<span style="font-weight: bold">-Collab with Eggs-</span><br/><br/>The bell above the weapon shop’s door jingled as the door budged passed the bell. The shop wasn’t very busy, and the blacksmith certainly wasn’t. Heran walked quickly over to the blacksmith to snag his attention before he started working on anything rather important. Betrah followed behind her, being careful to not bump any of the shelves or other patrons.<br/><br/>“Excuse me sir, could you examine our gear and repair it if needed”? Heran asked, almost impatiently. Her fingers drumming against her sword’s hilt. Betrah placed her hand on the smaller woman’s shoulder to try and calm her impatience.<br/><br/>“Heran, don’t rush him, he’s a busy fellow”. Betrah smiled at the blacksmith as he wiped his hands of dust.<br/><br/>“I can certainly take a look at your weapons, please lay them on the table over there for me”. He pointed at a relatively clean table covered in the corners by tools.<br/><br/>“Thank you sir”. Betrah nodded and lightly pushed Heran towards the table. It didn’t take long for them to remove their weapons and place them on the table, nor did it take long for the smith to set about examining them for damages.<br/><br/>As the smith got to work looking at the weaponry, the doorbell jingled again as another customer entered the shop. This one more local, and something of a regular. Tamani at first approached the counter, but stopped halfway through a step when she saw the shop owner was already taking care of someone else. “Damn. People don’t usually come around this early,” she commented, pursing her lips slightly. Oh well, it wasn’t like she had anything else to do, so waiting her turn wouldn’t hurt.<br/><br/>She could at least get a question in, and did so after finishing her approach towards the table. “Did that order I put in come by yet? Bullets don’t really grow on trees around these parts, you know.” Her voice took on a playful tone obviously meant to convey a joke, delivered with some slightly exaggerated body language, hands on her hips and a lean forward. It was supposed to be faux-imposing, though her very short height sort of removed the intended effect.<br/><br/>Before getting an answer, her eyes trailed towards what the smith was working with. The curious mechanisms of Heran’s sword immediately caught her attention. “Oh my, that’s nice,” Tamani muttered, quite impressed by the craftsmanship of the thing. Combinations of blades and firearms were growing increasingly common, but a majority tended towards older flintlock mechanisms. This one, though, it looked like it had been crafted by a master smith. Her head tilted to put her attention on the two other ladies, and with curious inquiry, she spoke to them. “That yours?”<br/><br/>Heran turned towards the door as the bell jingled again. She watched as the woman entered the shop and looked from the counter to the smith. She nudged Betrah to get her her attention as the new woman walked over to the table where the smith was working currently. The woman’s joke got a small chuckle from Betrah as she eyed Heran’s sword.<br/>“Yeah, that particular blade is mine, why, is there something wrong with it”? Heran asked, her eyes wandering down towards her sword and it’s mechanisms. She instinctively reached for her swords hilt, before realizing it was still on the table.<br/><br/>“Girl, sit down”, Betrah tugged Heran’s armor back down. “She’s merely admiring the craftsmanship of it”. The smith looked up from his work at the exchange and snorted out a loud exhale.<br/><br/>Heran’s defensive reaction made Tamani cock her eyebrow and stand up straight, her gaze shifting to Betrah when she pulled the girl back. While she didn’t say anything about it, her expression was questioning and a bit confused, though she suspected that there had to be<span style="font-style: italic">some</span>reason for the reaction. Moving on, she decided to answer Heran’s question. “Nothing at all, no. I’m just impressed by it, you don’t see many weapons like that with advanced mechanisms. A lot of them are just boring old tubes of gunpowder and a ball. But this is<span style="font-style: italic">very</span>nice.” Weapons of the sort weren’t unheard of, but the expense behind the thing’s construction must have been immense. Tamani’s own arsenal had cost quite a bit, and they were just ordinary guns.<br/><br/>Heran sat at Betrah’s tug and looked up at the woman as she spoke. She let out a friendly smile as her confusion had been cleared. “Thank you very much”.<br/><br/>“It’s not often where her sword gets complimented with out someone claiming it’s also broken, or someone trying to steal it from her, so you can see where her defensive attitude towards it comes from”. Betrah sat in a chair next to Heran and leaned back. She looked towards the newer woman and noticing the weapons she had holstered on her. “Those are very nice too”. She looked at the woman’s face. “I’m Betrah, and this Heran”.<br/><br/>Tamani returned the smile, accompanied by a nod, and accepted the explanation as understandable. “Ah, I’ve been in that place myself. Some people on the road think they’re entitled to take whatever they please.” She rolled her eyes, conveniently ignoring the fact that her past occupation was piracy. “I suppose it can’t be helped. Thank you, though. I’m proud of these things.” To show them off a bit more, Tamani drew the currently empty revolvers from their holsters, giving both a quick spin around her fingers. As she did that, her smile turned a bit more sly. She enjoyed showing off with them.<br/><br/>After a quick toss, she caught both by the barrels and held them forward, offering one each to the other women if they wanted to take a closer look. “Dvergar engineering never ceases to amaze, does it? I haven’t seen a single gun as good as these out there.” She accompanied the offer with a wink. “Name’s Tamani, by the way.”<br/><br/>Betrah was impressed by Tamani’s display, but Heran was visibly more impressed. Her eyes always showed more emotion than she meant to. At the woman’s offer Betrah reached out and took the guns, admiring the craftsmanship of them and the weight of them in her hand. Their weight was very balanced in her palms.<br/><br/>“They feel like they’ve got a good weight to them, they’re balanced for lots of firing with little recoil I assume”? Betrah phrased her response as a question while handing one back to Tamani and the other to Heran for her to hold.<br/><br/>“Woah, heavier than I expected”, Heran remarked, taking the gun in her right hand. She traced over the shape of it with her left and spun the clip once before handing it over. “The Dvergar do make very good weapons, my sword was made by a close friend of mine”. Heran pasued to look at the sword again. “He’s one of the best Dvergar smiths I know”.<br/><br/>“That they are. People don’t really expect a gun like this to fire all that fast. You can put five shots in someone before they even know what’s happening,” Tamani explained, taking back the gun that was handed to her. She gave it a few more idle spins on her finger while she watched Heran look over the other, and once both were back in her possession, she slid them into their holsters.<br/><br/>“I might just have to buy something from him one day.” Heran’s mention of the smith’s skills were immediately believable, especially with evidence of it on the table nearby. “Not really one for swords myself, at least most of the time, but it never hurts to have a little extra firepower laying around.” Casually, Tamani leaned on the edge of the table, looking over the sword another time. Just from looking at the mechanisms, she guessed the blade’s firearm aspects used an ammo size around the same as her own pistols, and had to wonder if she hadn’t already commissioned the smith without realizing it. “So, what brings you around these parts? I can’t imagine a Dvergar smith who could make something this nice lives down south. You must have come a long way.”<br/><br/>“I bet it certainly helps to keep bandits and the like at bay”, Betrah nodded at the thought. “I don’t think you’ll be buying from him anytime soon, he’s currently missing. We’re traveling to find him”. She looked over at Heran, her eyes conveying that she should keep quiet about her past or her alternate goal.<br/><br/>“He actually lived in the same town in Ardon as I did, he was like a father to me”. Heran spoke up, nodding at Betrah’s gaze. “He went missing a year ago and we’ve been trying to find out where he went. When he disappeared he left a note saying that the sword was a prototype of his, who knows how many more he’s made by now”. She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I wonder where he is”.