Ch40 - The craftsman

[Unending bag of inks -

Bestial inks - Giant wolf spider, Giant spider, Wyvern, Kobold and undead ooze.

Detection ink - Dragons, Oozes, Monstrosities.

Unique - Talon's scripture.]

With the bag made I spent the day getting my business set up and official, they wanted proof of production and evidence of being able to fund my own company. However, none of it was an issue for me as production is free and efficient.

Pricing each bottle was simple as I looked at the market rates and created competing prices for my own. With all the certification needed, I walked over to the tattoo parlour. A spinning blue and white cylinder was hanging off the frontside of the gothic black building. A large designed window displayed the name as 'Ngozi's inks', I walked through the door and looked inside. For once, the room did not expand massively upon entry, instead there was just the reception and a few people laying down getting tattooed.

Walking over the creaky dark wood flooring, I walked to the Yuan-ti on reception. She was tall, lithe and heavily tattooed and pierced with a dash of eyeliner. "Hi I've just started an ink production business, if possible, could I meet a manager or even the owner?"

"Hmm, sure one sec" She stood up and stretched, leaning side to side. After that she turned around and shouted, "Hey Dumisa! There's a business guy here for you! It's not about taxes so come out!" Ignoring the comment at the end there, I waited patiently for Dumisa to come.

A minute passed and a tall black man walked out of an office, "Who is it? I told the monks I have paid already, they're getting ridiculous." He wore a simple white button up and black trousers and had a noticeable accent, though I couldn't say where from.

"Hi I'm Charles, I own Nomad's ink. I was wondering if you have anytime where we can discuss a potential partnership between our companies?" I hold out my hand and he shakes it.

"A pleasure to meet you Charles, I'm Dumisa, new owner of Ngozi's inks. I have some time now if that works for you?" He gestured towards his office with his left hand as he shook with his right.

I agreed and we sat down in his office, I begun to speak once we were both settled in. "So to business, Nomad's ink can offer you a large discount on all goods purchased from them. However, until other circumstances occur, you can only buy Nomad's ink choices instead of others. To elaborate, if a competitor has an ink we do not have, you can buy that."

"So aside from the discount, what else does your company offer us? We have good ties with the keep's inkmasters, why should we distance ourselves from that for you?" He responded, leaning on his desk.

In response, I pulled out an example of each of my inks. "I can offer you a reliable source of these specific inks with no drawbacks, I can handle the transportation fees myself. Not only this, but I developed a new ink myself, access to this can only be gained through me and only me. If you want any more kinds of inks, you can request it from me, but I may take my time in developing it."

"How do I know this is a reliable source? And what is the production method you use?" Dumisa asked, clearly curious about the company by now.

I pulled out my unending bag, "I created this bag myself, from it I can pull infinite copies of the inks before you. Which is why I can afford to sell them to you at a discount as well. Transport is not an issue as I have methods to travel uninhibited between points, whenever you need to purchase more ink, you can contact me through this ring." I push across another [Iron token] so he can communicate should he take the deal.

We talked business for about another 20 minutes, he then accepted the deal. We wrote up a contract and signed it, he immediately purchased a bulk buy of 50 of each detect inks, then 100 bestial wyvern inks and 10 Talon's scriptures. I made an immediate profit of 80,000p, which is roughly 40,000g.

[Pricing

Detect inks - 400p

Bestial inks - 100p

Unique inks - 1000p]

With the deal finished, I went to the markets once again. Still bustling with people, everyone was shouting prices and random magic names, unfortunately for me, it was full of crap. I need bags of holding, not 'hole immune cheese', so I walked further into the east end of the city, the streets were clearer but the shops became more refined and had their own buildings.

Maggy's Laces had a cursive sign and a pristine white interior, just across the path from that was Dennis' bakery, I smiled and waved at him as I saw him through the window. Unsurprisingly, Erilys' bakery was shut down and had yellow tape over it.

My shopping trip ended with me buying 100 balls of wool, basic hardware tools, 300kg of scrap metal, a port-a-forge and 4 bags of holding. It was a costly trip, exactly 14,370p spent, most of it was on the bags of holding as well.

The plan was for an unending bag of wool, then I can create just about anything with it, so long as I follow that guidebook on knitting correctly. An unending bag of scrap metal can help me with anything, the pieces can be flung at enemies and I can shape them in the port-a-forge.

The skies were beginning to darken now, but once again, the night would not be over for me.

****

In the night I created a few different items, whether for my own enjoyment or not didn't matter since they were all useful in one way or another.

[Unending bag of Wool -

Wools - blue]

[Unending bag of Scrap -

Scrap metal - Iron, Steel, Copper, Aluminium, Tin, Zinc, Nickel and Lead]

[Toxic notebook -

A ritual infused book. A great book for ideas and notes, unfortunately useless to all but the owner.

Library book - Grants the book infinite pages and self-organisation.

Self-writing quill - Will automatically update depending on the owner's will.

20oz Talon's scripture - The content will be written in this ink.

Stillmaker - Readers not granted permission have to succeed a DC16 wisdom saving throw or be placed under 'Hold Person'.

Illuminator's tattoo emblem - Writing will only be visible to the owner, unless bypassed.

Features: A floating hide bound book. Self-updates based on previous command of the owner. Capable of writing even when closed or in storage spaces.]

This one was partly to get rid of some stuff and partly because I want a notebook. It will help when I start writing my autobiographies, then I can just copy it down as I see it.

[Fey puppet (Small) - 150hp

Ritual infused metallic doll. A dark creation made as a rookie's attempt at an automaton.

6 pixie corpses - The automaton can fly and is summoned and dismissed by the accompanying bell.

1 Broken Moonlantern - Allow the eyes to glow.

6 Aberration Form eyes - Within the eye glow, slowing ray is in play, opponents must succeed a DC16 dexterity check to succeed.

Features: Being made of a mix of metals gives it immunity to poison, necrotic and psychic damage. However it is vulnerable to thunder and acid damage. It has been equipped with a large kitchen knife.]

In my late-night madness, I got an irresistible urge to create a personal favourite horror character of mine, Chucky. I haven't painted it yet, but I have knitted the overalls it's known to wear. Just to make sure I didn't annoy the neighbours, I used 'Silence' to keep any loud forging noises to a nil.

I turned him back into a bell and organised everything away into my bags or on my waist. It was still only 10pm, so I'll bide my time learning about ways to counteract hellfire in the halls of wisdom. The flight over there felt off, there was a subtle fog that lay over the city streets, an eerie tension fell over me.

I heard panting coming from up ahead, a scratchy panicked voice reached me quickly, "Please you have to help me! Erilys got out!" It was Dennis sprinting towards me through the fog, arms flailing as he breached the distance.

"Just Erilys? The halfling baker with no fighting experience got you running?" I landed as a human and walked towards him, resting my hand on his shoulder as he caught his breath.

Between deep breaths he said, "Yeh, she's just gone crazy." I look to see where he ran from but no one was there, it was only then that I saw the knife he held. "Ah, you're not Dennis then. That explains it." It heard me say that and it lunged at my throat attempting to slice it, it shifted into its normal form in the air, assured of its victory.

Unfortunately, I shifted into my [Undead Ooze] form and immediately encompassed it in my gelatinous form. He swung his knife fruitlessly in my body as he slowly suffocated to death inside me, I felt indifferent to that, I only wanted to know why they're here. I used [Devour mind].

Recent memories appeared, a different doppelgänger in the baldurs gate sewers was instructing everyone to infiltrate Candlekeep and kill as a testament to Bhaal. This one volunteered for it and I was intended to be the first victim of an unholy rampage.

I stored the body in my bag, I can always use it for a bestial ink later. I shifted back into a human and carried on walking towards the keep, clicking my cane on the cobbled stone floor in time with my shoes. In hindsight, I reversed its tactic on it, by switching forms to suddenly kill it that is. I chuckled at it as I reached the emerald gates, my new amulet glowing as the doors open.

Reaching the library, I sit down by the bestiary and called, "Raphael". A minute passed and no books came, in fairness he isn't that important in the big picture. Next I called for, "Hellfire", this time about 18 books flew down and landed in front of me. Once again, I breezed past them with my glasses and came to a rather irritating conclusion. There is no such thing as hellfire immunity or resistance, unless I can grab something touched by Mephistopheles himself, I have no chance.

So instead of focusing on defence, I'll focus on damage. If I can gather enough knowledge on fiends, cambions and devils, I'll probably be able to make something strong enough to deal sizeable damage to him. Ideally, I'll give all my companions something like that.

For the rest of the night I focused on fiends, radiant damage, fiend gods and summoning rituals. The final one was because a good ritual caster can bind powerful devils into anything, so a decent one could probably get Raphael easily.

****

3 weeks later

[Exam cooldown over]

I was in the middle of finishing up a requested blade when I got the alert for the exam. I looked out my shop window and called out, "Alright last call, I'll be closing early!" A mix of sighs and puffs flooded the road as I worked on my forge for the next hour.

At the end I passed everyone their mended weapons and staffs before closing the shutters on them. My business 'Nomad's inks' became a lot more fruitful than I expected when I struck a deal with the crazy wizard in the south tower. So I used to money from that to branch out, I knew it wouldn't last long but I can always hire staff to watch over the place whilst I'm gone.

I added some more ink to my repertoire and upgraded my unending bag of scrap metal to an unending bag of metal. But mainly I included magical wool to my unending bag of wool, so I can pull out and knit fire-proof blankets if I want. I also started harvesting the ectoplasm from my band members, which I used for a ghost beastly ink and to give my cane the ability to hit ghosts normally.

I walk up to my own room and lay on the bed, "Start crafting exam"

['Crafting' exam starting]

My mind was rushed like water down a stream to a steaming hot forge underground. Looking around it was only a large steaming forge and a familiar face.

"Long time no see, I'll be running through the blacksmithing section with you. I hope you do well" Dammon smiled, a charming look on his face to be sure. When the test begun, he had me create every item I could think of, and I had to explain my process behind every single strike, dunk and heat treatment. Not only that but as we moved onto more difficult areas like specific enchantments, he tested me on the kinds of metals used. Later when I had to make even more powerful items, I had to explain the specific compositions of the metals.

It took a while but I finished it, I sat back and wiped my sweat. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them, Ethel's wart ridden horrifying face was in front of me. "Hello again petal! Why haven't you been calling your Auntie Ethel more often?"

"Oh um, I called you last week though? You said you were busy doing something at the end so I hung up." She backed off and dismissed me.

"Who cares? I'm here to make sure you haven't been slacking on yer potions and rituals sweetie!" She gave a yellow toothed smile and led me to an empty cauldron. There I started with basic health potions, every time I finished, she would throw it out of the window. It didn't take long for me to start making purple worm poisons and potions of flight, all whilst explaining everything as I did it. But when she asked me to make a psudo-immortality serum I was lost, I think I briefly read about it in a potions book in Candlekeep, but that's it.

She knocked over the pot and led me outside, there I was to create a variety of objects using designated materials. It functioned like the last two and I even had the opportunity to speak of all my own rituals. It worked like this for artificing, knitting, whittling and a vast variety of other crafts. The only one I could say I was truly lost on was when I was asked to create a nautiloid out of driders. Nevertheless, I woke up on the bed mentally drained for the day.

[Exam completed! You earned:

Crafting

lv1: Treehouse builder

lv2: Image imprint

lv3: Crafter's ally - Additional effect

lv4: Lucky craft - Perfect environment

lv5: Missing item - Jack of all trades

Botany

lv1: Mushroom growth

lv2: Edited smell

lv3: Plant ally - Vine whip

Ink

lv1: Finger writing

lv2: Custom tattoos

lv3: Ink manipulation - Ink membrane

lv4: Ink developer - Quality tattoo]

[Treehouse builder -

Intrinsic sense of where to build a treehouse and what with.]

[Mushroom growth-

Can grow a variety of mushrooms on your back.]

[Finger writing -

With inks you've developed, you can excrete it from your fingers, allowing you to write with it.]

[Image imprint -

A previously created stamp or art piece can be copied and pasted onto anything else you want.]

[Edited smell -

Can smell like any plant of your choice, does not have any non-aesthetic effects.]

[Custom tattoos -

Mundane tattoos can cover your body, changing shape, style, pattern and size to your whims.]

[Crafter's ally -

Seen with a friendlier face by those in the crafting industries.]

[Additional effect -

Can add one extra enchantment or effect to any work you create. Proportional to the quality of the piece made.]

[Plant ally -

Plant species types will look favourably upon you.]

[Vine whip -

From your arm a vine will whip out and attack anyone you wish, or can be used to coil around and grab something.]

[Ink manipulation -

Ink around you can be moved telekinetically, can be used as a weapon or a way to get writing done quicker. Power scales with ink/artist/tattoo level.]

[Ink membrane -

An ink of your choice acts as an invisible physical barrier around you. Can switch the ink type at will as long as you have made it before.]

[Lucky craft -

Any crafted items that require luck in the process automatically succeeds.]

[Perfect environment -

Can summon and dismiss a silent environment for a specific kind of craft at a time. Contains all tools and equipment needed.]

[Ink developer-

Ink you make functions in a qualitatively better way than if anyone else made it, even using the same tools equipment and process as you.]

[Quality tattoo -

Any tattoo you have can become a magical tattoo of your choice, requires a short rest to change it unless [Custom Tattoos] is used. Can only use inks you've personally developed.]

[Missing item -

You can create any 1 material you need in the correct quantity once a day for a craft of your choice.]

[Jack of all trades -

Jack of all trades master of all. Simply by looking at any craftsmanship, you can see where it can be improved and how.]

"Shit! Once again!" Another great haul from my exam, this one reaching level 5. I was planning on focusing on supply and crafting but the ink manipulation will allow me to create something truly foul and use it against anyone. Not only that but jack of all trades is a lot stronger than it appears, I can look at anything in existence and see how it can be made. I wasn't a religious man before, but this world has proof of everything being made by one being.

The first thing I did when I got out of bed was create a large ritual circle and fill it with 100oz of regular ink bottles. The only option for me to beat a devil is to create something so inherently good and holy that it burns. I use my [Missing item] to create a…