Jack of Many Trades

First Made for the Artificer

Originally posted: 2015-09-05

The other day I posted the prayer beads I made for Mara. They weren't the only beads I made that day, though.

It took me a while to work my way around to understanding Brhenti as the Daughter of Metal. Part of the reason for that was my more extensive experience with another spirit associated with smithwork, for whom I found a name, Taksa, last year. One of the challenges of fictional recon or really of any work with unknown deities is a requirement for openness. We make guesses, we draw conclusions, and sometimes we are right and sometimes we're a bit off the mark. One way to handle this is simply to be willing to revise; I have a lot of thoughts about revision that I want to visit in the next couple of weeks. Another way to handle it is the way the Otherfaith does, allowing for a variety of canons, as well as fanfic AUs, among the faithful.

I have experienced the Artificer as one of the forces of Order, and I have experienced the Smith as a demigod-type human child of spirits. I suspect these may both be true; I think this may be another figure who entered the labyrinth. I am pretty sure Taksa is Brhenti's child, now, but until I get a myth I'm reserving judgement.

It's been a long-standing habit of mine that the first of any new craft I do is offered to Taksa as the Artificer, because the energy I've put into it is that first spark of creativity and understanding. I started this years ago, when I offered to him the project I produced the first time I worked in a forge.

In this case, while I've done beadwork before, I've avoided fancier beadwork and especially fiddly, rosary-style beadwork because my sense of what I was capable of was skewed by previous experience with my ex, who made jewelry. When I sat down to do proof of concept before launching into a full project for Mara, I produced the first beadwork I've done in years and the first rosary-style piece I'd ever done. That's definitely new enough to qualify for an offering, in my book.

Taksa is definitely a spirit who keeps up with the times, as interested in computers and other technology as he was in the forge when steel was invented. This is one of the reasons why the terminal pendant is a piece of memory, wire-wrapped. His best-known spirit partner is Danec of the Rivers. In Danec's case, they are both fierce seekers of knowledge, though they have been known to get competitive and sometimes ridiculous.