BECMI Chapter 415 - Sword and Hammer
The clanking of the steam hammers from the Forge Factory was not audible until you passed the walls and the Permanent Sound Bubbles that kept it from annoying the locals.
Even then the noise level would have been extreme without the Muting spells, which quieted down the loudest of noises to no louder than a human voice, allowing conversations and not deafening those who worked there.
Magically-lit, remarkably clean for what it did, the Factories employed a lot of men, rising and falling in the hours they worked with demand for their products. Trade numbers weren’t exactly rising swiftly with all the chaos in the world, but they still spread out from here to the rest of the Bolle tribes in a slow and constant flow of increased craftsmanship and higher standards of living thereby.
“What spells drive the steam hammers and lathes?” Sif asked as we entered, eyeing the long pistons overhead with geared shafts attached to them and driving multiple rotary tools.
“Wall of Fire on the primary boiler driving the main engines. Smaller boilers use a constant Heat Metal, standard for the personal hot water heaters and utility pumps. Water is generally not a problem with the river right there and a dedicated culvert through here, and the workers really appreciate the hot showers at the end of the shift,” I noted, watching her study the metalwork and nod slightly at the sight of the welds and precision involved. “This is all original work, not Darkmoor imported, although Thor’s been proposing and leading some of the upgrades as we go along. He starts drawing new stuff and all the smiths here just sigh and wish they could afford to work on that stuff, instead of what actually sells.”
“Does the place make money?” Sif asked directly, as we headed towards the most irregular cacophony of hammers banging on stuff. There weren’t many women around, so we drew a lot of interested eyes, and her sly smile and open gaze indicated she didn’t mind the display of beefcake around, either.
“Tons of it. Spends a lot, sells a lot, keeps it all churning nicely through the workers. Reinvests a bunch, too. There’s been several attempts by outsiders to try to buy the place, but the smiths are the core of it, they won’t move, and the managers work for them.”
“And you might have warned them not to sell?” she asked, clearly looking around to see if she could spot who we were looking for.
Then he straightened up from the anvil he was bent over for the moment, clearly a head taller than almost every man in the place. He raised a hammer in a massive fist, and brought it down.
TING. It was definitely the loudest of the hammers in the place!
I watched her eyes get very big indeed. Thor Briggsson had on a smith’s leather apron for his tools, stiff blond hair held back in a sweeping mane, gleaming with sweat on a whole lot of body hair and looking like a god of the forge in the light of the furnace nearby. If his head was a bit too square and heavy-browed to be called handsome, it just radiated strength, especially with his neck as thick as it was, and his build was clearly brawnier than even the most thick-boned of humans.
“Still growing. Should put on another six inches,” I commented, watching the color rise in her cheeks, and her smile start to grow.
“He’s so fuzzzzzyyyy…” she breathed out, her eyes starting to narrow, like an archer sighting her prey.
“Ah, but you don’t have any interest in a Briggs, right? Restricting choices and all that.”
Sif looked down at me sharply, back at him, back at my unmoved face. “Find your own Hagspawn!” she said with complete shamelessness, and pressed right past me, strolling towards Thor with complete confidence and focus.
It took Thor a minute to realize the sounds of the rest of the smiths were a bit strange, and look up from the breastplate he was working on. He saw the men had largely stopped working and were looking his way with strange smiles on their faces, then turned around and saw who was standing there.
Pale blue eyes met pale green. Sif crossed her arms over a chest with nothing there, and smiled.
Eight canines gleamed at him, looking ready to gobble all of him up. “You must be Thor,” she purred in a voice he felt all the way down to his toes. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve been hearing so much about you for all these years.”
Thor swallowed as his eyes flicked past her to me, waiting there in my Gina guise patiently, and obviously amused. “Sif! I, ah, wasn’t notified you’d be coming so soon!” he squirmed, then looked around helplessly. “I’m right in the middle of something…”
I pulled a leather apron out of nowhere and tossed it over Sif’s head, breaking eye contact and giving him a moment of relief. “I believe she’s fully qualified to assist you, and she certainly wouldn’t want to interrupt your workday, Master Thor. Maybe you can help her get started on making a decent sword for herself.”
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Sif pulled down the apron, turning her head to look at me, but I was already walking away. “Have fun, lovebirds!” I said over my head, and the whole place promptly erupted in whistles and knowing shouts and catcalls at the fiercely blushing Thor.
Sif just turned back, calculation on her face. “Well, then, why don’t we shut them up with some proper smithwork, you fuzzy furball?” she grinned, fitting on the apron with deft black-nailed hands far too callused to be those of a proper lady.
He reached out with his big mitt of a hand, slid it beneath the red locks blocking half of her face, and pulled them away. His pale blue eyes settled on the blue and black scarring of her Cursemark and the ruin it made of what was surely one of the most beautiful faces in all the Bolle lands.
Her canines looked even deadlier and prettier at that moment.
“My hag,” he said roughly, “It’s good you’re finally here.”
Her teeth gleamed with a hungry smile, as did his.
A few minutes later they were deep into the hammering of another piece of armor, as if they’d been working together forever. The watching smiths were actually stunned to see a young woman working metal with such proficiency and skill, and she and Thor getting along like two peas in a pod.
The lewd comments trailed off, and everyone got back to work. Clearly there was another smith working here now, and if a position as assistant to Thor was widely coveted, it was obvious who it belonged to now.
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“So, what are your plans for us?” Sif asked directly. She was unapologetically and quite possessively snuggled up under Thor’s massive arm, proclaiming her property and just fucking daring any woman there to try something on one of the richest men in town.
None of them were that dumb, and the serving staff had been told to spread the warning that Thor was taken, and that was that.
My Gina identity was known as one of the Cryptomancers who helped keep the roads and buildings of Drakkenport clean and straight, plus for emergency Healing magic for those who truly needed it, although it did cost non-natives.
The fact the town paid tribute to the Lady Edge wasn’t secret, but the fact I actually took care of them this way was.
“You are in no hurry,” I stated calmly, making sure the private booth was shut. “Conflict will come to you, because Sources cause change by making Fate. The Erto tribes are likely going to make a play at this place, there’ll probably be at least one sahaugin strike, I can walk Sif up through to sword Mastery at least, and both of you to open hand Grand Mastery. You can earn plenty of Karma just making Jadework items to sell, and I can disperse them across the world as needed to generate that coin.
“Once your reputation is established among the Bolle, and perhaps you’ve crushed the Erto entirely, then you can go and set up shop in front of Dungeon Doomrose, and try your luck inside.”
Both of their eyes lit up with interest. “That sounds like it would be fun… and dangerous,” Thor acknowledged.
“A lot less so as your racials come online, particularly your Regeneration,” I noted calmly. “I figure you’ll be reaching Twenty in Melee inside there, and then the real fun starts.”
I flicked up a sphere of light in front of me in Holo. They both focused, recognizing it instantly as a globe of the world… which shrank down inside itself to reveal the world within it.
They both blinked in surprise. “There’s a Hollow World here?” Thor asked in a hushed voice.
“Yes. It’s like an Immortal zoo, where the Immortals vacate the cultures and creatures they don’t want to see destroyed.” I let that hang there a moment. “Actually, there’s a Darkmoor colony down there taking advantage of that to stay alive, which is kind of flummoxing some of the Immortals who want to get rid of them rather badly. As they aren’t going a-conquering or subjugating the primitives around them, no actions have been taken against them, and they are quietly getting on with life.”
Both of them grinned at the irony of the situation. “Good thinking!” Thor said with a nod. “Why is this of interest to us? I mean, sure, dinosaur hunting could be fun, but it’s not all that productive, right?”
“It’s because of these.” Points of light lit up all around the interior surface of the Hollow World, spread out all over the place, including in the depths of the shallow seas down there. They were roughly equidistant, but not precisely.
I zoomed in on one for them, bringing up the picture of the Annellid for them in as much realism as I could for them.
Both of them began to snarl in instinctive hostility for the thing. Given it was a thing of Entropy, their instincts were spot on, of course!
“These are Annelids, world-eaters of Entropy. They are the things that created much of the Underdark on this world, eating out the caverns, tunnels, and systems beneath our feet. Some were left in the mantle and caves by lazy Immortals when they got done using them, but most of them were shoved down into the Hollow Earth and put into torpor.
“I’m leaving them for you to slaughter them all.”
Their eyes widened, then narrowed as they realized the weight of what I was telling them. “Immortal Creatures?” Sif asked sharply, bending in for a closer look. I put a human next to the protruding head of the creature, and she snarled silently at the size of it.
“Definitely. Sphere of Entropy. Couldn’t content themselves with just asking the megalith to create some subterranean biomes. Someone sweet-talked the Immortals into using the Annelids, and then they just left them there instead of sending them back, because they ‘might prove useful in the future’.”
Their lips curled together. “Oh, fuck them!” Sif rebutted simply, staring at the things. “Can we even kill them?” she asked narrowly.
“Sama and Briggs on the Far Shore are. They are going through about one a month, harvesting them for Immortal Power and quietly wiping them away. It helps that nobody is actually paying attention to the things, not even the Immortals who hope to wake them up and unleash them on the Hollow World.”
“And given they are four thousand years ahead of us, and the things are still there, nobody is definitely looking at them before then,” Sif nodded, reading between the lines. “Okay, we know what we have to build for, then. We can do it!” she declared with assurance.