Evren had a roughly polished silver bowl crudely attached to an improvised stand. In the base of the bowl, he had cast ‘light’ and used the contraption as a focused lamp. He had a small hammer in one hand, and a fine chisel in the other, and he was using those to finalize the rune he had inscribed on the side of the anvil he was working on. Runes covered the body and base of the anvil, most of them filled in with celestial bronze.
Once he finished the rune, he would need to tamp the slivers of celestial bronze he had shaved off the ingot into the grooves carved in the anvil. When he finished that he would need to grind, sand and polish the rune to make it look proper, prior to hardening. He had been working on this anvil for two weeks now and as it neared completion, he figured he would only need an hour or two to finish.
He set the hammer and chisel back into the pockets of the roll up tool holder and set it back in place in the shop. The shop had been cleaned and organized properly, and doing as a good dwarf should, he’s ensuring it stays organized. He went outside to the road where he had a makeshift forge set up, with a mechanical crane next to it. He set fire to the wood in the forge and laid some coal on top of it to prepare the forge. He didn’t use the forge in the shop because of the size of the crane he used, and the quenching he would need to do after it was hot enough.
When the fire was burning well enough, he went back inside to finish the work on the anvil. He drew out another rolled up tool holder and took from it a small metal rod, and a very small hammer. He would place the slivers of celestial bronze over the chiseled area, and using the rod and hammer, he’d tamp it into place. As he was doing so, he was pouring magic into the celestial bronze with a clear image of how he wanted it to look when finished. There would still be some that needed to be filed away, but this is how it was supposed to be done according to the journal.
He finished and put the tools away, this time pulling out some small files. As he gently filed away at the anvil, he continued with putting magic into the celestial bronze, and the image of what the finished rune would look like. Finishing that, he used flat stones and water to sand and polish the rune to completion. After he finished, he picked up the extraordinarily heavy anvil and carried it out to the forge.
He set the anvil on the ground next to the forge and added more coal to it. He used the bellows at the base to heat up the fire, ensuring everything was burning properly, and evenly. He flipped the anvil over onto its top and affixed a heavy chain to the base. He then attached the hook on the crane and prepared to lift it. Pulling the rope through the pullies, he eventually got the anvil up high enough that he could push it over the improvised forge and lower it onto the fire. He wanted to leave it hanging but wasn’t sure if he’d burn out his crane.
Now that the anvil was on the flames, he cast the spell ‘dust devil’ over it and watched as the fire slowly built itself up. He then went down to the bellows and pumped it to increase the airflow even more. The flames were intense. Even though his head was lower than the flame and he was actually leaning away from it, he felt like he was getting cooked. He kept turning his head from side to side to give half of it a chance to cool down.
Eventually it was hot enough. He stood and dispelled the ‘dust devil’ taking a closer look at the anvil to make sure it was hot enough, and not melting the celestial bronze inset in the runes. He moved the crane back in place, attached the chain and then the hook, and lifted the anvil off the fire. He moved the crane to the opposite side of the forge and carefully lowered the anvil to the ground. He disconnected the hook and chain and moved the crane out of the way. Using a metal bar, he flipped the anvil, so the base was on the ground.
Backing away from the anvil, he cast ‘deluge’ on it. Water poured down on it from above meeting the steam that was formed. The anvil angerly hissed as it was rapidly cooled by the torrent of water. When the ‘deluge’ spell finished, he saw that the anvil dried very quickly, so he cast the spell again. He cast the spell one more time after that, just to be sure. The water had cleared away most of the dirt and soil that had accumulated over the years, so now the anvil sat on the original stone road.
Evren reached out tentatively to the anvil, slowly getting his hand closer until he touched it quickly. He kept tapping it, each time he touched he would leave his fingers on the anvil a little longer. Finally, he laid his hand on the top. It was hot, but bearable. He reached down and picked up the anvil, marveling at how heavy that it was compared to the old one he was replacing and carried it back to the shop. As he entered the door to the shop, he realized he should have let the anvil cool a bit longer as it was now burning his hands.
He neither wanted to drop it, nor set it down, so he growled as he carried it to the log that would be used as a base and set it down. He backed off and shook his hands as if to cool them down. When he looked at them, the palms were red. He cast his newly learned spell, ‘heal burn’ a couple times and then opened and closed his hands a few times. “Well, I finally got an opportunity to cast it.” He said with a chuckle.
The rest of the tools he still needed to make were hammers, punches, chisels and tongs, along with some heavy gloves and a proper dwarvish apron. Fortunately, only the hammers needed extensive runes on them, as the others would only work in concert to the runes on the hammer. The runes cast upon the anvil were used to ensure the magic transmitted from the hammer and tools wasn’t absorbed into the anvil, dissipated, or passed onto the ground.
He had already cast a majority of the pieces, a few he wanted to wait until he replaced some of the tools, so he could melt them down to use for the casting. He was hoping the crude wooden vice he had in the shop would be sufficient to his needs. He moved on to his next project which would be the first of three hammers he would be making. He would only make one now but planned for the other two to probably be made after the other tools, or during the winter.
During the casting process, there was some extra metal added as a result of the hole used to pour the metal in, and the seam between the molds. The difficult part to that was that he didn’t have a saw with which to use. So, the only way he could get the metal off was to heat the metal and cut it with a chisel on the anvil. But, since he had already set the old anvil aside and didn’t want to use the new one yet, he decided to break down the crane and temporary forge he had assembled in the street.
The crane was made from heavy wood that broke down in to three pieces, the crane, the post and the base. The temporary forge was made from brick and clay with the bellows borrowed from the furnace. Evren disassembled the crane first, bringing the pieces to the back of the shop, near the furnace. He might set it up here if he needs it later, but for now, it could remain in pieces. He took the rope and pullies off and brought those into the shop. Those he didn’t want exposed to the elements since he didn’t have much in the way of rope.
When he finished with the crane, he walked back out to the temporary forge and cast ‘drench’ upon it, immediately following up with a ‘freeze’ spell. The water the fell onto the forge soaked it thoroughly and began leaking out the bottom when it was frozen. The brick and clay expanding slightly as the ice pushed from the inside. Evren did this combo two more times before his head started to ache and the entire thing was frozen. “I should contact public works to let them know this’ll be here a while.” He said, chuckling to himself. Evren head back inside the smithy to begin filing the cast tools. He would cut the rest of it off later.
