[center][h1][b]Ma'otah[/b][/h1][/center]

After the first furnace was built by Ma'otah, many others were constructed by the villagers. Most were used to fire clay, turning simple clay pots and figurines into proper earthenware and common mudbricks into harder, sturdier building materials.

The others were used for metalworking. Ma'otah and a few interested craftsmen dedicated most of their free time to experimenting with new techniques that the furnaces' high temperature permitted. They'd found a way to feed more air to the fire while keeping the furnace closed, making the heat within rise even higher. It was a clever construction, using a large pot, an animal hide, some cord and a tube to link the pot to the furnace's interior, which they'd called "bellows". By pumping the hide, one could blast air inside the furnace, without letting heat escape.

Higher heat meant an easier time melting metal, which took up a big part of their experiments. Many soapstone molds of varying sizes and complexity were carved and used, and copper and silver adornment were created with them; small round plates with a hole in the middle to be mounted on necklaces as pendants, large plaques with reliefs molded on their surfaces that would hang on the walls of homes, thick bangles to adorn wrists and ankles...

Small rectangular ingots were also often cast, to be put in storage for when they would be needed. They also had the advantage of being much purer than raw copper or silver nugget: when melted, all impurities contained in the metal would float to the top, and could be excluded.

The results were a bit crude, the edges often spilled over the mold when the liquid metal was poured from the clay crucible, and the object sometimes had to be melted and remolded multiple time to be an usable shape, but with time and practice, and refining the spouts of their crucibles, these problems lessened somewhat.

They even tried mixing different both copper and silver, which to their great surprise ended up not with a swirl of both, as they had expected, but with a uniform mass, softer than copper but much more brilliant. They tried different ratios of both metal, and carefully observed the difference in softness and patina, how some shined like gold, and others tarnished not into the blue-green of copper nor the dull brown of silver, but into a much darker gray color.

Having thoroughly explored casting, Ma'otah set her sight on a different, yet familiar way of working. She thought of the hammering of cold metal, still used plenty to make bowls and pots and plates, and of the woman who thought of warming the metal in-between cold working session, so that it did not harden to the point of breaking. And she had the idea, why not hammer the metal when still hot?

She took a stone hammer, one crafted specifically for metalworking and a copper ingot, draped a heavy leather hide over her chest, dragged a large flat stone near a furnace, and got to work.

She heated the ingot, not to melt it, but to softened it, and took it out using two long flat pieces of copper, so that she did not burn herself. Laying the ingot on the stone, she began hammering, and was amazed at how the ingot bent with barely any resistance under her strikes. She soon called for her fellows and all unoccupied craftmasters.

[b]"See how the copper listens to each hit,"[/b] she said, demonstrating with a few strike. [b]"When it glows, it no longer is as stubborn as we all know it can be."[/b] She kept working the ingot with no real goal in mind, simply testing how it felt to work it. Her fellows watched with great attention, ideas already forming, some fetching more hammers and hides so that they could try their hands at forging too.

"What if," one said, "you were to strike not with something flat, but something pointy? Or something with a relief?" Proper tools were immediately fetched, and tried out. Pointy strikes led to small depressions, or even holes, and strikes with reliefs created identically shaped indents.

"What about if you made it very thin?" another asked. "Could blades be made? Axes, knives, arrowheads?" Blades were possible, it turned out, but far inferior to stone ones. Copper was simply too soft, so the edge dulled quickly under repeated use. They weren't even that sharp to begin with, with no real way to sharpen them.

Similar questions and suggestion kept getting thrown around. Strikes shaped hot metal well, but could it be bent? Was jewelry easier to make with forging than casting? Could two pieces of hot metal be made to stick together? On and on, the experiments continued, now with multiple people working at once, until night fell and they were too exhausted to keep going.

Before going to sleep that night, Ma'otah made sure to bury a small ceramic figure outside her home, quietly thanking the One That Lay Below for what he had given them.

Many things came out of this frantic day of working. Many new techniques, or at least leads towards new techniques, saw the light of day, though most would not be put into practice for a long time, due to the primitive nature of their equipment. Some things could still be put into immediate use, though, and metal kitchenware saw a neat increase in production; ceramic was great for cookware, but made poor spatulas. Copper was much better suited for utensils, as well as tools like hammers.

With metal also being able to be hammered into thin wires without becoming brittle, jewelry also advanced. Finger rings, whether plain or with jewels inlaid, became a normal part of people's wardrobe, and silver hoops mostly replaced bone earrings.

Slowly but surely, metal gained more and more importance in Ma'otah's village, and technology kept advancing...

[hider=Summary]
Ma'otah and her village keep experimenting with metalcraft. They develop primitive bellows to fuel their furnaces, which they use to fire pottery and melt metal for casting. They experiment with different mold shapes, and even discover the possibility of creating metal alloys by mixing silver and copper, though they do not have much of a use for the billon beyond its aesthetic qualities.

Ma'otah, inspired by cold- and warm-working techniques, decides to try forging. She and other explore different potential techniques, though not many end up being immediately useful. They try making pure copper blades, but they are generally inferior to stone ones. In the end, forging mostly facilitates the production of kitchenware, tools like hammers, and finer jewelry like finger rings or earrings.
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