Vhalar 1, 717
Kyin was sitting in the sooty shop where he works as a smith. He was hammering a way and an piece of metal, as smith's have a tendency to do. Kyin's boss, a friendly enough man (not that friendliness meant much to Kyin), walked in and reading from a piece of parchment, "Alright boys, we have a new priority order in from a group of mercenaries we need to get together five steel chain mail shirts, three rapiers and four daggers. You can decide how to go about deciding how to work on 'em, but we only have 4 or 5 days to get this done, then they'll be delivered to The Broken Blade"Kyin nodded "Alright Narric, maybe I should take the blades, since I can knock out the leather hilts faster."
Narric just shrugged "Can't. Leaving. See family." The Qi'Ora man had built up a disdain for Kyin over Kyin's refusal to follow the tenets and follow what most Qi'Ora considered to be decent behavior.
Kyin decided to start with the Rapiers. Rapiers aren't what most people think, they are nothing like a fencing foil, they are bulky and heavy. They have about a 3 foot blade that starts at about three quarters of an inch thick and comes to a point. That is a lot of metal which means a lot of weight. The weight isn't really a bad thing though, it is a stabbing weapon and extra weight makes it much harder to parry blows from. Kyin started with the blade, he took a 3 and a half foot rod of steel and set about flattening it. He then began on the hilt, he decided for the best protection at the price, that they would have a simplistic, largely not decorative basket on the hilt. Kyin walked over to the wire drawing bench, essentially a way to draw metal through progressively smaller holes in a metal plate to get a specific gauge of wire. Kyin wanted wires that were about an eighth of an inch in diameter. Kyin formed one wire into a "3" shape, the bottom portion of the "3" would cover the middle finger, ring finger, and pinkie finger while the top portion would protect the pointer finger. Kyin continued the trend of number shaped wires with an "8" which he then rolled over a rounded surface to curve it back. The "8" shape would wrap around the fingers for further protection. Kyin pulled out a portion of dowel about 5 inches long. This portion of dowel would form the hilt. Kyin then chiseled a slit into the dowel's end, about an inch and three quarters deep. He then slid the end of the blade in and put tacks through holes he punched in the end of the blade. He then lathered the dowel in flour paste, wrapped calf skin around it and began double stitching it on. He then repeated the process for the next two rapiers.
Kyin moved on to the daggers and began flattening out a short blade. He then added the fuller (a trench that goes down the length of the blade). Kyin added a small cross guard to the daggers. He gave each end of the cross guard a gentle curve in opposite directions. In sword smithing the types of cross guards are not named, they are all called quillons, but the twelve styles of quillons are numbered. This particular style is called style 12. Kyin began on the hilt, he formed a cylinder with a ring on the end. The ring would work as a stopper, to keep the sword from flying out of the owner's hand. "This could use some decoration." he thought out loud, taking advantage of his irritable neighbors absence. He took a small ball of pewter and cold hammered it into a cuboid, the corners were rounded. the cuboid was just about small enough to fit into the ring without issue. The cuboid's rounded corners added enough surface area to successfully solder in the cuboid on it's corners to the inside of the ring. This was decoration, but my have the added benefit of extra stopper on the end of the blade. Kyin continued on the next three blades not encountering much error, other than messing up a couple of pewter cuboids and having to restart, but that couldn't have been more than a couple ounces of pewter, which is largely insubstantial.
Kyin realized he was dreading the chainmail, "Immortals damn it, I should probably see if I can deliver this stuff. Procrastination is key." Kyin said out loud thinking to himself.
"Sounds fine by me, be back quick though." came the reply from the office, apparently Daran, Kyin's boss was listening in, "After all, we wouldn't want you procrastinating would we?"
"Of course we wouldn't, Mr. Bossman, sir." Kyin replied a small smile on the corners of his mouth brightening his bored expression for but a second.
Kyin grabbed his fez from a hat rack and made his way to the Broken Blade. He was muttering to himself holding a package full of weapons, when out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw a flash of feathers "Not again." He looked in that direction, to find nothing there. "I need to get him out of my head. The so called Prince of Eternal Mercies is interfering with my work." Kyin sighed, "I should probably set up a meeting, how would I do that though? He said he'd find me, but he hasn't. I need to get over this." Kyin found himself so distracted by these thoughts that he was already at the Broken Blade.
Kyin walked up to the bar, "I was told to deliver this here." he intoned, in his usual bored monotone.
"Yeah, I can keep it behind the bar for your client." the bar tender said, slightly brusque once they realized Kyin wasn't here to buy.
"Alright, this is only a portion of the order, the rest will be around in a couple days." Kyin said as bored with this conversation as was possible. Kyin didn't wait for a response, he turned and walked out, briskly finding his way back to the shop.
Kyin went to the wire bench again, he began drawing out extremely long wires at about one and a half millimeter in diameter, and clipping them at two to three centimeters each. he flattened the ends of half of the lengths of wire, before bending all the wire into circles which would for the rings for the chain mail. He then took all the non flattened rings and soldered them together. He then created short two millimeter wedge rivets, that he would hammered into the flattened pieces of the next set of rings. He began looping four regular rings to each of the flattened rings, and riveting the flattened rings ends together. The result was a chain mail shirt with sleeves ending in the upper wrists, enough room for gauntlets to slightly overlap. Kyin continued through 4 more equally tedious shirts. Kyin had always preferred working on bigger objects, this type of work was too fiddly, for lack of a more technical term. By the time he had finished it had been another few days, as he had promised the bar tender.
Kyin walked into Daran Porter's office, and said "I finished up the mail, I should probably deliver it, that okay?"
"Sure, sure. By the by, you seen Narric?" Daran asked, "He was supposed to be here today."
"Narric is... not a huge fan of me, you would know sooner than I would." Kyin said, "If I see him though I'll tell you. His group was just probably deferred on the way back."
"Okay, could you go see if he got caught up with the Black Guard on your way to the Broken Blade?" he asked.
"Fine. I will bring him back if he is there." Kyin said on his way out.
Kyin went to the Great Pahrn Gate, carrying five shirts of chain mail in a box strapped to his back. "I wish Daran had just killed me, preferably before I had to work on the chain mail." Kyin muttered discontentedly.
He approached one of the Black Guard "My boss wanted me to look for a Qi'Ora named Narric, he is a smith here."
"Ah, he is over there, with Sergeant Hei'tep he was in a rush through the gate, and when we stopped him he was rude and combative. So we decided to chain him to the fence for a couple breaks see if it would help him. He hasn't stopped moaning about getting to work since."
"Yeah, sounds like him, can I go get him back to work? The boss will be all over me if I don't" Kyin said, trying to cut back on his bored tone of voice, in order to make the guard more amiable to the idea.
"I suppose." was the guardsman's response. "Oi, Sarge! This man says that our little friend works with him, can he go to work?"
""S'pose so." was the sergeants reply, then came the click of manacles.
Narric went up to Kyin and said with no small amount of a grudge, "Thanks."
"Yeah, whatever." Kyin stated flatly, "You owe me, so take this shit to the Broken Blade." Kyin dropped the box with a loud thud, and began heading to the shop without another word.
OOC Info: Chart of Quillon Styles
