The Pillars of Rule
Twenty-Seventh Day of the Twelfth Month 292 AC
"Of course," you say, thankful for the reminder in matters both particular and general. It is a relief to have a conversation of substance with her that does not feel as though you walk on eggshells. "I can imagine how the lack of structure might be distressing, as strange as the sorcery perhaps. In part it is a matter of not wishing to bind my household too deeply, lest like a man manacled and chained it should prove more a hindrance than a help on the path forward..."
"Yet certain bindings must exist least all swarm about as ants from a turned-over hive. I have found that there is nothing so frustrating as those who meddle in the business of another for the boon of their overlord's favor," she alludes to the viper pit that was your father's court, you suspect, where every man vied for his favor to ward off his wrath or aim it against their foes, to take advantage of his absurd busts of generosity, every action stoking the fires of his madness. Little wonder that she worries about chaos at court having seen one decay beneath her eyes.
"The grave and the womb are both dark yet for very different reasons," you say softly. "I aim to make a new thing here, not the abandonment of formality for that would be folly, but a place where one may rise on merit and not barbs cast and petty intrigues garbed in poisoned pleasantries. An ideal yes, unattainable in its entirety, but I see no reason to encourage the opposite by making great and weighty titles from whole-cloth like a mummer's play. Still you have reminded me that it is time and past time I play more attention to the matter, for the urgent needs of the matter often overshadow more gradual concerns and the matter of Leila is indeed one such, that will be handled this very day."
A relived smile passes over her features at your last words, lifting the the almost-unseen veil of worry from her features."Good, keeping your house in order can be a chore, all the more so in times of turmoil, but it is in those very times that it is most needed." Then her gaze slides over your shoulder, looking to the smelter: "I
think it is doing something..."
"Making steel, hopefully, though one never knows with tinker fey about," you jest, turning to watch the forge in action for the first time.
Molten steel does indeed fall through the free outwards flowing shafts to fall into molds for the making of ingots, as Lya beaks from the light trance in which the Forgemaster's Ring binds one when used to guide the process. "There, forty three ingots of medium steel, done cheaply and quickly."
"Lya Steel?" you ask teasingly, a play on Ser Gerold's initial suggestion that you call the the fruits of the smelter 'king's steel.'
"Call it that and I may yet
hit you with one of those ingots," she threatens you in jest.
Together you set out closer to have at last when the molds were broken at the first pieces of Everfire Steel, named not by you but by the very same man who worked the smelter for the sorcery from which it had been born and giving that name also to the forge-works and the village that had begun to grow around it: Everfire Dale
What do you say to the assembled friends, functionaries, merchants and newly minted legionaries?
[] Write in
OOC: Speech time. Also keep in mind that there is a representative of the Iron Bank and also a 'spy' for the Sealord in the audience.
] "I am the 
