Forged

So uh, I lived a simple life before I was a Skylander. I came from a small village that was doing well for itself but not rich. We made our living off the land. Things like farming, textiles, mining and smithy work made up all the people in my village knew. We had minor trade routes into the big cities and other settlements but we were isolated and it was a long journey to go to market. So we made due for the most part.

See, the village was in the foothills of Mount Scorch. Ah, the volcano never bothered us much. Sure it would rumble and belch out ash daily but it hadn't erupted in forever. The ash was the worst part. Think of a blizzard but instead of everything going white it turned grey. And the sulphur in the air wasn't too pleasant. Although, to be honest, if you've only ever known the stench of brimstone it sort of becomes a comfort and easy to ignore.

We had this huge wall we called The Bluff that would keep most of the ash out. It still managed to get into the village and into our homes. You might ask why the village even bothered with such a location but for us it was simple. Nowhere was the earth more fertile for crops than in volcanic ash. And our mines? Oh the ore veins ran thick and were so varied. We had a silver mine, iron mines, coal, topaz and of course obsidian. That was our richest mine.
Now I know what you're thinking; I said we weren't rich yet I just named all of these mines that should make that a lie. Well, you see, if there isn't much trade wealth doesn't mean much. Our crops didn't sell well because, let's face it, while that ash was a great fertilizer it managed to get into the flavor of the food. I mean, ash was in the air too. You could wash food over and over but it would still find a way in. And while we were used to it others didn't like it. Told us it tasted like dirt. Like they knew what dirt tasted like.
We never got into much along the lines of livestock. The ash was harder for them so all we had was just to provide us with dairy, meat and leather. Those were our biggest imports and where most of our wealth went to begin with.

Tiny history lesson over, now onto my story. Oh yeah, I'm Wallop by the way. My first job was working the mines. I was only maybe seven. It wasn't that I was forced, it was that there was nothing to do and I willingly followed my father down under the earth. It was nice in the tunnels, we'd go deep enough to where the ash wouldn't bother us and the air cleared up. It smelled less like sulphur and more like rich, fertile dirt and rocks as old as the land itself. Coming up from those mines was the only time the smell of sulphur bothered me. It was a whole other world under the earth and I was amazed by it.

Maybe when I said I worked the mines I was exaggerating. I swung a pick axe a few times, bagged up sand and ore mixtures but what I really showed talent in was finding the veins of ore. They sang to , not like a song song but it was music to me. It was... a feeling. A pull and a sensation in my blood that drew me to the richest deposits and made the miners' work that much easier.

I did that until I was about eleven. Once I had explored all of the tunnels in the mines I began to get bored. I wanted to try something else, do something new. So my father took me to one of the smithies to see how the ore was smelted, treated and then turned into tools, parts and weapons.
I worked the bellows for a while. I heaved ore into the smelter and learned how to make alloys. But what really caught my eye was the shaping of all these things we could make with those lumps pulled up from the mines. At thirteen I was finally allowed to become a true apprentice and work the forge.

I was a big boy. Armadillos are known for their sturdy builds and strength but I took the cake. And I was impatient too. Arrowheads are some of the first things an apprentice learns to make. By the third day I was already staying late to try my hand at blades. I progressed quickly and was on weapons and armor long before others that started even sooner than I did. After that I decided that hammering away with just one hammer wasn't enough and I picked up a second to pound the metal faster. I was an artist at my core; I just picked a harder medium to work with. It gave me so much joy to work the forge. I loved it. It was hot and I would end the days drenched in sweat and covered with soot but I would eagerly get up the next day and go back.

I was bounced around from forge to forge when each blacksmith found my skills were great enough to receive teaching from each of them. There was nothing I couldn't do. On my easy days I made jewelry. I cast the molds myself and even took to the delicate art of wireworking. Some of the other apprentices laughed at seeing big, monsterous me hunched over a table with a piece of wire so thin it looked like hair between my fat fingers. No one could deny the beauty of the pieces in the end though. And everything used was provided by the earth while I shaped it.
For me, life couldn't get any better. The ash in the air didn't bother me so long as I was in the forge working hard at making art.

That was how I grew up, hard at work and proud of what I made at the end of the day. I always had to better myself, discover something new or find a new technique to further enhance the end product or simply make the forging process shorter. That was my life; making things. I kept a few trophy pieces but my work was highly sought after by adventures, nobles and collectors alike. Our village did get a little bit richer and it grew a little as well. We still had the ash, still had food that carried the taste of it and still relied on imports for everything else. But it was home and I wouldn't change it for the world.

By now I bet you figured out that being a blacksmith was a big deal in my village. The most prized and highly sought after positions where those of the masters. Each one was a blacksmith that excelled at the craft. Each one had something that was synonymous with their names, a product that defined them. I had worked with them all and learned each of their ways. And each of them in turn had made me who I was. I knew they were proud of me and I wanted to give something back to them.

I was going to demonstrate my skill, speed and accuracy with them watching as I created something I had designed on my own. I had found Traptanium. A nearly impossible crystal to work with. Something harder than diamond and far more magical. But I knew I could manage it and I knew I could find myself named a master as well if I should accomplish it.

I had everything ready. The forge was roaring, my slack tub was filled with fresh water and all of my tools and workspaces were in perfect order. All I needed was the masters to arrive.
The earth shuddered once and the volcano belched a mighty cloud of ash. The earth trembled again and the constant lava flows that never bothered the village grew brighter as liquid fire seeped more readily from the mountain.

That was new for me and the rest of the village. There weren't many animals around the base of the mountain but what livestock we had flew into a panic. They broke the pens that held them and rampaged through the village in their effort to get away from the shuddering earth and the thick ash that was falling like the blanket of night over us at noon.
The volcano looked like it was finally fully awake. The people began to grab what they could and prepared to flee. I left my forge and everything but my hammers behind as I too began to gather what was most important to me and prepared to flee. Looking back it was dumb of us to try and grab things instead of just running for our lives. But by stalling I learned what was really happening.

Right through the side of the mountain it punched a hole. A river of lava poured down the side and rocks that had been hundreds of feet above the village rained down on us like missiles.
In the belly of the volcano a fire viper had slept. Something had woke it up and boy, was it mad. Naturally being the first thing it saw the huge wyrm attacked the village. It didn't care about homes or livelihood. It just wanted to smash things and roar at us. The volcano had grown quiet but with the fire viper out things were far from calm.
I didn't know what to do. I wasn't trained to fight. No one in the village was. Just because we made weapons and armor didn't mean we were skilled with their use. We were farmers, miners and craftsmen.

I weighted my hammers and narrowed my eyes at the beast as it wrecked part of The Bluff. Ash that had been piled against the wall poured in like an avalanche and completely buried several homes. I had to do something. Screaming like a loon, there's no way I can make that sound cool because that's exactly what I did, I ran at the huge beast. It towered over me. I was maybe the size of a tooth in its ugly mouth. It lunged at me, hissing and snarling with breath a hundred times more rotten than sulphur.
I wound up my good arm and swung my hammer. I caught the viper right in the tooth. I shattered it just like that. The viper jerked back in pain and howled.
"Yeah!" I shouted at it. "How'd ya like that?" As it turned out, it didn't like it at all.

I found myself running for my life as the viper spat molten balls of lava at me and shot streams of fire. It was outright chaos. I didn't know what to do, all my bluster was gone. But I had to fight back because the viper was focused on only me.
It snaked around and blocked my escape with a thick body rounder than any tree trunk I had ever seen. The limbs on a fire viper are more like toothpicks. They can't support the creature and they ain't even a threat in fights. I mean, the thing has to get close enough to crush you to make use of its limbs so naturally, it just tries to crush you. But those limbs are weak spots. The obsidian-like plates that armor the viper are missing from the limbs so it can move. I saw it as a weakness and took it. I landed a hit from each hammer before the viper levitated up and coiled in the sky like an angry snake. It must have thought it was a rattlesnake by the way it twitched the tip of its tail.

And there was more running. Actually, I did a lot of running. The viper always seemed to have the upper hand. I didn't look like a hero, I didn't act like a hero. But I didn't give up neither. In the end, I got lucky. I got stupid too but it paid off.
managed to get up onto a building and found myself on the serpent's back. Ugh, I get air sick. Or at least how the viper was tossing me around made me ill. All I could do was hold on. And I guess I did so long enough to make the viper think I was gone. It calmed down enough to let me move very carefully along its back and towards the head.

The viper was very interested in something in the barn. I nearly fell off its back when it ripped the roof off to reveal a family cowering inside. There was no way I was going to let the viper get them. I ran again, this time right up the neck and on top of the viper's head. I did the only thing he knew how to do and swung both hammers down as hard as it could. There was a sickening crunch and the viper folded and hit the ground hard. I was thrown from it and stuck under the wreckage of the barn wall but worked my way out quickly. The child I had seen earlier was screaming his head off but was unhurt just like the rest of his family.
The viper stirred. It was a lot closer to the family then. I threw the broken wooden beams off me, picked up my hammers and charged the viper again. I hit in the face, the eyes, the jaw and the throat. I hit it where ever I could and as fast and hard as I could.

We had fire viper for dinner that night. It's sort of a tough meat, a little gamey but it comes with a natural smoked flavor. The village was safe. It was a wreck but no one had died. We had injured but no deaths. It was a miracle.
Rebuilding the village took time and effort. I left the forge to do just that. And after months of rebuilding everything from homes to The Bluff I found an emptiness inside I wasn't familiar with.
There was something thrilling about taking on the fire viper. Something that almost made me feel invincible or at the very least truly alive.

I forged my greatest masterpiece without the masters there to see. I bent and molded Traptanium to my will. I forged two massive hammers from it and marveled at their crystalian beauty.
I left the village with adventure on my mind. I had a wealth of blacksmith skills to back me up if all else failed.
Like any adventurer I started out as a no one with hardly a coin to my name and slowly built up a reputation and enough coin to live comfortably. But I wasn't ready to settle down. There was so much to see, so much to do.

In my travels I eventually crossed paths with Master Eon. He had an offer for me: to become the official blacksmith for the Skylanders.
It was a job of prestige. One that would please my masters back home. And while I loved the forge I nearly said no.
Eon smiled at me and looked right at my hammers, "I believe, young armadillo. That you have a gift that will greatly benefit Skylands. Come with me. I have a few Skylanders I think you should meet."

I met Snap Shot, Blastermind and Head Rush. A new unit of Skylanders Master Eon was forming. He again offered me the position as blacksmith and after seeing that each of the new Skylanders possessed raw Traptanium I agreed. I forged their Traptanium into weapons and after learning of my exploits Snap Shop offered me a position as a Skylander.
I accepted it and learned that had been Master Eon's plan all along. Both of my skills earned me my position. I am a Trap Master now and help keep the riff-raff of Skylands contained. I keep all of the Skylanders prepared by upgrading and repairing their weapons and armor. I'm doing what I love and helping make Skylands a better place. I'm right where I belong.

I am a Skylander.