The Black Forest
Enania examined the metal piece that her son Faelar had brought back. She’d had the chance to examine it for a week now, but it was like a never ending puzzle. Anything she figured out about the strange metal only left her with more questions.
She could bend metals easily, and often had to control her strength when handling the weapons and armor of other races. But this shard required her to actually exert force to bend. The jagged edges were also capable of cutting her skin, a sensation she had almost forgotten by now; it had been a century or two since any foreign object had cut her.
There was a slight smell of iron and some other metals, but it was overwhelmed by the smell of burnt air and volcanoes. She had been tempted to get rid of the shard for the overwhelmingly offensive smell. She had to increase the strength of her smell-deadening spell just to handle it.
She sensed a spatial spell forming a few miles away, and then heard the sparks and rush of air that indicated an open portal a couple seconds later. ‘Ah good, they are here’
…
A few miles away two fully armored men, carrying a sword and shield, stepped out of a portal into a clearing in the forest. They looked prepared for an ambush, but the clearing was empty. After appearing satisfied that it was empty one of them stepped back through the portal. A few seconds later he re-emerged. Then Faelar stepped through after him, followed by a dozen men and women. All of them except Faelar were armored from head to toe.
The portal remained open, the clear edges of it were spewing out sparks, but the ground had been prepped for this and was just gravel to prevent anything from catching fire.
Most of the men and women were wearing highly decorated pieces of armor, and they had the glow of active enchantments.
They were standing around for a few minutes before one of them spoke up, his helmet and breastplate were decorated with symbols of fire, earth, and metal to represent his specialties in magic. There were other symbols to indicate his membership in the mage’s guild and crafter’s guild. And finally some status symbols to indicate that he was over level 50, and thus not to be messed with.
“Prince Faelar, will your mother be here soon? Keeping this portal open is expensive, and we …”
“I am here, Jason Ruschmeid” Enania had suddenly appeared at the edge of the clearing.
The man was surprised by the sudden appearance, but quickly got his bearings. “Thank you for the invitation Queen Enania, my late father Jason spoke highly of you, I am his second son Karl and have inherited his levels and position within the System bounds of Badengart. Forgive me, I did not wish to offend you by implying that you would be late. Your son informed me of a lucrative offer.”
“Yes, I wish to know everything you can tell me about this piece of metal.”
She held up the metal shard, one of the men in plain armor stepped forward to take it, and brought it back to Karl.
“The level of information you can provide will dictate payment. If you can at least tell me what I already know, then Faelar will accompany you to perform a single dungeon clear.”
Karl took the piece and began calling up the basic metal analysis spells that were part of any decent smithing class. The result he was getting back was full of errors. He started using some more specialized diagnosis spells developed by his family and passed down through the system. He spoke as he got results
“Hmm, well obviously not made by anyone from Badengart, it hasn’t been in any system records before. Approximately 10% iron, but not any iron I’ve ever seen before. It is … off somehow. I think the main composition is similar to titanium, but just like the iron, it is wrong. It's not normal titanium. This titanium is worth a lot to me if you are willing to trade.”
He looked up and saw a subtle shake of her head. He couldn’t hold in a disappointed sigh and went back to interpreting the analysis spells.
“This side of the piece has some weird traces of a heavily oxidized substance.” He rubbed off a bit of ash from the inside of the shard.
Enania spoke up for the first time “I am not familiar with this term oxidized. Nor am I overly familiar with titanium, what is so special about it?”
“Rust is just iron oxidizing. Many metals have some kind of reaction to the elements in the air and water. We call it oxidation, because it's a chemical reaction with the element of oxygen.”
“So you found some white rust on the inside? Why is that strange?”
“Well it's a mixture of oxidized sulfur, and some alkali metal that has been oxidized. Honestly I’m the least certain about these. They aren’t my specialty, and usually I’m trying to remove these things from the metals I’m working with.”
“And the Titanium?”
“Is there no chance you’d part with it?”
“None.”
“Fine, it is very valuable to me and my family. We are armorsmiths and we have been trying for a few decades to find some good alloys for titanium. It is an easy metal to find, but very difficult to process. It is much more resistant to corrosion than iron and steel. It is light, but yet very strong. It is terrible for holding an edge, so the weapon smiths don’t compete with us on finding sources.”
“So whoever made this is more advanced at metalworking than you are?”
The question seemed to make Karl a bit uncomfortable and he shifted his stance, as if he was about to get angry, but he calmed down as he remembered who he was speaking with.
“Yes, your majesty. In the area of titanium working the creator of this metal likely knew more than I currently do.”
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“Is there anything else peculiar about the shard?”
“Yes … There is a large amount of magic stuffed into the material. Either it has been sitting next to a dungeon core and soaking in mana for a few decades, or whoever made it was being downright wasteful with mana.”
Enania simply nodded, “Yes, I had noticed the mana on it. My son found the shard at the site of a magical explosion, so it is not surprising. And not everyone is as limited in their ability to acquire mana as your people are, and it is not wasteful to trade the resources you have in abundance for those you lack.”
Karl bowed his head at the minor rebuke and economic lesson.
“Of course your majesty. I’ve told you everything I can about this item.” The man in plain armor took the shard and brought it back to Enania.
“Faelar will clear the dungeon for you within the week. You may also request three more dungeon clears within the next ten years as payment for the information you have provided. I will speak with my son alone before he returns with you, please leave the portal open.”
The people in armor bowed their heads before leaving back through the portal until only Faelar remained.
They spoke subvocally. None of the humans listening or watching would be able to tell what they were saying.
“Must we still pretend to be ‘royalty’, their strange ideas of pampering grow tiresome.”
Enania smiled at her son’s frustration.
“Yes, trust me that it is much easier to deal with the cities this way. Too much respect is better than none at all. What was your impression of Karl? I didn’t sense any intentional falsehood, but people can often lie to themselves better than they can lie to others.”
“He is arrogant, but it is an earned arrogance. Apparently his skills and abilities exceed those of his late father. Most of his progress was prior to inheriting his father’s class, but he hasn’t completely stagnated after the inheritance. He does seem to have an obsession with finding metals that can replace iron and steel. The city is apparently in some minor dispute with their main iron supplier. Karl was originally going to try and ask about looking for iron deposits on our land, luckily his advisors dissuaded him before I had to say anything. There was an endless stream of gossip and secrets being spoken aloud. You were right that they would assume I was both deaf and dumb.”
“You’ve done well my son. I know these excursions can seem tedious, but they are necessary for your continued growth. Learning to tame your senses and power in these idyllic woods will only give you a false sense of control. If you can learn those skills out in the chaos of the world then you will be much better prepared for the surprises of life.”
“Thank you for the wisdom mother”
They nodded at each other and Faelar stepped back through the portal.
Enania looked at the shard again. She had gotten answers but it had once again only led to more questions.
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City of Badengart
As Faelar left the workshop to go clear out the dungeon Karl sat back in a plush chair. The past few days were rough. He didn’t enjoy surprises at work. In his spare time, he loved them. Surprises meant his wife throwing him a party, or his kids doing something entertaining and cute. But at work surprises always meant trouble. He loved when work was boring and straightforward. Come in, test some new alloys, complete some new sets of armor, and maybe test out some tweaks to old enchantments if he had a lot of time on his hands.
When Faelar appeared there was a city wide crisis. Elves were dangerous, if the stories were to be believed. Stories of them going insane and wiping out cities were a bit fantastical, but stories of them wiping out entire groups of high leveled individuals were downright common. Karl would have been happy to let the city diplomats, administrators, and leaders deal with the crisis. But the elf had wanted someone that understood metals. He had requested to speak with Karl’s father or someone that had the best understanding of metals in the entire city.
The burden fell on Karl, and the city leaders were practically knocking down his front door to get him to deal with the ‘elven problem’. The skills and inheritances that they had spent generations building up had told them that their presence was only upsetting the elf, so Karl was left alone to deal with a diplomatic crisis that he was ill equipped to handle or care about.
He could admit to himself now, in hindsight, that his initial approach had been stupid, and possibly suicidal. He hadn’t really appreciated the danger of the elves, so his approach with Faelar was to make increasingly bad diplomatic mistakes in the hope that the diplomats of the city would have a skill notification to intervene. It didn’t work.
Instead he was somehow assigned as the person to meet the “queen” of the elves. He hadn’t taken the whole thing seriously until he used [identify person] her. The readings his [identify person] gave were terrifying. Suddenly the stories of elves wiping out cities didn’t seem so fantastical. And the most worrying part of the [identify person], is that she had cooperated with the magical readings. At some point in the past she had allowed the system of Badengart to test her. Speed, faster than what could be measured. Strength, enough to treat stone and metal like putty. Mana absorption rate, too high to determine. Mana output, the only slightly normal stat, but still as large as a high level mage.
He shook his head, and concentrated on writing down everything he had learned about the strange metal. Everything he had told her was true, he wasn’t going to try lying to someone that could slap his head off his shoulders. But there was one thing he hadn’t brought up. The strangeness of the metal wasn’t totally new to him. When he was on sabbatical in the capital of Lerbin he had been shown an armored gauntlet made of a strange metal. The gauntlet was the strongest piece of armor in the entire country, and armorers from all over traveled to level up their class specific [identify] skills. He would write a letter to his friend in Lerbin and find out if the composition of the armor was similar to the metal shard he had found.