Discipline

Weaponsmith

Weaponsmith

Forge Weapon, Forge Armor, Item History, Steel Thought, Suppress Curse, Temper Flesh, earth skin, wound balance, spot armor flaw, lion heart, fireblood, first impression
chasing the perfect blade, carries everyone's burdens, an oath sworn is an oath I can't break, no patience for niceties
Finish the one weapon that holds everything I am.

WEAPONSMITH ROTES

Forge Weapon
Practitioners: Weaponsmiths
(Prep, requires access to a forge and roughly a week of daily work) The Weaponsmith performs an extended ritual to sharpen and refine a weapon's edge beyond what ordinary craft alone could manage.
a properly equipped forge • uninterrupted time to work • a weapon already well-made
a poorly equipped or improvised forge • being rushed or interrupted • a weapon already pushed to its limit
SUCCESS
Prep action, requiring days of work at a forge. Give a weapon a lasting enhancement — sharper, deadlier — until the working fades or is renewed.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • The enhancement holds far longer than usual (keep the spotlight)
  • The weapon gains a second, complementary enhancement in the same working
  • Word of the weapon's quality spreads
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • The enhancement can only ever be as strong as your own skill allows, however good the forge
  • Attempting to push a weapon further than it can bear risks ruining it entirely
  • The work leaves the weapon subtly changed in ways its wielder notices
  • A weapon this improved draws attention from people who'd like to take it
Forge Armor
Practitioners: Weaponsmiths
(Prep, requires access to a forge and roughly a week of daily work) The Weaponsmith performs an extended ritual to reinforce a suit of armor beyond what ordinary craft alone could manage.
a properly equipped forge • uninterrupted time to work • armor already well-made
a poorly equipped or improvised forge • being rushed or interrupted • armor already pushed to its limit
SUCCESS
Prep action, requiring days of work at a forge. Give a suit of armor a lasting enhancement — tougher, better-warded — until the working fades or is renewed.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • The enhancement holds far longer than usual (keep the spotlight)
  • The armor gains a second, complementary enhancement in the same working
  • The armor's wearer moves with newfound confidence
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • The enhancement can only ever be as strong as your own skill allows
  • Pushing armor further than it can bear risks ruining it entirely
  • The work leaves the armor subtly changed in ways its wearer notices
  • Armor this improved draws attention from people who'd like to take it
Item History
Practitioners: Weaponsmiths, Troubadours
The Weaponsmith studies an item closely enough to draw out a piece of its hidden history — who made it, who carried it, what it's seen.
uninterrupted time with the item • an item with a real, storied past • relevant lore or context already in hand
an item with no real history to find • being rushed • an item deliberately stripped of its past
SUCCESS
Discover action, requiring time spent studying. Learn a piece of the item's hidden history.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • Learn something the item's own owner didn't know (keep the spotlight)
  • Learn a detail with immediate, practical relevance
  • Learn who could tell you more
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • What you learn is wrong, or badly incomplete
  • The item's true history is worse than you expected
  • Someone notices you studying it and asks why
  • You can't learn more from this item until something about the situation changes
Steel Thought
Practitioners: Weaponsmiths, and others
The Weaponsmith resists a spell or magical effect aimed at them, their will hardened the same way a good blade is — through repeated pressure.
a clear awareness that magic is being used against you • steady nerves • prior experience resisting similar effects
being caught completely by surprise • a mind already worn down or distracted • an effect too subtle to notice in time
SUCCESS
Free action, as a reaction. Helps a reaction against a spell or magical effect targeting you.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • Resist the effect so cleanly the caster doesn't realize it failed (keep the spotlight)
  • The resistance holds against a second attempt in the same exchange
  • Turn the moment into a lesson that helps you resist similar magic later
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • Resisting once doesn't mean resisting twice
  • The effort leaves you mentally drained
  • Word gets around that you're hard to affect with magic, and people plan around it
  • Something about the attempted magic lingers uncomfortably even after you resist it
Suppress Curse
Practitioners: Weaponsmiths, Wizards
The Weaponsmith temporarily nullifies a curse or lingering negative magical effect afflicting a target, holding it at bay through sheer force of will and proximity.
proximity to the afflicted target • a clear sense of what the curse is doing • time to concentrate
multiple overlapping curses or effects • being forced away from the target • a curse from a source far more powerful than you
SUCCESS
Standard action. Helps a reaction to resist or remove a curse or lingering negative magic from a target.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • Suppress more than one affliction at once (keep the spotlight)
  • The suppression outlasts your proximity to the target
  • Learn something about the curse's origin in the process
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • The effect returns the moment you step away
  • Some of the curse's weight transfers to you instead
  • The suppression is only partial, and the target still suffers
  • Whatever cursed the target notices your interference
Temper Flesh
Practitioners: Warriors, Weaponsmiths
The Weaponsmith performs a ritual, drawing icy ether from astral space over their body in a lengthy meditation, tempering their own flesh the way they'd temper a blade. Only works if they're completely uninjured beforehand.
being fully rested and uninjured • time and safety to complete the ritual • a genuine need to prepare for harm ahead
already carrying any injury (locks this out entirely) • being interrupted mid-ritual • no time to prepare
SUCCESS
Prep action, requiring an extended ritual with no prior injury. Give yourself a lasting toughened status for a full day.
  • EXTRA FEATS
  • Extend the duration further (keep the spotlight)
  • The toughening holds even through a fight that would normally end it
  • Share a portion of the effect with a companion through the same ritual
  • CONSEQUENCES
  • Attempting this while already hurt costs you dearly instead of helping
  • The toughened state fades at the worst possible moment
  • Your altered flesh draws stares and questions
  • Relying on the ritual instead of caution becomes its own kind of vulnerability

The Weaponsmith's Place in Barsaive

Nearly every community in Barsaive holds its Weaponsmith in genuine esteem, and for good reason — a good Weaponsmith is as much a keeper of a settlement's memory and safety as any Troubadour or guard captain. The forge draws people in the way a hearth does, and a Weaponsmith who's tended one for years knows more about their neighbors' troubles than most would ever admit out loud.

Craft that outlasts the craftsman. The foundation of the Discipline is exactly what the name promises: real skill at making and mending weapons and armor, refined into something more. A properly forged blade or shield can be reinforced through days of careful, deliberate ritual work, made sharper or tougher than time and steel alone would allow — an enhancement that lasts a year and a day before it needs renewing, a lifetime's worth of care poured into objects meant to protect the people who carry them.

A will forged like a blade. The same patient, repeated pressure that goes into tempering steel goes into a Weaponsmith's own resolve. They resist magic aimed against them with a hardness other Disciplines rarely match, and can even draw astral cold over their own body in a rare, demanding ritual — but only when they're already whole, since the working punishes anyone who attempts it while hurt.

A memory kept in iron. Study a blade or a suit of armor long enough and a Weaponsmith can draw out a piece of its forgotten history — whose hands shaped it, whose hands carried it, what it's witnessed. This is why so many old weapons in Barsaive still have names, and why finding the Weaponsmith who remembers a weapon's story is often the fastest way to learn what it's truly capable of.

Every Weaponsmith eventually feels the pull toward something larger than ordinary craft: a heartblade, a single weapon meant to hold everything they are, poured into metal over months or years or an entire lifetime. Finishing one is rare. Most Weaponsmiths spend decades on the attempt and call the effort itself worthwhile. Alongside that quiet ambition sits an equally quiet code: a Weaponsmith's oath is treated with the same seriousness as their steel, and breaking one — to an enemy, to a fellow Weaponsmith, to the memory of a legendary blade — can see them cast out of every forge that would otherwise welcome them, unwelcome until they've earned their way back.