“Oh.” Rin looked down. “That’s not good. I think the Pearl is the key to… goodness, who’s Dragon Gate was it…?”
“Solnetsi,” I replied, pacing in front of the forge.
“I don’t know anything about her lore. I think she’s a goddess of war or something.” Rin shook her head, and as she did, I saw a glint of metal at her throat. A thin chain, just like the one on the necklace I’d picked up on the ground. I still hadn’t had a chance to look at mine.
“Well, nothing I can do about it in Taltos,” I said with a sigh, and jammed my hands in my pockets. “Hey, I’m feeling pretty strung out after that chat: do you mind if I try my hand at some Crafting? This is the first place I’ve seen with player-ready crafting stations.”
“Sure!” Rin nodded, leaning over to look at something underneath her artifact. “What are you going to make?”
“I REALLY need new armor. Not that I’m probably going to be able to craft any.”
“What’s your Armorsmithing skill level?”
I checked. “Uhh... Zero.”
“If you’re just starting out, refine some materials and practice making leather bracers.” Rin pointed at a bin full of what appeared to be raw animal pelts. “It’d actually be a huge help if you can refine all those pelts into Leather and turn some of that scrap metal into Iron and Copper ingots and fittings. I don’t get any EXP from that kind of work anymore, but you’ll level up five or six times if you do it. You can use any of the ingots you make.”
“Aren’t those expensive?”
“Not really. Kanzo and I craft clocks and crucibii for the House of Corvinus and the Forgers. We’re not short on supplies or money.”
I stared at her. “You craft for the Church?”
“Of course. The Volod is - well, was - our patron. Humans farm out their magical crafting to us whenever they can.”
Listening to a former Dev refer to ‘humans’ as if they were a different species was surreal, but I shrugged it off. I was glad to be thinking about something other than Ororgael and Baldr for a while. I got heartburn every time I thought about that backstabbing albino asshole. “Okay – anything in the shop I can’t use?”
“Not that I can think of.” She shook her head, picking up what looked like a small welding torch. She twisted around to get a small glowing capsule that she slotted into it. As she twisted, I saw a glimmer at her throat – the necklace.
I jerked my nose toward her. “Hey, one last thing before I start: did you make that necklace you’re wearing? It’s pretty.”
“What? This?” Rin looked up, and then reached up to pull the delicate chain out from under her shirt. “No, Kanzo made this. He gives one to all of his apprentices. I’m not the first. He mentored several other NPCs who are Journeymen… we all get one of these.”
At the end of the chain was an unusual pendant: a stylized bee, about an inch long, with a spiral seal embossed on the back and magical runes on each delicately-worked section of its abdomen. The body of the bee was partially hollow, and a straight metal axle ran down the center of its body on the inside of the pendant, visible through the gaps in the design. I carefully felt my captured necklace with my fingertips. It was a replica of the same pendant.
“Bee bling. Nice.” I chuckled, and pulled my hand out of my pocket as I headed over to the Forge. “What’s it mean?”
“It’s Kanzo’s personal House Mark,” Rin replied. “And the Maker’s Mark of this workshop. He was exiled from his House in Zaunt – our homeland – because he refused to make war machines for his Tlaxican. He was disinherited, which is an awful thing to happen to a Mercurion. But he made the best of it: he was from the House of the Hornet, a very wealthy House in North Zaunt, so he took the honey bee as his own House symbol. He told me that he’d rather be like a bee than a hornet, living a humble life and making things that are beautiful and useful for people. He told me that the only use for weapons was to defend yourself.”
Or to do kinky murder-bondage with helpless priests. I nodded and smiled anyway as I approached the forge. When I was close to it, a prompt jumped up in my HUD. [This is your first time using a Crafting Forge. Do you want a tutorial?]
“Sure,” I thought back.
Using a Forge
Realistic as Archemi can be, Crafting is supposed to be fun! You will be using a simple system that can be roleplayed in a realistic fashion, if desired.
To use a Forge, you need Forge Tools. Smelting metal ore into ingots requires a lit Furnace, Tongs, and an Ingot Mold. When you pour molten metal into Ingot Molds, they will cool and be added to your Inventory.
You can smelt certain types of ingots together to create alloys, which are required for many types of items. Try smelting [1 x Pure Charcoal] with [2 x Iron ingot] and see what you get!
To make tools, you need Tool Molds. Mold blueprints can be found in Smithing craft books. Once you learn a blueprint, forge it the mold, then pour melted ingots and any other required ingredients into the mold to create the tool.
To turn ingots into armor, weapons, and tools, you will need a Hammer and Anvil. Anvils can nearly always be found beside Forges.
To make weapons, you will also need a Plunge – a bucket of water (or other liquid) which you will use to quench your crafted weapons.
To make Heavy Armor, you will need a Dishing Form.
To make Medium and Light Armor, you will need a Riveter.
Once you have the correct tools and ingredients, you will be walked through a crafting minigame that will determine the success of your crafting attempt. The more you practice, the easier the game gets and the more items you can craft, so don’t give up!
You can only craft the items available to you at your current level. As your skill level increases, so does your understanding. Unless you have the Prodigy trait, you can train yourself to Beginner 5 in any craft. You will then need an instructor to unlock the next set of levels, which will take you to Apprentice 1. NPC Instructors can be found in most towns and all large cities, and other players might be able to help you as well.”
I heard banging from across the room, and glanced over to see Rin’s eyes flicking from place to place as she hammered out a brass plate with what looked like lightning speed.
Based on that tutorial, I could guess that refining pelts into leather required a knife, so I drew mine as I went to the bin of unrefined skins. It contained Tanned Deer Hide x 200, so it was going to keep me busy for a while. The first thing I did was check my own inventory to see what I already had:
[Iron Ore x 49]
[Copper Ore x 32]
[Charcoal x 225]
[Fox Pelt x 19]
[Wolf Pelt x 5]
[Monster Skin]
Yeah, I had a lot of charcoal. It weighed nearly nothing and it made starting fires easy, so there was no reason for me not to have a ton of it.
I set up my tools. The leather was first. I got a very brief tutorial on how to deal with hides:
Leather Goods
Creating [Leather] is a four-step process.
First, you must collect a hide by skinning an animal, then you must cure it. To cure the hide, apply salt to it and use a knife, dagger or scraper to scrape the fur away.
The next stage is tanning. Tan hides by applying [Tanning Solution] to the cleaned hide. It will turn into leather.
Cut leather by equipping any appropriately sharp tool - a Leather Trimmer works best.
You can further refine leather by boiling it to make [Hard Leather] or cutting it into [Leather Strips].
By riveting together two sheets of [Hard Leather], you can make [Leather Plate].
I nodded after the narrator finished speaking, and got to work. My pelts were uncured - fortunately, they weren’t the sort of items that turned gross with time, because I’d had them for a while. I rubbed salt on the wet side of the hide, drying it, then used my dagger to scrape them down. That was my first introduction to the rhythm-based minigame. A blue line would light up on the hide, and when
I touched the pelt with the blade, it would travel down in a straight line at a certain speed. The edge of the knife had to remain inside the borders of the line. The bigger the hide, the more swipes you had to do. The [Fox Hide] took 5; the [Wolf Hide] took 10. I discovered that I was also able to salt and scrape the Monster Skin, turning it into a Monster Hide. That was worth 20 silver Rubles - not a bad price for a single component.
The workshop had a big barrel of foul-smelling tanning solution, so I took all of the hides over there and began working. It was fucking nasty. I called out to Rin. “What is this stuff made out of?”
“Do you really want to know?” She called back.
“Yeah. If nothing else so that I can brag about sticking my hands in it.”
She laughed, a high, musical sound. “Mostly pulverized oak bark. Oh... and urine.”
I made a face. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Whoever thought up this game is a complete fucking sadist.”
Hides turned to leather at a 1:1 ratio, and [Leather x 1] could be sliced into [Leather Straps x 10], but hardening leather required [Leather x 2] to produce one piece. I tried them all, and even got a Riveter and made some [Leather Plates], which were used for most kinds of Medium Armor.
[You have reached Leatherworking 2!]
[You have reached Leatherworking 3!]
“When you reach Leatherworking 5, we have some Skill Tomes to allow you to keep going until you hit Apprentice 1,” Rin said, pointing a small bookshelf close to where Karalti was sleeping. “It’s the one with the red cover.”
“Aren’t those one-time use only?” I asked.
“Sort of. Kanzo is a Master Artificer, so he can inscribe and recharge each of the Tomes. He only keeps the ones here that he can easily replace.”
Puzzled, I went to collect the one I needed. “Why are you giving me this stuff? I mean, I appreciate it, but...”
Rin shrugged. Her back was to me as she worked on Hopper. The automata was now moving, waving its legs. “Nearly all the NPCs of Taltos think we Mercurions keep to ourselves so that we can hoard our jewels and gold and look down on everyone else. The reality is, if we’re on the mainland, then we’re all refugees running from a terrible war, and we work jobs that most other races can’t, so of course we stick together. Some Mercurions can be cold to strangers, and I guess I just want to show you that we’re not like that. You know, before you go back to the Volod.”
I walked back to the smelter. At no point had I generalized anything about the Mercurions, but I knew that if I was a serial killer and I needed cover, becoming a kindly, respected craftsman in a law-abiding community was a pretty good disguise.
The first fruit of my labor was a leather sock. I had intended to Craft an Archer’s Bracer, but it didn’t end up that way. I got a sock. A leather one. About the only thing it was going to be good for was jerking off into. Needless to say, it was a [Junk] category item.
Things got better on from there as I got the hang of the crafting minigame. Similar to what happened when I was scraping hides, I got lines and circles highlighted on the materials I was working with, showing me where to cut, trim, fold, and stitch. The ghostly instructions would appear in a sequence, showing you what to do, then fade. If you matched the sequence, you got the item you wanted. If you screwed up, you either got a lesser item – like my sock – or a lower-quality item of the same type you were trying to craft. The minigame pattern-sequence thing was the same each time you attempted the item, so there were no surprises if you failed once and tried again.
I stopped at Leatherworking 5, then switched to melting down scrap and pouring ingots to build my Blacksmithing skill. Soon I had plenty of iron, steel, and bronze ingots. I checked my crafting recipes to see what I could make, bursting with creative anticipation:
Chest Armor
Trousers
Boots
Gloves
Archer’s Brace
Weapons
Steel Militia Spear
Other
Leather sock (Junk)
I reached up and tugged at my braids, staring at the nearly-blank menu. “Rin? Do you happen to have any beginner crafting recipes?”
Chapter 13
I hit the wall at about three in the morning. Fortunately, Rin had been able to furnish me with some recipes: Raider’s Breeches, Heavy Boots, Lancer’s Gauntlets, and Steel Vambrace. I made the leather items first, and then tackled the metal one.
Working with metal was far more complicated than leather. Sweating, I carefully banged the curve in the vambrace in time with the colored minigame prompts – red, blue and yellow – that told me how hard to hit, where, and with what tool. When it was done, the vambrace flashed, a three second timer counted down. I quickly lifted the hot steel and plunged it into the bucket of hot water at the end of the anvil.
[Crafting Success! You made Steel Vambrace (Regular Quality)!]
“Hell yeah!” Grinning, I pulled the wet vambrace down and patted it with a towel. Despite the prompt, it wasn’t quite finished. I riveted some leather straps on it, and eagerly tried it on. The vambrace protected my entire forearm and tapered out above the elbow. Perfect fit. “Look, girl! I did it!”
“Hector needs to sleep,” Karalti grumbled, burying her snout under her wing. She had moved as close to the furnace as she was able to. Rin had gone to bed hours ago.
“Party pooper.” I flexed my fingers, turning my arm to look at it from all angles. My old Light Vambrace gave me 15 Armor; this piece gave 30, plus +7% resistance to slashing, bludgeoning and piercing damage.
All of the new pieces together increased my total Armor from 95 to 140. My main chest piece was still the old Jack of Plates I’d worn since my visit to Dinant Palace in Ilia, but I’d been able to repair and improve it. I’d also made myself a Militia Spear for the hell of it. It had stats that were nearly identical to the broken Spear of Nine Spheres, but none of the special perks: no Dex bonus or anything like that.
A bittersweet smile played over my lips as I equipped it all and swung my arms to test the weight and quality of the new gear. “You know… I think this is the first time I’ve ever made anything useful.”
Karalti shifted her wing so that she could peer at me with a brilliant violet eye.
“I just never had the chance to make anything before,” I said. “The Army taught me how to shoot shit and dig foxholes. I improvised some stuff… but I never created it like this. I’m too dumb.”
“Hector’s dumb sometimes because he thinks he’s dumb,” Karalti replied, yawning. “And because he’s awake late banging metal things together.”
I yawned too. “You say that now. Wait until I have to make you a saddle. You’ll be grateful I spent all this time on Crafting.”
“Saddle is for later. Sleep is for now.” Karalti rolled onto her side and partly unfurled her wing, revealing up a length of cloak for me to lie on. “We have to find bad man in the morning.”
She had a point there. The little ‘Zzz’ icon in my HUD was warning me that I had the Exhaustion debuff: penalties to carry weight, movement speed, and reflexes. I needed to sleep.
Archemi required that you take care of your basic needs, but fortunately, it didn’t grind your face in it too hard. With the Dragon’s Blood Potion buff at work, four hours of sleep was enough. We woke with the sun, moderately refreshed and ready to start the day.
We left Rin’s shop at about 8 a.m. She saw us off at the door with a wave, and I rode out with some nice new gear, her master’s pendant in my pocket, and a deep sense of satisfaction mixed with odd longing. The talk with Rin about Ororgael and Rutha played back like a recording.
“You thinking about white elf lady?” Karalti asked me. She was perched behind me, holding onto one shoulder with a foreclaw, her head beside mine. “I never met her. What was she like?”
“She was pretty great.” I urged Cutthroat to a high-stepping trot, keeping her on a sh
ort rein. The hookwing was irritable, as always, but she’d had a meal at a nearby public stall and was about as mellow as she could ever be. “Smart as a whip, really kind. She was fierce when she wanted to be, gentle when she needed to be. And she was gorgeous. Big eyes, long ears, beautiful long white hair…”
“You think she’s as nice as grumpy lady?”
“They’re not really comparable. Rutha was nicer, for sure. But ‘nice’ isn’t always what you want in a friend. I’ll take hostile honesty over nicey-nice liars any day.”
“Did Rutha lie to you?”
“Yeah.” I felt a pang in my chest. “I don’t know if she meant to lie to me or not, but she did.”
Karalti ‘hmm’d’ aloud, nibbling the stubble on the side of my head. “I don’t lie to you ever. You think Suri is honest like me?”
“You know, weirdly enough, I do think she’s honest.” We pulled up at an intersection to let traffic pass. I swept our surroundings, taking in cover, potential threats, passersby, and ambush points in a single glance, then moved on. “Suri could be a Pacific Alliance Party fanatic who’ll hate my guts forever on principle, but at least she’s the kind of person who’d tell me to my face. I knew a lot of bikers and soldiers like her. Tough, hard, but real. If we earn her respect, we’ll never have a better friend.”
“You don’t NEED another better friend, ‘cause she’ll never be a better friend than ME,” Karalti said grumpily. “And if she does, then I’ll fight her. See how tough she is then.” And then, as if to soothe herself, she began to mimic the sounds of the streets around her under her breath.
We soon broke out onto the main market street, which went through the center of the Market District and up towards the University District. The food stands were setting up for breakfast: vendors were basting kebabs, uncovering trays of bread and pastries full of fruit, cheese, or ground meat, and brewing coffee. My stomach rumbled.
“Hey, Hector?” My dragon plopped her head on my shoulder. I reached up to scratch around her horns. “You gonna make a saddle for me?”
“Yeah, I guess I’m going to have to try that out, soon. But we probably need to find a blueprint for a dragon saddle before I can make it.”
Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset Page 47