TIMESTAMP: Ash 29th, 122
NOTES: -
NOTES: -
- - -
Ash 29th, Late Afternoon thru Ash 30th, Morning, 122
Aardwalden had a furnace, for metal. He had no ore to test it with, but he did have a furnace, and he knew he could use that furnace to heat metal when he had a need. After working with the earth for so long, he’d spent much of the afternoon meditating after waking from his trance, connecting with the earth and laying further roots.
Faced with the reality that he would soon have to build every aspect of a Runeforging workshop by his own hand, Aardwalden had begun to visualize what he might need. He was no artisan Scrivener, and even if he weren’t, he still needed wards for the errant energies Runeforging produced, and then there was the matter of Aura Glass. Very specific Dragonshards were used for the panels, but he’d never heard a tale of mining one nor where to begin.
It seemed to him that he would have to rely upon intuition to suss out the details of his work, and any such tool, forge, or anvil he made to work the Viscerite would be quite shoddy. There was no short amount of risk to be had, and the more he thought to how dangerous that might be, the more he felt discouraged. In fact, he would not dare.
”I will help the Expedition in other ways,” he thought to himself. ”I will practice to Scriven, and there are magi who may be able to teach me. One of them may be gifted in Semblance, as Vik was. With my Lodestones, and Scrivening, we could work together. If only I could hold the attention of those flocking stone rats.”
Aardwalden briefly considered taking upon himself a Rune from those on the expedition with him. Merethyl had brought up the subject with him before, an attempt of bribery that he entertained, but he feared what might happen. Skipping across the world into the unknown was one thing, but he felt a sense of mortality when he thought of risking his life for a Rune. Many decades had passed since he became an Elementalist to fix the granite walls of his former master’s workshop, but he still remembered how hard it was to reconcile the initiation in spite of his affinity for the earth.
If he were to take any rune, it would perhaps be something to travel, or to see. Anything else, he thought he should avoid for now. What if he fell into a coma only to awaken with the Maddening and drive the earth into a frenzy? He shuddered the thought.
Then, a strange idea popped into his head, something his curious mind began to expand upon. The first thought was finding something other than an aura to discern the danger of magic. Aardwalden put his hands to his cheeks with a loud groan of thought. “Aaaaahhhh!” It seemed so simple, but how!?
Aardwalden thought that even if he needn’t see the aetheric pathways in the object, he could still visualize them in other ways. A tray of Sorcerer’s Sand, perhaps. No, regular sand would work too! If he forged an object upon a bed of Scrivened wires transmitting to the surface, with a network of Lodestone... Could he use earth magic to visualize the changes by vibrating the sand? It could work, and he felt a lick of madness just thinking about it. “It really could work!” he said aloud. But, he knew he’d need to make a prototype. The amount of Scrivened nuance required could take some time, something possibly far beyond his expertise.
The gnome must have looked mad running out of the dark home nestled in the hill, rushing down the steps, and scooping a handful of sand like a swaddled child before running back up and into the dark. He threw the sand on the floor, dropped to his knees before it, and held his hands above it, envisioning how his own magic looked beneath the Aura Glass.
Coaxing the earth into a broad, gentle thrum, Aardwalden let it resonate with him, each little grain of sand quaking on a smaller scale. As his hand moved inward, he found he could hone the vibrations, and Influence them into dancing along the lines of a spell he was by now innately familiar with.
The first test was a resounding success.
For the second test, Aardwalden held out his hand, and began to congeal a Lodestone, an inordinary one, for this one was small. The first was the size of his fingertip, but he went smaller still, until the quartz appeared as a glowing chip comprised of his aether. To test what it could hold, he breathed upon it with the gentlest whisper of the same rousing he’d Influenced the earth with before, so small he couldn’t feel the earth inside the crystal.
Lowering the Lodestone down, he pressed it to the sand and shut his eyes, then fed a sliver of his aether to the object before relenting, and to his amusement it began to hum the sand around it just as he wished. Was the second test going to pass? Aardwalden realized he’d just discovered Lodestone Fragments, minor shards so small they could only carry fractional power, objects that might be useful in other ways.
Gnomish intellect at play, Aardwalden lept up to the stone wall in the foyer and scratched upon it with his quartz claws, drawing a harsh diagram of a bed of hundreds of Lodestone Fragments, a sheet of Scrivened granite above it, layered with interlocking Mirrors and Paths, and the sand resting atop its surface, cradled in by shallow walls. In the minutes that followed, he worked his way down the wall, drawing the scrawling of an anvil with a scribbled Pictographic representation - shorthand - for hundreds of paths and Mirrors each corresponding to a modulating output on the tray, and another from a kiln for heating the Viscerite.
If Aardwalden forged an object with this configuration, its pathways should show in the sand, and the pulsations and ripples would be equally represented. Strange and unorthodox, and it certainly needed more work, maybe even a better usage of Scrivening symbols and materials, but he’d done it, right?
He was sure this was possible… until he blinked with oversight. He wasn’t. Aardwalden had gotten ahead of himself, and he could tell now that this wouldn’t work. He loved the earth, and he wished for it to be his solution, but without a spell to visualize the pathways themselves the sand would merely vibrate in unison.
Aardwalden felt instantly crushed, dropping to his knees with a thud and pressing his forehead to the smooth earthwork. “How did the first Runeforgers invent their forges? There has to be a way without that damnable Dragonshard!”
He did not need to breathe, but he found himself doing so anyway, to sigh his frustration to the stone around him which shuddered in concern. “Blast it, blast it, blast it all. What being summoned me here, and for what purpose?” His eyes peeled. How could he blame that mysterious force for bringing each of them here, to this strange land?
“I will build a way to return to Solunarium,” he affirmed to himself, picking his body off of the stone floor. He set his hand back to the cavern wall, this time turning to scrounge upon the other side of the stone hall. Every tool of Runeforging, he went through, studying its make, studying whether it needed to be. Hammer, chisel, and tongs. Forge, kiln, mortar and pestle. Sorcerer’s Glass. Aura Glass. Tonal Fork. Tonal Fork!
“Well, I’ll be.” Aard scratched his stony chin. “A Tonal Fork can guide the pathways, and I can hear them… a pure quartz one ought to do the trick. That solves one problem.” A Tonal Fork didn’t need to be made from Runeforged materials. If he could shape it right with his Arche, it just might work with trial and error.
The kiln would be a hard thing to make. He knew the symbols, even the design, but he wasn’t sure he could pull it off. It wouldn’t be stable, at least.
The next problem was a doozy. How to melt the Dragonshards and convert them to the Viscerite he needed to forge the other tools? Well, he had to make Sorcerer’s Glass, but how? For that, he could surely use some of the Aetherite he brought with him. Aetherite could be guided to carefully pass the tuning fork to create the small amounts of Viscerite he needed to form a Sorcerer’s Glass lens. If the kiln were miniature. It might just work, though he risked Strain.
Baking Viscerite took hours. Could he hold out for that long?
Then, there was the matter of stabilizing the product. He wasn’t a good enough Scrivener to make a perfect Basin. The Pictography work there was a bit beyond him, but much of the Pictography was standard and taught to him long ago, and he’d certainly read the runes enough times to know what he was looking at to give it a go.
The gnome wrote all of that down on the walls, step by step, Pictograph by Pictograph in careful concentration. “Right, Tonal Fork. On the ‘morrow, then!” Glancing over his shoulder, Aardwalden realized by the pale blue sky at the entrance that it was already dawn. Another day, another project for a busy gnome.
Ash 29th, Late Afternoon thru Ash 30th, Morning, 122
Aardwalden had a furnace, for metal. He had no ore to test it with, but he did have a furnace, and he knew he could use that furnace to heat metal when he had a need. After working with the earth for so long, he’d spent much of the afternoon meditating after waking from his trance, connecting with the earth and laying further roots.
Faced with the reality that he would soon have to build every aspect of a Runeforging workshop by his own hand, Aardwalden had begun to visualize what he might need. He was no artisan Scrivener, and even if he weren’t, he still needed wards for the errant energies Runeforging produced, and then there was the matter of Aura Glass. Very specific Dragonshards were used for the panels, but he’d never heard a tale of mining one nor where to begin.
It seemed to him that he would have to rely upon intuition to suss out the details of his work, and any such tool, forge, or anvil he made to work the Viscerite would be quite shoddy. There was no short amount of risk to be had, and the more he thought to how dangerous that might be, the more he felt discouraged. In fact, he would not dare.
”I will help the Expedition in other ways,” he thought to himself. ”I will practice to Scriven, and there are magi who may be able to teach me. One of them may be gifted in Semblance, as Vik was. With my Lodestones, and Scrivening, we could work together. If only I could hold the attention of those flocking stone rats.”
Aardwalden briefly considered taking upon himself a Rune from those on the expedition with him. Merethyl had brought up the subject with him before, an attempt of bribery that he entertained, but he feared what might happen. Skipping across the world into the unknown was one thing, but he felt a sense of mortality when he thought of risking his life for a Rune. Many decades had passed since he became an Elementalist to fix the granite walls of his former master’s workshop, but he still remembered how hard it was to reconcile the initiation in spite of his affinity for the earth.
If he were to take any rune, it would perhaps be something to travel, or to see. Anything else, he thought he should avoid for now. What if he fell into a coma only to awaken with the Maddening and drive the earth into a frenzy? He shuddered the thought.
Then, a strange idea popped into his head, something his curious mind began to expand upon. The first thought was finding something other than an aura to discern the danger of magic. Aardwalden put his hands to his cheeks with a loud groan of thought. “Aaaaahhhh!” It seemed so simple, but how!?
Aardwalden thought that even if he needn’t see the aetheric pathways in the object, he could still visualize them in other ways. A tray of Sorcerer’s Sand, perhaps. No, regular sand would work too! If he forged an object upon a bed of Scrivened wires transmitting to the surface, with a network of Lodestone... Could he use earth magic to visualize the changes by vibrating the sand? It could work, and he felt a lick of madness just thinking about it. “It really could work!” he said aloud. But, he knew he’d need to make a prototype. The amount of Scrivened nuance required could take some time, something possibly far beyond his expertise.
The gnome must have looked mad running out of the dark home nestled in the hill, rushing down the steps, and scooping a handful of sand like a swaddled child before running back up and into the dark. He threw the sand on the floor, dropped to his knees before it, and held his hands above it, envisioning how his own magic looked beneath the Aura Glass.
Coaxing the earth into a broad, gentle thrum, Aardwalden let it resonate with him, each little grain of sand quaking on a smaller scale. As his hand moved inward, he found he could hone the vibrations, and Influence them into dancing along the lines of a spell he was by now innately familiar with.
The first test was a resounding success.
For the second test, Aardwalden held out his hand, and began to congeal a Lodestone, an inordinary one, for this one was small. The first was the size of his fingertip, but he went smaller still, until the quartz appeared as a glowing chip comprised of his aether. To test what it could hold, he breathed upon it with the gentlest whisper of the same rousing he’d Influenced the earth with before, so small he couldn’t feel the earth inside the crystal.
Lowering the Lodestone down, he pressed it to the sand and shut his eyes, then fed a sliver of his aether to the object before relenting, and to his amusement it began to hum the sand around it just as he wished. Was the second test going to pass? Aardwalden realized he’d just discovered Lodestone Fragments, minor shards so small they could only carry fractional power, objects that might be useful in other ways.
Gnomish intellect at play, Aardwalden lept up to the stone wall in the foyer and scratched upon it with his quartz claws, drawing a harsh diagram of a bed of hundreds of Lodestone Fragments, a sheet of Scrivened granite above it, layered with interlocking Mirrors and Paths, and the sand resting atop its surface, cradled in by shallow walls. In the minutes that followed, he worked his way down the wall, drawing the scrawling of an anvil with a scribbled Pictographic representation - shorthand - for hundreds of paths and Mirrors each corresponding to a modulating output on the tray, and another from a kiln for heating the Viscerite.
If Aardwalden forged an object with this configuration, its pathways should show in the sand, and the pulsations and ripples would be equally represented. Strange and unorthodox, and it certainly needed more work, maybe even a better usage of Scrivening symbols and materials, but he’d done it, right?
He was sure this was possible… until he blinked with oversight. He wasn’t. Aardwalden had gotten ahead of himself, and he could tell now that this wouldn’t work. He loved the earth, and he wished for it to be his solution, but without a spell to visualize the pathways themselves the sand would merely vibrate in unison.
Aardwalden felt instantly crushed, dropping to his knees with a thud and pressing his forehead to the smooth earthwork. “How did the first Runeforgers invent their forges? There has to be a way without that damnable Dragonshard!”
He did not need to breathe, but he found himself doing so anyway, to sigh his frustration to the stone around him which shuddered in concern. “Blast it, blast it, blast it all. What being summoned me here, and for what purpose?” His eyes peeled. How could he blame that mysterious force for bringing each of them here, to this strange land?
“I will build a way to return to Solunarium,” he affirmed to himself, picking his body off of the stone floor. He set his hand back to the cavern wall, this time turning to scrounge upon the other side of the stone hall. Every tool of Runeforging, he went through, studying its make, studying whether it needed to be. Hammer, chisel, and tongs. Forge, kiln, mortar and pestle. Sorcerer’s Glass. Aura Glass. Tonal Fork. Tonal Fork!
“Well, I’ll be.” Aard scratched his stony chin. “A Tonal Fork can guide the pathways, and I can hear them… a pure quartz one ought to do the trick. That solves one problem.” A Tonal Fork didn’t need to be made from Runeforged materials. If he could shape it right with his Arche, it just might work with trial and error.
The kiln would be a hard thing to make. He knew the symbols, even the design, but he wasn’t sure he could pull it off. It wouldn’t be stable, at least.
The next problem was a doozy. How to melt the Dragonshards and convert them to the Viscerite he needed to forge the other tools? Well, he had to make Sorcerer’s Glass, but how? For that, he could surely use some of the Aetherite he brought with him. Aetherite could be guided to carefully pass the tuning fork to create the small amounts of Viscerite he needed to form a Sorcerer’s Glass lens. If the kiln were miniature. It might just work, though he risked Strain.
Baking Viscerite took hours. Could he hold out for that long?
Then, there was the matter of stabilizing the product. He wasn’t a good enough Scrivener to make a perfect Basin. The Pictography work there was a bit beyond him, but much of the Pictography was standard and taught to him long ago, and he’d certainly read the runes enough times to know what he was looking at to give it a go.
The gnome wrote all of that down on the walls, step by step, Pictograph by Pictograph in careful concentration. “Right, Tonal Fork. On the ‘morrow, then!” Glancing over his shoulder, Aardwalden realized by the pale blue sky at the entrance that it was already dawn. Another day, another project for a busy gnome.
- - -
