Winning Vote.
[X] Plan The Shine of Metal and Blood
-[X] Teach your apprentices. [Cost: 1 Action] Locked in for 10 turns.
-[X] Khazukan Kazakit-HA!: March out with the throng once more. Raise your war axe and slay them. Battle Turns
-[X] [Simple] Foundry Founding.: [Cost: 2 actions] Productivity Like No Other will proc. 2 Actions and Apprentice action.
-[X] [Simple] Altar Assembly: [Cost: (2-1) =1 actions] Productivity Like No Other will proc. Grudge has proc'd. 1 Action.
-[X] The Rune Metal: [Cost: ???-1 Actions] Student of the Odd will proc. 1 Action
…
You blearily open your eyes, the sight of the familiar stone ceiling of the Temple of Valaya greeting you.
"Mmrp" you try to speak, before realizing something is keeping your jaw in place.
"I wouldn't do that Rhunrikki," a wizened old voice says from the corner.
You lift your head from the pillow and catch sight of the hold's High Priestess of Valaya and one of the few dwarfs here older than you. Moira Anguzdottir of Clan Ironarm, the hoops of her snow-white plaits touching the floor, sits on a chair watching you bemusedly.
With your mouth stuck as it is, you simply raise a brow.
She laughs softly before getting up and walking over to stand to the left of your bed, "Your bit of foolishness did
quite the doozy on you. The broken jaw, for one thing, had to feed you brew through a straw. Left Femur broken in four places, cleanly thank the ancestors. Right arm dislocated and broken in a further two places. Don't even get me started on the mess that your ribs were when they brought you in. Foolish in the extreme, beardlings
wish they could do stunts of such stupidity. I should wring your head and ask the Ancestors how you decided it was smart to fight a troll over eight times your size
alone," she finishes with a disbelieving shake, plaits swinging with the motion of her head.
Oh.
You haven't felt this in a while, centuries really, not since your beard was still chocolate brown and barely past your chest.
The familiar shame of disappointing an elder runs through you again for the first time in a long time.
And not even normally! The terrifyingly effective mix of disappointment and worry that dwarf matrons have honed to a level beyond even the most curmudgeonly Longbeard bears down on you like a mountain range.
"But!" she says, pausing to look at you seriously, "but your actions saved many that day, my great-grandchildren included. And made the casualties far less ruinous than they could have been," she continues, watching sadly as you remember the events of the battle.
You attempt to ask the obvious question but she simply shushes you.
"Alright alright, don't jostle the brace you daft idiot," she chides before taking a moment to compose herself.
"A third," she says flatly, a small frown on her face, "a third of the throng sent out was killed or wounded. Not terrible considering the circumstances, but we lost some hundred more in the Temple, despite our best efforts. We've already interred them, whole hold turned out for it, not just their clans. But enough sadness, two-thirds survived. That's a good many dwarfs that live on in no small part due to your efforts young one, so I don't want you getting morose over not doing enough. The world isn't kind as you should well know, and every dwarf who marched out knew what they risked. Of the living, around half suffered from only a broken limb or fractured rib that they should recover from if they
follow my instructions," she emphasizes the last three words, eyes boring into yours.
You do not shrink into yourself under her gaze.
You wilt just a tad.
"I've already sent runners to inform your apprentices and the hold proper about your waking. Get ready to be a busy dwarf while you're stuck here, and no stressing your limbs or jaw, priestess' orders," she says, dusting off her hands and heading to the door.
With her back turned you look down at your broken arm and flex-
"-
What. Did. I just
say beardling?" she says, still turned towards the door.
You stop.
"Boys get past their fifth century and think they know what they're doing, bah," she says to herself as she walks out of the room and down the hallway, just loud enough for you to hear.
Your back falls against the bed with a muted
whump, following Moira's instructions to the letter.
Well, you weren't going to fail at something so simple as lying in bed. You don't think you can stand that disappointed and worried stare aimed at you a third time.
…
Two months later you're finally cleared enough to walk out with a crutch and sling on your arm.
You can't say you're sad to leave this place. For all of Elder Moira's efforts to make your time hospitable, being inundated by gracious dwarfs coming to you with gifts and thanks has transformed from heartwarming to bothersome. Your gratefulness and appreciation running out after one dwarf hired a skald to sing a tale of your deeds to you in a new-fangled style the beardling's were raving about.
Five times.
As you walk through the Halls of Healing on your way out, apprentices trailing behind you, your presence catches the attention of the many dwarfs still here recuperating. Eyes brighten, backs sit up straighter, and a quiet cheer goes up before it's shushed by the priests and priestesses. Those who can bow from their bed do so and those who can't find other ways to acknowledge your presence.
A particularly rowdy dwarf with both his arms in slings tries to restart the cheer before he is shushed by High Priestess Moira, hanging his head in shame as she chides him.
You later learn the dwarf in question was her great-grandson Orrek Oakenfist, a longbeard of four hundred years and the second in command of Thane Otrek Ironarm at the battle.
Walking out into the hold proper you see dwarfs going about their day all stop to pay more respects to you than even you were used to. Elders huff approvingly and adults bow at your passing before pushing along gobsmacked beardlings and children.
...
In the months you spent in the Temple of Valaya, recuperating from your wounds, you were not sitting idly. From the comfort of that bed, you were wracking your head at the memory from all those decades ago. The glitter of silver and flash of pure white coming to your mind with ease and perfect clarity as if it was only a day ago. As a Runelord you're more knowledgeable than most about the properties of Gromril. Though this body of knowledge was mostly in the practicalities of working the metal itself. Harder and rarer than anything your people have found in their long history, and most importantly for your profession, took to runes like elders and grumbling.
You could explain how to know if an ingot was pure enough for the Master Rune of Gromril, the exact hue for when the metal is most easily shaped into a specific type of armour or weapon. A thousand different measurements and calculations when taking oxidation into account during forging. Things that any master smith could mumble in their sleep.
But
knowing Gromril, understanding the why and how of its existence, what made it take to runes so well. That was the realm of the eldest master smiths and a group like the Brotherhood of Dron.
You suppose you'll have to do what a group of Runelords and Master Smiths have been attempting for centuries.
Bah.
…
You return to the Temple of Valaya after you've fully healed both your limbs and your jaw. Of course, you came here a day before seeking Elder Moira's agreement about your fitness to begin working here.
Couldn't do with her chiding you in front of the beardlings
Speaking of, you turn and gaze disappointedly at your two apprentices, their forms struggling to push the wagons laden with tools, several hundred pounds of troll parts and the other necessary reagents for the runes you were going to inscribe.
Honestly, when your master made you pull the cart he forbade you to have wheels at all!
Shameful.
"Hurry now beardlings, the priestesses of Valaya shouldn't wait any longer than they have to," you say biting into a piece of stonebread.
"Yes Master!" they both shout, struggling with renewed vigour.
"Well well, look whose come back to finish their job," a familiar voice calls from the top of the temple steps.
"Ah, Honoured Elder, apologies for the tardiness, these beardlings I have taken on as apprentices have decided to dawdle about you see," you reply conversationally as you jut your chin at your young charges.
"Ah yes," the old matron says nodding, "of course, that must be quite the heavy load indeed. What is it, a tonne and a half each?"
"Sadly no Elder, just shy of five hundred pounds for 'em. They don't have the constitution you see."
The wizened old woman just tuts with disappointment.
…
The art of inscribing the Runes that represent the individual Ancestor Gods is an especially sacred one. Runesmiths argue over the reason but the reality is clear, the Runes of the Ancestors encompass what dwarfs associate with that specific ancestor and depending on the item they are inscribed on, change their effect.
All this, done without altering the Rune itself as a runesmith normally would.
The Rune of Impact that you bore on your armour for instance, was a derivative of the original Rune discovered and used on mining tools. You'd put that very rune on many of the picks you enchanted a decade or two ago. But continuing with the point, the Rune of Impact was
altered to work on armour according to the principles of the Rule of Form. The art of discovering which alterations made a Rune suitable for inscription is often what many a runesmith would get stuck on. It was honestly a topic you loved teaching and thinking about, but that was for another time.
Back to the point at hand, the Runes of the Ancestors were different. Alterations need not happen as there was only one way they were inscribed, one set of reagents used, whether it was on armour, a weapon or a talisman. The amount of the material may change depending on the size of the rune, but the proportions, the geometry and the exact order of strikes the Rune was struck in did
not change.
And that boggles the mind of many a runesmith.
A good few simply chalk it up to the Ancestors being above their understanding, others still, pointed to the Theory of Language and used both in conjunction as proof both of the Ancestor's divinity and their natural skill. For the Rune encompassed each definition equally, almost as if it knew what it was being inscribed on and chose the best effect.
Take the rune of Valaya you were inscribing now. Once complete, the Rune, along with a host of other effects, would enhance things, other Runes included, that encompassed the kind of themes and topics one associated with Valaya herself. Healing brews grew tastier, hearths grew warmer, walls felt sturdier, Runes of warding grew stronger, Runes of Healing more potent the list went on and on. This wasn't just hearsay or gut intuition either, this effect was an extensively tested and recorded phenomenon because Runesmiths of times past were so flummoxed that they measured the effect to make sure they weren't going mad.
Perhaps only the Burudin had a good idea as to why the Ancestor Runes worked as they did, and if so, you certainly were not privy to that bit of knowledge.
Things to ponder or confuse your apprentices with for another day you suppose, the rest of the temples needed your attention too after all.
…
Near the decade's end, just shy of your 587th birthday, you finally get around to inscribing Runes in the foundry district.
A natural consequence of both Urban Planning and natural dwarf tendency to like things squared away in their proper place. The location of the foundry district is part of a trinity between itself, the market district and the residential district. Both foundry and market were arrayed closer towards the hold's entrance and the residential, obviously farther away and deeper in the mountain. This, of course, made a sort of sense especially when the hold wasn't connected to the Ungdrin and its Gromril mine lied outside of the hold itself. Cutting down the distance carts full of unrefined material and visiting caravans travelled to go about their business.
But that bit of knowledge was important to you because it affected how you were going about inscribing the runes of filtration that would cleanse the heated air of the foundry as well-engineered ventilation ducts allowed it to spread throughout the hold.
You thankfully didn't have to go inside the damn things, simply inscribe runes on the steel grates that the air flows in or out of.
That task takes you the better part of a year, the number of the vents and their out of reach locations at the very least making good practice for your apprentices as they haul material to and from where you are. You're so secretly impressed by their gusto that you give them the honour of wiping the grates clean of the muck and ash that gets caught as it's pulled in by the standard convection current throughout the hold the masons created with a bout of clever stonework. Despite the efforts of your people to keep their airflow clean, either by piping the smog from their forges directly out of the mountain, or some other trick of engineering, only runes have so far proved to be foolproof.
With that done the task moves on to the task of laboriously inscribing the Rune of Morgrim and Smednir in their respective institution's guildhalls.
Morgrim, a poetic sort would call him Thungni's counterpart, machine precision over artisan craftsmanship. But the reality was that both groups required an equal amount of technical skill to do their jobs with any amount of efficiency, the difference lied in the expression of that skill.
Runesmiths were ill at ease with continuously making the same array of runes over and over again, it went against a literal rule of the guild but did so grudgingly for the benefit of dwarfkind. A runesmith prided themself in making something unique, something that no one else could rival in terms of craftsmanship and skill.
Engineers on the other hand you found, sought uniformity and ever greater standardization. To be sure there was some young firebrand making some innovation, or an individual customizing or adding modifications to their tools but their end goal was to implement their change wholesale and make it the standard that all other engineers followed and saw as good sense.
But if Engineering and Runesmithing were so different, then Smednir's craft was what bridged the three trades into a cohesive unit that sought to improve the lives of
all dwarfs.
After all, a good rune requires material worthy of bearing it, and a war machine worth the name cant be made from unsound wood or impure ingots. All the skills and knowledge in the world couldn't make up for shoddy material.
During your time there you are met by a group of master smiths and miners from Clans Grimseal, Steelbeard, Silvereyes and Grimlisson who come on behalf of their clans with a proposition for you. You see, during the Battle At the Dragon's Maw the Patriarchs of these various clans all came to the aid of the others at one point or another, and they along with many members of their clansmen have sworn oaths of fellowship and sealed many a marriage contract with each other to commemorate that glorious victory.
In that vein, the Thanes, with the backing of the clans' elders, have agreed that in the spirit of cooperation, to found a large smelter capable of smelting Pure Gromril for their clans' smiths to work into weapons or sell as ingots locally and abroad. They were wondering if and whether you'd be interested in a commission to apply the runes necessary for the process.
You do them one better and offer to apply a heavy amount of funding towards the project from your coffers on the condition that the facility is expanded to be capable of letting smiths outside their clans the opportunity to coordinate and pay to smelt Pure Gromril for themselves.
The group before you say that such an offer was beyond their remit to negotiate and would have to deliberate with their respective Thanes.
Somehow word got out, and another coalition of clans came to you with the same offer months later, just as the original coalition came back with a response of their own.
Realizing where this could potentially lead, you acted swiftly and politely requested to discuss this matter with the Thanes in person.
Acquiescing to your wisdom, and beard, both parties left soon after to bring their Patriarchs back with them.
The Thanes arrive more months later, behind them are other Thanes from the hold who were brought onto side with offers and deals.
You scoff so loudly at the sight of so many dwarfs, your disappointment at this type of petty strife in the wake of such a momentous victory only years before. After all, all of you had shed blood for the other, perhaps not as directly as some clans have, but did not dwarf fight for dwarf on that blasted hill? Did you all not lose grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, siblings,
children to the depravity of troll and daemon alike? How easily did they forget the blood that spilled on that ground was not
just for the clan, but for the
hold.
You gaze at them all disapprovingly, the weight of your gaze and magnificence of your beard making Elders well into their fourth century look down in shame.
If this was getting done, it would be done right.
So it was, that after another round of, now more amicable, negotiations that a facility for smelting Pure Gromril would be built for the good and use of all within the hold, with an equal proportionate contribution from all clans in the hold, while yours is the largest individual contribution by sheer dint of wealth you owned through a long life of good business decisions and the ownership of the aforementioned Gromril mine that made this endeavour possible.
You haven't finished the work but have gotten a good way through by the decade's end.
Gain:
- Through a combination of your overflow, reputation in the hold, and personal tendencies you have advanced the foundry chain down a path to creating a smelter to be used by all in the hold for producing Pure Gromril. Though its output may not match the sheer scale of a place as established like Karak Azul or Zhufbar, you will produce enough metal to suit your needs, and given time perhaps the whole region or even match those vaunted southern holds. Action Unlocked and partly completed.
- Temple District has been properly runed with the relevant Ancestor Runes. The number of troll parts from the battle has allowed you to produce far more runes of healing than you had expected. Improving the Temple of Valaya's effectiveness at helping dwarfs recover from wounds by a small but noticeable amount.
- Started down the path of the Rune Metal, total research for this stage revealed. [Cost: (5-1) =4 actions]
AN: Now something I'm far happier with. A nice combination of action synergy and you've finally gotten some research done, hurray! As Always C&C and thank you for reading :^)
