I groaned in frustration and annoyance at the situation but I was powerless to do anything about it. Lokjun came back well into the night and in it's own weird way tried to be supportive by offering the tastiest bit of the wolf it had hunted. It was a silly thing but made me smile all the same. Sleep did not come to me this night, my mind wouldn't let it. I grumbled about it as the sun started rising and the first light of the new day stretched across the frozen ground outside the dome.-
I left the dome quietly and summoned my toad before setting off for Windhelm once more. I doubted any of the smiths in the city could really rework the ancient Falmer armor pieces I had into weapons but I certainly wasn't going to trust anyone in the shivering isles to do it. Don't get me wrong I knew that any smith there was likely obsessively dedicated to their craft but that was kind of the entire problem. Ancient Falmer alloy was a lost recipe. The only way you got more was if you reworked a piece of already existing equipment made of it.-
In the game there was a mod that let you make ingots of it using moonstone, ivory and quicksilver but I'd already debunked that in reality. No ratio of those three ingredients made the glossy white metal that was ancient Falmer alloy. All you ended up with was either a horribly impure Altmer alloy or terribly strange looking slag. Thankfully you didn't need to know the recipe for the alloy in order to rework it. The stuff was just another metal once melted down and the trick was then just shaping it without having it break.-
My hope was it was not much harder to work with than normal Altmer alloys and a smith in the city could handle it. I spurred my toad to run especially fast this time and so made it to the city before dark. Windhelm was not changed in the mere three days since I had left it. Life went on as it ever did and I moved through a city winding down for the day. I hurried over to the market area and thankfully found the smith I had sold the melted down thalmor metal to working his smelter when I arrived.-
"I hope you haven't shown up to melt down more of that elf metal. That last batch earned me some hard questions from the guards." the man said seriously.
"Probably just trying to make sure you got it without making deals with the T halmor right?" I asked and he nodded.
"I told them that you showed up and borrowed the smelter and I just bought the metal off you after you were done. Haven't been bothered about it since but I'd prefer not having a repeat visit over it." he said frankly.
"That's fine. I've got a different sort of elvish metal this time I need reworked. Priority work too, top coin for quickness." I said taking out the armor pieces.
He looked it over with a frown and tapped it with his knuckle and scrapped it against the side of the smelter.
"Don't recognize the material, looks elf though. All frilly and fancy. Bunch of pointless pageantry." he said gruffly.
"It's Falmer, the ancient sort not the goblin things in the deep places." I said calmly.
He raised an eyebrow "That right? And where'd you go and find something like this?" he asked curiously.
"Yngol's barrow. You'll find no more there though." I said honestly.
"Tch, adventurer nonsense then. The ancient dead should remain undisturbed in my opinion but I'm just a smith so what do I know?" he grumbled but still took the commission.
He looked at me oddly when I flat out told him I didn't need polished or pretty pieces, merely the barest functional finished products. I was technically rules lawyering how my blade ate stuff with this. The rule merely said that the things fed to it had to be weapons, mums the word on the condition of those weapons.-
Besides I was after the material this time anyways so I didn't need master crafted stuff, just whatever was functional. Honestly I wouldn't even be surprised if he just melted the stuff and dumped it into a mold before giving it a slight sharpen. Still I was satisfied with that and headed for the inn to sleep in an actual bed for the night. My mind had relaxed after a day's time to cope and I had little trouble getting to sleep. In the morning I didn't bother doing anything much and just hung around near the smiths forge for my weapons.-
At around noon my theory about what the smith would do was confirmed as he handed over four white ugly barely sharpened swords. They were dull with a pitted surface as all the imperfections in the mold were left as is on them. None of them had any wrapping on the handle or any guards for that reason. Calling them slightly sharp pointy sticks made of metal honestly wouldn't be terrible descriptions. It was fine though as I paid the smith for the work and left the city again before Ulfric got any funny ideas.-
Once outside the city I chose to follow the White river south-west as it eventually led to Whiterun hold. Of course I fed the four swords to my blade as I walked.
Yes, walked.
There was no point in summoning my toad since I was just going to be heading into the isles soon enough. Still with the four swords devoured by my own the material change completed for the Falmer alloy. Now my blade was a solid almost dawn colored yellow with a slight green tinge. If I was being honest it frankly looked like it was made of plastic with that ridiculous color.-
Not that anyone in this world actually knew what plastic was and would think it a toy at a glance. Quite the opposite actually. The more strange something looked typically the more dangerous it actually was, my sword was no exception in this regard. The next material on my list for my blade was now Dwemer metal. Thankfully that stuff was not exactly rare as any Dwemer ruin of decent size had the metal literally all over it. Honestly it was one of the reasons equipment made of the stuff was pretty common. Not actually Dwarf make but the material was not hard to forge by any decent smith these days.