Editor's Note:
Andrew of Longthorn, better known as Andrew the Chronicler, had a brother who made the mistake of not taking a combat class. The brother, whose na has been lost to ti, is known to have left behind three children and a widow, whom Andrew the Chronicler provided for until the children ca of age. The influence of this is visible in Andrew's rendition of The Legendary Smith.
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Author's Note:
All know the Legend of the Smith who Saved the Kingdom, which, while an important part of the history of Asufal (and indeed, all humanity), the legend itself has had a pernicious and lasting impact on the youth of our country. While the perils of taking two non-combat classes are known intellectually, being taught to all children from a young age, the romantic legend of The Smith inspires a small, but simultaneously all too large, portion of youth to ignore the wisdom of their elders, which leads to much suffering in their short lives. All know, or know of, at least one person who has defied the ta of the world and t a terrible end, but the passions of youth, once stirred by the legend of The Smith as commonly told by the bards and storytellers, lead many astray.
There is no reason for such as situation to be allowed to persist. It is my hope, that by faithfully retelling the story of The Smith, including the portions of his life that are commonly glossed over by the bards, and therefore known primarily to historical scholars and not many else, to a wider audience, that youth about to choose their second class might pause and take heed of the wisdom of their elders, and thus avoid a tragic and altogether easily avoided end.
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The Legend of the ta-Defying Smith Who Saved the Kingdom
Before The Smith was The Smith, or even a smith, he was a boy in the village of Roric, the second youngest of five. Jas, as he was known then, was a precocious boy, quick in his studies, and thus often bored with the simple life in a village.
"I'm going to Jared's!" he shouted as he ran out the door of the small wood and stone house where he lived with his parents and sister. Without waiting for a response, he ran down the path to the village road and made his way to the village smith's forge. The wind ruffled his sandy blonde hair as his bare feet pounded the packed dirt of the road, not yet warm from the weak morning sun.
On one side of the road there were lines of houses separated by simple low fences and surrounded by herb gardens, while on the other side of the road stretched out fields of wheat bounded by shallow ditches denoting property lines. Beyond the fields was the river, which curved around closer to the village by the lord's manor before continuing on its way Jas didn't know where. On the other side of the river was the forest where hunters and herbalists would hunt and forage, providing the village with an irregular supply of at, hides, alchemical ingredients, and the occasional magic crystal.
Jas ran through the village square, past the soldiers' barracks (typically empty) and the village's few shops and lone tavern before stopping outside the largest shop of them all: the village's forge. Jas had been visiting the village smith often over the last few weeks as he approached his fifteenth birthday. He had also visited the hunters and herbalists and farrs, and even spoken with a passing adventurer party who had passed through, but his interest was mainly in the smith and the forge.
Jas fancied that the tal spoke to him, although if he was honest he couldn't actually hear anything. He did however love smithing, seeing a chunk of raw ore slted down into a valuable (although practically useless) tal ingot, and then that ingot heated and beaten into a useful shape, every smashing hamr strike and tender tap giving the raw tal a form and a function, becoming a valuable and useful tool to aid a person in their labors. So far he'd seen Jared forge farming implents: hoes and trowels and shovels and rakes, but today Jared would be forging a sword. Jas wouldn't have missed it for the world.
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He walked around the side of the shop towards the forge in the back, seeing smoke billow up from the chimney. Jared, a great big bear of a man, had yet to put on his smithing apron and was bent over, feeding wood into the forge as the fire grew. Without looking up, he ordered Jas.
"Go fetch water from the river, I'll need two barrels full."
"Okay" replied Jas, impressed that Jared had known he was there without seeing or apparently hearing him approach. Most adults could tell such things although he hadn't yet figured out the trick. He grabbed two buckets by the handles and jogged down to the river. Carrying two buckets at a ti would improve his strength, necessary for a smith, and while he might also train his speed by running with one bucket, smiths didn't need speed much. Jas had by this point decided that his first class would Smith, although he hadn't yet told anyone.
Back and forth for the next hour Jas jogged to the river and walked back with water, until both large barrels in the forge were full of fresh cold river water. Jared had shown him previously the best place to collect the water, to avoid mud and silt and mana from lesser undines that would all spoil the quenching process. Jas took his word on the undine mana; being as yet classless and not particularly mana sensitive, he couldn't tell if there was mana in the water or not. Once he poured the last bucketfuls in the barrel, Jared peered into the barrels and nodded. "Good, this'll do nicely."
Next he looked down at Jas and folded his arms. "And ye know what I'm working on today, don't ye?"
Jas nodded, "You're making a sword today!"
Jared nodded too. "Aye, a sword, and not just a sword, it'll be an enchanted sword for the lord's son, so it's quite a bit more involved than forging a normal sword."
Jas listened with wide eyes as Jared explained the difference between forging a normal sword and a sword to be enchanted. A normal sword usually just needed to be balanced properly and was otherwise rather simple to produce, but a sword to be enchanted required very detailed work, the material and precise dinsions and even etching all required to be exactly as ordered to support the enchanting process.
"What kind of enchantnt will it be? Fire? A fire sword?!" Jas asked eyes shining.
Jared snorted. "Heh, no, fire's a terrible enchantnt for a sword. Few monsters are weak to fire and most armies are warded against fire as a matter of course. No, this'll be a wind enchantnt, I can tell. It'll lighten the sword and let the wielder get in more hits faster, good for taking out lots of weaker monsters quickly or against slower swordsn."
Jas looked at the plans already hung up on the wall of the forge for easy reference. "It doesn't say what kind of enchantnt it'll be on the plans though."
"Aye, of course not, be a foolish thing to let everyone know exactly what your weapon's enchanted with. I can tell because I've worked on swords for enchanters before and seen so of the finished pieces."
Jared looked to the forge, waves of heat roiling out into the rest of the workspace. "Alright, enough chitchat, you sit over there and don't talk while I'm working."
Jas moved to the corner with a view of the forge, anvil, and workbench. Jared, throwing on his apron and gloves, used large tongs to move a dium sized ingot of white iron into the forge. Then, working the bellows, he brought the forge up to temperature, hot enough to make the ingot glow a dull red, then orange, and then almost orange white before he pulled it out to the anvil. SMASH. SMASH. SMASH. Ear-shattering crashes of iron striking iron filled the air as the ingot changed from a block of tal to a long strip, more details slowly erging as the hamr beat the tal into shape.
Jas sweltered in the heat of the forge, eyes peeled to not miss a single swing of the hamr and hands over his ears to protect his hearing as the sun rose high in the sky, crested, and started sinking towards the western horizon. As it approached the peaks of the western mountains Jared put away his smallest hamr, having switched several tis throughout the day as the work grew more detailed, and finally he worked tiny chisels and files to etch patterns into the blade. First one side, then the other, as sun set behind the mountains. As the daylight dimd the light of the forge kept the workspace illuminated in red. Jas wanted to get up and look closer but remained seated, knowing that if he interrupted Jared he'd be kicked out of the forge imdiately, no second chances. He'd seen other boys about to unlock their classes ask questions at the wrong ti and be imdiately banned from the forge, and he wasn't about to risk it so close to his choosing day.
The sky was almost totally dark when Jared finished the blade, having put a simple edge on both sides of the blade, not completely sharpened, and the blade still without a hilt. Jared sat heavily on a stool and leaned back on the workbench.
"Okay, ask away" Jared said wearily, knowing that the young boy had been biting his tongue all day. Jas asked questions about the hamrs the blacksmith had used, about the files and chisels, about the quenching and why he needed two barrels, about the iron he'd used, and so on.
"And how does the enchanting work?"
"Ahh, that I don't know. I just follow the plans the enchanter sent and he'll do the rest. I just forge the blade, they said to leave the hilt off."
Jas bit his lip and looked down. "Uh, Jared, my choosing day is coming up…"
"Aye, and you want to be a smith do ye?"
Jas looked up, shocked. "How did you know?"
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