Records: Hephaestus’ Forge

The Royal Academy made it's debut in December 1376, and the Order of Merlin had been around slightly before that. They supported each other, that much was known, and they were making phenomenal progress – that much was seen. Exactly *how much* progress wasn't fully understood by most...

1377 was the Royal Academy's first full year, and the year the RANP spread beyond London (mostly to Bordeaux in the beginning, thanks to then-Prince Richard). Likewise, the OM was cranking out *Glow Stones* at the time – and quietly growing along with the RANP.

The wildcard, the *catalyst*, was Prince Rick. He was asking questions, suggesting techniques and providing spells to rank-and-file RANP that were like a laboratory in a wand. Perhaps it started a little slower in 1377, but not by much. By 1378, from Savoy Palace to Leeds Castle, the growing society was asking and answering question about the natural world at a phenomenal rate.

It wasn't exactly the natural progression that the original timeline had traveled; it sometimes skewed, jumped, looped back and skipped forward based on what was needed at the time. This went hand-in-hand with the mundane engineering that was growing at the same rate.

From 1377 to 1384 was only seven years; but the power of actual magic spread the word *supernaturally* fast. Still, that was only seven years to grow the human resources pool, where even a rise in birthrate was offset by calamities like the rise of the orks.

Despite the challenges, *progress*. If a 20th-century observer were to track the understanding and insight earned by these groups, they'd note an average close to *a century per year*.

Rick had set the tone, built the channels, created limits and sparked the questions that now had the rank-and-file RANP and the OM progressing at a level that was absolutely phenomenal. And with the *Books of Learning*, every new development was recorded, folded in to the curriculum and spread for those who needed to know.

## **Hephaestus' Forge**

The forge itself was as metaphorical as anything else in myth or religion. The reality was that there were four centers that were near-copies of each other, and together they were known as Hephaestus' Forge. The largest had been built as a nod to the origin story of Hephaestus after his fall, in the volcano of Mount Etna on the east coast of Sicily.

They'd considered one on Mount Olympus, but as that was first infested by orks and later used as the seat of Grecian government, the hazards of the forge were best kept distant.

### **What A Century A Year Looks Like**

The core of the RANP and the OM alike had an understanding that outside observers would consider *modern*. Perhaps most of their surroundings were still late-14th century, but there were advancements that belied life in provincial villages or stone corridors deep in castles. In the innermost sanctums and laboratories, the environment was often beyond even the imagination of those in the support hamlet just beyond.

The four sites of Hephaestus' Forge weren't even the "most advanced" of the facilities, but they embodied the majority of the developments that boggled the minds of the comparative few who had access.

With magical engineering, there was running hot and cold water, flushing toilets, lights without visible sources, perfect temperatures, locks that recognized people, self-cleaning surfaces, windows that dimmed or disappeared altogether, walls that changed color on command and artwork that moved on its own accord.

## **The Function of the Forges**

Nearly anything could be fabricated at any one of the forges, but that wasn't their primary purpose. Rather, it was RANP materials research. To understand the research, one had to know lead the OM had taken.

The Order had stepped deeper into transmutation, and there was a growing gulf between those at the cutting edge and those at the periphery. Even with *Books of Learning*, there was a common misconception, even among the magically trained, that alchemy and transmutation were interchangeable.

That wasn't the case: alchemy changed elements, while transmutation changed the form of elements. One couldn't turn coal to gold with transmutation, but one could turn coal to diamonds. The better a wizard was at mundane chemistry, the more efficiently they could transmute one substance to another. Volumes transmuted depended on the purity of the source material, the strength of the mundane chemistry and the available magical energy.

### **Calculation to Experimentation**

While other sciences were there to push metallurgy with predictions of properties, it still took old fashioned experimentation to prove it right. Now, with an easy magical 50,000° C at their fingertips, the old fashioned trial and error mix-and-match discovery process flew at unprecedented speed.

The Forge could purify, melt and combine elements in liquid or gaseous state.

With the magical calculation machines, they were making extraordinary substances from the most mundane combinations. At times, the experimentation was so fast, the role of calculation changed from cost-reducing predictions to result analysis (a whole lotta “What did we just see happen here?”).