Old Lore, New Craft
Thirty-First Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
Given all that had changed in the world while he lay dreaming in Essaria, and all that now hinged upon his efforts, it was not often that Malarys Vanor had the time to reflect upon how much this new world changed
him. There was of course the obvious, no longer a priest of Balerion, no longer a mage of lost Essaria where only the monkey-folk birthed of his dreams and those of his fellows dwelt, but subtler and more enduring than what he was and the titles he bore was how he acted and whose company he chose to keep.
Once he had been a keeper of the Crimson Code, and in some small measure an inquisitor, guardian of those sorceries the Lords Freeholder and the gods themselves deemed too perilous to invoke, though rare had been the day when he had to hunt such heretics himself. Now he was Lord High Justice of a realm still bloody from its birthing and he had the heretics over for tea... well one of them at least. While he could probably endure hosting the kyton, assuming she had a mind to exercise tact like she practiced her craft upon her own flesh that day, and he could understand the worth of both the tangled serpent and the old death-spinner, there was only one among their number he would voluntarily associate with on a weekly basis.
Saenena Caleris swept into the chamber with all the poise her blood begat, all the confidence of a life hard-lived, but he knew her well enough to read the slight stiffness in her posture, the way her eyes were a touch too fixed forward, compensating for a headache, he suspected. Under other circumstances he would have offered to heal it, but he knew from experience that such aches contracted within or near the Forge of Gogossos were beyond the power of his magic to heal, for they were not ailments of the flesh, but the unavoidable consequence of a soul being so near the resonance of the thousand, thousand voices that made up the gods of the Sunset Lands in a facility meant to amplify empathic connections, the better to grow some of its more delicate subjects.
At least the forge's current project was unlikely to cause grumbling from the dreaming spirits, unlike the raising of corpses that had never lived.
As though reading his mind, the lady sniffed. "For all its useful qualities, the God-Mind can be frightfully slow in adopting a new concept rather than merely refining the old."
"Trees do have a habit of doing so," Malarys replied, allowing himself a faint smile. "What novel concept vexes them so?"
"The Adamantine bonding, the metal is not native to his world outside of falling stars, and it was not common in the works of the flesh-smiths either, being both rare and somewhat looked down upon them to include any metal in one's creations."
The former priest shook his head, startled by such a fundamental oversight, but the cultural norms of long dead flesh-smiths were not his concern. "What of the organ augmentations. I would imagine those would be novel to the forge if for another reason." The very idea of the flesh-smiths building an army, such as the praetorians promised to be, would have likely sent the whole Assembly of the Forty into a cold sweat.
"Heart and lung growth continues to be their greatest stumbling block, but I have confidence that another moonturn will see them displaying a functioning augmentation before the king. One cannot fault any of them for lack of competence in their craft."
Project Praetorian Progress 22/40
What next?
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OOC: I did not think I could even come close to @Azel's forge omakes in terms of quality showing the interactions there, so I'm using Malarys here to get the chance to show a character moment for him too. Not yet edited.
