Creating Some Scenery

Though Angela didn't know exactly what she wanted to create she figured that anything would be better than what she had right now. She remembered back to the gardens around her house. When she was younger her and Charles used to play in the gardens, before Charlotte was born. The gardens were their imaginary world where they fought dragons and evil kings, finishing them off just in time to eat.

Angela had a sudden urge to recreate the garden. She might not be able to completely copy it but she hopes that she can get the nostalgic feeling that she had just enjoyed. The garden had tall hedgerows and small dainty trees that look like paintbrushes. The ground was covered in grass with a gravel path down the middle.

Opening up the floral record, Angela began to plan out what plants she would use. For the hedgerows the closest she could find was a waist high shrub that physically bonded to nearby plants of the same species, the behaviour was fascinating to Angela as it wasn't common to find a plant that co-operated with other members of its species. Angela had already planted the spirit fruit trees but there was no harm in having some variety and while browsing through the trees she came across an odd one that she quite liked. It was a quirky little tree with a rich purple tint to its leaves and branches that shot straight up like a pinecone.

Angela went through her daily washing before peeking under her bandages, relieved when she saw that it was back to normal. This meant that Angela could restart her work on runes but as she had started planning the garden she might as well continue.

Thus her daily schedual continues: wake up, clean, garden, visit Lenara, test her runes. After a few days Angela has about 100 bricks as well as a second kiln up and running and she decides that it is about time to start working on her furnace.

The schematics for the furnace show a square structure with two holes, one for the input and one for the bellows. It also tapers to a pointed chimney at the top that releases the smoke and stops the build-up of non-flammable gasses.

With a convoy of brick carrying drones in tow, Angela heads out of the hive and stops about 100m away, declaring the current spot to be "just right". The drones begin to work in an orderly fashion, slathering bricks in a sand+clay+water mixture similar to cement before placing them according to the plan. Angela stands and watches, occasionally stepping in here and there to fix a mistake, all the while thinking how nice it is to have such an efficient workforce.

Soon the drones had constructed a knee high square wall but, as was inevitable, they run out of bricks and are forced to stop. The progress was incredible though, constructing roughly 30% of the forge in just over 2 hours; a task that would take a human work force twice as long.

This process is repeated again in a few days and the furnace is just about complete. In a flash of brilliance, Angela has an idea and quickly makes a couple modifications, building a fired clay casting channel that leads out of the furnace. This will allow the smelted metal to be channeled into a mold.

Another cool modification that she had made to the furnace was to engrave the 'blast runes' onto the bricks themselves, this meant that she could charge the runes from the outside of the furnace rather than having to take the rune out every time.

With the furnace complete Angela's plans take another step forward, she would just have to create a mold for an anvil and she would be able to actually start working on armaments, though she still hasn't figured out the rune combination that would give her the effects the quill has.

Molds are fairly easy to make in the blueprint editor as it was mostly just a clay block that is hollowed out in the desired shape and then mirrored with a small hole to input the metal. After the metal cools and hardens the mold can be cracked open to reveal the finished product.

With the furnace built, Angela remembers that she hadn't checked the quest menu in a while and since he had a quest for building the anima pool it wouldnt be too far fetched to have one for the furnace.

Sure enough there was a completed quest:

Construct a furnace 1/1, reward: blacksmithing tools unlock, apprentice blacksmithing book

Angela completes the quest and opens up the tool menu to see a plethora of new options: hammers, tongs, mallets and chisels. She purchases one of each and soon has a small mountain of tools at her feet, though she has no idea what to do with them.

As she had no idea how to forge not to mention smelt, angela decides that it would be prudent to read her new book before starting anything and so she heads back to her shack (though hopefully she will be able to move out soon) and begins to read.