Day 3.3: The Soldier & The Tinker

We made our way south of the city and night was approaching fast, it seems to be fall and nights take of three quarters of the daily cycles now. We moved swiftly down the aged road skirting swampish woodlands that were no doubt the home of some at best deplorable bandits and at worst some foul dragonkind. We arrived to the property outlined by the deed and found the main house of the farm or plantation to be an utter wreck and in disrepair, but fortunately the old barn still stood as strong as ever so we decided to take shelter there. But as we approached the entrance, there were signs of habitation... so we cautiously entered. Jannott and Wraith both felt we should take an offensive approach to the problem, Medea and I thought it'd be more prudent to be peaceful. The goliath seemed to have no opinion one way or another.
 
From the cellar or basement of the barn we could hear the sounds of small hammers and whirring clinking machinery, I approached the stairs and called down in a soft voice "hello? anyone one down there?". The sounds stopped all of a sudden and we could hear a mechancial bellow as if it were yelled in a metal barrel in a deep voice: "FUCK. OFF". The source of the voice marched up the stairs, one at a time slowly and methodically until it reached us. There standing at around 7 foot tall and easily almost 400lb was a Warforged, it's body tinted in rusted and worn in time but it did not dull his apparent ferocity. Again it told us to "FUCK. OFF.", in which Wraith replied from somewhere in the rafters above "NO. YOU.". The Warforged's one eye, as the other had a leather eye patched, looked up seeking him. After appraising us a brief moment and counting us, he turned and called down the stairs "TO. PAZ.".
 
Behind the mechanical behemoth, sprung out a small Rock Gnome woman. Immediately Jannott found her adorable and implicated she wanted to keep her, like her pets or Twitlick. The Rock Gnome narrowed her eyes and Jumped up on the Warforged's shoulders and introduced herself as Luticia Topaz the Artificer and the Warforged as Erron Panzer. I remembered seeing schematics back at the IA of prototypes of Warforged, they unlike Golems and other such constructs were designed to have a particular and unique intelligence and sentience: they were made with souls. I in truth found this Erron Panzer quite fascinating and the Artificer equally fascinating as such a practice was already rare within the now Old Empire and here she was in this broken new time, she surely had much to tell us.
 
Luticia invited us down for some tea in her workshop basement and we had a nice long talk and rest down there while Erron and Wraith kept watch outside. She explained that after she left home, for reasons she did not explain to us, she found Erron alone and mostly unconscious in the woods covered in moss. As Warforged are beings that do not sleep that is most concerning, and so she had begun repairs on him and they have been together since. They found this old barn and the workshop beneath it almost 2 years ago, and have been squatting and living here since. We in turn explained our circumstances, telling the same story we told the priest back in town, and astonishingly she believed us. Medea, with the deed in hand, explained that this land and the barn belonged to her. Luticia rebuttled politely something along the lines of "finder's keepers" and "squatter's rights". They hashed it out, politely, and came to a deal. Medea could have the main house and the surrounding land and fields, if Luticia could keep her workshop and most of the barn. In addition if Luticia could help provide equipment and artifacts that would be appreciated too, and surprisingly Luticia seemed excited by the idea. She seemed eager to test out her new Sending Stones and offered one to Medea, so that the next time we travelled we could keep in contact. As an added bonus she said her and Erron would gladly travel with us if it meant finding new lost magic and tech in doing so, a prospect I could certainly get behind for sure. As we talked into the night we finally drifted off to sleep.