Altheim Part 10: Reinhald the Swordsmith's Forge

 Time to head back to Altheim and introduce another building and it's owner. This time it's Altheim's Premier Forge, and Reinhald Strohmann, Master Swordsmith. Oh, and his hapless apprentice, Matthias...

Reinhald and Matthias about to start a hard day's work. 

More photos and info after the cut...

So, first up, the building itself. One of the older buildings in Altheim, the Blacksmith's was originally just a small cottage, but Reinhald bought it, knocked down a small outbuilding to the side and built the forge himself. The downstairs of the building has been heavily secured and is used to store raw materials and stock, whilst Reinhald and Matthias live in the upstairs rooms. The forge serves as both workplace and kitchen, with one of Matthias's many daily tasks being to prepare meals before and after the day's work. 

The Dwarven Shield above the forge shows that Reinhald has served under a Dwarven Master Smith, a particularly rare occurrence for a human. As well as the tools of his trade, there is also some of his more day-to-day stock on display, spears, polearms and farm implements. 

The rear of the forge. The back door was boarded up long ago to improve security. 

Next up, the forge itself. This view shows his tools and equipment. The sign on the front of the forge shows Reinhald's true interest, swords.

A view of the interior, showing the anvil and the actual forge.

Finally on to Reinhald himself.

 

Originally hailing from Norsca, he completed his blacksmith's apprenticeship in his home village, before following the Norscan tradition of heading out to sea to earn his fortune. After a few minor jobs, he took a position as Shipsmith on board the 'Princess Augenblick' an exploration vessel trying to find a safer route to Lustria. 

On the voyage the ship came across the 'Lothar's Revenge', a Dwarven scout steamship that had been badly damaged by Dark Elf Reavers. With most of the crew killed and it's repair workshop out of commission, Reinhald helped the Dwarf Engineer that was to be his mentor, Hosir Ironhammer, craft the spare parts necessary to repair the Dwarven ship in the Princess's workshop. Mildly impressed with his skills (and more importantly, missing most of his engineering crew!), Hosir offered him a position on board the Lothar to help limp it back home. Reinhald agreed, but on the proviso that Hosir trained him rather than simply paying him. This led to thirty years following Hosir on land and sea, honing his skills. 

Eventually they parted ways, with Reinhald leaving Hosir's service on good terms with a large quantity of gold and a permanent stoop from living in cramped dwarven ships for three decades. He eventually found his way to Altheim, using some of his gold to buy the cottage, build the forge and setting himself up in business. 

As a Master Swordsmith, he has rapidly built up a reputation amongst army officers, ships' captains and the nobility in the immediate vicinity for supplying high quality blades to the point that he has been able to take on an apprentice to deal with the tedious day to day work of making nails, horseshoes and farm implements. 

Said apprentice is Matthias. Unfortunately for Matthias, Reinhald has developed several entirely dwarven personality traits due to his living in close proximity to them for so long. This can be seen on Matthias' face. 

As regards the models, Reinhald is the blacksmith from the C46 Townsfolk range. Matthias is a preslotta F-series FS63 Store Keeper. Following an idea from Axiom's blog about using older 25mm scale models as children due to the scale difference, I decided to use the store keeper as an apprentice. 

Interestingly, the forge equipment (main forge inc chimney, bellows, grindstone and anvil) are all 3d printed. Whilst I've been pretty negative about FDM 3d printed items in the past, these are done by a friend with a SLA Resin printer (Elegoo Mars) and i'm very happy with them. The build lines are nearly invisible, and don't even show up when drybrushed. He's done me a few other bits of scenery that I'm in various staged of painting up, so expect more in the future. 

The building is another heavily modified Townscape one with the usual additions such as roof tiles, resin windows and roof tiles. 

So, that's another building done, and another couple of inhabitants. And who knows, maybe Hosir and the Lothar's Revenge might turn up in the port one day!