Smith
Overview
Smiths are skilled craftspeople who have used a lifetime's experience selling their wares to become canny traders and experienced negotiators who strive to get the best deal for them and their friends. They are used to dealing with powerful individuals and understand the importance of standing their ground when needed, to avoid being browbeaten. They often strive to keep typically fractious Marcher communities together, by trying to resolve disputes and settle feuds.
Many smiths see themselves as the natural folk in Marcher society to handle negotiations with the creatures of the realms, whether that is an errant member of the wee folk threatening a farmer's field, or a powerful eternal offering a boon to the Marcher nation. The best smiths study the lore of these beings, learning everything they can about them. They pride themselves on careful preparation, seeking to ensure that any deal they make will provide the best possible benefit their community.
Smiths emphasise practical solutions that serve the people they are loyal to best. They have little time for fanciful ideas that cannot be realised; they prefer down-to-earth solutions that will shrewdly resolve the problem now, even if that means storing up trouble for later. They understand the importance of compromise, not just when making a deal, but when forging a plan. They appreciate that a simple bargain that is easily implemented is a better solution than a perfect outcome that can never be achieved.
Smiths are brokers and dealers who enjoy haggling, whether it's selling an Apprentice's Blade to a passing striding, bartering their skills with the Prince of Scales for a much-needed boon or forging an agreement with the powerful in society. Whether wealthy or poor, they take Pride in the respect earned from loyal hard work in service to those who rely on them.
History
Much of the history of the smiths was lost to the Marches for centuries, a secret obscured by the machinations of the Shadow Courtiers. Now that the past has been reclaimed, the Marchers are slowly refamiliarising themselves with the role smiths once played.
Long before the Empire was formed, smiths were respected figures in Marcher society who were trusted to handle negotiations and bargains on behalf of others. At first, these were simple matters of mortal trade as smiths were forced to buy the metals they needed for their arts and sell the items they produced. As they became experienced hagglers, they would help their fellows get the best prices for their wares. As people came to rely on their aid more and more, they came to be seen as the natural folk to call on them to make deals with creatures of the realms. They gained a role akin to that of the landskeepers, respected practitioners of magic, albeit as artisans rather than ritualists.
Where landskeepers concerned themselves with the land, smiths were more concerned with dealing with the small folk, whether that be a herald dwelling in a creek, or a swarm of boggarts infesting a barn full of hay. Smiths were expected to be experts not just with hammer and flame, but at negotiating bargains with all and sundry. As such, when someone was needed to solve any problems caused by a herald or similar creature, the yeofolk would send for the local smith to come and deal with it.
The smiths disappeared from Marcher lands when a deal they had brokered with the Forgemistress turned sour. The smiths had negotiated with the Bronze Artisan for the Anvil of Silence, a powerful artifact that would help the nation construct a runeforge. In return, they agreed to provide their services to the Prince of Shikal until the work was complete, but the troll's curse on the Anvil ensured the work could never be finished, leaving the smiths trapped in an Autumn regio for centuries, labouring away in service of the Forgemistress.
With a little nudging from Barien Dragonforge, Gemma Brightsmith was finally able to free the smiths from their toil. The shrewd Marcher pursued a challenge laid down by the Reeve of the Summerlands to recover the lost art of the Marches. The challenge took years to complete, but ultimately led Gemma to the cursed Anvil of Silence, a powerful troll-stone that was recovered from the Westmere when the waterway was dredged.
While people argued over what should be done with it, the Burser of the Conclave endowed the curse stone to Estavus. By returning the stone, the Marchers repudiated the deal - forcing the eternal to release the smiths. Time often runs differently in regio, and so it proved here. The smiths emerged from the dominion of the Forgemistress, without having aged a day, despite their centuries of toil. Sadly, the centuries of labour at the forges had left them confused, with only the vaguest memories about who they were, or where they have come from. It seemed that centuries of toil for the eternal had left little room for any other memories.
The losts smiths reappeared at the Woldstone, in Ashbrook in Upwold. Bewildered by their experience, they were taken in by the monks of the nearby Oakwood monastery who tried to help them find their feet. The Marcher Assembly acted decisively, upholding a judgement that saw Aliss Thorn enact a mandate to urge artisans to travel to Oakwood to help the smiths recover and rediscover the lost art. After centuries of estrangement and years of hard work by Gemma Brightsmith and her companions, the nation finally recovered the lost art of the Marches.
Hammer and Flame
Compromise is the crucial tool in the art of the smith. As every good blacksmith knows, making steel is always a compromise. Iron is soft, you need to add charcoal as you heat it to make a bloom that is hard and strong. But if the steel becomes too hard it becomes brittle and can shatter. There is no steel that is perfect, no answer that is perfect - both hard and unshatterable.
As in the forge, so it is in life. Smiths teach their apprentices that negotiation demands give and take, just like any attempt to bargain. You wouldn't buy ore from a miner who took your purse and gave you nothing for it. A good trade is one that benefits both parties. The most profitable deal is rarely free - to get the best out of a situation you often have to give something up.
Preparation and study are crucial to making effective bargains. When you trade, the merchants you deal with want the best price they can get and they expect to be paid in coin for their wares. But when you bargain with a herald or an eternal they could ask for anything, and it's hard to know what they will offer. To deal with anyone, you need to know what makes them tick. That is even more true of eternals than mortals.
The more you know about what a being might offer and what they might demand, the better your chances of being able to reach an understanding. If you can compromise on what you want, or what you will give up, then it becomes easier to find the common ground needed to strike a deal.
This approach can have dividends in all walks of life, especially in the notoriously truculent Marches. Sometimes, feuding neighbours will turn to a smith when they want help settling a grudge. Of course, that assumes both parties want to settle the matter - there's rarely an answer to any fight unless the smith can bang heads together and get everyone to agree to split the difference.
Creating a Smith
This archetype is designed to interest anyone who likes haggling and negotiation, either for money, favours or boons. The ideal of the smith is the archetypal wise member of the village who understands people and what motivates them - and who uses that insight to settle arguments and reach agreement. Smiths can be interested in trade, magic, or politics, you don't have to be a dedicated trader to be a smith. The archetype is perfect for people who like to make deals of any kind, especially the kind that can benefit everyone.
While many smiths are artisans, that isn't actually essential. Smiths are crafters, some of them make magic items, but others make mundane items and have different character skills to reflect that. The skills you have aren't essential; how you play your character is always more important than what you can do in Empire. But being an artisan will give you a need to buy materials for your art and give you items you can sell, which is a great way to get started. You can pair this with other skills as you wish, but smiths generally avoid a lot of ritual magic or ceremonial skills. Remember that you can always call on a Landskeeper when you need a powerful ritual cast or a friar if you need a testimony performed.
Don't assume that being a smith means you have to be a blacksmith! There are blacksmiths, brownsmiths (who work copper), and whitesmiths (who often work tin). One of the most famous smiths in modern times, is Gemma Brightsmith, who is a skilled jeweller. The smith archetype can cover most craftspersons, including all the above as well as tailors, bowyers, fletchers, cobblers and much more. There is a deep well of practicality in the Marches, so exotic crafts are rare, but a smith could be anyone who trades their skills for a living by making things.
If you do play an artisan then you can pick items that you can create with your skill to help you develop the idea of the things your character makes. If you don't have the magician skill then it is useful to be able to make a Pauper's Key or at least have a way to access one. While it's rarely a good idea to have all the skills you need, because it's more fun to rely on other people to help you, you either need the magician skill or a Pauper's Key, to get into the Hall of Worlds. If you plan to try to interact with eternals this will give you a chance to negotiate with some of the more powerful magical beings in the world of Empire.
If you are creating your character as part of a group, then it is worth discussing what the group needs with them. A large group might include two or more smiths in their ranks, but it would be rare for an entire group to all be smiths. Negotiating on your own behalf is great, but it's more challenging when you're negotiating on behalf of a larger group. Your group are the people most likely to trust you to defend their interests when representing them initially, so it's good to check that that will be the case before you create the character.
As a smith, you can take any resource you like, but a farm or business is a good starting point. A farm is the best choice for any Marcher who isn't sure what they want because it gets you involved in the nation's politics. You don't have to play a farmer - you can be the smith who lives on a large farm and comes to Anvil to represent your home. If you want your own premises then a business can represent that - and will stand out in the Marchers where they are less common - if only because they are less powerful than farms.
You can't play one of the smiths who was recently released from the Autumn realm, but if you are playing a smith, then you have been probably met and talked with them, and may even have been trained by one or more of their number. The old smiths are somewhat bemused by the very existence of the Empire and are very socially conservative. This can be a great reason to create a Marcher with very traditional ideas if that appeals to you.
Loyalty is an important idea for every Marcher character. "Pride in small things, Loyalty to great ones" is the nation's motto. The best smiths are trusted to negotiate on behalf of the people they are loyal to, but for that to happen, you need a good sense of where your loyalties lie. It's rarely a good idea to be entirely self-centred in Empire, few people will trust you if you are obviously only out for yourself. But your first loyalty might be to your household or the market town your character is from. You might be loyal to your territory or your nation - or even the Empire itself. Where your loyalties lie is an important part of defining your character. Even though you may find your loyalties evolve in play, it's a good idea to think about them when you create the character.
Playing a Smith
The key reason to play a smith is because you enjoy negotiating and making deals with others. There are three different aspects to the archetype that you can try to bring out in play - you don't need to pick between them, but which ones you emphasise should depend on which area interests you the most.
The simplest way to play a smith is to be a merchant and look to trade things with other characters. If you are an artisan you will need to acquire ingots and measures of precious materials like green iron or ambergelt to make these items. These resources are expensive, and one of the easiest ways for you to make money is to sell some of the items you create. This can create a virtuous circle, provided you don't let anyone talk you into giving your items away for free.
In Empire, the most successful merchants are the ones who become rich enough to buy bourse materials like white granite or mithril - you won't need these resources to make items, but if you find you enjoy trading and haggling then there is always more things to buy in Anvil. Crucially, ilium is a very expensive material, because it can be used to make magic items permanent. Trying to acquire enough ilium to make an artifact is a great goal to pursue for a character who is focused on trade.
The archetypal way to play a smith is to look for opportunities to negotiate with heralds, eternals and similar magical beings. According to their history, smiths use the skills they acquire from a lifetime buying and selling to deal with the inhabitants of the realms. The idea is to use your practical down-to-earth approach to negotiation to hammer out a deal that is in the interests of everyone. Remember though that there are encounters with eternals are few and far between, so it's not a good idea to concentrate on this to the exclusion of other things.
This approach is likely to work best with the inhabitants of the Autumn realm, who tend to be much more transactional than the other realms, but most eternals will respond to someone who engages with them proactively seeking to make a deal. You shouldn't shy away from talking to eternals from other realms though, just be aware that they can be less predictible. It's always worth reading the wiki page for any eternal carefully before you deal with them - the better your understand them, the more you will get out of the encounter.
The third way to play a smith is to focus on the politics of the Empire, looking to interact with the Synod, the Conclave, the Senate and the Military Council. Politics is the lifeblood of Empire and one of the the best ways to enjoy the game is to throw yourself into the politics of your nation. It takes time and hard work to get a position in these august bodies, but the focus of the smith is on making deals rather than giving speeches. If you treat the senators, generals, archmages, grandmasters, and cardinals in the same way you treat an eternal - as someone to be negotiated with to see what benefits you can obtain - then your character should always have things to do.
Compromise is usually an essential part of any negotiation with NPCs. It can really help your character be more effective if you understand how to approach a negotiation to get the best chance of success. Modern ideas like a ZOPA, a zone of possible agreement, illustrate the idea of searching for an area of mutual compromise that is agreeable to all parties.
Do not assume that Empire is a story in which you can just demand what you want until the NPCs give it you - that will almost certainly not work. Smiths are meant to be practical people who are pragmatic about the bargains they make - they're not meant to be trying to create perfection - simply making a deal that benefits both parties is a huge success in Empire, even if it includes compromises that neither side like.
Likewise, don't assume that an agreement is always possible - it is always worth trying to negotiate to see what potential there is for either side to move their position, but it's perfectly possible that there is no common ground that you can agree on. Plenty of negotiations end in failure in Empire - you should play a smith if you think you will find the process rewarding, not the outcome. The more negotiations you enter into, in good faith, the more likely you are to strike an important deal. And remember, the fact that success is never guaranteed in Empire is the reason you can feel triumphant if you do manage to make an important bargain.
Smiths are meant to be respected and trusted by the Marchers to negotiate on their behalf. You will have to earn that trust in play, through demonstrating that you are dependable and are loyal to others. Few people will ask you to negotiate on their behalf simply because you are a smith - the archetype is a good way to communicate who your character is and what interests them. If you want people to respect your character and what they do - then you need to show them how that will benefit them.
This is especially true with Landskeepers who have a complementary role. They perform magic to support the nation as a whole and Marcher traditions in particular. If you respect their role, and do what you can to help them perform magic, they are more likely to respect your role and do what they can to help you negotiate and make bargains.
The best way to play a smith is to be ambitious about what you want to achieve in the game. If you can find big things you want to achieve it will motivate you to seek opportunities to negotiate and deal with other parties, whether mortal or eternal, in service of your goals. If those goals help your group, the nation or the Empire, then can seek out other characters who will support you. Don't just talk to PCs and NPCs who can help you at the moment though - the more people you know - and the more you know about them - the easier a time you will have finding the people you need to talk to strike a bargain. This gives you the perfect reason to talk to any important character in the setting, even if it's just to find out who they are, what they want and what they are willing to offer for it.
Further Reading
Core Brief
Additional Information