This just came to me. It is so cool.
For the first time in years, Thibbledorf Pwent took up a hammer and tongs. He had been the leader of the Gutbuster battlerager Brigade for nearly a century, and had not smithed an item in a century and a half.
This time was special, though.
It was his time, and much like how Bruenor crafted Aegis-Fang, it was his time to make his greatest smithing achievement of all time.
The two hundred kilos of glass sat before him. He was ready.
The labour was hard and rough, but it was worth it for a certian someone. In Obould Many-Arrows' seige upon Mithral Hall, Banak Brawnanvil had been paralyzed from the waist down, and this was a project dedicated to get said dwarf to join the Gutbuster Brigade.
Pwent's thickly muscled frame lifted another ten kilos of glass into the furnace, creating the molten sand he needed.Carefully removing it so he did not get the ashes in the pure, melted liquid, he placed the melted glass into the container with all the rest of what he had melted thus far. It had to be big, it had to be perfect.
After a tenday of melting glass (doing some loads over again as a result of the tainted ashes), There was enough.
Pwent set ten kilos aside in a smoldering container to keep it hot, and got to work on the rest.
The pipe he used to make the glass was elegant, smooth, and made sweet music when the glass was blown properly. It had to be magical, it had to be perfect.
Another greuling tendays passed, and the project was nearly complete: a glass orb bristling with spikes. The ten kilos of glass Pwent had set aside were sitting in the heater still, and he got to work on that.
From this, he made a magnificent wheelchair, hooked to the orb around it so it could move with the speed and precision that he had seen Banak use in his own chair. The chair took two days, but it was perfect. It had to be.
The Craftsman Pwent slipped on iron mesh gloves, and smoothed the glass out with them, making sure each crease was turned into a smooth portion of the orb. It had to be smooth. It had to be perfect.
Soon, all of the orb was complete, and the most difficult task yet was at hand. A normal glass ball would shatter under the most clumsy of blows, making it completely useless, but if it was glassteel, then it would work.
Pwent walked to his chest of magical items, including his first set of Gutbuster armor, and the components he needed. The satchel of steel dust was heavy, but it was going to work, and the scroll was the largest Pwent had ever seen in his life. He would have to put his Gutbuster instinct aside and sit back into his softer side, the one that could finish the sphere for Banak.
The sphere had hundreds of runes etched into its frame, more concentrated on the poles than anywhere else, spreading out down the diameter of the seven foot high sphere, to the base, and etching into the chair.
Pwent sprinkled the steel dust onto the runes, where the particles stuck like the runes were a magnet. After every rune was completely filled, the chant began.
This was perhaps the most taxing test on Pwent. Each arcane word drew another bit of his life-force and brutality out and placed it in the sphere. The runes dissapeared in the order they were etched, leaving a blood-red tint in their wake, a testament to the monster blood this machine would spill.
When all was said and done, the craftsman bit down on his thumb, causing some blood to flow. The blood welled up, and Pwent stood on the chair in the center of the orb to write his name in the rune-text of Faerun on the upper pole of the sphere. Exhausted, Pwent fell asleep in the orb he had spent so long to craft.
It was ready.