Nod nod write write.

She'll get to turn all these terrible scraps into nice ingots! It'll still be stupid and bad but a step up! Plus, quicklime, yay!

"...Want to, uh, hang out more? Talk about engineering? Or are you going to go? I'm fine either way."

Belmarniss points at her shopping list apologetically.

"Makes sense. Godspeed. Or... Maybe I should rethink that turn of phrase if gods're real."

Snort.

Once Belmarniss leaves, Waltana's sore muscles think it is now time to SLEEP.

...Set up rocks and thread across the entrance in a way that they'll probably be noisy enough to wake her up if disturbed, then SLEEP.

She sleeps badly and spends much of the next morning sulking about missing City Frostbound. Does a bit more work, though.

Belmarniss is back the next day with a bag of coal and iron scrap and a chunk of cinnabar and a copy of Chimney newly scribed into her spellbook, not that Waltana witnesses that last thing directly.

Oooooh. She loads chalk and iron bits into the towering kiln- There's some kind of mechanism attached to it now too- And carefully arranges the coal at the bottom and lights it up.

Something gives an increasingly high pitched whine. "Yesssssss the turbopump is working! We will reach lime-baking temperatures in mere minutes, mwahaha! Chimney whenever you're ready."

"Chimney!"

Watching her carefully manage the airflow and remove and replace objects from the searingly hot kiln may get old after a few minutes, but she looks like she's having fun.

Belmarniss watches until it gets repetitive, in case there's anything cool she could be helping with magically - anything need Prestidigitated or anything?

Prestidigitation would help a lot with preventing cross-contamination in some of these steps, actually. She prioritizes those first.

Belmarniss prestidigitates as instructed.

Chemistry! Smelting! Cooking quicklime! GLASSBLOWING!

Does she really have to get like that every time. There are sword-y people who do that but an alchemy-ish person doing it is just weird.

It's visible and obvious just how much faster and more bullshit the work goes once she's fully worked up. She's singing a song about hexagons and steam pressure, now, and hammering iron pieces for a minute or two that somehow come out of it in very precise-looking shapes.

"Blast! Going to run out of coal! I need more energy, but where..."

"Fox's Cunning."

She stands in place for a full round.

"...MUSHROOMS!"

She runs over to another part of the cave.

"Yes, it's perfect, the mycelial threads are paths for transport and chemical signal, a network that reacts to distant parts of itself- A city in miniature, each cell a worker performing his job and demanding his due pay. This is the principle of intelligence! I can use this to make a biomechanical hybrid clank-"

The kiln is forgotten. She is now doing unspeakable things to the dried mushrooms with her miniature Jolter and a bunch of metal rods.

Well, if it looks like it's going horribly she's got a Sleep prepped.

She is making some sort of metal-mushroom monster! It's not attacking anything (yet?). It's just standing there as she assembles it.

"Why??"

"Mechanical labor! Automation! New frontiers of SCIENCE! And why NOT? Mwahahaha! Stand back, now!"

She raises the Jolter high with a grin.

"Sleep."

Will save DC15. Waltana has +0 (WIS), +2 (Spark Fugue). Result: 19+2=21.

She brings the Jolter down and dramatically slots it into place on the back of the weird two-foot-high mushroom golem thing.

It stands on four pointy legs, a bit like a spider, and looks around curiously with three glass-bauble 'eyes'. "Yes! It's alive!"

Well, that didn't work at all. Hopefully the golem is fine to have around and not just another money sink.