by Aleron Kong
Damage: 21-28
Item Class: Uncommon.
Quality: Well Crafted.
Weight: 3.5 kg.
Traits: +11-12 points of water damage per attack
5% chance to cause Freeze for 5 seconds
+10% damage vs. spell barriers
Charges: 412/412
You have enchanted:
Shadow Moonstone Boar Spear.
Damage: 26-34
Durability: 147/147
Item Class: Uncommon.
Quality: Exceptional.
Weight: 5.4 kg.
Traits: Ignore up to 10% of physical defense
+10% damage vs spell barriers
Charges: 405/405
Depending on which smith forged which weapon, the quality would change. Quality not only affected the damage each weapon was capable of inflicting, but also heavily influenced the object’s enchantment potential. While Bowdin’s work typically let him get weapons up to the seventh enchantment rank, the weapons produced by the other smiths only let him reach the fifth or sixth rank. He wouldn’t have been able to enchant to even that rank if not for his high skill level in Enchanting. As a journeyman, Richter could add fifteen points to an item’s enchanting potential and one of his Talents increased the potential by another 20%. It was true that being a Professed Enchanter didn’t have the direct combat potential of a Warrior or a Mage, but there was no denying the power of it. After hours of work, the end result was some badass weaponry!
They worked through lunch and into the afternoon. Some of the human smiths had to leave the smithy, their stamina exhausted and overcome by the heat. The dwarves continued, though. While some of the dwarven smiths mocked the humans, Bowdin admitted to Richter that dwarves burned less stamina than other races in general, but especially when it came to actions like mining and smithing. It answered a question that had always stumped Richter. In battle, Krom’s endurance had fallen almost as quickly as anyone else’s, but the smith could swing a hammer all day and night without flagging. Richter smiled thinking about how he would throw that in the dwarf’s face when he came back. More than once, Krom had mocked Richter for having to rest when the chaos seed swung a hammer.
Ultimately, he was able to enchant another twelve weapons and six mail shirts. It wasn’t enough to outfit his entire force, but it would have to do. He also refilled the charges on all existing magic weaponry. He would leave it to Caulder and Terrod to decide who would receive the magic weaponry and who wouldn’t. There was more to be done.
Richter grabbed some cold meat from the feast area and washed it down with a cup of fruit juice. His people greeted him, but he spent only a few minutes sitting before he was on the move again. His next stop was the Dragon’s Cauldron. Randolphus had been given the task of letting Tabia know about the upcoming battle.
The dark-skinned elf had come back from her Trial as a Professed Alchemist. She had started creating health, mana and stamina potions every day, but she had also been working on several “experiments.” When Richter had asked what they were, she had just smiled coyly and said that she didn’t want to “spoil the surprise.” The coyness was so out of character for the former mercenary that Richter had let the matter drop. In the days since, she had spent almost all of her time in the Dragon’s Cauldron. Strange smells and colored gases could be seen escaping the glass building at all hours of the day and night. Some of the gardeners had complained, but since no real damage was being done, Richter let it go. He just hoped that she had something ready that would help. The chaos seed wasn’t disappointed.
Walking into the Cauldron, he was struck again by how strange the inside of the building was. “Strange” actually wasn’t the right word, Richter realized. “Unexpected” fit much better. The Land was analogous to medieval times in many ways, but it was not a perfect analogy. In some ways, the magic and technology of The Land went beyond what was available on Earth. The inside of the Dragon’s Cauldron looked like a high-tech chemistry lab rather than a darkened apothecary’s den. Glass beakers and eye droppers were everywhere. There was even a shower in one corner, supplied by a type of magical plumbing.
Tabia was slowly titrating a cloudy, yellow solution into a small beaker of clear liquid. When each drop fell into the beaker, a red bloom of smoke rose from the surface for a moment. Amazingly, each bloom of smoke formed a figure before dissipating. Despite the urgency of the day, Richter decided just to watch for a few moments. Every few seconds another drop fell, and the figure grew more distinct. After a few minutes, Richter saw that it had four legs and a tail. Ten minutes after that, the smoke formed a perfectly detailed red fox. It bared its teeth at Tabia, then slowly dissolved. Its red color leached into the liquid which began to bubble. The chaos seed’s eyes grew slightly wide as the liquid became even more turbulent.
Quickly, but smoothly, she picked the beaker up and moved over to a waiting tray. There were indentations in the tray, three across and five deep, like an egg carton. Sparkling powder was in each tray. With surprise, Richter realized it was powdered crystal. Looking at it, he guessed that about five measures of the precious ingredient were sitting there on the tray. It was worth several gold. Despite his instinctual twinge at seeing such wealth being used all at once, he decided to hold his peace and trust his Alchemist.
The potion was bubbling hard now. The reaction was getting so violent that Tabia was forced to hold the beaker in both hands. She began to pour the solution onto the prepared crystal. With a sure hand, she poured a dollop into each indentation, not spilling a drop. Each measure of potion interacted with the crystal, first dissolving it, then precipitating. By the time that she was done pouring the potion, all fifteen piles of powdered crystal had been covered.
“What is that?” he finally asked.
Tabia looked at him in surprise. His sprite boots apparently made him quiet enough that she hadn’t heard him even with her acute, elven hearing. Either that or she had simply been distracted by the dangerous alchemy she was engaged in. Either way, she was not happy. Her elvish oath roughly translated to, ‘By the cancerous sphincter of disease-ridden drow!”
“My lord!” she continued. “You should not sneak up on me!” She took a deep breath and centered herself, “As you are already here, however, please help. Open that cabinet.”
She indicated a glass cabinet that was built into the structure of the Core building. “This one?” he asked. She nodded her head vigorously and then looked at the tray in her hands. The powder-solution mixtures were starting to rise like bread, forming fifteen red bubbles. Apparently, time was a factor. He quickly opened the glass cabinet, or tried to. It had a latch lock that took a few seconds to figure out.
“My lord!” she said, drawing out the second syllable to urge him to move faster. He finally got the door open and she placed the tray inside. She slammed the door shut and latched it with a sigh of relief. The bubbles had already risen to twice the depth of the indentations.
“What the hell is that?” Richter asked. She was looking at the reaction in fascination.
“What?” she asked with a blank and innocent expression. “Oh, that?” she asked again, pointing to the cubby.
“You know goddamn well ‘that!’” Richter snapped. “Why do I get the feeling that we both almost died?”
She grinned, “That, my lord, is red foxfire. It is a form of solid alchemy that I have been working on for the last two weeks since I achieved my Profession! The main ingredient, crimson daidenroot, is actually fairly common in the lands around the village.”
“That’s great, Tabia. You still haven’t told me what it does.”
“Oh. I would have thought that was obvious, Lord Richter. It explodes.”
Richter looked at her. Then he cocked his head and looked at her. She just kept smiling. “Explodes?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” she said, nodding and smiling broader. After another few moments of looking at each other, she said, “I thought it might be useful if you could get it near some
enemies.”
A small smirk started forming on Richter’s face as well. He looked at the tray through the door of the glass cabinet, “And what is the cabinet for? Is it a zero-oxygen area required to finish the reaction? Or maybe an oven of some kind?”
She shook her head, “No. Nothing else is required. The alchemy is simply maturing on its own now.”
“Then why did we have to put it in the cubby?” Richter asked, still smiling.
“That is simply a safety precaution, my lord. In case one of the alchemies proved unstable. The detonation would trigger a cascade of explosions in the other fourteen solutions that could turn us both into red mist.”
Richter’s smile slipped.
Tabia kept talking, her tone academic. “This is actually the fourth time I’ve done this particular reaction. I do not know the exact formula you see. I have been using the Cauldron’s ability to experiment with the local resources.”
Richter’s smile fell off his face completely. His lips started twisting into a sour expression, but he still understood, that her dangerous experimentation was necessary. One of the Dragon Cauldron’s abilities was to give information about combinations of ingredients and whether it was possible to make a potion out of them. It was one of the most useful traits of the building, because it took much of the guesswork out of finding new recipes. All knowledge in The Land was jealously guarded and could be more valuable than gold. The only problem was that the ability could only be used once per day. He was actually surprised that she had stumbled on a new recipe so quickly.
“Even with the Cauldron’s ability, I can’t believe that you found a new formula in the two weeks that you’ve been back,” Richter said.
“I understand your point. I have to thank Queen Elora for that.”
“What does my Companion have to do with anything?” Richter asked.
“She is a Professed Herbalist,” Tabia said excitedly. “With her help and the perks of my journeyman rank in Alchemy, that was all it took!” The chaos seed thought she was being a bit fangirl, but then he realized that an Herbalist and an Alchemist were kind of a match made in heaven. “She has a Talent that lets her see up to six uses for any plant. I just gathered four or five that had explosive or fire properties and experimented. By the fifth day, I had stumbled upon a working combination! The vessels in the central cauldron started to throb. At first I was concerned, but then my mind was filled with the formula!”
The central cauldron had vessels running through its walls like a circulatory system. Richter could well understand being freaked out when it started beating like a heart. The building had been made out of the blood of an aged, crystal dragon. Richter still wasn’t completely sure that it wasn’t alive in some way. He had another question though.
“If you learned the formula more than a week ago, why haven’t you told me about it before now?”
Tabia nodded, “It takes about three days to create it, and it is a very difficult formula. It has failed several times already. Even when it seems to be progressing well, it has a tendency to explode. I haven’t been able to stabilize the reaction yet.”
“Well how strong is the explosion?” he asked.
“I have never gotten to this point, so I cannot say how strong the final reaction would be. I can say that you do not want to be nearby when these detonate though.” She tapped her face and he noticed for the first time that her eyebrows were missing. A scant bit of stubble showed where they were growing back. His eyes widened and she nodded again. “I was fifteen feet away.”
“You weren’t hurt?” Richter asked. He would have expected at least some faint burns.
Tabia looked embarrassed, and simply said, “Sumiko.”
Once again, the Life master had saved the life and limbs of one of his villagers. He didn’t want to think about what state his people would be in without her. He prayed that the Hearth Mother’s healing magic would be enough to save the lives of his people after the inevitable wounds they would receive in the upcoming battle.
“So after losing your eyebrows, you decided to put the solutions in a cubby until you knew it was safe,” he said. It made sense. Despite being clear like any glass back on earth and sharing the same name, the substance that made up the Dragon’s Cauldron was impossibly hard. That translated into a durability that was crazy high. The clear cabinet they were standing next to should be just as good as a bomb disposal unit. That being said, he still took a few steps back now that he knew what was going on.
The two of them watched the fifteen bubbles continue to slowly rise. Every once in a while, they would collapse and Richter’s heart would skip a beat, but then they would start rising again. He and Tabia watched this pattern repeat itself several times until each of the fifteen rose a final time and visibly hardened. The entire time they had been observing, the mixture had looked wet and smooth, like red, latex paint. Now, the surface of each golf ball-sized sphere was craggy, though still a deep red. No more movement could be seen.
“Now what?” Richter asked.
“I have no idea,” she said frankly. “I have never gotten this far before.”
“So how do we know when they are safe?”
She just looked at him for a few moments, blinking. When she spoke, he had to resist the urge to strangle her, “Uhhhh, you could touch it.”
Richter closed his eyes and prayed for strength. He had been transported to a magical land, across probably a bajillion parsecs of space, become the head of a fledgling village, unlocked Mastery of two branches of magic… and was still being given the same stupid fucking advice that had started this whole thing! He opened his eyes and sighed deeply. Dumb as the advice was, all in all, it had worked out for him the last time.
Part of him wanted to drag the moment out and ask Tabia if she wanted to be the one to open the cabinet, but he knew that he was the right choice. If he died, he would be reborn after all. If he lost Tabia she wouldn’t be coming back. It would be a personal loss and a great blow to the village. Richter told her to take cover. She started to protest that it was her responsibility, but he just waved her away. If it was to be done, best to be done quickly, and he had never had tolerance for wasting time. After she was safe, he opened the cabinet, keeping his body behind the door. It wasn’t much protection, but if the introduction of more air catalyzed a reaction, it would be better than nothing.
A second later, he was still in one piece and he opened the cubby the rest of the way. He picked up one of the red crystals.
You have found:
Crystallized Red Foxfire.
Alchemy Class: Unusual.
Alchemy Level: Solution.
Alchemy Strength: Processed.
Durability: 3/3
Weight: 0.2 kg.
Traits: Breaking the fragile shell of this sphere will release the power within. Will cause 167 fire damage within its effective radius of ten feet. Damage drops quickly after this distance. Chance to cause Burning status.
Richter smiled broadly, though he gingerly placed the foxfire back into the tray. She had made him grenades! Well not grenades exactly, more like highly unstable napalm, but still, it rocked! He closed the cabinet again as he turned to speak with her. No reason to take chances.
“This is amazing, Tabia! I don’t understand the relevance of the potion’s level though. I thought that just dealt with potion duration.”
“For liquid alchemy, it normally does, my lord. Potion level can also describe the area of effect for certain alchemies like this, however.”
Always more to learn, Richter thought. “Do you have the ingredients to make more?”
“I have most of what we need and should be able to find the rest relatively easily. I used up two of the ingredients when I made these five doses though.”
“Five? There are fifteen.”
Tabia clarified, “Each dose makes three crystals.”
Richter nodded in understanding, “Even so, I didn’t see you use the Cauldron's duplication ability. How did yo
u make the fifth one?” He knew that for each rank an alchemist achieved, they could make one dose of a potion. Novices could only make one dose at a time, while a journeyman like Tabia should only be able to make four. He didn’t know where the extra dose came from.
She shook her head with a smile, “Just one of the perks of being a Professional. I bought the Talent Additional Doses I. It increases my brewing limit. I am also not sure that we could use the Cauldron’s duplication ability with this alchemy, my lord. You saw how unstable the mixture is until it is added to the powdered crystal. I could try, but five doses going off all at once…”
Richter shook his head, “You’re right. It’s not worth the risk, to just try it willie nillie. Still, see if you can find a way.”
“I will,” she assured him. “For now, let me show you what else I have.”
“I want to see, but first, we have to test something.” He started emptying his Bag of Holding. She looked at him in curiosity but held her peace. It took longer than he thought it would. Over time he had accumulated a good deal of bric-a-brac. Her eyes widened when she saw him remove entire chests from the flat bag. It took some time, but then it was empty.
Richter slowly opened the cabinet again and placed a foxfire crystal into his Bag. Then he left the Cauldron. Walking thirty feet away, he placed his bag on the ground. Tabia looked at him in utter confusion now. That expression turned to one of horror when he started wailing on the bag with his sheathed sword.
“Are you crazy?” she screamed.
He ignored her and gave the bag a few more good whacks until he was satisfied. Then he put the bag back on and reentered the alchemy lab. Tabia filed in a few seconds later, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. She watched while he put his belongings back in his Bag of Holding. Seeing the incredulous look on her face, Richter shrugged, “Had to make sure the damn thing wouldn’t go off while it was in my bag. Now what else did you have to show me?”
Muttering about the craziness of humans, she brought out the rest of her stock. She had several hundred health, mana and stamina potions prepared, of varying potencies. He collected them all, planning to distribute most amongst his fighters. She also brought out a few dozen vials of poison. Those he planned to keep for himself.
