Although Alder knew that everything coming out of ‘flamehead’s mouth was bullshit, at least from his perspective, he did think it was a really cool backstory for his situation.

After letting ‘flamehead’ finish speaking Alder decided to ask some questions of his own.

“Where do I go from here? I have no memories and nothing to my name.” Alder said.

“Well, the one plus in these situations is that being an elemental dwarf does come with some perks. For one, attunement comes with some serious power, and because of that power, we are considered as a separate entity than a basic citizen. Years and years ago a group was created in order to manage and broker a deal surrounding elemental races here in dwarven lands. The agreement consisted of a few key things. The main one was in regards to political positions of power, the dwarfs and elementals as they became to be called were worried that allowing elementals to hold positions of power over the populace would with time create a hierarchy where the ‘strong’ elementals ruled over the ‘weak’ dwarfs, this was seen very clearly with elven culture and the dwarfs did not want it replicated here. In order to combat this, it was decided that while elementals would not be allowed to hold traditional governmental positions, but they would also not be held to the same rules and laws governing the country. Instead, their rules and laws would be created by a council with sitting members of both the dwarf and elemental races. I’ll give you some documentation later that outlines all these laws, but a big one for you is that elementals can use government-sponsored inns for free. I have about an hour left on my shift for the day but when im done l could help you register with the elementals guild and get you set up at an inn if you want.” said ‘flamehead’.

“That would be great,” said Alder.

‘Flamehead’ continued for a moment, “Until then I could show you some of the things you should be able to do as an elemental dwarf while I go about my work.”

Alder nodded as ‘flamehead’ got up from his chair but he did one want other question answered.

“This is great and all but I do have one question… What’s your name? To be completely honest I’ve been mentally calling you flamehead this whole time.”

The fiery dwarf laughed heartily before responding, “my name is Hammer Fireborne, I come from a pretty long line of Fire Dwarfs. Im sorry for not introducing myself earlier but I guess that leads us into the first thing you should learn, pretty much everyone can learn a basic analyzation skill. Here in dwarf lands, it’s customary to analyze everyone you meet it gives you basic information like the person’s name. Be careful though, dwarfs are an oddity when it comes to that custom. In elven lands, it’s considered impolite to analyze someone you just met and in human lands, if you are of a lower class of the person you analyzed its a crime.”

Alder was starting to notice that Hammer was strangely forthcoming with information outside of the scope of the main question but after considering for a moment it sorta made sense to him, Hammer is the first NPC in the actual game that Alder had encountered and since the game had no official tutorial Alder figured this was like the replacement for that. Deciding to milk it for all it was worth Alder began to ask questions.

“How do I get an analyzation skill?” Alder asked.

“Focus on something long enough and you should get some information about it,” replied Hammer.

Alder decided that the best place to start would probably be with Hammer himself as the target. So he started staring, about ten seconds he succeeded.

Skill Learned!

Analyze: Focus on a target to receive information.

Name: Hammer Fireborne

Title: Mine Overseer

“I got it!” said Alder.

“Yea its a really common skill, generally it takes about 10 minutes to get it but you probably had the skill already in the past and are just relearning it now,” said Hammer.

“What do you mean relearning?” commented Alder.

“When you get an attunement it resets all your skills and abilities. But because you already have the theory behind them and you have used them before they are easy to reacquire. With skills like Analyze it’s pretty much guaranteed that you had them before you attuned because they are taught to children at a very young age,” explained Hammer.

“Hmmm that makes sense,” said Alder.

As Hammer configured the controls of the mine elevator that they had come up earlier he began to speak again.

“Im no expert in metal dwarfs, but I’ve heard that one of the first things metal dwarfs generally learn is sense,” said Hammer.

“You should be able to spread the metal form of whatever your energy type is from your body and sense metals in your surroundings.” he elaborated.

The mine elevator cart came to a stop back on the level that Alder was originally found on. The dwarfs were still mining away at the walls.

Thinking about what Hammer had said Alder decided to test out some things.

First, Alder opened the ‘tap’ that controlled metal energy and drew some out. Deciding on the first test he tried just projecting the energy out of his hand like a flashlight. It worked ok, he could barely sense some metal fragments on the floor but he nearly instantly ran out of energy to support the ‘spell’.

The way that Hammer made it sound indicated that he should have no problem keeping the ‘spell’ powered. So Alder decided to try a different approach, this time he kept the metal energy inside his body just bringing it really close to the edge of his skin. Alder was actually pretty surprised to feel a resonance forming between the energy and his body and within a few seconds that resonance was radiating out of him into the surroundings. It was like echolocation for metals, his body would send a pulse and the metals bounce the pulse back. The best part is that it cost no metal energy to use.

Celebrating in his success he asked Hammer, “would you like me to use my sense to point out metals to your workers?”

And as if Hammer was waiting for the question he instantly responded “YES!”