Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

Once again, Princess Kristie had little problem stripping down to underclothes/swimwear and diving for loot, taking it all right in line, showing matchless hips and legs along with Nothing to See Here with a complete lack of shame.

There was a lot of salvage, but the intact magical stuff was severely lacking. The Cloudrider Allegiance had been one of the first large Allegiances, which also meant one of the first to give up the grind and back down to more casual activities, leaving the relentless hack and slash of the lifestyle to younger adventurers and newer Allegiances who’d risen to replace them in influence.

They’d barely done enough to hold onto their Mansion, the Mick informed me as I scanned for stuff down there, and he joined Kris down below with Water Breathing active to move stuff out of the way so it could be Sifted and gathered up top.

There was a decent amount of the stuff, heaping up several Disks, the Allegiance having put in a supply for all the members that they regularly dumped into and drew from, a common occurrence from what The Mick related. The explosion and expulsion had combined to scatter the contents all over a corner of the space, fairly localized, but any true treasures were likely to be dispersed all over the place on wall hangings as trophies, so the entire place had to be scanned.

It was hard, wet work, with the scouts up top keeping watch in case something happened, and I sent up the Disks to them as they filled up, just to keep them out of the way.

---

Grumbling slightly, the Mick grabbed a Disk and heaved himself dripping up out of the water with one hand, making it look fairly effortless… but not as effortless as Kris simply rising up out of the water on Vajra and lightfoot to stand there, the water draining right down her and leaving her completely clean instantly.

She was holding up a long dagger in one hand that hadn’t been there going down, with two others like it in her off hand. They’d been slathered in oil or something, and so hadn’t rusted or decayed.

“These don’t seem to be magical, but someone went through a lot of care to preserve them,” she said, holding the single one up. “Take a look at this.” She made to toss it to me.

“DON’T TOUCH IT!” the Mick shouted, all wide-eyed, just as Kris fobbed it to me.

I twisted and juked, but Kris was faster, her hand whipping out snake-quick to nab the dagger she’d just tossed before it could land in my lap, barely.

Both of us froze for a second, then turned to stare at the Mick.

He, of course, was staring at the dagger she had just caught, and breathing a sigh of relief while glancing at her other hand. “Highness, if you’d kindly make sure that none o’ us who use magic touch those things.” He reached over to his undershirt laying on another Disk with his Armor and Weapons, and handed it to her without blinking an eye.

Kris gave him an assessing look, before calmly taking his shirt and carefully bundling up all three daggers in it. She wrapped them up securely, and I even Presti’d up a simple cord for her to tie around them securely.

“Damnation, the things we stumble across in the places like this,” he murmured, giving the bundle an odd look while shaking his head. “I didn’t think any o’ those existed anymore.”

Kris hefted the bundle warily. “There’s no magic on this that I can sense at all, which means no Curses or the like. Why the alarm?” she asked directly.

“Those are Gertarh’s Daggers.” Our utter lack of comprehension could not have been unexpected. “They were made, or acquired, by a banderling trader, the only one o’ his kind we ever met with a fixed location. No Isparian was ever able to duplicate ‘em.

“Lass, can ye Assay them through the bundle?”

I just lifted an eyebrow, and Cast the spell.

Gertarh’s Dagger, right enough. Weight, Value, Speed Factor, Damage, Threat Range…

“Wait, what?”

The Mick’s hard smile held a hint of relief. “Aye, that’s about the right of it. Are they still as nasty as they were back then?”

I flicked up the Holo of the Assay. It wasn’t all that important, especially the throwing range, and they weren’t magical, or technically even Masterwork. Except for...

Damage: 7-8

Kris blinked at it. Blinked again to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. “Are you serious?” she murmured in disbelief.

The Mick sat back and sighed as he stared at it. “No bonuses t’ hit. No bonuses t’ damage. No spells on. Just the absolutely tightest damage variance we ever encountered. Even Atlan Staves didn’t compare.”

“Which is another question-?” Kris queried.

“Damage 9-12 on those.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, looked at him. “Okay, different systems. What were the best axes and swords, then?”

“Axes and Swords, 8-16. Single-handers, mind ye. Tachis, takubas, an’ broadswords, the heaviest ones the smiths made back then. Eventually they made stronger and stronger weapons, somehow taking the damage up higher and higher… but all that seems to have dissipated and gone now, and we’re back to what were not even starting weapons before the Fall.”

“Those are Isparian damage ranges. A reaction to the high magic environment?” Kris theorized. “The ridiculous amounts of Health that creatures have here would have necessitated more powerful Weapons to keep the balance. What did powerful Weapons range up to?” she asked, hefting the bundle of daggers.

“Powerful Axes ranged up to 73, 74, top-end, without magic?” he replied, thinking back. “Swords were 70 or so. But they all had wide variance, with Staves being the tightest, with a top-end o’ 68 or so, as I recall.”

I shared a glance at Kris, who looked entirely bemused at that number. “Such Weapons could slaughter with a flick of the wrist,” she said thoughtfully.

“Aye, but ye couldn’t even wield them if yer skill wasn’t high enough, so there was obviously some magic involved, mayhap some arcane version o’ Profound Weapons that be no longer working on the Weapons themselves.” The Mick shrugged. “Ye could pick them up off the ground when they dropped as Summons loot, but try to put one in hand? If ye weren’t one of the best Melee specialists in that weapon about, it weren’t happening.”

“That’s… totally possible?” Kris slowly nodded. “The way pyreal was reacting to the magic going through those Atlan Weapons is very similar. Seven Profound advances plus Heavy… it’s not that far off a damage range like that. Having the skill to modulate and overcome that kind of magic would take tremendous skill, and is probably why you learned Profound Weapon so easily, Lord Mick.”

“Aye, the feeling be familiar, if not so aggressive… an’ it comes from me, now, not the Weapon,” he agreed, more than a little satisfaction in his voice. His effective Item magic Caster Level at Twenty had increased the power of his blows with Bunita to something far more acceptable to him!

“I could see why a tight damage range would be so dangerous. These daggers are basically as lethal as your average broadsword, if not more. With the way Blooddrinker works to enhance damage, keeping that tight variance as your Weapon improves would be very dangerous,” Kris mused, considering the point.

“Ye’ve the right of it. Nobody knows exactly what happened, but one day Gertarh ended up dead, an’ suddenly the Green Huntsman, Oswald the Assassin, became famous fer being able t’ absolutely kill things right through Asheron’s Protection. Too, the Daggers started disappearing, falling apart at the touch of those who used an’ swore by ‘em, an’ soon enough, they were almost impossible to find or see.” He gestured at the bundle in her arms. “Trust the Cloudriders to have some squirreled away, and likely mostly forgot about them as better Daggers did indeed come around in time.”

“You’re thinking that anyone wielding them who has magic makes them decay?” she asked, carefully setting them on top of a Disk heaped with beads and nuggets of fine steel.

“That be the only theory that held any teeth to it, an’ o’ course, the WHY it were suddenly so bamboozled everyone.”

“Someone watching decided it was boring, and got rid of them.” I rolled my eyes at the sky, and the Mick sighed and slowly nodded.

“They weren’t stolen. They weren’t misplaced. It were suddenly they weren’t in pack or sheath or chest, or whatnot. Some people would go ta check on ‘em, handle ‘em an’ look ‘em over, they’d be fine, an’ they would go back the next day an’ they’d be gone.

“Some didn’t touch them at all, an’ they seemed to endure… unless they started showing them off to others, word spread, an’ soon their little stash evaporated like a dream, too.”

“So, you want me to see if I can replicate them?” Kris asked, one hand on the bundle, tapping it with a black-nailed thumb slowly.

“Granite Infusions, if ye remember me talking about them.” We both nodded. “It made no sense from a real standpoint, sure enough, but alchemically, nobody contested it. Granite tightened up the damage variance of a weapon. Spend enough o’ it, an’ ye could get a damage variance like a Gertarh’s. We never were able t’ Imbue or Infuse a Gertarh’s, so belike it were already Infused?...” he trailed off.

“So, the banderlings discovered how to do that before you did, or perhaps these daggers led to that?” Kris ventured into the silence. “There is indeed something going on with the crystalline patterns of the metal itself, how its laying and layered, something like folded steel, but more faceted than wootz or traditional tachi butterfly steel methods. You can’t do something like that with a hammer, flame, and anvil, although a Shaping Hammer could attempt something similar.”

“So… it’s a magical spell?” I smiled slightly.

Kris inclined her head. “Or an Artificer Infusion. Perhaps with those very chips of granite as the material component?”

We all glanced at one of the Disks there, a section of its stone dividers heaped up with sharp-edged flecks of granite stone I’d brought up off the ground after Kris and the Mick had cleared off obstructions to doing so.

“An addition to the Crafter’s Pentad would be quite a coup,” I said, “even if it’s purely Weapon-based.”

“Crafter’s Pentad, now?” the Mick immediately asked eagerly.

I held up my left hand, splaying my fingers out, Zeks gleaming there. “A set of five spells, one per Valence, in the Matrix system. Some would say there’s six, or seven, but the five are the base of it.

“Rune. It ties you to an item of craft with blood, and is the start of Naming Karma, as I showed you.” He pursed his lips at the thought of the custom sigil now on Bunita. “Some would say Edge, allowing you to preternaturally sharpen a blade in an instant, is one of them, but it’s temporary, and more a buff.

“Reed, which immensely increases the flexibility and ductility of an object, without affecting hardness. Something which is incredibly hard but brittle suddenly becomes incredibly hard and malleable. For instance, Quaver there could easily be bent into a half-circle and snap right back to true without any issues… but you’d still have to be a Jotun to be able to do that.”

“Hard AND flexible? That be like why steel exists at all!” the Mick blurted out. Iron had the problem of being one or the other, not both!

“Yes. The third is Stone, sometimes called Dwarfcraft. It doubles the amount of damage a thing can take, once the damage gets past how Hard the item is in the first place. Items of Stone take a long time to destroy, resist weathering, and just last a long, long time.”