Torias

Fingering your ring, you step through the heavy banded wooden doors of the Silver Consortium and into the drafty halls therein. After you get past the well-lit common room, you find the adjoining halls sparsely lit. Students of varying age and race acknowledge your presence with a smile or nod, as they rush past. Many have floating globes of light trailing shortly behind them.

You wind through the interior halls and corridors, then up the large rear staircase, heading up to the third floor. The Arcane Items level. Oddly, the door is shut. You hear hurried talking inside, then a loud, deep boom, like that of an explosion. A white-blue door of force appears over the normal wooden door. Smoke slowly snakes out between the wooden and force door, rising and filling the abscess between the doors. You hear loud expletives and coughing from inside, high-pitched, probably coming from the resident gnomish artificier, Biskin Sparkleshoot.

After a few seconds, the smoke disspates and the force door’s outlines shimmer, then fade.

“Get some air in here, fool girl, do you want to suffocate us? Well, young Bigby, I hope you’re happy with yourself.” the high-pitched voice says.

The door quickly opens and you can see that the room is in total disarray. A young female human is standing near the door, sooty marks on her face, hands, and clothes. She’s surprised to see you standing at the door and squeaks, and her face flushes in embarrassment. Biskin looks over at the door, his eyebrows and long white beard completely singed and blackened, with a similar sooty blackness covering him.

“Well, let the lad in, Lady Evoker. That spell still needs some work. Go to the library and do a little more research. Come back and see me tomorrow.”

The young girl packs her charred belongings, gathering up what look to be a handful of red-orange glass beads, as well as a couple of spellbooks and component pouches, then hurries out of the room.

“Poor girl. Turns out that not of all of young Bigby’s force spells make good catalysts for fireball beads. Well. What can I do for you, looking to have something crafted, boy? It might take an extra day, as I’ve got to clean up my lab now. Little experiment gone awry here. Now, what can I do for you?”

“Boots, eh? We can probably work that out. You’re a Silver Consortium student, right? Do you want to rent space to craft them, or you want me to do it for you? You know, if you’ve got a few weeks, you can learn how to craft these wondrous items yourself.”

“Well, lets see. Let me check my logbook.” He walks over to one relatively unscathed wooden workbench, where a leather-bound stack of papers lies. He flips through a few pages, crammed with schematic drawings and rushed writing. “Here we are. Yes, I could be persuaded to start right away on the boots. Then, if you want me to have a look at that ring you’re playing with, I can do that too. I can have your boots in a week. The ring will take another week or so. So you’ll be back to normal by the 17th of Readying. Almost normal, your purse will be a bit lighter.