Felix took a breath and nodded. Harn let him go and grinned. "If you're tryin' to get your new house up to snuff, then why come here? You gonna forge some tools or weapons?"
"I had considered it. But like I said, I've no time to be the Master of the Forge here." Felix hesitated, and then his eyes flashed a bright sapphire as a wide smile crept across his face. "What about you?"
Harn scowled. "What about me?"
"How would you like to be the Forgemaster?"
"Me?" Harn was thunderstruck. His hands clenched atop the anvil. "I'm just an old soldier, kid. I'm good at killin', not makin'."
Felix leaned close, and Harn swore, those eyes of his just about crackled with lightning. "Wouldn't you like to try?"
Felix felt good.
It had felt right to give Harn the Forge, in a way he couldn't exactly quantify. There seemed to by an affinity between the special room and Harn. A...syncopation, between his core and the Forge itself. Felix had heard it several times during his conversation with the grizzled warrior, but it wasn't until the man had waxed nostalgic about his childhood. The connection thrived in that moment, impossible to miss.
Felix's first thought had been to somehow get the Coldfires to his Stronghold, even though that would have left Haarwatch with less craftsmen. He hadn't seen Harn make anything yet, but this was a far better solution. And it gave the man something more to do than babysit the Haarguard, a bonus benefit Felix wasn't sure he'd realized yet.
Making him the Master of the Forge was as simple as deciding and Harn accepting it. A System message had trumpeted, celebrating the choice and announcing it to everyone within his Stronghold, and then Harn's eyes had truly widened. Felix's Authority and ownership of everything around them afforded him an extra layer of awareness, something his Mind and Intelligence easily handled. Harn's own Mind wasn't weak, but Intelligence wasn't his focus either; when the sudden awareness flooded him, he fell to his knees. A Mana construct wrapped around him, a net of invisible lines that tied into the man's Aspects.
That had been scary. Felix was close to severing the construct when Harn stumbled back to his feet. His eyes were a bit wild, and he flinched as he moved a bit too fast, but he claimed he was fine. More than fine, apparently, as a giddiness overwhelmed Harn's Spirit, so bright and loud that even Felix's banked Affinity could sense it from him. Harn had run his hands over the anvil, over a set of tongs and hammers and specialized tools like he'd never seen them before.
"What was he feeling?" Felix asked.
"Likely a link to the tools and equipment within the space," Karys answered. "A Hall Master is connected to their Hall in a way that others cannot replicate; there's an intimacy to it. Once he settles in, I doubt even you could walk into the Forge without Harn knowing it."
In addition to that bond, Harn suddenly had access to a series of Quests. They had been waiting for him, or whoever became the Forgemaster. There had been three.
The Hand Which Tempers
Temper 100 pieces of weaponry and/or armor, bringing out the latent potential within them.
Reward: Title, XP, Varied
Kindle The Forgeflame
The Forge comes with a furnace of standard flame, if quite magical. A true Forgeflame, however, is something found and sourced by a Smith. Kindle the Forgeflame and earn access to a second Tier I array.
Reward: Title, XP, Tier I Forging Array
Reforging I
All items carry within them multiple lives. It is up to the Smith to transform them, changing their purpose and bringing forth hidden potency. Reforge an item of Tier I or greater and begin your path.
Reward: XP, Varied
It had proven to Felix, once and for all, that crafting gave its own rewards. Previously, he had gathered that it was the work with difficult materials and such that garnered them XP, as the case with Elle and Rafny. But his "old-style" Authority allowed crafters to advanced far more directly.
Karys explained. Quests like these could come from a Lord of a Territory, or their representative, but would rarely be given to every crafter around. It was a benefit of having relatively few crafters, and the fact that Harn would be the Master of the Forge.
The first Quest seemed to be a matter of using the Tempering Array on as many items as possible. The second was...harder to conceptualize. Neither Harn nor Felix knew what a Forgeflame was, which was annoying as it's reward was another forging array. Karys hadn't been able to explain it, though not because of holes in his memorieshe had just never really gotten into Smithing while he was alive. The man could whip up sigils and slowly repair his own metal Body, but the specifics of Smithing weren't in his purview.
Regarding the last Quest, Felix had his club, which was damaged ever since he had cleansed the Profane Sigaldry from everything during his fight with the Archon. His club had suffered, becoming nothing more than a big metal bone, not even able to take on Essence any longer. Thankfully, his Fang of the Blade was untouched; Felix was sure that was by virtue of it being tucked into his Spirit along with Pit, sheathed into his Companion's barding during the climax of that fight.
"I still think your Inscribed Femur of the Envoy is too advanced for Harn to affect," Karys said. "The Quest said Tier I or greater, but I the sliding scale of difficulty must increase significantly Tier to Tier. Your Femur is Tier III, easily. Journeyman or Adept, were it a sapient being."
"With it wiped clean, I can't use it as a weapon any longer. So I might as well let him do what he can with it." Felix wasn't particularly worried. He'd used his oversized weaponry less and less as the weeks went on; returning to his roots, he thought of it, as he looked at his broad fists. "I've still got my Fang and the Inheritor's Will, anyhow. And if he manages to make something of it? That's just extra XP and probably better other rewards."
Felix crossed the landing, now featuring that lamppost. It was a neat little feature, looking more like a half stone, half crystal pillar containing the light of his two cores. Red-gold and blue-white. His Voracious Eye called it a Beacon, and Karys had explained that they were like tiny relays, siphoning power back to his Seat and Seal while also spreading his influence wherever they were constructed. When Felix had asked Karys what that meantspreading his influenceKarys hadn't been able to answer, except to say that eventually he would gain the ability to make them throughout his Territory.
They were cool light sources, at least.
"Felix, pardon the intrusion, but why have you not combined your new Shaping abilities?" Karys asked as Felix mounted the steps toward the Glyphworks. "You were quick to do so with the ice type Skills you had garnered."
He climbed the last few steps and walked slowly to the white-stone door leading to the Glyphworks. It was marked with hundreds of script circles, each radiating off another in a wild, almost organic pattern. He paused before he touched it. "I thought about it. But they feel...incomplete. The patterns of them weren't resonating, not like how those ice Skills had." Felix shook his head. "I don't really understand how it's doneother than Willing it to be sobut I know that if I am going to successfully combine Skills together they need that connection. I'm missing something, and until I figure out what that is, I'll level them separately."
He had briefly considered asking Harn about his weird armor, as it could shape itself in strange ways. But that was clearly an inscription of some kind, not a Skill Harn possessed. Felix was positive he couldn't consume an item and learn from an array; he'd eaten enough magical items to know.
"I'll keep an eye out for more Shaping Skills, but for now, we've got other work ahead of us," Felix said. He pushed open the door to the Glyphworks, and the sigils lit up in a brilliant fountain of red-gold sparks. When they cleared, Felix grinned into the chamber beyond. "Oh, now that's cool."