The Smith's Tale

No templates, no progress bars. The steel goes where your hammer lands, as far as your swing drives it. Draw out a blade, bevel an edge, punch an eye for a haft, curl a hook, fold pattern-welded steel and strike your own maker's mark. What leaves your anvil is exactly what you made, blow by blow.

Bank the coals and pump the bellows. Read the colour of the steel and strike while it's hot, because cold blows crack it. Quench in water, oil or brine and hope it holds, then grind it bright, temper it to straw or blue, hone the edge, and fit a guard, grip and pommel or drive on a haft.

Your iron doesn't have to come from a merchant. Dig ore in the mine, carry it home and smelt it in a clay bloomery behind the smithy, holding each metal at its own heat with the bellows: copper, tin, bronze, steel, silver, gold, and stranger metals from far below. Then melt the rest in a crucible and pour it into sand moulds at the casting corner: bells, buckles, candlesticks and cooking pots for the carter.

Steel isn't only for blades. Cut a round of sheet at the plate shears, sink it into a hollow in the stump, then raise it over the armourer's stake, blow by blow, into a skullcap, a breastplate, a bascinet or a great helm. Rivet on its straps and lames at the riveting bench, and hang it on your armour stand.

Mail: draw rod into wire at the draw bench, wind it into rings and link them, row by row, into a coif, an aventail or a shirt.

Shields: rounds, heaters, kites and pavises at the shield bench, then painted at the heraldry easel with your own device or a great house's arms.

Finishes: polish it bright on the buffing wheel, blacken it in the pit, etch it, or gild its edges with gold leaf.

Wear what you make: your armour turns real blows in the mine, and comes home dented for you to mend at the stake.

The folk of Emberford come to your window with worn tools and new orders, and every one of them has a name, a trade, friends and old grudges. What you make, they keep and use: the hoe in the kitchen garden, the axe at the woodpile, the sword at the watchman's hip. Good work wins them over. Poor work wears out, and they remember who made it.

Everyone in Emberford needs something, and there are more than eighty errands to find, each a small story of its own. Fetch Orrin's brass weights back from the baker he courted twenty-six years ago. Find Iva's ribbon in the reeds, and old Zdenko gives you his fishing rod. Settle a debt without a coin changing hands. Some only come once a villager trusts you, some lead on to others, and one leads up the hill after dark, to a lantern by the old mine mouth.

Your journal keeps it all: the folk and what they've told you, the tools you've learnt, the beasts below, your deeds, and every errand in hand, pinned to the corner of the screen until it's done.

Make a name in Emberford and the realm starts to notice. Three great houses send their heralds down the road with sealed letters, and their knights ride through the village on business of their own. Ashcombe, the lords of the valley, want it on time and exactly alike. Valdren, the border lords, want steel that holds in battle. Morcant, the Duke's house in the city, pay a fortune for beauty and rare metal.

Answer their letters at your Patron's Lectern before the candles burn down.

Earn their favour and spend it in a patronage tree of its own.

Rise through their ranks from Noticed to Sworn, through named commissions that test everything you know.

Arm them: kettle hats for the levy, a knight's battered plate back from the field, a black harness for the Duke, piece by piece.

You start with a straw pallet in a cramped forge, with no iron and no coins.
Build it out wing by wing, up to a great hall, and choose its walls, floors and roof.

Learn over 130 skills across six branches and unlock more than 30 stations, from the trip hammer and the rolling mill to the armourer's stake and the star crucible.

Upgrade your stations through five tiers, each with its own look.

Take on Jure, your apprentice, and give him work of his own.

Under the hill lies the old mine: fifty hand-built floors across ten zones, from oak-shored drifts and glowworm grottoes to rivers of molten rock and the sunken ruins of Old Emberford. Take your own blades down, fight what lives there, dig the ores no merchant sells, and find out what happened to Matej.

Fish the River Ember. Share an ale at the Tankard. Forge love tokens for shy sweethearts, remember birthdays, and feed the stray at your door until it's yours. Four seasons turn over the valley, with snow to dig through, rain that rings on the river, and long nights passing over the hills.

Hands-on forging: every hammer blow shapes the steel

Heat, quench, grind, temper, hone and hilt, each a craft of its own

Pattern-welded steel, etching and your own maker's mark

Smelt your own ore, and cast bells, buckles and pots

An armory: raise plate, link mail, build and paint shields, and wear what you make

A village of folk with names, trades, friendships and long memories

More than eighty errands, and a journal that keeps them

Three great houses to serve, each with its own gifts, and the road to the King's Blade

Over 130 skills, more than 30 stations and a smithy to build up

A 50-floor mine with its own creatures, guardians and story

Fishing, seasons, weather, a tavern and a dog of your own

Mouse and keyboard, or full controller support