>>5421231>"For how long has the army needed more metals?"You ask, bringing the point up to the light and examining it closely.
"Long's I can remember, My Lord," Ursanga says, picking up a helm and turning it over in his hands. "But Nippur being as it is, no-'un ever thought to expand the stores. Come a campaign, there's enough to equip the men an' send 'em on, an' only when they return, the bare minimum's made back t'account for what was lost along the way."
You turn your attention back to the weapon in your hands. The bronze glimmers alluringly in the half-light of the lamps. You can dimly see your reflection in it, you realise, but it is blurred and distorted. Your left hand runs across the shaft, rolling over the leather straps that stretch down its length in tight coils. The blade is mottled, but sharp, longer than your hand from middle finger to wrist and wickedly pointed.
You find yourself imagining the process of its making, the tin imported from far in the north, the copper from across the lower sea, made to burn in mighty furnaces and poured into the deftly-crafted moulds. The whetstones rasping over the newly-forged metal, up and across, up and across. Your finger runs along the edge softly.
>roll 1d100:>A brutish craft for brutish deeds. [1-20]>The smiths make such beautiful things. [21-40]>A triangle made keen. But quantity, not quality, is wanting now. [41-70]>I must look into the process further. [71-90]>Clay, stone, metal... what else? [91-100] 