Runesmith's Gavel

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Description

A runesmith's gavel is most often a bar of metal with a hexagonal cross-section, with each face inscribed with runes or symbols of artifice and repair. Invoked by a magician it can mend torn metal and shattered wood as easily as a mazzarine spindle repairs shattered bone and torn tendon.

True magicians tend to learn the spell themselves and seek wands which provide more exotic benefits, leaving the Gavel as something of a magical dabbler's tool. It is most commonly favoured by warriors who know a little magic and want to be able to put their weapons and shields back together in a hurry after encounters with axe-wielding barbarians. Bands of Schlacta may have the occasional member who knows enough magic to make use of a Gavel and they will often find themselves spending their evenings by the campfire putting their comrades' shields back together. Some front-line Warcasters among the Imperial Orcs also supplement their combat abilities with these wands. The demand for mending spells can be great among the Legions, as a means of preserving items of great Worth when mundane repair is no longer enough. Freeborn Corsairs also appreciate this wand as a means of swiftly patching up their ships during storms.

Rules

• Form: Wand.
• Effect: You may cast the mend spell as if you knew it.
• Materials: Crafting a runesmith's gavel requires seven ingots of orichalcum. It takes one month to make one of these items.

You’ve probably heard plenty of stories about the Ninth Winter Incursion, but I’m telling you this so you don’t think everyone was just dying in the mud.

For a start, the mud was frozen solid, so everyone was dying on it, not in it. The only ones that died in it were the smiths, because the forges were running so hot, not even the winter ice could stop the mud from melting.

I know, because I spent time there. I wasn’t a smith, but I do have some of the old magic in me, and I’d served an apprenticeship with Old Molly Summer. Now, Old Molly might have seemed a bit loose between the ears, but her magic was strong, and so was her sense; she made me create a runesmith’s gavel as my journeyman tallymark. She said it was so I’d always have something to barter, if my magic couldn’t get me by. That was Old Molly; mad as a brush but always with a contingency plan.

Anyway, that forge was one of the orc’s priority targets. Not only was there a decent supply of orichalcum and green iron, but the smiths themselves were working full time making armour and weapons to kit out the lads and lasses dying out in the cold.

And I spent much of my time using that wand. Often we’d get weapons back, all ripped apart and shattered, but with some magic still in 'em. Some of those orcs carry big, nasty weapons that will ruin anything they hit. So I’d mend 'em back up with the Gavel, and back out they went.

A few times we got orcs at the door, and that’s when we’d really start dying in the mud. Saw those weapons up close and nasty then, I did. Saw them shatter bills like they’re glass, shields like it’s just so much pottery. If we managed to get a breather, that’s when the gavel came out; I remember thinking seven ingots of Orichalcum was a fortune when I made it, but it paid for itself many times over.

Saved a lot of armour, that Gavel did. Saved a lot of Marchers too.