Editor’s Note:

  Andrew of Longthorn, better known as Andrew the Chronicler, had a brother who made the mistake of not taking a combat class. The brother, whose name has been lost to time, is known to have left behind three children and a widow, whom Andrew the Chronicler provided for until the children came of age. The influence of this is visible in Andrew’s rendition of The Legendary Smith.

  ***

  Author’s Note:

  All know the Legend of the Smith who Saved the Kingdom, which, while an important part of the history of Asufal (and indeed, all humanity), the legend itself has had a pernicious and lasting impact on the youth of our country. While the perils of taking two non-combat classes are known intellectually, being taught to all children from a young age, the romantic legend of The Smith inspires a small, but simultaneously all too large, portion of youth to ignore the wisdom of their elders, which leads to much suffering in their short lives. All know, or know of, at least one person who has defied the meta of the world and met a terrible end, but the passions of youth, once stirred by the legend of The Smith as commonly told by the bards and storytellers, lead many astray.

  There is no reason for such as situation to be allowed to persist. It is my hope, that by faithfully retelling the story of The Smith, including the portions of his life that are commonly glossed over by the bards, and therefore known primarily to historical scholars and not many else, to a wider audience, that youth about to choose their second class might pause and take heed of the wisdom of their elders, and thus avoid a tragic and altogether easily avoided end.

  ***

  The Legend of the Meta-Defying Smith Who Saved the Kingdom

  Before The Smith was The Smith, or even a smith, he was a boy in the village of Roric, the second youngest of five. James, as he was known then, was a precocious boy, quick in his studies, and thus often bored with the simple life in a village.

  “I’m going to Jared’s!” he shouted as he ran out the door of the small wood and stone house where he lived with his parents and sister. Without waiting for a response, he ran down the path to the village road and made his way to the village smith’s forge. The wind ruffled his sandy blonde hair as his bare feet pounded the packed dirt of the road, not yet warm from the weak morning sun.

  On one side of the road there were lines of houses separated by simple low fences and surrounded by herb gardens, while on the other side of the road stretched out fields of wheat bounded by shallow ditches denoting property lines. Beyond the fields was the river, which curved around closer to the village by the lord’s manor before continuing on its way James didn’t know where. On the other side of the river was the forest where hunters and herbalists would hunt and forage, providing the village with an irregular supply of meat, hides, alchemical ingredients, and the occasional magic crystal.

  James ran through the village square, past the soldiers’ barracks (typically empty) and the village’s few shops and lone tavern before stopping outside the largest shop of them all: the village’s forge. James had been visiting the village smith often over the last few weeks as he approached his fifteenth birthday. He had also visited the hunters and herbalists and farmers, and even spoken with a passing adventurer party who had passed through, but his interest was mainly in the smith and the forge.

  James fancied that the metal spoke to him, although if he was honest he couldn’t actually hear anything. He did however love smithing, seeing a chunk of raw ore smelted down into a valuable (although practically useless) metal ingot, and then that ingot heated and beaten into a useful shape, every smashing hammer strike and tender tap giving the raw metal a form and a function, becoming a valuable and useful tool to aid a person in their labors. So far he’d seen Jared forge farming implements: hoes and trowels and shovels and rakes, but today Jared would be forging a sword. James wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

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  He walked around the side of the shop towards the forge in the back, seeing smoke billow up from the chimney. Jared, a great big bear of a man, had yet to put on his smithing apron and was bent over, feeding wood into the forge as the fire grew. Without looking up, he ordered James.

  “Go fetch water from the river, I’ll need two barrels full.”

  “Okay” replied James, impressed that Jared had known he was there without seeing or apparently hearing him approach. Most adults could tell such things although he hadn’t yet figured out the trick. He grabbed two buckets by the handles and jogged down to the river. Carrying two buckets at a time would improve his strength, necessary for a smith, and while he might also train his speed by running with one bucket, smiths didn’t need speed much. James had by this point decided that his first class would Smith, although he hadn’t yet told anyone.

  Back and forth for the next hour James jogged to the river and walked back with water, until both large barrels in the forge were full of fresh cold river water. Jared had shown him previously the best place to collect the water, to avoid mud and silt and mana from lesser undines that would all spoil the quenching process. James took his word on the undine mana; being as yet classless and not particularly mana sensitive, he couldn’t tell if there was mana in the water or not. Once he poured the last bucketfuls in the barrel, Jared peered into the barrels and nodded. “Good, this’ll do nicely.”

  Next he looked down at James and folded his arms. “And ye know what I’m working on today, don’t ye?”

  James nodded, “You’re making a sword today!”

  Jared nodded too. “Aye, a sword, and not just a sword, it’ll be an enchanted sword for the lord’s son, so it’s quite a bit more involved than forging a normal sword.”

  James listened with wide eyes as Jared explained the difference between forging a normal sword and a sword to be enchanted. A normal sword usually just needed to be balanced properly and was otherwise rather simple to produce, but a sword to be enchanted required very detailed work, the material and precise dimensions and even etching all required to be exactly as ordered to support the enchanting process.

  “What kind of enchantment will it be? Fire? A fire sword?!” James asked eyes shining.

  Jared snorted. “Heh, no, fire’s a terrible enchantment for a sword. Few monsters are weak to fire most armies are warded against fire as a matter of course. No, this’ll be a wind enchantment, I can tell. It’ll lighten the sword and let the wielder get in more hits faster, good for taking out lots of weaker monsters quickly or against slower swordsmen.”

  James looked at the plans already hung up on the wall of the forge for easy reference. “It doesn’t say what kind of enchantment it’ll be on the plans though.”

  “Aye, of course not, be a foolish thing to let everyone know exactly what your weapon’s enchanted with. I can tell because I’ve worked on swords for enchanters before and seen some of the finished pieces.”

  Jared looked to the forge, waves of heat roiling out into the rest of the workspace. “Alright, enough chitchat, you sit over there and don’t talk while I’m working.”

  James moved to the corner with a view of the forge, anvil, and workbench. Jared, throwing on his apron and gloves, used large tongs to move a medium sized ingot of white iron into the forge. Then, working the bellows, he brought the forge up to temperature, hot enough to make the ingot glow a dull red, then orange, and then almost orange white before he pulled it out to the anvil. SMASH. SMASH. SMASH. Ear-shattering crashes of iron striking iron filled the air as the ingot changed from a block of metal to a long strip, more details slowly emerging as the hammer beat the metal into shape.

  James sweltered in the heat of the forge, eyes peeled to not miss a single swing of the hammer and hands over his ears to protect his hearing as the sun rose high in the sky, crested, and started sinking towards the western horizon. As it approached the peaks of the western mountains Jared put away his smallest hammer, having switched several times throughout the day as the work grew more detailed, and finally he worked tiny chisels and files to etch patterns into the blade. First one side, then the other, as sun set behind the mountains. As the daylight dimmed the light of the forge kept the workspace illuminated in red. James wanted to get up and look closer but remained seated, knowing that if he interrupted Jared he’d be kicked out of the forge immediately, no second chances. He’d seen other boys about to unlock their classes ask questions at the wrong time and be immediately banned from the forge, and he wasn’t about to risk it so close to his choosing day.

  The sky was almost totally dark when Jared finished the blade, having put a simple edge on both sides of the blade, not completely sharpened, and the blade still without a hilt. Jared sat heavily on a stool and leaned back on the workbench.

  “Okay, ask away” Jared said wearily, knowing that the young boy had been biting his tongue all day. James asked questions about the hammers the blacksmith had used, about the files and chisels, about the quenching and why he needed two barrels, about the iron he’d used, and so on.

  “And how does the enchanting work?”

  “Ahh, that I don’t know. I just follow the plans the enchanter sent me and he’ll do the rest. I just forge the blade, they said to leave the hilt off.”

  James bit his lip and looked down. “Uh, Jared, my choosing day is coming up…”

  “Aye, and you want to be a smith do ye?”

  James looked up, shocked. “How did you know?”