Orbiting near the poles of Ilium was a small moon of metal and volatile materials. It was a barren world, save the many undead gray dwarves operating the excavators below the surface and the anti-gravity ferries sitting atop it. It was around that world that the artificers chose to call home, creating worlds of stone and metal before they dove down to that industrial ring to explore the depths of their crafts. It was within that ring where my chief engineer and I relocated after brewing a hundred thousand superior healing potions and receiving the paltry rewards that came with the title of Grandmaster Alchemist.
Well, one perk was paltry. Relatively so.
The Alchemist's Eye was much like the Appraisal skill. With focus, I could ascertain the ingredients that went into making the potion as well as the quality and the effects it yielded. I supposed it would have been useful if someone tried to cheat me out of a brew. The Alchemists Cookbook, however, was a different story. Of course, it was like my apps and the Artificer’s Cookbook, but for potions, and that made it invaluable. I had learned to make a quite respectable number of brews from the book Zoop gave me, and it would only get thicker in time. The Artificer’s Cookbook, on the other hand, contained everything I’ve ever created. Which, after living through three technological eras and spending nearly a century and a half learning and making all manner of things in my past life, was a lot, but nothing new. Not to mention, I had the Starfarer’s Archives as well. The digital library shared by all in the Solar System and beyond contained knowledge of how to do everything from making stone tools, making clothes out of pelts, and setting up mud huts to creating cybernetic implants, building megastructures, and terraforming worlds.
Like many on the outside, the Archives had been downloaded into the servers and databases embedded in my neural interface and streamed through my sensory implants in more or less the same way as the Eternal Eye. The same couldn’t be said for alchemy and potions, however, so the Artificer’s Cookbook was relatively worthless. But only to me. It would be Ed, Forgruna, Els, and Matthew who would benefit most from it. With their Cookbooks and the powers embedded in this realm, they too had a sense of augmented reality. And with one of my domains being engineering, they too had access to those vast Archives. And much, much more.
Capitalizing on that knowledge, I created a sub-world of my own. A place like my home- formed with a high concentration of divine mana, but attuned almost exclusively with my engineering domain. Thus it was a cube rather than a sphere. A cube filled with spatially and temporally distorted boxes or modules in which anyone could design and create whatever came to mind.
Capitalizing on the powers granted by my divinity, the artificers and the undead craftsmen took their blessings of tireless inspiration and worked without pause throughout the month, surveying the many components and materials born from my divine realm and using them to create things that utterly blew me away.
As far as they were concerned, the most notable of them were the materials that absorbed the divine essence of moonlight or twilight, including adamantine and mithral. Though their names had yet to be agreed upon, the woods, metals, liquids, and stones more or less held the same properties on both ends. Albeit with varying intensities. Depending on how they were refined, Twilight materials could be crafted into items with illusory or charming attributes, if not umbral or radiant, or even life paired with necrotic effects. Either way, it had the potential to both heal and corrupt, as well as utilize light and darkness. Conversely, only materials imbued with Moonlight had a connection to the ‘Worldly Seas,’ creating not only materials that were nearly frictionless in water and able to withstand the tremendous pressures of the ocean deep, it created materials that could swim freely through the sands, magma, and of course, the air.
As far as I was concerned, however, the most remarkable materials were imbued with neither of my lights. They were the materials born from the Engineering domain. Exotic materials that would make any engineer froth at the mouth at the chance to get their hands on them. Magic-infusing nanites; 4-dimensional metals; temperature-independent superconductors; metals that acted as batteries, capable of absorbing many types of energy and transforming them into electrical potential energy. Super fuel. Hyper-magnets. Even a new type of wise rock. At the pinnacle of all of these materials was a trio of yet-to-be-named crystals. One was amethyst that became strongly attuned to gravitational energy; one was a computing diamond; and the other was a quasi-RTG in the form of topaz. An immensely powerful one at that.
With the latter, my clone, the undead, and the citizens were able to leap past the jet and atomic ages and even push past the realm of information. Enabling us to build and test an array of complex vehicles for the Captains' subordinates. Although, most of the designs would be hard to use without the proper training. And harder to use still without the proper infrastructure. And even then, they would be improved upon with enchantments at a later time. Regardless, however, the array of new materials afforded to us meant that in some cases, there was no need for enchantments. And with my studies of the art on the horizon, I found the perfect excuse to create as many prototypes as possible in the meantime.
[Grandmaster Artificer, Step 7: Grandmaster Alchemist - Task Complete.]
[To continue the path towards becoming a Grandmaster Artificer, you must learn the Basics of Enchanting by mastering the use of the Mana Scalpel and Mana Chisel, then learn enough of the art to carve your first ten Sigils.]
It was a long road with a lot to learn along the way, and few things excited me more than such prospects. Coincidentally or not, one of those things was the very act I delved into after I bottled my last potion. Designing and creating technologies of fantastical proportions. Technologies that had no hope of existing on the outside.
“So, everyone has their vehicles?” I asked my fellow artificers.
“Damn right!” Els ran a polishing rag across his pony-sized chopper for the umpteenth time- a beast of metal that ran on alcohol and would keep running so long as it was maintained. For a dwarf, there wasn’t a greater treasure in the world.
“Though some of the ungrateful bastards didn’t want them,” Matthew grumbled under his breath, eyeing the many barbarians multiple worlds away.
“They will when they have to ferry hundreds of people across the continent.” Ed laughed, exchanging knowing glances with me before he gestured around us. “What’s all this then?”
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As was customary in the space around Ilium, bolts, screws, or bubbles of lubricants and curved panels remained suspended in space around a trio of magical crystals. Aligned precisely with a holographic blueprint, each component was painstakingly inspected by the undead gray dwarf craftsmen while their ebon lips twitched in ritualistic prayer.
“It’s Zakira’s new bike,” I finally said with a chuckle upon remembering her immediate love for beach cruisers. As of a few days ago, that love moved on to one for motorcycles- bikes she somehow wasn’t surprised to see and knew to ride innately. Her world was filled with racetracks and open roads at once. And now, she was praying- yearning for the opportunity to ride across the lands below. And so, to answer her prayers, I sent the array of components into motion.
Though still, she would have to earn it.
Their fascination never fading, Ed and the others watched intently as the silvery-blue plates and black pipes and white conduits fell into place, followed by an army of screws and washers and bolts, spinning into their homes to tighten it all down. Even with my backs to them, even with the Piety Nave turning my actions into a dizzying blur of motion, even with the undead chanting prayers into the room, I could see their eyes darting this way and that as they tried to form the final product in their minds.
Els and the other dwarves noticed it first. The two purple crystals attached to either side of the yellow-orange crystal at the center of the squat chassis, keeping it floating upright as the pieces kept falling into place to hide the crystals behind elongated fenders of silvery-blue metal. “It’s to fly!” Came his exclamation just as the vehicle hummed to life and poured a purple ambiance around the wheels. But the pieces kept falling, making handlebars and foot pedals and storage compartments while I moved from front to end with paints and decals at the ready.
“It shall be called, the Moon Runner!” I declared as they marveled over the first anti-gravity bike in creation. But it was just one of many marvels being created at that very moment. One of many marvels that wouldn’t make it to their respective owners for quite some time. For the most part at least.
In workshops like this, to our front and rear, to either side, both above and below, and dozens more beyond them, more lattices of components, lubricants, coolants, and magical materials were cascading into each other under the divine guidance granted to me by the Piety Nave. Using it, I could see something similar to Zakira’s bike being brought into creation in the module above us. A long and squat, purple-glowing carriage of divine wood and the unnamed bluish-silver metal that came from mithral infused with moonlight. In another, the various components were cascading into a 392-meter-long, nuclear crystal-powered submersible battleship called the Moonsliver. A monstrous beast compared to the 41-meter-long, hydrogen-powered fast attack ship, soon to be received by my investigator and taken away shortly thereafter. And in yet another module, hellfire-infused mithral plates were being formed into a pair of winged suits of armor that weren't of my design- although various other types of armor were.- and many expedition trucks or vans, long-range planes, subsurface trains, and other fantastical vehicles formed still in others.
But one module in particular contained no screws, bolts, or washers; or few pieces of metal, for that matter. Only four: a pointed cap of death-infused mithral; a strange, twilight-infused mithral plate, engraved into the likeness of a certain raptor; and a pair of twilight-infused, taloned leg prosthetics. The only other material floating in the space was a hand-sized piece of unicorn bone, carved and stuffed with more marrow than necessary before being infused with Twilight. Two fat globules, one of dusky feathers and another of nightly quills, orbited the drow-made tunic and cloak gifted to me by Abbot Eiriol sat off in another ambiguous corner of the module; and a beam of divine wood from Zorrenor’s tree orbited around another beam cut from mine sat in another corner.
More so, the entire module was bathed in twilight, creating an almost infinite expanse inside what was already a vast workstation. And at the center of that realm, floated a dark-skinned shadow of a man with pointed ears and long, flowing locks. His clothes were shed, revealing a blacker-than-black mark sprawling across his chest- the light of twilight looming behind a great tree. There was a solemn look on his face, for he knew that today would be his last day living as he always had.
He knew that he was no longer just Numa, my Doppelganger. He was to become Numa, the darker, often more malevolent twin of Amun. Made of shadowstuff and spirit still, but born anew as a result of the divine flowing within him. He wasn’t alive, per se. Rather, undying. The other side of the coin that was Amun- me. Like me, he was the God of Mana, Engineering, and most of all, Twilight. But not Moonlight.
Only the one of true flesh and blood- only I held the power of all four domains. But that mattered not for the Doppelganger-no-more. He was an engineer and an artificer still, the God of Mana still, and thus he could see the same sigils glowing before his eyes as I. He could trace them out with mana-bolstered fingers just as easily as I and could mutter the arcane words just as fluently. He used whatever amalgamation of Mana and Divine Wells he possessed to bring out the powers of the Material Purification Skill and watch the magic unfold alongside me. The result was no less potent than mine.
Still, it was curious. Using the skill required molding a field of mana over the material. Yet it used our mana to purify it. Using everything in my Arcane Well of the Eighteenth Grade, I could purify up to eighteen tons of material, compared to the two tons Ed’s Eighth Grade Ice Well afforded him. But my Doppelganger-no-more could refine just as many grams as I could. The bone and marrow had been purified the day before and promptly infused with divine twilight. And the mithral the day before that, just before it was infused with the appropriate energies and formed into a pointed tip. The twilight-adamantine and feathers and quills were plucked before that, even. Leaving the wood as the only target. An impossibility without my divinity.
Like a sunbeam through a magnifying glass, the surrounding energies of the realm- both magical and divine- cascaded into the grains and burst out the other side in the form of a dusty mist comprised entirely of impurities. Enshrouding the two meter-long beams in a veil that forced the various knots to unfurl, voids to fill, and the grains to straighten into the most beautiful patterns wood could ever create. And then came the blur. For the Piety Nave worked on him too, here, in the divine realm of Eotrom.
Using the same power, I saw the drow-made cloak and the globules of dark fluff turn into a feathered robe that contained the power to make use of both sides of my heritage. The beams, on the other hand, were gnarled together to form a doctor’s cane tipped with the mithral point and handled with the carved unicorn bone.
It was then that I appeared in the Metaphysical. As a visage of my true self with all of my powers to boot, despite my incorporeal form. But after a quick pulse of purple energy, I was gone. Meanwhile, the Doppelganger-no-more was busy slipping on his robe, allowing the innate powers of the dusky feathers and nightly plumes to turn his body into amorphous darkness. His form shrank to the size of a halfling as his arms pulled through the sleeves, forming wings with barbed fingers that stretched out wide with pleasure.
With those fingered wings, he brought himself up to full size by slipping his mechanical taloned legs over those stubby nubs of darkness. Then donned his metal mask of dark shades and gilded highlights, and thus turned his starry eyes to see his gravity and death and twilight-infused cane floating before him expectantly. Tentatively, he reached for it. Muttering words that would one day be written and retold in the Sanctuary for eons to come.
“The Light of Dawn brings a sense of peace to the lands seen as dreary in the Shade of Dusk.” Taking his cane, he thrust it down mightily, releasing a wave of horrid screams across the otherwise empty workshop. “Neither shall stymie the Gloom that stalks the horizon, for the Owl flies through both Dusk and Dawn.
"Long may his feathers rain.”