Redsteel Chisel

Description

A redsteel chisel is almost always crafted from metal (most often a complex alloy of green iron and orichalcum). rather than wood or bone. This wand is a practical tool, much favoured by runesmiths, magician-smiths in the Marches and Dawn and Varushkan Wardens. More often than not this implement has a tapered end, and can be used quite successfully as an actual tool for shaping wood in conjunction with a hammer. Indeed, it is said that the chisel developed from a tool into a wand, for times when mundane craft would not be swift enough.

Marcher artisans find these particularly useful, given their people's disinclination to throw anything away when it might be fixed. Known owners of these wands find themselves pestered to repair items which nothing short of magic can save. One Marcher song recounts the tale of the famous smith Anna of Ashill and her decision to move to the dankest corner of Bregasland after being asked to fix a series of increasingly unlikely objects, often improvised by the singers, using her magical chisel.

Magicians who are utterly devoted to mending combine this wand with a Forge of Isenbrad. Together they are known as the Spell-Fired Smithy or Quartermaster's Companion. Such well-equipped magicians are usually found supporting the Imperial armies, particularly where the barbarians are known for their use of two-handed weapons. Legions of Imperial Orcs often give tools such as this wand to their standard bearers and occasionally a Witch Weaver will go to war with the armies of Dawn to perform repairs.

Rules

• Form: Weapon. Takes the form of a wand. You must be wielding this implement to use its magical properties.
• Requirement: You must have the magician skill to bond to this item.
• Effect: Twice per day you can cast the mend spell as if you knew it and without expending any mana.
• Materials: Crafting a redsteel chisel requires seven ingots of orichalcum, six ingots of green iron and three measures of iridescent gloaming. It takes one month to make one of these items.

Making her way through the peaceful blanket of drifting mist, the Landskeeper picked a careful path among the bodies that carpeted the hillside. Untold numbers of good sons and daughters of the Marches all oozed and dripped their last lifeblood into the rich earth, their deaths a valiant sacrifice that had, in the end, not been payment enough.

The old woman curled her lip as she passed scenes of horrific carnage – Imperials and barbarians who had died in one anothers' arms as they kicked and bit at each other, bodies impaled on a dozen pikes, limbs like lost lambs scattered far from their owners on leashes of spattered blood. Her scorn wasn't for the slain, though – far from it.

This travesty should never have been allowed to happen, and those she held responsible for the failures of command would learn of the anger of the Landskeepers.

Still, she could not turn back time, could not force the sands in the hourglass to reverse their fall. Now she had to be practical, had to consider the present. The barbarians would soon rally from their own encampment and press forwards once more; there would be time to give the good sons and daughters who littered the dirt a right burial after the foe had been defeated.

Right now, it was her duty to retrieve the most precious of those artefacts lost to the embrace of the dead. Grim work, but she could not allow them to fall into the hands of the barbarians' magi, or to be lost to the dirt for good when the Marcher army needed them now more than ever.

The wand was cold in her hand, its red metallic gleam a comfort as the old woman stooped over one carcass, then another, seeking out the faces that she recognised from the weeks before; the noble-hearted valiants who had born enchanted items into battle. Crows bickered and squabbled around her, fluttering back with outraged cries when she wandered too close.

Another kind of vulture stalked the battlefield too. Now and again she saw ragpickers scurrying through the mist, plucking rings from numb fingers and ripping metal buttons from the clothes of dead soldiers. The Landskeeper didn't feel scorn for them – they were just playing their part in the great cycle that would soon break down the signs of the battle that had been here. Better that the desperate and poor of the Empire have a few more coins in their pockets from corpse-thefts than the barbarians just trample it all into oblivion.

Still, they were competition; an enchanted item would be a rare prize for one of the ragpickers. So the Landskeeper hurried her stiff-kneed pace, muttering in satisfaction as she finally came across a blade inlaid with orichalcum, one shattered in three places from some barbarian's cleaver.

As she scooped the pieces up, the old mage tapped ran the redsteel wand down the broken length, and as she spoke the words of the spell the blade shivered and flowed back into wholeness.

Another sight ahead caught her eye; the true prize of her search. The Marchers' banner, half-buried in corpses of the warriors who had laid down their lives to defend it. So deep in the dead was it that the barbarians must have been unable to pull it forth when they fell back, and so one had struck it with a heavy blade and near-broke it in half, the toppled height of the banner attached to the lower by a mere twist of mangled splinters.

This took the Landskeeper longer to save than the blade had. First, she had to put her aged muscles to the task of wrenching the lower part free; that done, she worked her spell across it. The splintered wood cracked and popped as it grew fresh buds across the break; the ragged, blade-torn pennant wove itself back together into a clean whole. And then she had to haul that banner up herself, a banner that would have taken a stout, brave Marcher soldier to carry it into battle.

Just hauling it from that grim wasteland left her gasping and coughing from the effort.

But the Landskeeper had to do this, even if it was just her all alone. No soldier dared return to the field of battle, fearful that the barbarians' next march had already begun.

A hand on her shoulder made the mage halt with sudden wariness; two ragpickers had emerged from the mist and approached her, wiry and lean men of poor health clad in ragged clothes that had clearly seen better days. She felt little fear of them with her soul still a full well of arcane power, but if they had thievery on their mind then it would be a waste of her mana to have to kill them.

Neither man tried to rob her. Instead, they gave respectful nods, their eyes glued to the image of the shattered banner remade with her magic. Even ragpickers had the virtue to see an old woman in need, and the Landskeeper's effort seemed to have rekindled some patriotic fire in their bellies.

And so she marched back to the Imperial camp, a growing tail of former ragpickers in her wake with the banner born aloft in their midst.

At the encampment gate, they laid down the fruits of their scavenging on the ground and asked to join the army.