"Enough about that however. Make yourself comfortable. This will take a while." I said as I stepped up to the workbench and got to work.
Thanks to the two pieces of knowledge I'd traded from Mora I was mostly familiar with animunculi manufacturing. The Aetherium forge used the height of Dwemer engineering after all. The parts for this sphere were all here so I just had to follow the design and slot them into place so the connections were snug but not strained and the synchronized enchantments were all aligned.-
It was not dissimilar to putting a puzzle together as there were pieces that could fit into other places but wouldn't really work if used like that. For all their cruelty and hubris the Dwemer were incredibly meticulous when they made things even if it was barely "worth" anything to them. I carefully placed the final connector in place two hours later with sweat at my brow from the continued exposure to the heat of the magma below this platform. Alontar had flat out decided to wait back towards the entrance where it was cool instead.-
I created a bit of steam in the internal boiler of the sphere and sent it through the full construct to make sure there were no leaks before closing it up and putting it into my storage plane along with the tools and materials in this workshop. I wanted to take the smelter as well honestly but knew I couldn't as it was fully integrated to the stone and pipe system of this platform. I also considered taking the "tuning forks" that were keeping the magma circulating and molten. But decided against it since I could just make some myself if needed now that I knew the tonal frequency used.-
"Done?" Alontar asked from the stone seat he'd taken out of the room as I approached.
"I am. Let's make camp here for the night before setting out at first light." I said after closing the stone mechanism that hid this place for so long with us inside.
I sparked a fire in the Dwemer cooking pit in the room we found the toy in and got to work cooking. I started by kneading out sourdough and rolling it into thin disks before frying it up on an iron skillet with a little oil. This created our flatbread which I paired with a hearty Salisbury steak and mushroom gravy. -
"You really are quite exceptional at cooking. This tastes like it would be fit to grace a royal table." Alontar said clearly enjoying the meal.
"It's a simple dish. Inexpensive too all things considered." I admitted freely.
"Perhaps but it's extraordinarily flavorful. The meat crumbled with barely a chew and is not overwhelmed by the rich gravy. And this bread is chewy and soft while it soaks up the gravy so very little is wasted." he says honestly.
"It's one of the recipes that was quickly adopted in Skyrim after I introduced it. It fits the Nord sensibility quite well because of how filling and cheap it is." I say calmly as I swipe my bread through my plates gravy and eat it.
"You did mention you have two cookbooks circulating. What made you want to do so?" he asked curiously.
"I grew up in that orphanage as you know. And it was only about halfway through that time I realized that most people ate bland food. Everything was roasted, boiled or baked. Even worse the seasonings used rarely differed much. I hoped that by releasing these books with my recipes in them this trend might change, even if only a little." I said honestly.
"Did it?" he asked.
"I don't know. I know for a fact Ulfric has at least one of my cookbooks and his chef's use it as he served a feast that included a few of my recipes but everywhere else? I have no way of knowing." I said with a sigh.
"You tried at least. The same could not be said for many. It's easier to accept what is than to try and change it." he pointed out.
"True. Still there's something to be said for those that can happily accept everything as it is and be satisfied. There's a simplicity to that I admire, just a little." i said with a slight smile.
He turned in for the night after that and I sat up meditating on the knowledge I'd gotten from Mora. Even now I hadn't fully internalized it all. Such a vast amount of information took time to sort through and update with the knowledge I had from the present era that had exceeded the understanding in those ancient knowledges. It was rather interesting looking at both sides of things and seeing the drift in reasoning and logic.-
Thousands of years will do that to even the most comprehensive systems let alone the flawed nearly unrecorded ones like what I am working with now. War, purposeful destruction, daedric obfuscation. The reasons for the knowledge vanishing over time were countless. It was thanks to seeing these ancient knowledges that I could understand how very different the available knowledge was in Shalidor's era versus this one. Perhaps harder to obtain but it was more complete. Legacies from the Ehlnofey that hadn't been systematically lost yet still existed. Now though magic was almost a husk of what it used to be. -
It was pathetic.
As someone from a modern world I understood what progress should look like. And this world? Wasn't making much. It wasn't stagnation exactly but such a pitch droppingly slow progression that it was painful to watch. And that doesn't even count the fact the world is playing catch up after a vast amount of knowledge just vanished for some reason no one can figure out. Regardless of anything else I knew that should I not get murdered by the something I was going to be spending a lot of time dungeon delving in search of these lost knowledges.