Over and Under
Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2019 1:32 am
Frost 64, 119
By the time the golem's fabricated parts had arrived, Foma had finished the lures, selected and inscribed the core, and readied everything he'd need to work on the individual pieces themselves. While he'd received a verbal lashing from Miss Holzknecht regarding his late night mistake days earlier, business had been much the same as ever. He was continually swamped with tasks and jobs, leaving precious little time to work on his own project, but he'd managed. Most of the time he could find was either very early in the morning or late at night, which the latter was limited to when Master Wagner locked up the shop as he'd lost the privilege to do stay beyond that point for the foreseeable future.
Having just finished inscribing another set of cores, Miss Holzknecht informed him he would have the rest of the day to do with him time as he saw fit. So, as he saw fit, Foma set about grinding and sanding and smoothing the golem's would be copper body. He worked steadily and carefully, not wanting to waste his time by being too slow but neither wanting to waste it with foolish mistakes. When that was finished, he moved on to the wooden arms, then the hands, then fingers, filing down sharp or rough edges along the way.
Once everything was in order, he settled into the process of connecting everything together. The lures took the place the golem's shoulders, elbows and neck. It had no need of nor possessed any legs, and to help the thing stay balanced while it worked, Foma planned to fill its innards with a small sack of sand.
More filing and grinding and sanding later, and everything fit together as it should, though all the pieces remained separate, as it was easier to apply a shroud to hands and wrists that weren't attached to ungainly limbs. The hands themselves were divided into sixteen pieces each and fit together like a puzzle. Each of the pieces was perforated with several holes, wherein string could be woven through them so that they might connect together but still retain their flexibility of form. The blueprints had only shown that a two-fingered claw was needed, but Foma had opted for the more elegant and artisan form of a hand true to life. Such things were both easier to imprint and, later, instruct.
Picking up the first of the delicate wooden pieces, he pulled a thin metal needle from where he'd been letting it heat in his candle's light, and gingerly began the process of burning in the proper pictographs. Movement, control, flexibility, and stability. The purpose of the shroud, of the function the hands would soon perform, took the forefront of mind as he worked. Each smoking symbol burned its way across the smooth surface of the wood, interrupting the natural grain and superseding the materials old nature, instilling new focus, new meaning, and new purpose.
He took breaks often. His eyes and thoughts needed rest, and he allowed them that. There were no spares for the hands, for any part of the physical body, and he wanted to make certain that he made no mistakes. Half of that process was simply keeping himself from rushing or pushing through fatigue. Every time he felt his eyes struggle to focus or the beginning draw on his mind to wander, he set his needles aside and took a short walk around the workshop.
Miss Holzknecht kept her ever watchful eyes upon him whenever he did so but had nothing to say on the matter. He wasn't the only one who needed to stretch his legs. They all did from time to time.
When the shrouds were finally finished, Foma carefully strung them together, the twine snaking through the pale cypress, giving familiar form to the neatly sanded and pyrographed pieces of wood. The pictographs extended to the wrists, the point were the strings attached to the arm itself, leaving the hand hanging limp. Soon the arms were connected to the body and, lastly, the head.
His coreless golem sat lifeless upon his workbench, like some poor drooping thing, but it very much looked like the nearly finished product it was. The head itself had four holes borne into it: two for the ears and two for the eyes. Foma had smoothed the sharp edges of the metal and fitted a thin gauze over the ear holes to keep anything from getting inside the head. For the eyes he'd carefully installed two clear, glass marbles that snugly fit in their allotted places. There was no need for a mouth, so the golem possessed none.
Next came the overbody, the reason he'd put everything all together even though he still lacked the properly imprinted core. This time his tool of choice was no needle but a thin metal rod carefully fitted with a small, ruby crystal at its end. The creation of what was essentially the metaphysical structure to hold the golem's "mind" required more than just scratches into metal and burns upon wood. It required pure aether, carefully and exactly directed.
He started from the head and worked his way down and out. Every symbol was carefully tailored to the function of the form, not dissimilar to what he'd done with the shrouds, however where function had the primary purpose behind the shroud, now Foma focused on the cohesivity of the body as a whole. The head was more than a place of sight and sound, but the peak of this mountain of copper and cypress. It fed information to the core, to the pseudo-soul, and allowed for information both familiar and new to be gleaned from the world around it.
The neck, that simple lure, was like all joints a connection, a joining of two points. It was mobile and didn't possess the same restrictions as a neck of flesh might. It connected head and body, just as the shoulders and the elbows and wrists did much the same. Every symbol carried with it purpose as well as an implication of place within the greater, grander web of the golem's true design.
As he worked, the symbols burned themselves into surface of the golem, an elegant and delicate tattoo that covered the entirety of the body. By the time he finished, his hands ached and a small headache pressed in at the corners of his own skull. He slumped into his chair, focus still tightly held in hand and let his eyes shut. Even in the darkness he could still see the symbols floating and drifting by, each carrying with them their own meaning and a greater more cohesive whole; letters and sentences and stories.
He remained like that for a time, simply allowing his mind wander and rest.
There was still much to be done, a core to be imprinted with not only thousands of words but the proper way to move its own body, to learn, and whom to learn from. Then tests and calibrations, alterations maybe if there was a need for them. The lures would need undergo stress tests and the whole thing would need both varnish and polish then a thin waxing to protect the delicate pictography from the wear and weather of time.
But all that would come when it came. For the moment, he rested.
When he did finally open his eyes, he laid the focus aside and set about examining his handiwork. There were slight stutters here and there, small errors in in form that, while not ideal, weren't enough to cause any noticeable flaws in function, assuming the core was properly imprinted. The symbols themselves would need to be retraced, anyhow, once the core was installed, to both properly direct the flow of the golem's aether as well as familiarize it to the body itself. A process within a process within a process; the art of artifice was more patience and time than anything else.
It was a curious sort of practice, and one Foma often found himself wondering why he enjoyed it so much. It was tedious and endless and unforgiving. Mistakes could be learned from but most materials couldn't be reused, either correct and useful or incorrect and useless. Yet there was a beauty to it all, a natural order to each of the little puzzle pieces that, once all neatly fitted together, created something wonderfully impossible.
And these creations were just the beginning. In his time under Master Wagner and Miss Holzknecht, he'd learned technique after technique, absorbed every lesson and applied their tenants to anything and everything he did. There was still so much he didn't know, still so much he had yet to refine, and yet his progress had been as steady and unending as the very nature of artifice itself. Every finished project felt good, every step completed one step closer to new revelation, to new inspiration, and he found that was the thing he loved most about the magic.
There was always something new to discover.
By the time the golem's fabricated parts had arrived, Foma had finished the lures, selected and inscribed the core, and readied everything he'd need to work on the individual pieces themselves. While he'd received a verbal lashing from Miss Holzknecht regarding his late night mistake days earlier, business had been much the same as ever. He was continually swamped with tasks and jobs, leaving precious little time to work on his own project, but he'd managed. Most of the time he could find was either very early in the morning or late at night, which the latter was limited to when Master Wagner locked up the shop as he'd lost the privilege to do stay beyond that point for the foreseeable future.
Having just finished inscribing another set of cores, Miss Holzknecht informed him he would have the rest of the day to do with him time as he saw fit. So, as he saw fit, Foma set about grinding and sanding and smoothing the golem's would be copper body. He worked steadily and carefully, not wanting to waste his time by being too slow but neither wanting to waste it with foolish mistakes. When that was finished, he moved on to the wooden arms, then the hands, then fingers, filing down sharp or rough edges along the way.
Once everything was in order, he settled into the process of connecting everything together. The lures took the place the golem's shoulders, elbows and neck. It had no need of nor possessed any legs, and to help the thing stay balanced while it worked, Foma planned to fill its innards with a small sack of sand.
More filing and grinding and sanding later, and everything fit together as it should, though all the pieces remained separate, as it was easier to apply a shroud to hands and wrists that weren't attached to ungainly limbs. The hands themselves were divided into sixteen pieces each and fit together like a puzzle. Each of the pieces was perforated with several holes, wherein string could be woven through them so that they might connect together but still retain their flexibility of form. The blueprints had only shown that a two-fingered claw was needed, but Foma had opted for the more elegant and artisan form of a hand true to life. Such things were both easier to imprint and, later, instruct.
Picking up the first of the delicate wooden pieces, he pulled a thin metal needle from where he'd been letting it heat in his candle's light, and gingerly began the process of burning in the proper pictographs. Movement, control, flexibility, and stability. The purpose of the shroud, of the function the hands would soon perform, took the forefront of mind as he worked. Each smoking symbol burned its way across the smooth surface of the wood, interrupting the natural grain and superseding the materials old nature, instilling new focus, new meaning, and new purpose.
He took breaks often. His eyes and thoughts needed rest, and he allowed them that. There were no spares for the hands, for any part of the physical body, and he wanted to make certain that he made no mistakes. Half of that process was simply keeping himself from rushing or pushing through fatigue. Every time he felt his eyes struggle to focus or the beginning draw on his mind to wander, he set his needles aside and took a short walk around the workshop.
Miss Holzknecht kept her ever watchful eyes upon him whenever he did so but had nothing to say on the matter. He wasn't the only one who needed to stretch his legs. They all did from time to time.
When the shrouds were finally finished, Foma carefully strung them together, the twine snaking through the pale cypress, giving familiar form to the neatly sanded and pyrographed pieces of wood. The pictographs extended to the wrists, the point were the strings attached to the arm itself, leaving the hand hanging limp. Soon the arms were connected to the body and, lastly, the head.
His coreless golem sat lifeless upon his workbench, like some poor drooping thing, but it very much looked like the nearly finished product it was. The head itself had four holes borne into it: two for the ears and two for the eyes. Foma had smoothed the sharp edges of the metal and fitted a thin gauze over the ear holes to keep anything from getting inside the head. For the eyes he'd carefully installed two clear, glass marbles that snugly fit in their allotted places. There was no need for a mouth, so the golem possessed none.
Next came the overbody, the reason he'd put everything all together even though he still lacked the properly imprinted core. This time his tool of choice was no needle but a thin metal rod carefully fitted with a small, ruby crystal at its end. The creation of what was essentially the metaphysical structure to hold the golem's "mind" required more than just scratches into metal and burns upon wood. It required pure aether, carefully and exactly directed.
He started from the head and worked his way down and out. Every symbol was carefully tailored to the function of the form, not dissimilar to what he'd done with the shrouds, however where function had the primary purpose behind the shroud, now Foma focused on the cohesivity of the body as a whole. The head was more than a place of sight and sound, but the peak of this mountain of copper and cypress. It fed information to the core, to the pseudo-soul, and allowed for information both familiar and new to be gleaned from the world around it.
The neck, that simple lure, was like all joints a connection, a joining of two points. It was mobile and didn't possess the same restrictions as a neck of flesh might. It connected head and body, just as the shoulders and the elbows and wrists did much the same. Every symbol carried with it purpose as well as an implication of place within the greater, grander web of the golem's true design.
As he worked, the symbols burned themselves into surface of the golem, an elegant and delicate tattoo that covered the entirety of the body. By the time he finished, his hands ached and a small headache pressed in at the corners of his own skull. He slumped into his chair, focus still tightly held in hand and let his eyes shut. Even in the darkness he could still see the symbols floating and drifting by, each carrying with them their own meaning and a greater more cohesive whole; letters and sentences and stories.
He remained like that for a time, simply allowing his mind wander and rest.
There was still much to be done, a core to be imprinted with not only thousands of words but the proper way to move its own body, to learn, and whom to learn from. Then tests and calibrations, alterations maybe if there was a need for them. The lures would need undergo stress tests and the whole thing would need both varnish and polish then a thin waxing to protect the delicate pictography from the wear and weather of time.
But all that would come when it came. For the moment, he rested.
When he did finally open his eyes, he laid the focus aside and set about examining his handiwork. There were slight stutters here and there, small errors in in form that, while not ideal, weren't enough to cause any noticeable flaws in function, assuming the core was properly imprinted. The symbols themselves would need to be retraced, anyhow, once the core was installed, to both properly direct the flow of the golem's aether as well as familiarize it to the body itself. A process within a process within a process; the art of artifice was more patience and time than anything else.
It was a curious sort of practice, and one Foma often found himself wondering why he enjoyed it so much. It was tedious and endless and unforgiving. Mistakes could be learned from but most materials couldn't be reused, either correct and useful or incorrect and useless. Yet there was a beauty to it all, a natural order to each of the little puzzle pieces that, once all neatly fitted together, created something wonderfully impossible.
And these creations were just the beginning. In his time under Master Wagner and Miss Holzknecht, he'd learned technique after technique, absorbed every lesson and applied their tenants to anything and everything he did. There was still so much he didn't know, still so much he had yet to refine, and yet his progress had been as steady and unending as the very nature of artifice itself. Every finished project felt good, every step completed one step closer to new revelation, to new inspiration, and he found that was the thing he loved most about the magic.
There was always something new to discover.
