A Deal As Strong As Iron

If there was one thing every adventurer needed, it was proper gear. Weapons ranging from bows to maces to swords. Strong yet light armor to cover them from head to toe. Going out without being properly prepared was asking for a death sentence.
Lilith knew this. She also knew there was only one place for an adventurer to get all the gear they needed: smithies. Smithies, the workplace of blacksmiths who have mastered the art of crafting various materials into tools, weapons and armor. If she wanted her Adventuring Guild to even stand a chance, Lilith needed to find a blacksmith who was willing to help her with her endeavor.
After asking around Mythrite, she learned of a blacksmith from The Halberd , nicknamed the “Iron Viper.” This blacksmith, while biased towards dwarves, was one of the only ones in Mythrite and was supposedly one of the best. Lilith knew she did not have much choice, so she decided to create a proposal and make her way down to The Halberd in search of this “Iron Viper.”


After walking around The Halberd a bit and talking to the locals, Lilith quickly found her way to the Tempered Edge, the smithy that was home to the blacksmith she was searching for. She made her way inside and was hit with a sudden wave of smoldering heat. The sound of metal clanking filled the air and a smoldering fire lit up the room in its amber colored light. As Lilith walked deeper inside, she noticed many miners standing around either perusing the tools for sale or waiting to get custom ones made or repaired. Behind a counter in the back, Lilith spotted a woman around her height sitting in front of an anvil, hammering away at a chunk of scorching iron.
“Excuse me, miss! I’m looking for someone known as the ‘Iron Viper.’ Would you happen to be that person?” Lilith asked.
The woman continued hammering the metal before her, not even bothering to look at Lilith when she responded. “Yep, that’s me. My real name is Ruith Nornan , by the way. Now, what do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy? I also have other customers patiently waiting their turn.”
“Well, my name is Lilith Brightwood. I recently moved to Mythrite in order to create an Adventuring Guild and if there’s one thing every Adventuring Guild needs, it’s an amazing blacksmith, such as yourself. I came here with a business proposal for you, Ms. Nornan. Would you be kind enough to hear me out?”
Ruith stopped her hammering, grabbing the iron with a pair of tongs and standing up. She made her way over to the furnace and put the iron slab back inside, eventually making her way towards the counter and Lilith.
“A business proposal?” she questioned. “And what could an guild of adventurers that, if I heard you correctly, does not exist yet offer me?”
Lilith stared off at the furnace, watching the iron quickly heating back up until she was snapped back to reality by Ruith.
“Hey! Are you listening to me? Either give me the proposal or get lost.”
“I’m so sorry!” Lilith exclaimed. “I just couldn’t help, but notice how you hammered and folded the iron before putting it back into the furnace. You really live up to the praise the people of Mythrite give you. I don’t know of many blacksmiths who are smart enough to power up their iron by doing that.”
“Um, thanks. You know a bit about metal working I see.” Ruith awkwardly responded.
“To an extent, yes. I’ve read several books on it to make sure my father always got good gear from our local blacksmith back in Secomber. Now, where were we? The business proposal, correct?”
“Yes, and if you could please get on with it. Time is money, Ms. Brightwood.”
Lilith reached into her satchel and pulled out a large, leather bound book. She quickly flipped through the pages, until she found what she was looking for. She turned the book around and showed Ruith a page completely covered with various diagrams and a lot of poor handwriting. “This is the proposal I wrote out. The gist of it is, I send all the adventurers who join my guild to you exclusively for any gear they need and in return you’ll give them a twenty percent discount!”
A few of the miners in the room began to listen in the moment Lilith began talking about a discount. Ruith could see they were growing a bit disgruntled with Lilith’s proposal. Loyal customers like them did not even get a discount, so why should the people this girl sends here?
“I think not. I don’t even give the people who frequent my forge discounts. Why should I let your guild get one? And a twenty percent discount at that, are you out of your mind?”
Lilith closed the book and put it back into her satchel, completely unaware that by now all eyes were on her. “I promise you, it will definitely be worth it. As the Adventuring Guild grows over time, so will the need for many, many tools, weapons and pieces of armor. It should more than double the amount of business you get now from just the town’s miners. And even with a twenty percent discount, your profits will be far beyond what you make now.”
“That sounds wonderful for the future, but for the present twenty percent is still much too high. You don’t even have any adventurers to send my way right now. If you can’t send enough, I will lose profits.”
Lilith pondered for a moment. “How about we make it a ten percent discount? And only after I send a certain amount of people your way? Basically, if I send enough people here and they put in big enough orders, then you give them that discount. If I can’t send enough people here to help raise your profits, then no discount. Deal?”
Lilith extended her hand. After a minute or so of Ruith considering the deal, she finally took Lilith’s leather glove clad hand into her work glove clad one.
“Fine, you got yourself a deal. Better make it worth my while though, or else any future deals are off the table.”