Crafter of the Unusual is a piece of fiction for Silkgift: The City of Sails, one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara, which is available in versions for 5th Edition and Pathfinder.
The workshop was at a temperature many would find uncomfortable at best. Kellen Smeltfire, being a Takatori dwarf, just found it pleasant.
The dwarf pondered the slightly unusual commission she’d just received from the sorcerers of Archbliss. Not so much for the subject of the commission, as where it came from. Those of the City of the Sorcerers were known for their elevation of magic above all other things, so for them to require purely mundane assistance was, though not unheard of, certainly not common.
It seems, though, that there are some things that magic does need help with, and that is why Silkgift’s Ingeneurium had been contacted. Kellen specialised in the construction of optical devices and the grinding of precision lenses, not an easy feat to do, and it seemed that Archbliss’s Stargazer’s Tower needed some new lenses to be ground to some very precise specifications for a new gazing device that was going to be installed in it.
The device would need a focusing ability, and this would require a mechanism to be constructed in order to achieve this. Magic is unable to create a mechanism out of thin air if the caster has no idea what the mechanism was supposed to be, only what it was supposed to do.
That is where the Ingeneurium and Kellen came in. They had access to the necessary skills and expertise to turn a detailed description into a functioning device that would do just what it was intended to do. Well, do what the specifications said it should do; no-one really understood just what the sorcerers were creating, beyond the physical and mechanical aspects. Magic would no doubt be involved in the finished device, after it was shipped to Archbliss.
Of course, just because you had the skills and experience didn’t mean that the construction would be easy. Besides, where would be the fun in it if it was easy? “Should be fun” mumbled the dwarf to herself as she grabbed pen and paper and started sketching some plans for the device, referring back to the details sent from Archbliss, and making notes of what materials and skills would be needed.
As to how Archbliss was paying for this… well, not really her problem. Certainly, the sorcerers could pay with gold, but given they would just conjure it up, the dwarf assumed that negotiations had been done for something of more value in payment. She’d make the device so that it worked. What happened next was up to everyone else.