Bathroom Monologue: Thanks to random spam from oertwig@unknownmailerdaemon for inspiring this one with your likely made-up name

There were blacksmiths who refused to make weapons. Of them, Oertwig was the most famous. His pacifism wasn’t notable when he was just an apprentice and spent most of his time fetching bellows or water. It became a source of conflict when he became a professional, and especially after he showed such talent.

He began with horseshoes, made with tiny feather imprints, and after shoeing them, the horses ran at double speed.

His first shield bore the imprint of a single fingertip, like a giant had stamped it with his thumb. On the battlefield, that shield was held futilely up against a battering ram, and repelled it.

All of Oertwig’s ironworks held up under the pounding of enemy steel, though soon he was not working with such lowly metals. Soon he was making soft gold cufflinks that never scratched, each with a little perfect circle imprint on the center. Soon he was getting loads of rare dwarfish metals, things that glowed or turn knives dull all on their own, just to see what he could do with them.

But the orcish and human kings demanded Oertwig smith them weapons. By that time he was rich and renowned, and used his position to refuse. They used their positions to insist.

His breastplates bearing interwoven hands were uncannily likely to catch arrows between their fingers, and never let them pierce the leather doublets beneath. The man who wore Oertwig’s first hound helm was mistaken for a werewolf. When his apprentice held Oertwig’s personal ankh, he swore he had a vision of the two great prophets.

Still, he made no swords or spears. When warlords brought torches to his door in threat, he responded by dumping water onto his own coals. The local militia was so enraged that they would have stabbed him to death, if they could have penetrated his armor. The closest thing to a weapon he ever made was drawing a wave on his piss bucket. When he emptied the thing out the door it washed the militia down to the river.