterday. Guide my arms in the working of the iron so that it may be a fitting tribute to you. Strengthen my sight so that I may see clearly.” He figured that a little repetition did not hurt and it focussed his attention on the task he had set for himself.

[Eanos]

He had created from the low carbon iron stock four bars which had more charcoal in them. It was something experimental for he was not an expert in the creation of iron. That was something on which he had placed a great reliance upon the Ironworks and he would continue to do so for they had great expertise in that. But the process had allowed him to better understand the changes that made. Magecraft was infinitely powerful and yet that power came with very distinct limitations and much of the power was unobtainable without the power of a Kingdom at your beck and call. He laid two of the bars in the forge to heat, one each of the two that he had created and thought further about that. While the iron heated he decided that it was time to put some of the thoughts into action. Even someone as strong as Eanos could not move the anvil easily for it was large and heavy, but with a good deal of pulling, pushing and shoving he managed to change it’s place so that it butted up against the forge. He rested for a short while as his breathing came back under control then reached into the fire and took out the bars which had now become hot enough to work. The start as ever was to effectively weld the two ends together as it made manipulating the work easier after that. Heat blazed against his left arm from the forge while the hammer in his right hand came down hard on the glowing iron. He transmuted djed to give himself vision into the bars, some of it through his eyes and some of it through the fingers of his left hand which held the bars together close to where the hammer struck. The two bars still retained their different colours and feels under this vision, one slightly darker and stiffer than the other, though the differences were not very great. Somehow he felt more tired than he should and the bars danced in his vision causing him to reach more deeply and transmute that little bit more djed. With the weld formed it was simple enough to complete the weld so that the two bars were completely joined and he was now on familiar ground as he worked the iron so that it lengthened as the two pieces of iron were forced together. Now he could quickly slip it back into the forge before it lost any noticeable temperature and work it again. The process went quicker than it was wont to using his previous technique and soon the bar was folded back upon itself and the welding process started anew. With his previous forays into pattern welding he had tended to produce a large number of layers and but this time he only folded the metal four times so that there were sixteen layers of the iron in total. As he folded he concentrated on the layers of iron, feeling them with his mind so such an extent that his normal eyesight was more in the background of what he was doing in much the same way as his hearing was. He paid attention to his eyes in order to avoid hitting himself with the hammer and for general placement of the iron as he moved it around, but on the whole he concentrated much more closely on the auristics. He did this so that he had some control over the layers and how they were placed inside the iron. The main reason he stopped when he did was because it was becoming very hard to feel each layer in the iron and indeed it was mostly at the edges where he could do so, and there the layers tended to overlap and intermingle the most so soon the iron was becoming quite messy to understand.

[Eanos]

Though he was loathe to use the additional bars of iron which he had formed, it was he felt necessary to do so and so repeated the process with the other two bars. This time he took a good deal more care at each stage to keep the two irons more even. It was slower and harder work, one which soon gave rise to the familiar headache which centred itself between his eyes. This time when the edges got messy, instead of simply squaring it up with the hammer, a process which before had cause him to end up with an edge of mixed iron, this time he used the hot cut chisel and struck it off so that the edges of the iron layers were once more exposed. Four folds later and this time he was much happier with the result. Now the layers were harder to see in his mind, but he was confident that he could still see them and it was time to move on to the next stage. Back in the forge to heat, the metal sat happily while he readied himself for a last and close scrutiny with his auristic senses. The layers shifted a little under his vision under the heat, the djeds still retaining some of their separation but also remaining linked. Now that he looked more closely he could see that there were some inclusions of other matter in there and that annoyed him. He could only hope that it would not matter and in any case he needed to move onwards. With the metal back up to heat, he shifted it back to the workbench where he caught one end of it in the vice and then using tongs for leverage on the other end started to twist the bar. It was a delicate process and one where he paid as much attention as he could to the feel of how the layers were distorting into a spiral. It took several attempts of moving to and fro the forge to bring the iron back up to heat before he was as happy as he was going to be with the end result. With a final heating he beat the edges back to flat and then heated and laid it aside to normalise. The metal had taken quite a number of distortions now and he could see where the hot djed had distorted and didn’t run as smoothly as it should be any more. Some of this he suspected was down to inclusions of other matter but some of it he knew from experience would be where the metal had stressed from the bending, likely having cooled just that bit too much while still being formed. While the pattern welded iron slowly cooled beside the forge and the inner grain of the iron slowly grew back into its new form Eanos started work on the simpler work of shaping one of the iron bars which he had not touched. This fortunately required no use of personal magic because the combination of headache with the pounding of iron was a very unpleasant one and he certainly didn’t want his current headache getting any worse. As it was his ambition and the typical Isurian drive to keep on working was enough to keep him working even though he could now feel each hammer blow directly in his head and not just in his hands.

[Eanos]

Because he was experimenting with the irons there was no point in attempting something fancy nor something large or complex. Neither however was his vanity ready to merely do what he ought to be doing and just produce bars of iron which would have to then go for scrap afterwards. Of course he knew he was being foolish, and he intended to compromise just a little but even so, he pressed on. This would be a knife he had already decided and there was plenty of iron with which to make several attempts on it. Even he knew that it would take a number of attempts in order to produce what he wanted and a good many more before it actually had the appearance that he wanted, but he had the time so that was not really an issue. It did not take long to heat and then reshape the bar of plain iron and while he was waiting for the forge to bring it up to heat he made a start on the first and rejected bar of pattern iron. This one he hadn’t been sure how it had turned out and so now he set it in the vice and started taking some slices off with the hacksaw. Because the iron was still soft and ready for working it cut easily. As he’d suspected the layers were not even, but it also wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it was. It was certainly good enough for him to decide to carry on with it and use it as a test piece to practice with. The iron was already done, he argued to himself, justifying the idea. As it was it was destined for the scrap pile and this way he would make the initial mistakes on the scrap iron, not on his second bar. With that thought it went back on the forge to heat while he worked on the plain bar and then once it had been twisted it would go with it’s fellow to normalise ready for the next days, or in his case nights work. When the three bars were ready he shut the forge down and left the irons to finish the normalisation cycle. The next night started with a major session of filing work as he brought the edge of the scrap pattern welded bar back to flat and started to expose the patterned iron. Of course it was hardly visible as it was, at least to the naked eye for it was only when the iron was etched that the different irons became visible, but to his aurustic vision the swirl of djed was unmistakable and it made it much easier to see where he was working. With the patterned scrap bar and the plain iron bar prepared and fluxed, they both went back into the fire to heat. This was where he was starting to go beyond his experience. In principle there was nothing new, but as with the care he’d taken on the pattern welding, so too here it was the nature of the welding which was new. With the pattern welds the iron was worked a lot and so the welds had opportunity to form even if he failed to complete them on the initial pass. Now though he wanted to keep the two irons isolated from each other, so instead of having thin layers he was attempting to join two thicker layer and layers of different irons to boot which had different welding temperatures.

[Eanos]

The metal bars hit the anvil with a soft clunk, the plain iron against the anvil and the pattern iron on top. His hammer hit square on the far end, on what would be the tip and forced the metals together. Each bar was slightly convex in profile where they touched so that the flux and any other contaminants were pushed out to the side as the metals first met in the middle and then under his hammer blows distorted and met flush. His djed converted directly into a pain between the eyes or so it seemed as he squinted at the metal, trying to get the feel of what was happening inside. The contact area of the two metals was initially small because he had chosen a narrow profile. As he hammered and the metal bars merged then of course they also grew wider for all that tried to avoid it. Once the join seemed firm then he flipped it onto it’s side and worked against that so the bar lengthened once more and the profile reverted back to something more knife shaped. Still though it was just a metal plate that he’d now created, at least to the naked eye and it was only as he ran the finger tips of his left hand along the red hot metal could he feel how it had joined. Everything seemed to be just as he wanted though it wasn’t as even as he felt that it could be. Still though it seemed well enough and so he placed it back in the forge and worked anew on the hot metal. Now he worked on the shape, developing the tip and creating the bevel, pushing the metal around but keeping the spine straight. For this he wanted to match the harmon that he planned with the weld line of the irons, indeed it was crucial to the aesthetics of the finished blade that he get that right. This though was routine enough in the shaping for all that it required care and it was soon enough in the scheme of things that he’d worked the tang and cut off the excess with the hot chisel. Back into the forge the blade went though this time it joined two thicker iron plates and all sat in there until they were at the heat he wanted. The blade was sandwiched between the two other plates, clamped in place and set aside on the forge to cool slowly. Slowly the hot iron would form new crystals and as he felt the process happen he could feel the new grain which formed in the iron, binding the two halves forever into one, or at least so he hoped. Now the stresses and potential fractures which he could see in the way that the djed flowed within the blade should disappear and the end result would be a smoother and more even flow within the metal. It would still reflect the underlying nature of the irons and how they had been formed, but it should be patterns within the overall djed like water currents in a river, some fast, some strong, some placid but all parts of the same. What would be failure would be if the river ran in different beds because then there would be weakness instead of unity.

[Eanos]

When the iron had cooled, then the next night there were many hours of careful filing, not to produce the perfect finish for this was a test piece but enough so that the detail of the welds would be apparent and not hidden under hammer marks. He left the deeper marks that would have required considerable additional filing and polishing to remove and moved straight onto the claying, the final process before the hardening of the irons. The hardening would be a test of his welding for the differential heat treatment would exaggerate the issue of the two irons. It was still an age old problem but that did not take away from his need to overcome it in a reliable fashion. Not that he could avoid failure of course because that happened to all smiths, but he aimed to reduce the risk considerably. The blade sunk into the coals and only time would tell now. He busied himself around the workshop area and took hold of the offcut of the blade. There was material enough here for another blade but first he made some experimental cuts with the hacksaw; a series of tests he ought to have carried out before. The blade sliced through the soft iron and delivered him a series of finger width slices out of it. He checked them carefully, first by eye and then with his other vision. The welds appeared to have held well and the join was invisible to the naked eye except as a change in the colours of the iron. He locked the segments into the vice and started work with the files to reveal the side surfaces and when they were smoothed then he etched them with a weak acid. Once more all appeared well with the pattern welded iron showing its distinctive patterns against the smoothness of the plain iron. All seemed well then for the blade and now it was time to remove it from the heat. As he took it from its bed of iron, it was clear though that not all was well. The clay hid much of the detail, though the blade had taken the curve he wanted as the blade thinned down. That was as expected but even the clay could not hide the fact that the tip had pulled apart on the weld. He stared at it for a moment for it was unexpected given the success of the samples he’d just been working on. More than unexpected though it was irritating because he’d put a considerable amount of effort into it and he’d thought that he’d been careful in checking that this wasn’t going to happen. Hot iron clanged as it bounced off of the wall, dried clay shattering and filling the air with a cloud of dust. Eyes closed, Eanos fought for calm as the anger burned bright but it was hard to avoid the fact that the fault lay not in the iron but in the smith. Something had gone wrong for all his efforts and he needed to understand what it was. That was a truth which lurked in his heart, but for the time it remained buried for only a calm mind might unpick the error and just now anger burned bright as the Isur sought new ways to vent it.

[Dusk]

XP Award! Eanos XP Award: Auristics: 2 XP, Bodybuilding: 1 XP, Weaponsmithing: 3 XP, Etching: 1 XP Lore Award: Basics of creating steel, the Whispers Ledger: -2gm, useless broken dagger Additional Note Another great training thread!