Dearest Citizens of Sapience,

I was recently with a good friend of mine who is a very
accomplished blacksmith. Those of you who know the labour
of a blacksmith know how repetitous it can be. In fact my
friend once commented that he usually forges in a kind of trance.
As I watched him fill and order for me, the effects of my secret
tea recipe and the monotonous clang of the hammer began to go to
work. In that place, mingling between sleep and wake, is where
I am most creative and I began to see the blacksmithing process as
a metaphor for life.

A man, a leader, takes the impure ore from the ground and he looks
at it and he says to himself, "Im going to make something of this."
With his determined and attentive hammer and with the unforgiving
heat of the flame, he begins to shape the ore. Though the motions of
the hammer seem violent and brutal, they are guided by years of
experience and skill. Unsatiable, untamable, relentless, stupid fire
engulfs the ore, and it begins to bubble and shift. Pure, usable,
valuable metal separates slowly in the heat, under the guidance of the
master, from the dirty, flakey, impure slag. The slag drips from the
metal amd falls through the forge to be immolated. And though the with
each drip, the flame leaps up and sears the smith, he is not daunted,
for he can see the product of his labour now forming before his eyes.
Work, work, work, he is tireless, but the fruit of his effort is
grand and beautiful, powerful. Such beauty and power could not be
crafted without trial of fire, without strength of will, without
learned skill, and slowly the blows of the hammer lighten, and finally
the work is carried from the forge for its final test of birth.
Plunged into the cold, now steaming water, the project goes. If any
flaw still remains in the craft will crack and be ruined. Differences
in thermal expansion coefficients between the impure and the pure
will exert internal stresses upon the product and rend it from the
inside. But if the metal is pure, its reddened glow will be replaced
by a cold blue and it will arise from its baptism a trusted tool. And
it will sing as it is drawn from its scabard and rejoice in the challenge
of opposing metal, because it knows it is strong, it has felt the
exhausting labour of fire and it has felt the strength of its master
through his hammer and it has survived the trial of tempering in the
living water.

A weapon such as this is one to carry by your side, to hold in front
of you as your enemy charges against you. Would you want to look
down at your hip and see Zio or his like there? Or would you like
to see his kind destroyed in the uncompassionate fire of the forge?

The Sight council me,
Your Augur Fetzer

Penned by my hand on the 20th of Chronos, in the year 254 AF.