Finulid City was originally a city-state at the mouth of the Samure River where it empties into the Imatin Sea. Being situated at the end of a peninsula meant many sailors from different countries, and even different continents, frequented the city. The result was a highly diverse population that flourished even more after inclusion to the Kingdom of Galesia. Raed was not surprised, then, to know that the blacksmith Christine had recommended to him was non-Galesian.
The blacksmith, Valter Hallen, was held in high regard by veteran itinerant adventurers. The master smith was an immigrant from one of the northern villages, which was rare even in a place like Finulid City. Many of the best smiths hailed from the tribes that inhabited the tundra along the southern border of the Forlorn Mountain range. Said mountains had the richest iron deposits in the world and served as the only barrier between the human world and the demonic portals that scarred the land. Additionally, due to past and ongoing demonic incursions, the minerals of the land north of the Forlorn Mountains introduced new compounds that were not naturally occurring in this world. With the correct proportions and techniques, a team of expert alchemists working in tandem with master smiths could synthesize new 'netheralloys' that were much stronger than any known human material. However, the dangers of venturing into the maw of the Netherworld's invasion sites, the scarcity of natural-occurring netheralloys, and the difficulty of creating a synthetic netheralloy, made such equipment vanishingly rare in the human world.
The rarity and difficulty involved with netheralloy meant anything created with it was limited by availability of the material. To date, Raed had only seen three items that were made from authentic netheralloy. One was the crown for the High Queen of Galesia, which was forged from the fused remnants of the Victorious Hero's weapon and Primeval Infernal's burnt out core. One was a ring crafted from a droplet that fell out during the forging of the Queen's crown. Somehow that fragment survived open exposure to air and earth. That ring was given to the Hero's widow and fellow party member, Yana the ranger. The third was a dagger, and the only weapon Raed had ever seen made from netheralloy.
Having arrived at the building that served as both forge and store, Raed took a look before going to the entrance. It was one among several shops in a row of buildings separated on the inside, no doubt. The marble exterior walls were a staple in Finulid City architecture. A large quarry existed in the hills to the north, just outside the city walls, from which the walls of almost every building in the city was built. Square glass windows were set in wooden frames, two to each store and on either side of its door.
A wooden sign hung over each door in the row of shops. The one that had the widely recognized anvil showed that it was a blacksmith's store. Under it was the store's name, 'Hallen and Son', written in both Galesian and Modern Northern. Raed pushed open the door and walked inside, being greeted immediately by a muscular mountain of a man who held his arms outstretched, the right one still holding a hammer. Smiling through his thick straw-colored beard, he bellowed a greeting.
"Welcome adventurer! You be Raed? Christine say you come today!"
Raed nodded. "You must be Master Smith Hallen, then?"
"Call me Valter! Any friend for Christine call me Valter!" He said, dropping a few words he couldn't pronounce and mispronouncing a few that he didn't.
"I'm here to assess my equipment before I go on my quests," Raed said while stepping into the store. He walked along the gray brick floor past display stands of various swords and armor pieces until he was at the birch wood counter. He slung his bag off his back and onto the counter top. He opened the pack and withdrew a tarnished and dull steel dagger, a ceramic dartgun with a large crack running down the barrel, and a red crystal sphere held by a silver eagle claw.
"Yah, my man, what century this from?" Valter clicked his tongue disapprovingly at the items Raed laid out on the table.
"I thought they were considered the highest quality back when we faced the primeval demon," Raed replied.
"Maybe back then ya? Not now they not!" Valter laughingly roared. Then he picked up the red crystalline bauble and observed it with his icy blue eyes. "This one, still good. It for demon finding, yah?"
"Yes, a resonant crystal. I don't suppose those have been replaced with something better?"
"Hah! No, that still good. The others, damaged," Valter said.
"What would you recommend now?"
"Glad you ask!" Valter gave Raed an appraising look. "Yah, more a caster type, are you? Judge by this dagger here and this weapon," he picked up the cracked ceramic dartgun. "I give it a guess you a wizard."
"An alchemist," Raed said.
Valter shook his head. "Never good at judge the non-fighters. If it don't use metal I don't know it. I find you stuff." He walked to a door behind the counter and opened it, disappearing for a couple of minutes.
After several minutes had passed, Raed began to consider if he should call out to Valter. He couldn't hear any sounds coming from the room beyond that door, so he wondered where that door led. From the outside, the shop didn't look to have the dimensions necessary for a large back room. It could have been a basement, which many other shops in the cramped buildings of Finulid City's shopping district used for storage.
As he considered the room layout that existed under the floor, a young man emerged from the door behind the counter, surprising Raed.
"Valter?" Raed gasped, seeing the pale-skinned, golden-haired, blue-eyed youth who resembled a younger, not as muscular, clean shaved version of Valter. "Did you just come back from the Fountain of Youth?"
The young man gave him a surprised "Huh?" and replied, "My name is Leif, Mr. Tening. I am Master Valter's apprentice."
"Oh," Raed said. "Oh yeah that would make a lot more sense." Now that he knew that, looking closer, the boy had a much different facial structure, such as a smaller nose and a wider brow than Valter.
"Master Valter is bringing up some weapons and armor that he thinks will benefit you. I have been instructed to appraise your current equipment and repair them if you request that. May I?" He asked, speaking a slightly accented but very fluent Galesian that matched the native speakers' cadences.
Raed waved a hand at the three items. "Go ahead and just fix them if you can. I don't need any appraisals, I got them the first time around."
The apprentice immediately set to work, placing his hands on the steel dagger while closing his eyes. He whispered a chant to himself in Old Runic Northern, and runes began to glow along the blade. Raed watched in fascination as the bright blue symbols burned away the dark stains along the blade, revealing the wavelike patterns formed by the carbon component of the steel. When all signs of wear from the past decade had been eradicated by the glowing runes, Leif lifted his hands and opened his eyes, and the inscriptions faded like the sudden extinguishing of a candle's flame.
Leif then moved to the ceramic dartgun, placing one hand on the cracked barrel and another on the undamaged jade handle. He whispered a different chant and closed his eyes. No runes appeared this time, although the young man appeared to be very focused. When he opened his eyes, nothing outwardly had changed for the dartgun.
"Mr. Tening," Leif said, "I am unfamiliar with the particulars of this weapon. My appraisal skill tells me that it most closely resembles a smaller version of the powder spears used by the Galesian infantry. But the material does not match, and there is no powder receptacle."
"That's pretty impressive, kid," Raed said. In the ten years that had passed since he crafted the dartgun, ranged weapons had begun to transition away from bows and crossbows. Regulars in the royal army were each issued a 'powder spear', which was more or less a primitive version of an arquebus, instead of the formerly provided crossbows. Much like the early firearms Raed knew about, the powder spears were difficult to aim, and reloading took much longer than even the slowest of crossbows. However, their effectiveness in penetrating even the best plate armor made them valuable assets, and their creation was a closely kept secret that only royal smiths and craftsmen knew.
"Where did you learn about powder spears?" Raed asked.
"I saw one when I was still in my village. It must have been a soldier that dropped it, so I appraised one back then," Leif answered.
"I see, that was what, three years ago then?"
Leif nodded.
Raed did not press further. Three years ago would have been during the most recent Galesian attempt to annex parts of the Northern lands as a buffer against demonic incursion.
"Is there anything you can do for that crack?" Raed asked.
"I can try to repair it, but it's not made with the same ceramic we have here. There's also jade in the weapon, but that's just the handle right?"
Raed nodded. "If I told you the minerals that I used and their proportions, do you think that would help?
"I can try, but I don't really know all that much about mineralogy," Leif admitted.
Just as Raed was about to provide the names of the materials involved in making the ceramic, Valter reappeared from the door, holding several daggers and shortswords in one arm, and multiple full sets of armor in the other.
Leif nodded to Raed. "Please let me know another time then, Mr. Tening," he said, backing away from the counter as Valter stepped forward.
Raed quickly packed away his three items, and slung the bag over his shoulder to give space for Valter to drop his large haul.
"Hey my apprentice help you much?" Valter said as he placed a row of sharp weapons along the counter without dropping a single one.
"He is very talented with appraisal and refinement. The refinement is rune magic, isn't it? The appraisal skill, though, I wonder about that," Raed commented.
Valter handed off the armor pieces to Leif, who began arranging them on stands. "Oh you say? That boy's appraisal is different, yah. Better than any smith I know. Me even!"
"Yes, it's something different. Something I think I might have seen before," Raed mused.
"Hah! Well if you see more like him, you tell them join Valter's shop! My business be the best in whole kingdom then!" He laughed raucously, and with open arms showed off the daggers and shortswords on the counter. "See any you like?"
"Hm," Raed looked at the well-crafted weapons. All of them showed impeccable blades and Raed could tell that all of them possessed useful enchantments. "Thanks to your apprentice, I think my dagger is back to serviceable shape, so I believe I am set for weapons." He looked at the armor stands, where Leif was finishing the last set of plate armor. "As for the armor, I'm not usually in melee range, and I have other measures to defend against ranged attacks. But these all look impressive, don't get me wrong. Just not really my style."
"Yah my man no worries," Valter said with slight disappointment. "You see any in shop you like? Christine want me to give you makeover upgrade, not just apprentice repair."
Raed looked around the room, passing over the displays of various weapons, plate armors, two-piece chainmail armors, shields, and helmets, until he settled his searching eyes on a faintly shimmering piece of metal from the trash container. He pointed at the round bin, asking, "What's in there?"
"That?" Valter turned toward the direction Raed was pointing, spotting the warped metal slab. "That was fail. We try new shipment of netheralloy today, but it don't work. Just junk now."
"May I have a look at it?" Raed asked.
Valter looked hesitant. "I said that is junk, yah, but still cost much lei to get. You want it? You still buy it."
"How about this, what if I can turn that into something you can work with?"
Valter and Leif both gave Raed questioning looks. Valter said, "Can't give you forge use. You a friend for Christine, but still outsider. No forge, sorry."
"No need, I can attempt a post-annealing modification," Raed suggested.
This made master and apprentice smiths look at Raed very skeptically. Valter relented though, and said, "You can try. You break, you buy, that's rules yah? Leif, give Mr. Tening the 'kret'."
Leif carefully picked the twisted lump of metal out of the waste container. He brought it to the counter and held it out with both hands for Raed.
Taking it in both hands, Raed felt an oddly shifting sensation of warmth intermixed with coolness running along the entirety of the misshapen piece. He closed his eyes, letting the background system appraise the metal for its structural and elemental composition, with his concentration directed at the netherworld portion of the netheralloy.
Iron oxide, silicon dioxide, titanium dioxide, aluminum oxide, and tungsten. After several internal iterations of the identification process, Raed recognized the elements present in the netheralloy. However, they were nothing supernatural. The limitation, Raed thought, must be in the technology that had yet to be developed. Raed searched his memory for ways to separate the impurities and bind the pure metals, but his knowledge of metallurgy was limited. Perhaps he could use an acid, like the real alchemists in the world who tried to transmute metals by dissolving them and attempting to refine the precipitate. But that could result in a dangerous spill, and Raed remembered that he had not prepared a suitable container to perform such a process.
In the end, Raed decided simply to separate the components, allowing the impurities to fall from his hands while maintaining a force field to contain the metals. With the liquefied metals contained, Raed forced them together. Once more, he felt the odd sensation of heat and cold that was not explained by the simple elemental identities of the components. When he was finished, he opened his eyes, his vision slightly blurred from the strain of working inorganic materials with his synthesis alchemy.
A much smaller shiny gray metal sphere fit in the palm of Raed's left hand. Pieces of black and brown unidentifiable waste material lay scattered on the counter and on the floor, dirtying the weapons Valter had laid out. The master smith and his apprentice looked at the metallic object slack-jawed and silent, their eyes showing clear disbelief.
"Sorry for the mess," Raed said, "This is actually the first time I tried doing this with metal."
Recovering from the shock, Valter waved it away with a massive hand. "No problems man. You don't worry the mess, we clean. That metal...it is real netheralloy?"
"I don't know, you can check it for me." Raed placed the metal orb in Valter's hand.
The master smith fell silent as he appraised the object. In two seconds he perked up with excitement, yelling "It's real!" and then, "You can keep it free!" While giving the netheralloy ball back to Raed.
"Thanks, but I wouldn't know how to do anything with it. You are a master smith, I'm sure this is enough material for you to use."
"Yah, wait. You keep the metal, I ask for favor," Valter said, "You going on a quest? Take with you Leif. He's useful apprentice, he knows how to camp. Maybe he learn from you this skill."
"Master Valter, what about the shop?" Leif said.
"Shop fine! You're ready to start own shop!"
"Valter, these quests involve hunting demons. They can get very dangerous, and I can't say for sure how long I'll be away or how far I have to go to complete a quest," Raed cautioned.
"No worries, Leif is great warrior. He also worth more. You saw his skill, yah? He can't develop it in safe city. He need to see world, be greater than here," Valter said, pride shining in his eyes as he looked at Leif. "Please man, do this favor for me and maybe Leif learns how to make you something with netheralloy," Valter suggested.
Raed shrugged. "It's up to your apprentice, I guess. As long as he can take care of himself. I'm not going to babysit him."
"I can craft and repair equipment on the field, I can help carry supplies, and I can even fight for you," Leif said, eagerly stepping up to the counter, his eyes darting from the netheralloy globe to Raed. "And if I ever become skilled enough, I will forge netheralloy equipment for you."
"Fine then," Raed said, "Welcome to the party and all. Meet me outside the Deerhound Inn tomorrow morning. I reserved a carriage for Landis Town."
"Leif, go pack. Be ready in morning!" Valter shouted merrily.
"Yes, Master Valter!" Leif said. Then toward Raed, Leif said, "Thanks for letting me join you on adventure! I won't let you down!"
With a bounce in his step, Leif hurried off through the door behind the counter.