by Kyle Johnson
Finally, Aranos picked up Saphielle’s spear. He’d already Enchanted one for her, but he was hoping to do something different with this one. He etched runes and wove Enchantments into the solid, wooden shaft, making it stronger, lighter, and boosting its wielder’s Attack and damage. The blade of the spear, though, he carefully altered, shifting the patterns of the metal, widening and lengthening the spearhead to create a looser crystalline lattice. The resultant blade looked and felt weaker, almost flimsy, but Aranos wasn’t finished.
Carefully, he trickled spirit mana into the steel. The energy roiled and swirled through the metal, bound and contained by the pattern Aranos had carefully crafted. The chaotic power snapped and darted about randomly, but Aranos’ patterns held it in place. Instead of odd swirls or ripples of color, strange, runic shapes began appearing and vanishing on the surface. The blade almost seemed to twist in Aranos’ hand, but after a moment it seemed to settle as a bright, chromatic aura glowed from the spearhead.
Aranos wanted to shout with excitement as he realized that his idea had worked. Since the spirit energy followed whatever patterns he created in the metal matrix bounding it, he’d simply made the patterns into a runeform themselves. It hadn’t been easy, but the crystalline matrix of the spearhead was now a runeform enhancing the spear’s sharpness, strength, and durability. Excited to see the results of his work, Aranos pulled up his waiting notifications, skimming over most of them except for the last four:
Crafting Success!
You have Enchanted: Ascendant Blade
Type: One-handed
Damage: 48 - 72
Rarity: Exceptional
Quality: Masterwork
Effects: Attack +125%, Armor Penetration +140%, Attack Speed +25%, Spell Power to Spells cast on/through blade +30%, never needs sharpening, cannot be broken by normal means.
On activation: Elemental Weapon – Can do air, earth, fire, or water damage (or any Composite of these) on attacks for 1 min.
Charged Item: This item requires 1 charge to do elemental damage or 2 charges to do composite damage.
Hauratite Core: Charges are regained whenever this sword is exposed to mana: 1 charge per 20 SP of mana cast through it or contacting it.
Current Charges: 1,146
Skill Boost: High Enchantment (T) has gained a Level!
New Rank: Expert 1
Expert Level Ability: You may add an additional Runeform and Enchantment to any item. 20% Chance to produce an Enhanced result. Chances of a critical failure are reduced by your [Dex / 2], rounded down.
Crafting Success!
You have Enchanted: High Faymetal Spear
Type: Two-Handed
Damage: 34 - 52
Rarity: Exceptional
Quality: Masterwork
Effects: Cannot be broken, can affect creatures usually resistant to piercing damage, Attack +125%; Armor Penetration +167%; Attack Speed + 68%; Double damage to Summoned, Enchanted, or Spellcasting creatures; Triple damage to magical barriers or animated creatures.
Skill Evolved: Skill Blacksmithing has become Faysmithing (T)^
New Rank: Adept 6
Can forge high quality items from mundane metals up to Uncommon rarity. Can repair or modify metal armor or weapons. All crafted items are automatically one Rank higher in Quality. Quality additionally increased +4% per Skill level.
Evolved: You can forge faymetal from Fine quality base metals.
Student Level Ability: You can craft mundane items up to Fine Quality.
Adept Level Ability: You can craft mundane items up to Excellent Quality. You can craft Enchanted faymetal items.
Both the sword and the spear had come out as Masterwork Quality and had phenomenal bonuses to them, but with one Skill leveling up and the other Evolving, Aranos was feeling inspired. His own Enchanted items were really pretty outdated and weak compared to what he could do, now, and while he was proud of everything he’d crafted, he wanted to try something unique that was just for him.
He took out a heavy, gold chain with a palm-sized medallion and touched it with his Sense Mana Skill and High Mastery. It was a Fine quality item, but he thought he might be able to improve on that a bit. He started by shifting the core of the medallion into a lump of hauratite, then connected small nodules of rusilver, nemsilver, vilsilver, and ontsilver to it using strands of auril. He turned the rest of the necklace into arcane silver, but he spent an hour carefully crafting the patterns of the metal around the central core. Those patterns wound around the interior of the medallion and through the chain, forged of pure truesilver that he hoped wouldn’t transfer mana out into the surrounding metal. Once it was worked as perfectly as he could manage, Aranos quickly Appraised the nonmagical item:
Appraisal Success!
You have discovered: Arcane-crafted Medallion
Rarity: Exceptional
Quality: Masterwork
Special: As this item is specifically crafted to receive High Enchantments, it can accept 50% more Runes and Enchantments than normal (10 Enchantments, 6 Runes).
Aranos put the medallion down and began to sketch out the runes he wanted, including the numerous sub-runes. He could put six runeforms on this, and he intended to use all six. At the same time, he needed the runes to complement the truesilver patterns he’d laid down, and he had to make sure it all fit exactly with the binding points of the medallion, where he’d be linking his Enchantments. Once he was certain the runes were as accurate as he could make them, he painstakingly etched them in the metal, not using an athame as he normally would, but using his High Mastery Ability to convert thin lines of arcane silver into auril. That allowed him to make the runes three-dimensional so that they would wrap around the truesilver patterns, but it also ate deeply into his SP pool, and he stopped to rest whenever his SP dropped to 50%.
When that was complete, he tied the Enchantments into the binding points, using them to connect the six Runeforms he’d crafted to one another and to the hauratite core in the center of the medallion. The Enchantments wound throughout the main talisman and spiraled along the attached chain, linking the whole into one, enormous Enchantment. Five of the Enchantments linked the six runes he’d crafted, while the other five linked the Enchantments to one another and to the central core.
Finally, Aranos felt like the medallion was as ready as he could get it. First, he connected to the buried veins of truesilver and trickled spirit mana into them, watching carefully as the entropic energy twisted and wound through the patterns of metal, following the wide gaps in the crystal in a swirling, spiral flow that never let any of the energy out into the surrounding metal. As the truesilver filled, Aranos let out a sigh of relief; his biggest fear had been that he wouldn’t have been able to meld the faymetal into the interior of the medallion without the energy leaking into the rest, which would have essentially ruined the item.
Once he was certain the spirit energy was flowing the way it was supposed to, Aranos poured SP into the hauratite core, adding 50 SP of soul mana for good measure. The medallion shuddered in his hands as he channeled nearly two-thousand SP into it, and he prepared to drop it if it started to overheat, but the hidden strands of auril channeled the mana just as he’d hoped they would. Once he felt resistance to his channeling, he let the flow stop and examined what he’d made:
Greater Creation Success!
Your Talisman of High Sorcery has Evolved into Unique Amulet!
Rarity: Unique
Quality: Artifact
Unique Item!
This item is a unique item and cannot be replicated or Deconstructed. All bonuses are increased by 25%. As the creator of this item, you can choose a unique name for it!
Soul-bound: This item cannot be lost, stolen, or destroyed.
Effects: While worn, this Amulet doubles Spell Power and halves Casting Speed for all Spells. All SP costs for Spells are increased by 50%, but resistance to Spells cast is reduced by 75%. One extra Spell can be cast at once with the Multicast Ability. SP Regen i
s increased by +50%. All Stats +25.
Faymetal Resistance: This Amulet has an Enchanted faymetal core that grants the wearer +50% resistance to all hostile magic and reduces the duration of any magical effects on the wearer, hostile or otherwise, by 50%.
Charged Item: A caster can expend charges to empower Spells or Abilities. Each charge spent increases the power of a Spell or Ability by +10%. This item regains 4 charges per day naturally.
Current Charges: 3,174
Limitation: This item can only be worn by a Sorcerer with at least Expert ranks in Mana Control and Mana Manipulation. Any other Class or creature attempting to use this item instead suffers Mana Burn for as long as the amulet is worn, plus 1 hour afterward.
For Crafting a Unique Item:
-1,000 XP
Unique Items
Unique items are great creations that, once made, can never be duplicated. They are usually forged for specific individuals and often only function for that individual or a creature very like that individual. They often have bonuses that are difficult for all but the greatest Enchanters to reproduce.
Unique items cannot be Deconstructed or replicated through Skills, Abilities or Spells. It is possible to craft an item that mimics a unique item, but these replicas generally fall short of the power of the unique item.
Crafting a Unique Item: It is not possible to specifically intend to create a unique item, nor can an Enchanter who crafted a unique item replicate the feat at will. Unique items are created through a confluence of many factors, and random chance plays a large role in their construction.
Limitations: Unique items are meant for a specific individual and cannot be used by every creature. A creature attempting to use a unique item not suited for them might find the item less effective, nonfunctional, or even damaging to them. Certain Skills and Abilities may allow a creature to subvert these limitations.
World’s First!
You are the first player to craft a unique item!
As such, you receive the Title: The Artificer
Title: The Artificer
Your crafts are extraordinary and may exceed the normal limits for crafted items.
Effect: All items you craft are increased one rank in Quality and Rarity. This can allow you to create Mythical items or, if an item would have Mythical Quality or Rarity, to craft an item of Deific Quality or Impossible Rarity (these ranks are normally not achievable by mortal crafters).
Aranos stared at the amulet in shock; that had turned out way, way better than he’d ever imagined it would, thanks to the boost from his Greater Creation Perk. He’d originally thought that the Perk was random, but he’d started to notice that it tended to kick in more often when he was crafting more carefully, or when something was more important to him. The Perk itself simply read that any item he crafted had a 10% chance to spontaneously Evolve. If it happened more often when he was crafting with care, maybe any item had a chance to Evolve based on the effort and thought put into it, and his Perk just increased that chance by 10%? If that was the case, he needed to start taking a lot more care with his crafting.
Even so, he took a minute to appreciate that he’d crafted a unique item. Apparently, he would never have to worry about losing the amulet, as it was Soul-bound, and the boosts it gave were amazing. Of course, there were downsides to the powerful necklace, as well, but his boosts to SP cost were already significant enough that the penalty wasn’t crippling, and the fact that it reduced his personal Spells’ duration was offset by the fact that it doubled the duration of all his Spells.
He donned the necklace, feeling the energies of it rolling through his body as he did. Instantly, a prompt popped up asking him if he wanted to name the amulet. He thought about that for a bit and considered naming it after himself – Aranos’ Amulet, or something like that – but he recalled that in a lot of games and stories, the most powerful items had actual names. Smiling, he chose a name and watched the item’s description change from “Unique Amulet” to “Sumeilain, the First Sorcerer’s Sigil”. It was a bit of alliteration, but ‘sumeilain’ meant ‘hidden rainbow’ in an old Elven dialect, according to what he’d read in Ruehnar’s book.
His thoughts were interrupted as a tingle in his mind told him that the first layer of his Elemental Ward had just activated. Aranos swore silently and rose to his feet, staring out the window. The moon was waning tonight and hidden behind a cover of thin, wispy clouds that cloaked the forest below in a sea of shadows. Aranos called up his Night Vision, and instantly the scene below resolved before him. Gasping, he rushed back and grabbed the Enchanted gear he’d been working on before activating his Flight Spell. He quickly leaped out the window, gliding down to the ground and soaring in the door to where the others were sleeping.
“Wake up!” he shouted, accompanying his cries with a short blast of sonic mana that squealed painfully in the confines of the room. “We’re being attacked!”
Saphielle and Geltheriel were the first to respond, leaping from their tents, both instantly alert and ready for battle. That made sense; the two Warriors had spent their entire lives being ready to rush to battle, after all. Rhys and Phil burst out about the same time, the Spellsword’s armor appearing from his inventory as he scrambled from the tent. Somewhat predictably, Longfellow was the last to emerge, rubbing his eyes blearily.
“What the bloody hell,” the man muttered. “I was having the most amazing dream, mate! See, there were these two elf girls who wanted me to craft them armor…”
“Please stop,” McBane said tiredly. “Just – stop, before one of the two elf Warriors who could easily kill you sends you to respawn, yeah?”
“Oh, yeah, forgot about that,” Longfellow murmured, glancing nervously at Geltheriel and Saphielle, both of whom were pointedly ignoring him. “Sorry about that. We’ll just keep the part about the chain mail bikinis to ourselves, then.”
Aranos sighed and held up a hand. “Okay, let’s focus, people. The attack we figured would eventually come is here. We’ve got an undead horde outside banging on my air shield, so we need to get ready.”
“Horde?” Phil repeated. “How big is a horde, precisely?”
“I didn’t count, because there are more than I conveniently could count,” Aranos replied grimly.
“We should have a significant amount of time, Redeemer,” Saphielle shrugged. “The shield held for some time against the urukkai, as I recall.”
Aranos shook his head. “We’re surrounded, and the undead are stronger than the uruks were. Plus, vangolors and those void mages can unravel the shield if they work together. I figure we’ll have less than a minute before the barrier drops and they enter.
“We’re going to make them come to us,” he continued. “They’ll be weaker on Redeemed ground, and the tower gives us some defense. Longfellow and I will head upstairs to use the height of the second story windows to gain range. Phil, Saphielle and Silma will hold the door; Geltheriel and McBane, you’ll deal with any who make it past or hold the line if one of the others has to fall back.”
“I’m not a tank,” McBane protested. “Geltheriel and I are DPS; we’d be better out there, hitting the flanks from Stealth.”
“The undead can see through my Stealth, Rogue,” Geltheriel snorted. “They will certainly detect yours. How long do you think you will last outside the tower, unable to hide, pursued by undead who do not tire?” McBane frowned for a moment, then nodded his head.
“You can be a kind of dodge tank, hon,” Meridian supplied with a laugh. “They have those, right?” McBane eyed her darkly and sighed.
“If we can hold the door, we can do this,” Aranos continued. “Between what Longfellow and I can do from above and the wall you guys can make of the door, they’ll tear themselves to pieces against us. Oh, especially with what I did to your gear!”
Aranos began taking out the Enchanted items and handing them out. The humans took their new weapons with some amazement, especially Phil. “Dude, this sword is amazing!” the Spellswor
d gushed, brandishing the blade. “The Stats are awesome, and it’s perfectly designed to let me cast Spells through it. Am I reading this right; I can do any kind of energy damage with it?”
“Elemental damage,” Aranos corrected. “There are lots of other types of energy.”
“Okay, but I can still make this thing a lava sword, right?” Phil looked as eager as a kid with a new toy, and Aranos couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah, or ice, if you wanted. Technically, I guess you could make it a mud blade, but I don’t know when that would be useful.”
“Redeemer,” Saphielle began slowly, staring at her spear, “how did you find a spearhead made of faymetal? Was this among the treasures of Haerobel? Such weapons are rare beyond my ability to describe it.”
“I made it,” Aranos shrugged. “I figured out how to forge faymetal, thanks to the book and samples Ilmadia gave me. Your spear was the first weapon I ever tried, actually. It’s time-consuming, and I can’t make a lot, but I know you needed it…”
His words cut off as Saphielle’s lips fastened to his, warm and yielding. Her strong hands grasped the back of his neck, pulling him toward her, and her hot tongue slipped between his parted lips. Aranos froze for a moment, stunned, then wrapped his arms about her and returned her embrace. Her armored torso was cold and unyielding, making the gentleness of her kiss all the more startling by contrast.
How long the moment lasted, Aranos wasn’t sure, but a cough from Phil shattered the moment, and reluctantly, Aranos pulled away from the woman and released her. Her skin was flushed, her eyes shone brightly, and her gaze was fastened securely on him.
“You see? My dream was bloody right!” Longfellow spoke up. “Crafters get all the ladies! Mate, you’ve got to teach me how to make chain mail bikinis…oof!” He cut off as Meridian elbowed him squarely in the gut.
The Shaman snorted. “You’d be lucky to score with some dwarf grandma, Shortfellow. Stick with peeping; that’s the closest you’ll get to real action.”
