Soldier's coat

Description

The leather used to make these sturdy pieces of armour is carefully treated with beggar's lye during the tanning process, and repeatedly abraded with a combination of tempest jade, often combined with sand from one of the great imperial rivers before being smoothed and polished with ambergelt resin. Weltsilver wire is used to reinforce and decorate the finished suit, enhancing the ability of a soldier to survive on the battlefield. While providing solid protection by itself, a soldier's coat is often worn with a suit of mail.

In Wintermark this item is called a trollslayer's banquet and commonly takes the form of a hauberk of mithril mail or heavy, dark coloured leather. It takes its name from tales of heroes who enjoyed the hospitality of the trolls, as well as from stories of the great feasts held after the trolls had been defeated.

In the The Brass Coast this armour is called irrepressible scale and is commonly decorated with the rune Zorech or with images of flame. Very rarely suits of irrepressible scale are carved or painted with images of monkeys, and a wearer often tries to emulate the nature of that creature on a battlefield, remaining mobile and playful but engaging with great savagery when they attack.

Rules

• Form: Medium Armour.
• Effect: While wearing this armour, once per day you regain all lost hits when you use the unstoppable skill.
• Materials: Crafting a trollslayer's banquet requires fifteen ingots of weltsilver, eleven ingots of ambergelt, nine ingots of tempest jade and nine measures of beggar's lye. It takes one month to make one of these items.

Gregorio accompanied the armourer through to the back of her workshop, where a small room was sealed by – of all things – an iron door. She gave him a handkerchief to wear over his mouth and nose, to his puzzlement, and donned a headscarf that looked almost Freeborn, leaving only her eyes visible beneath its folds.

“Your armour is finished with tempest jade dust, senhor, and do you know what happens when you breathe in tempest jade dust?” Gregorio shook his head dumbly. “Do you want to?” This time, he shook his head emphatically. She opened the door and shooed him in quickly, shutting it quickly after herself.

It was very beautiful thing indeed. The weltsilver decorations spelled out combinations of protective runes he’d never have considered putting together, and she led him through them, explaining how Hirmok controlled the excesses of Verys (an Urizen idea), and the tension between the drive of Feresh and the restraint of Cavul pushed the wearer to excel without overstepping their bounds. She’d already mentioned the tempest jade, and given it a token final polish with a wooden brush inset with a smooth lump of ambergelt.

In fact, Gregorio started to suspect that she was playing up the expense of making it. They had, after all, only agreed on a rough figure, which was risky. Then he’d found out how high the price of ambergelt was right now, and that would push the price up. Then he’d needed to hurry her up, and that would push the price up further. He suspected she knew what he was buying it for, and even that would push the price up.

Eventually, she got round to her price.

Gregorio winced inwardly, closed his eyes, and thought of the handsome guard-captain he was buying it for. And as with most of the troubles in his life since he’d moved upriver to Temeschwar, that thought soothed him somewhat.