Runesmith's Gavel

Description

A Runesmith's Gavel is most often a bar of metal with a hexagonal cross-section, with each face inscribed with runes or symbols of artifice and repair. Invoked by a magician it can mend torn metal and shattered wood as easily as a Mazzarine Spindle repairs shattered bone and torn tendon. This wand often bears the rune of wealth, Pallas, and when it is made of wood it is usually made of the wood of a fruit-bearing tree, especially the apple, pear or peach.

Some ritual magicians use wands such as this and the Acolyte's Mercy to allow them to offer support to their comrades in dangerous situations. It is also favoured by warriors who know a little magic and want to be able to put their weapons and shields back together in a hurry after encounters with greataxe-wielding barbarians. Bands of schlacta may have the occasional member who knows enough magic to make use of a gavel and they will often find themselves crouching behind a pair of their comrades putting their shields back together.

Some front-line Imperial Orc warcasters supplement their combat abilities with these wands. The mend spell is seen as a means of preserving items of great Worth, especially those already a little fragile from the rigours of time and hard use.

Rules

• Form: Weapon. Takes the form of a wand. You must be wielding this implement to use its magical properties.
• Requirement: You must have the magician skill to bond to this item.
• Effect: You may cast the mend spell as if you knew it.
• Materials: Crafting a Runesmith's Gavel requires no special materials. It takes two months to make one of these items.

You’ve probably heard plenty of stories about the Ninth Winter Incursion, but I’m telling you this so you don’t think everyone was just dying in the mud.

For a start, the mud was frozen solid, so everyone was dying on it, not in it. The only ones that died in it were the smiths, because the forges were running so hot, not even the winter ice could stop the mud from melting.

I know, because I spent time there. I wasn’t a smith, but I do have some of the old magic in me, and I’d served an apprenticeship with Old Molly Summer. Now, Old Molly might have seemed a bit loose between the ears, but her magic was strong, and so was her sense; she made me create a runesmith’s gavel as my journeyman tallymark. She said it was so I’d always have something to barter, if my magic couldn’t get me by. That was Old Molly; mad as a brush but always with a contingency plan.

Anyway, that forge was one of the orc’s priority targets. Not only was there a decent supply of orichalcum and green iron, but the smiths themselves were working full time making armour and weapons to kit out the lads and lasses dying out in the cold.

And I spent much of my time using that wand. Often we’d get weapons back, all ripped apart and shattered, but with some magic still in 'em. Some of those orcs carry big, nasty weapons that will ruin anything they hit. So I’d mend 'em back up with the Gavel, and back out they went.

A few times we got orcs at the door, and that’s when we’d really start dying in the mud. Saw those weapons up close and nasty then, I did. Saw them shatter bills like they’re glass, shields like it’s just so much pottery. If we managed to get a breather, that’s when the gavel came out; I remember thinking seven ingots of Orichalcum was a fortune when I made it, but it paid for itself many times over.

Saved a lot of shields, that gavel did. Saved a lot of Marchers too.