“I shall be greatly in debt to you once again, my lady,” Master Chlyfual responded quickly.
Now her hand rose, forefinger and pinkie of her left hand pointing, and shadows swirled with ruby edges around the two bones she had pointed out. Something sparked and faded in seconds as the magic within was dealt with, and did he hear a distant echo of pain from someone or something as their tracking magic was destroyed?
With deft telekinetic speed, the bones were wrapped up and floated over to her. They touched her hand, and Chlyfual blinked as floral petals like black ink, edged in scarlet, fluttered to the ground where the Lady Edge had been standing.
It was without a doubt the smoothest Teleport he had ever seen.
He clutched his prize of compensation. Even deducting a reasonable fee as a broker, he was still going to be immensely in debt to the woman once again… but that wasn’t going to be an issue. Between selling the carcass of the worm and possibly being commissioned to break it down into valuable parts, he was definitely going to come out well ahead on everything.
What the woman wanted to use the bones for was none of his business, and he’d feel much happier at this point not knowing.
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Time to make my Staff!
Staves on this world had some major restrictions, namely that all of the spell effects from them were at level Eight.
Eight!
It didn’t really matter how powerful the Staves were. There were elven mages who had Staves of Power and Wizardry, and their powers still took effect at Eight.
It was rather disconcerting, the magic around them was so dissimilar to what I knew.
But, I didn’t want one of those Staves, anyway.
First, I wanted an Implement. Always better to channel magic through an Implement than yourself, even if I happened to be a halvyri/shadenelf who didn’t need any Implement at all to cast without any problem whatsoever.
By the rules of this place, an Implement had almost no default effect on spells from the Caster, merely being waved instead of jiggling one’s fingers and executing complex geometric hand-signs and stuff.
Now, it could be Empowered to help with spellcasting, but that was a completely separate issue. Moreover, I was going to be powering it up through the Named Weapon rules, because I was going to be fighting with the damn thing!
I was actually kind of excited to be taking up a warrior’s job once again. Aelryinth considered his melee skills completely secondary to his Casting, which they were… but in places with limited magical capability, martial fallbacks were much, much more important, which meant Duum and I were going to be beating on stuff together, and I’d be racing my Familiar to kills, or at least trying to.
Really, I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if my big-arse Animal Companion couldn’t outperform me in melee. One little Animal Growth and I’d be happy to pit him against most dragons.
But me, it was time to do me some marrowmelding.
The spell was only a II Valence, but I kicked it up to V for the extra power, because these were Ancient Red Dragon bones, hard as steel, immune to flame, saturated with pyromantic energies, and eminently suitable for making Dragonwrought items from, which I most certainly was going to be doing.
Dragonwrought had been a very rare Feat in the game, because there weren’t that many dragons around for any Artificer to make use of it at the high end. In real life, there were too many dragons around, and everyone had to maximize the use of time, gold, and get as much power out of magical components as possible, so any serious Artificer took the Feat, assured of being able to use it whenever they felt like going out there and hunting down a winged human-eating lizard for themselves.
Here… it was just a slight penalty to the check, didn’t need the Feat to make things happen. Which didn’t mean I wasn’t going to take advantage of all the damn modifiers that I could.
Marrowmeld meant that I could make the bones run together like soft clay, blending together and making one long item out of many of them. I could compress them… and I could preserve the spinal hole down the middle of them where once the dragon’s sciatic nerve had run.
I had 8 ranks in Bonecrafting, and an Intellect bonus of +12, so a +20 got me to 30. A Heroics spell granted me Skill Focus at +3, getting me to 33, while Crafter’s Fortune added a +5 Luck Bonus, and Wieldskill piped in a +10 Competence bonus that would accelerate the amount of work I could do in one go, with Augment Artistry making sure it was aesthetically pleasing.This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Therein followed the Fabricate spells combined with Marrowmeld with +8 Jadework bone-carving tools to serve as ‘masterwork tools’, and I Melded up my Staff, spending my Arcane Focus to take 15 on the check. Thus I could clock a 40+8 QL, right at the edge of mortal crafting limits with room to spare.
Upcasting the Fabricates enabled me to do multiple days of work in one go, the bones sliding together, smoothing out, carved patterns forming in the subtle flow of dark bone and vertebral joins, magical channels forming, Runes taking form, power conduits and greater internal formations established, and my Staff was prepared for all the things I planned for it to do in the future.
It was also built fully to the standards of Jadework to a full +IV non-magical, a level of craftsmanship I hadn’t seen on anything here anywhere. I had to use dissolved diamond acid baths as the material components for the Jadework, and watching that stuff sparkle and disappear as my Fabricates went through was both heartening and frustrating, 32k of goldweight in material comps just GONE, just like that.
Well, it was a reason to keep hunting. I was going through fortunes, and there was no easier way to make money than killing rare and powerful things and bringing them back as components for someone else who didn’t want to get their hands dirty.
Once my Staff was in its final form, therein followed Reed, Stone, Iron, and Adamant, allowing it to bend double before breaking and thus making it nearly impossible to break or sunder; doubling its toughness and hit points; and increasing its Hardness from the base 12 of the bone, +8 from Jadework treatment, by another +14, to a full 34, which was harder than any mortal material could normally be without getting into some higher-end Weird Science, way harder than adamantine, even!
Not high enough for me, of course. The first two things going on my Staff were Morphing and Impervious, even before I added Enhancement bonuses.
See, I had made my Staff according to the height I would be when I grew up, its ‘final form’. I, of course, was currently running around at Brownie size, a mere two feet tall, and definitely did not need a Staff twice as tall as I was. Shrinking said Staff down to merely two feet high with me basically made it a jo stick, but that was fine, as most of the damage I was going to be doing with it was going to be coming from ki and arcane energy, regardless.
The empty core of it which I could install a Wand Chamber into and also run a line of adamant through in the future to make my Staff Heavy was a totally different matter, and would have to wait until I was strong enough to spin around a twenty-pound cudgel.
For its Name, I promptly bestowed upon it the moniker of Dread.
“The Dread Staff of the Lady Edge is upon you!” I laughed to myself, shaking the bone of glossy blackness with crimson shadows swimming through it.
For the jewel at the top, I totally outdid myself, and would have monumentally pissed off all the Priests of Gaebrel if they knew what I was doing.
I stuck one of their soul crystals inside a black star sapphire, whose star was red. Stone Shape at VIII took care of the shaping of the gemstones, as well as removing them from their natural surroundings and fusing them into a single stone instead of disparate lesser ones.
Indeed, I assembled multiple stones of the largest size and QL 40 as a matter of course, Elementals either bringing them out of the stone or guiding me to them so Stone Shape could remove what I wanted them to. The local elven miners had to rely on hand and tools to remove what Upcast Stone Shape could liberate quickly and easily, but I had no reason to tell them that, since there was no way they wanted me using such stones for myself.
What they were good for yet I wasn’t sure, although Mother’s tomes made reference to special spells only granted to the priests of Gaebrel and not used by anyone else. I hadn’t seen them in use or Cast as yet, so I couldn’t Ur them away and find out what they did, but I would eventually, I was certain.
An Energized Star Sapphire also happened to neutralize chronomancy and related temporal magicks within thirty feet, if I so desired it. It was a powerful high-end neutralizing agent, particularly important against high-end Casters who wanted to Stop Time and similar shenanigans, and I wasn’t going to let that happen if I could prevent it.
Ripples of shadowed anti-time cutting at reality from the gem bound in flowing dragonbone that trailed flames as I whipped it around myself definitely made Dread a thing to look at, and despair, ye hapless fools!...
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That was hardly the end of my basic efforts. Enhancement bonuses were far, far cheaper and faster to put on Weapons here than using the Matrix system, and if I wanted to have an intelligent Item Familiar here, that meant I had to use goldweight to lock in that stuff, not just use Naming Karma which might evaporate if something happened to me.
Seven days of prep work, eight hours a day of Infusing, leaving my new toy behind as I went out and continued my explorations for the other eight hours, coming home to rest and to Infuse other minor Gear in the interim, and perhaps sell the fruits of my labors, or clean them up and make them ready to use up, it was all good.
Plenty of goldweight to earn, plenty to burn.
+V Holy was my basic go-to, leaving me three Slots I could fill with Greater Magical Weapon. My default would be Enmity Blooding Vivic, but I could also put in Healing Edge if I thought it appropriate, go full Sun Dragon School if I was dueling, put in Defender or Guardian to up my defenses, or even override Holy and go complete Disruption if I was facing undead enemies.
The +IV Jadework backup was going to be important. It meant I could totally swap out the magical +V I was going to put in and use it for something else, giving up only a net +I for combat! Backhand cheater, that was me...
I also wanted Dancing and Flying on Dread, so that he could fight and move around by himself if needed. I would be using the Matrix method to make him an actual Stave with bound spells, not the local version, but it was so much cheaper doing the Weapon side of things this way that it would only make sense to do so.
I had big plans for Dread, but it would take a lot of time and Naming Karma to make it all come through, which was fine.
Time, I probably had a lot of. Hopefully. Cross my heart and hope not to die while being a totally reckless adventurer…