Drusilla: photo

My avatar done up as Dru in a goth sim in Second Life

Subaqueous Selection

Young and growing, that’s what she needed. She dropped the end of the stick into the water again, the end of the stick to which was affixed the Mechanism.

It was early enough in the day that the stench of gutted fish didn’t yet dominate the senses, and gull-cries were individual voices rather than the chorus that would make itself heard later. Rocking slowly on the gentle swells out in the bay, ships too big to moor at the piers were attended by smaller boats loading and unloading cargo, hands, and the occasional passenger.

The Mechanism obliged by becoming wet. At least in part. The submerged part. Still above the water was the aft-end of the short tube that led to the viewing port. Through the crystalline glass of the viewing port she beheld the barnacle-encrusted hull of a two-masted brig, lately arrived from Waterdeep carrying, in the effects of one of its passengers, a volume that would have changed the course of her life had she been able to read it.

The passenger was an antiquarian who had arrived at this wild land seeking ancient artifacts to attract the cognoscenti of the City of Wonders, and the book (he thought) was a fairy-story from after the fall of Myth Drannor, a rambling phantasy detailing the travails of a group of beasts and imaginary creatures. He was translating it from Draconic into Common in his spare time, the better to publish, amuse and profit, but he did not realize that he was removing the secret that had been enciphered into it in the way of Alchemists, who talk of Eagles, Bulls, and Hippogriffs in an allegorical tongue all their own.

And so Drusilla did not learn at that time the secret of setting spells into metal as neatly as fingers of gold hold a sapphire in a ring, but at least she had found her barnacles.

Manipulating the Mechanism along the boat’s hull (for boat it was, lacking the requisite third mast that would elevate it to the status of ship) she examined the mass until she found a newish, small barnacle. She pressed the Mechanism’s snout around it and pulled a lever, causing a thin metal shutter to draw across the snout’s opening and scrape that one barnacle loose. Free from the hull, it fell slowly in the warm bay water into the container that made up the Mechanism’s bottom.

It would be joined by another and then several more. Within the space of three-quarters of an hour, Drusilla had finished (for she didn’t need many barnacles, she just needed the right barnacles) and returned to the workshop.

This tooth would be well and truly fixed in place.

Artifice

in which a Prosthetic is contrived of rare Material

It was one thing to know that, in theory, the slightest amount of remaining moisture or irregularity would destroy a vessel placed in such extreme heat; it was another to hear crucible after crucible shatter in the small furnace she’d placed on the forge hearth.

Pottery was one of those things that was simple, yet maddening in the details. Yet after a week and a day, Drusilla finally had a crucible that survived. Inside, she placed ore that Brodie had crushed. She set the loaded crucible in the center of the furnace, then moved firebricks so she could stack coal. She fired the furnace.

It was not a big thing. It could’ve fit in a wine cask, and most of its volume was in the firebricks that confined the heat inside, focused it on the crucible where, over the course of an hour, flecks of metal would become liquid. Transformed, they would trickle together.

Next to the furnace was a plaster mold, warmed to a high heat on the hearth. She had started with the piece of beeswax Brodie had bitten into, and built up the shape of the tooth. The base would fit perfectly. She’d added a sprue to the top and would cut that away once it was unmolded. She defined the edges of the inlay pattern with the precise point of a steel burin, then cut away the rest of the relief with a tiny chisel.

She’d made the beeswax tooth to destroy it, though. Once she cast it in plaster with only the end of the sprue showing, she’d fired it in the forge to vaporize the wax out. Once the mold had done its job it, too, would be destroyed.

Drusilla leaned on the anvil, watching but not really watching as tricks of superheated air escaping from the furnace played games with the appearance of the forge behind. Her mind was remote while she waited, thinking of the Rooms and of her wilful charges gone so wrong.

At length, she took the heavy gloves and pulled them on. Incongruous with the blue and black brocade she wore, they afforded some protection as she moved firebricks aside. A breath of intense heat was released toward the ceiling. She grasped the crucible firmly with the tongs. Tipping it gently over the mold–a moment–then the liquid inside flowed out, a glowing metal. It could have been tin, or iron or silver from its look, but it was not. A thimbleful of molten mithril found its way into the mold and up the sprue, a few drops remaining pooled in the crucible.

Forge Hardening

High in the Grey Mountains the air is still crisp, even on the first day of spring. Blue brocade brushes against the frost still on the groundcover. A black cloak edged in yellow hugs her shoulders. She doesn’t notice the cold, for she’s brought all the steel she can carry up into these hills. It is her birthday.

She hears the welcoming howl of the minogons as she comes around a rock outcropping, but watches them hacking at the giant only for a moment before slipping behind the waterfall and into the Rooms of Ruin.

Deep in the Rooms, she puts on her gloves. She sets the first of the steel bars to heat in the hearth of the forge. She arrays her tools, readies a bucket of clay slip, puts water in a trough, notes the look of the steel, thinks about the talk she had with Card. She doesn’t need to think about the hearth being too hot–she adjusts the dampers a little, and knows that the steel will heat at the rate she wants. She wonders what her parents would think of /this/ forge, heated by magma under the isle, and larger than her mother’s entire workshop.

This isle, these people. Was it really that different from home, though? It irked her, not being taken seriously, but Card was right. Why concern herself with a few people who didn’t respect her? There was so much to do, after all. Seven years on the island and she felt as though she’d just brushed the surface of all there was to learn.

Lost in thought, she forms the blade of a long knife almost unconsciously. One blade anneals to be worked some more while she folds the metal for a larger blade, a core of soft steel inside the higher carbon steel. She works for hours at the forge, stepping back to drink water, to set metal on the hearth, to murmur an automatic greeting when a patrolling golem steps into the forge room. Metal cools from straw-colored to orange to dull cherry. It flows under her hammer into graceful curves.

It is past midnight by the time she scrapes clay from a few heat-treated blades. She applies a file to the edges to look at the grain of the forged steel, a tale of transformation written in the crystalline gradations there. A laminar failure betrayed by a crack on one, an unpleasing temper line on another, but some of the blades might work. If anything would.

In draconic now, she speaks. The warm light from the forge seems dimmer as magics light up the room. Directing her spells at blades, she tries one then another. A cantrip first. Spells of protection, of flame and lightning. She caresses the Weave for enchantments, invocations, and banishment. At long last she stops, unsatisfied, and fatigue from the long day takes over.

After she naps, she leaves the Rooms to find fallen scout minogons. Performing field repairs when she can, she welds and patches the maltreated units, realigning them as Jeri has shown. She dresses their axe blades and makes sure their sensors are polished and unobstructed. She can’t help but smile fondly at the automatons. These scouts were the first she worked on; simple compared to most inside, but that made them easy to work on. She salvages critical parts from the more damaged golems to bring back into the Rooms. Maybe she could make a power hammer for the forge using a golem core… But that is a project for another time; already she thinks about the materials for her next set of experiments.

She is twenty-four.

Drusilla: about

Drusilla Tamrakin is a wizard I played on the Thain NWN PW for a few years.

This category will archive a few of my favorite bits I wrote for her.