Account of the Reborn Bow.

[Osvald Hale]

Osvald eats his breakfast and departs the inn with Kellar, the two exchange a curt nod and head to in their respective ways.

The sound of Osvald's boots on the cobbles echo down the almost vacant streets. As dawn breaks into day, city folk filter out into the lane ways and merchants set their wares upon their stalls.
He works his way to the harbour, and boards the Trois Pistoles. He scours belowdecks for Ara, but finds the boy is still sleeping. Deciding against waking him, the ranger walks away silently to the compartment containing his borrowed bunk.

He removes his kit and lays out his weapons and other items, unbuckling his armour and stretching for a long moment in shirt and pants. It was good to be out of his gear--he'd been dressed for battle or flight since they'd arrived in Baldurs Gate. He felt exceptionally light on his feet. Despite all his injuries and ailments, the ranger had to admit he'd been growing stronger since fate had joined him with this lot.
The drive of justice and adventure was giving him strength... or perhaps it was just living with a purpose?

Shaking his head to clear his mind and return to the task at hand, Osvald then gathers up his things, in his cloak and heads to the deck. He filches a bar of soap from the ships meagre galley, and returns to the deck with rag and bucket to clean the grime from his armor.

The work is grim and his thoughts drift irrevocably back to Shorjahl and the tower. He does his best to focus his grief to fortify his resolve, but the ranger misses his friend.

The sun climbs in the sky.

Satisfied with his work, Osvald dumps the bucket of water--black with dirt--over board, and returns below deck to don his armour. He wipes down his blades and sheathes them, before finally fastening his cloak with his silver pin. Dressed near enough to a civilized man as he can muster, the ranger heads back into Baldurs Gate to do his loathsome task.

...

He traces the partys old path down the waterfront to the small shop of the Artificer Thrirnan. He knocks once, but greeted with only silence he takes a deep breath and open the low door to enter, to find it suddenly stop before him, an exasperated dwarven woman's voice calls out from within.

Thrirnan scolds; "What, ye can't wait 5 minutes for an old woman to answer her door!? What in all the nine hel--" She stops when she see's Osvald. "Oh--Oh, you! Shorjahls friend the ranger. Aye, apologies, it's early and I wasn't expecting anyone, please come in, come in."

Osvald ducks through the threshold, his frame ungainly in the small entry way. "Good day," He starts "I've co--"

Before he can finish, the whine of a kettle starts in a back room, and Thrinan hurries to quiet it, insisting all the while that Osvald must have a cup.

He begins a weak protest but decides against it... Sighing the ranger makes his way through the Artificers workshop, baubles and devices of innumerable fashion and purpose line the shelves, stacked one atop another amidst piles of dusty books and strange, fine tools.

Osvald rounds a corner when suddenly a clockwork owl spreads it's layered wings of overlapping copper sheets and bleats a high pitched hoot at him. The ranger curses... and removes his hand from the hilt of his dagger.

"Ah, never mind that old relic, it's harmless." Says Thrirnan, appearing from an alcove with two mugs of tea. Osvald accepts one, though it is almost comically tiny in his hands. Thrirnan clears a seat for him near her large workbench, shuffling away scrolls and work orders. He sits, knees forced together awkwardly by the diminutive seat, and finishes his tea in two gulps.

Thirnan settles into her own seat at the centre of her workbench, and swivels it around to face Osvald. "Now, tell me--the book; what of the book? and Shorjahl?"

Osvald sighs and quietly recounts the tale of the battle at the tower, the journey south, and Shorjahls sacrifice. He leaves out most details, and does his best to paint Shorjahl in the heroic light that he deserves.

With his tale complete the two sit quietly together for a time, only muffled clockwork chimes breaking the intense silence.

Eventually, Thrirnan looks to Osvald. Tears at the edge of her eyes.

"Shorjahl... He... That boy... He was a fine man. He had his share of trouble in the past no doubt, but... but he was always a good man. Always willing to help. There... there are a few others in town who knew him. I'll be sure to tell them of his passing... Thank you for coming here today. Thank you." She smiles a sad smile.

Osvald sighs, and bows his head slightly. He then asks Thrirnan about the pink fungus, and the Urn of the Flamelord.

(Ao?)

After they talk Osvald stands and thanks her, but as he turns to leave her shop, Thrirnan stops him; "Ranger, your bow. Let me see it."

"Uh..." He pauses awkwardly before unslinging it from his shoulder. "Here?" It felt unnaturally handing his bow away, he grew instantly tense.

The artificer swivelled her chair back around, snapping her fingers a silver candelabra on the desk illuminated with a flush of light. She grabs a bizarre looking headset with a series of lenses and straps it over her head, swinging a series of lenses in front of her eyes and peering closely at the bow. She immediately clicked her teeth disapprovingly.

"There's more blood worked into this then there is wood. ...This isn't all yours I pray?"

Osvald chuckled sheepishly, "Well, my brothers used to joke that bow has enough of our families blood in it, that it's practically a Hale itself."

Thrinan swivelled back around. "Hale, you say?" He eyes comically magnified by the headset.

"Ah... Yes? I'm Osvald Hale..."

"Hale... Hale... Hmm. Never heard of them." Before swinging the stool back around. Osvald frowns grumbly. She turns the bow end over end and examines the full length for a moment before sighing herself, and continuing on;

"Well, Mr. Hale, I can't improve upon your proclivity for injury... but I may be able to improve upon this old relic for you."

Osvald begins a protest before she silences him with a raised hand. "Now now, I won't hear it. A good man, a good friend of mine died saving you and yours. I'd rather see you better equipped to deal with the dangers of this world before they snatch any more good people from us. There are few enough in the world as is."

"Madam Thrirnan, That is most gracious, but I can't accept such a gift."

"Now, now, it is no gift. There will be a cost. I shall enchant this for you with no charge for my labour--for the favour you paid me with your vist today--But the materials... They are rare, and hard to come by. I've already promised some of the components to another client. The fee I charge you will go to them, in addition to their deposit to buy myself out of the artifice contract I've drawn with them. Fair?"

Osvald was thought he was following, but nodded in agreement nonetheless.

"Good, now take a seat and be quiet. This will only take a few minutes, but it is a delicate process." The dwarf became a whir of motion as she cleared her workbench and began fetching all manner of small pots and tools, and a number of small bottles with indecipherable markings from a locked shelf above her desk.

First she set to work on the bow itself, dipping a small velvet square into a metal flask, she liberally applied a glossy oil to it's surface. Then with a derives of small chisels she set to carving into the limbs--Osvald almost cried out, the bow was a beloved relic of his family and he was horrified to see it defaced, but he stopped himself, barely.

When finished she took a rag of cotton and wiped the bow down again. To the rangers surprise; generations of laquer, grime, and grit wiped away with the oil, leaving the bow pristine, white wood. It was almost radiant, and looked as it it had been cut from the heartwood this very morning. Osvald was agasp.

"Better, no? Just wait." Said Thrirnan with a slight chuckle as she filled a small fire-blackened clay pot with what looked like scales of burnished bronze, a few beads of lead colored metal, and other ingredients of compositions unknown to Osvald...

She then set to laying out another small clay dish, filling it with a yellow powder. Over that she set a curious metal frame. "Now ranger, Shield your eyes." She took a pinch of chalky purple powder and dashed it into the dish. When the powders touched, they ignited with a WHOOSH and a small jet of baleful blue flame erupted up from the dish, filling the room with an eerie light. Thrinan set the blackened pot into the metal frame over the flame and soon the metallic contents began to bubble.

With a too-large set of tongs for he tiny arms, Thrirnan masterfully clasped the clay pot, and with decades of skill, poured the contents into the carvings she'd made earlier. They dripped from the dish as a silky, smooth thread of molten heat, enchanting to look upon. Miraculously, the super heated contents did not consume the bow in flames, but flowed into and among the wood itself, embedding it's essence within the bow entirely, and consummately.

As Thrirnan finished the blue flame guttered out, and she set the tongs aside. Finally, she unscrewed the cap of a badly dinged and worn metal canteen, and poured a few drops of its contents onto a second square of cloth. This she spread onto the bow, almost lovingly, whispering words in what may have been dwarfish--Osvald couldn't be sure.

Finished Thrinan swivelled her stool around and presented the bow to Osvald with pride. He felt... drawn to it...

The ranger extended a trembling hand towards his prize: The wood was dark, almost black, but deeper somehow... Like an ebony-wood skin carved around a heart of wet obsidian. The metal had flowed along the grains of the wood, thin lines of bronze-silver running it's length in the natural, beautiful pattern of the grain, amplified by arcane process. He took it from her. It was light--impossibly light. Turning the bow in his hands he saw the hair-fine grain tracing tendrils of arcane metal converge into inlaid pools that filled where she had carved the runes. He could not read them, but managed to take his eye from the bow and look to the Artificer, wordless with awe.

"I've worked some special enchantments into that for you. You can feel, it's lighter now. I doubt it weighs more then a pound--but be careful, it will sink like a stone in water. The pull has been lessened now, you'll gain much more power from a lighter draw--and It will not break. Nothing short of dropping a castle on it will mar it's surface, so you can use it to block a few of those impending sword thrusts, hmm?" She says with a wink.

"But--but!" She continued. "My favourite part--and I was right about this bow being a relic--my favourite part was already lying deep in the bow itself; in an old enchantment long since run dry that I've managed to... reawaken. One tied into your blood, the blood of your kin in the bow itself. Long ago, this bow was tied to a member of your family, a direct ancestor. Not in quite the blood-tie sense you mentioned, but it was enchanted, bound to them. I've used what blood of yours that stained the bow itself to repower a form of that enchantment. You feel that... pull... towards it? Well, You're tied together now, in a fashion. You'll always know where it is, no matter the distance. So no excuses for losing it, hmm?"

Osvald was at a total loss for words, but thanked Thrinan to the best of his ability, and paid her the due for the materials used.

Stepping outside, back into the light, he again admired the beauty of her work. Silver-brass on wet-black. He would need a name for it. "Bow" would not suffice. He would have to ask the others... Custer in particular had a clever tongue for names. Moving on, he slung the bow over his back, and was startled to feel a sensation like a compass swinging round from north to south in his head. He took it back forward into his hand and felt the compass swing north again.

'That will take some getting used to.' He thought, smiling with delight, before merging into the now bustling crowd and heading to rejoin his friends.

As he leaves, a young smiths apprentice enters Thrinans breathlessly, barely hoisting an unusually large lance...

=====

Long one, thanks if you guys bothered to read this far!

Shot a question for her about the fungus and the urn, DM me if she has an insight, or whatever.

Ao, based on our talk I've done the following:

+2 Longbow, unnaturally strong and light, but it's normal weight (or perhaps even heavier???) in water. Also, Osvald alone has a sense of the location of the bow at all times, nothing too fancy beyond that.
Thought that seemed like a fun way to add some character, and maybe a good avenue for some potential RP stuff.
If it's too much, say the word and I'll scale it back. Cheers.