The anvil rang with every strike of the hammer. Soot and ash covered every corner of the forge. The sharp eyed observer would notice the pointed hat lying in the corner. "HaHaHa! HaHaHa!" Mad laughter rang out from the in dust and sweat covered creature. Streaks of white peeked out of the black mass on its face. It stood hunched forward over a still glowing helmet. Reverently it laid it inside a tank of water. There was no fog and no sound. Just a shining blue fire. The voice was heard again, resounding with glee and worship: "Azuth! The High One, Patreon of Mages, Lord of Spells, hear my prayer!" He took the now blue glowing helmet out of the water. Walking over towards a nearly fully assembled set of closed plate armour and chanted: "This knight shall serve you until the end of time! Let it bring your name into the corners of the multiverse, let the light of magic ignite its conscience and give it life! Arise, knight of Azuth!"
A few months earlier Argentarius was gathering resources for his project. Before him stood the Riace Bronzes, the Artemision Bronze and many different sculptures. All well over 2000 years old and made out of bronze which he had replaced with identical ones. No one would notice and even if, who could blame him? In his experiments with transmuting metal he had noticed some general rules. The first was, the older the metal, the easier it was to imbue magic. Second, was that if the object had more cultural or monetary value then that often beat age. Lastly, idols of gods were the most potent. He knew it was risky to smelt down Zeus and Poseidon into his little pet projects but who could resist Olympic Bronze?
Olympic Bronze was his humble name for the metal that met the above criteria. Its ability's were mind-boggling. Once he made an object with dragon-fire and it cooled of below a certain point, it could no longer be molten by him. Which meant it was immune to dragon fire. The razor he made put all that earth could make to shame. He would love to see how the people on TV, with their paper slicing toys, would look at him if he cut granite like butter. For himself he created a few new earrings and an amulet to serve as a spell focus. What exactly that did, he had no idea. It just looked cool and felt way better then the cursed his yakuza wished for him.
Lastly Olympian Bronze stopped healing, he cut himself with the razor. His finger had not been able to heal and the wound would not close. In his desperation he wished the greatest healing spell known to clerics but nothing happened. After 10 minutes normal healing spells worked again.
The fact remained this bloody metal could somehow limit the almighty Wish spell!
Further experiments with Wish were suspended after a rather large piece just vanished. The next days Argentarius was rather nervous when going outside, as he feared for literal, falling, godly retribution.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
His couatl media team was very helpful in locating almost a metric ton of the metal. Incredible that mortals would just put this treasure in open museums and gallerys. One time they had been discovered and had to make a rather complicated escape. Which included faking a gas explosion and swiftly manipulating the memory of multiple guards. They were now making headlines world wide as the 'doppelgänger', for the thieves always replaced the stolen goods with an exact replica. Well not every time, a few times Argentarius got lazy and missed some details. Once he even replaced the statue of a woman with a missing left arm with a fully repaired one.
Right now he could not care less. He was on the verge of creating something incredible, he could just feel it. Somehow he even managed to create holy water. Originally it was meant as a ritual for clerics and paladins. But Azuth was the god of mages right? So he sat down, copied his strongest spells and created spell scrolls. These were sacrificed together with gems in an elaborate ritual he completely made up. After three days of praying and flattering his deity in every way a human could convincingly come up with, he even consulted a career advise book 'Kick downwards, lick upwards' written by Jeffrey Brigham from Boston, his plan succeeded. Before him was an entire barrel of blue shimmering water.
In preparation he had taken courses by famous blacksmiths across the globe in drawing down, shrinking, bending, upsetting, swaging, punching and forge welding. Normally it would have taken at least 10 years to become proficient in smithing decent armour, not to mention bloody golems.
Thankfully he was a Master Transmuter. After he took 3 months to learn the basic theory behind forging metal he locked himself inside his smithy with only a few couatl. His own Transmuter Stone granted resistance to fire and the little winged noodles cured his injuries and fatigue.
Spells like Stone Shape, Mage Armour and Major Transmutation only worked when the metal was heated for the first time. Every time he only had one chance to shape the bronze, that oldly acted like steel while smithing it, so he continued to practice with other materials then the Olympic Bronze for another 30 days. As for why he refused to use True Polymorph for anything other then getting dragon-fire, he did not know if the golem would recognize him as his owner otherwise. The construct he wanted would be some sort of hybrid between the mighty iron golem and the intelligent helmed horror. The two most important ability's that his children needed was Fire Absorption, it granted healing when hit with fire damage, and the Spell Immunity of the helmed horror. Wish resistant Olympic Bronze should help in that aspect.
Argentarius knew that what he attempted was a feat for the ages. In the forgotten realms lore, no one had managed to create the helmed horror since the downfall of the great magic empires on Toril. The only ones encountered where inside ancient tombs, dungeons and forgotten mage towers. Most were over 5000 years old and still performing their duty.