Hello adventurers! DM Foamy is back with another chapter to this lovely project of mine!

Not gonna lie, this one was tough. Cy's always had the weirdest background out of the original Titans to me, so making him something unique was a bit of a challenge. Still, I managed to do it and-

Eh? What's that? I think Cy has the weirdest background? Ofc I do. BB was made by a serum, Raven's a half demon, Rob's an orphan martial artist, and Star is an alien. Those are pretty cliche compared to psycho-explosion-of-blowing-your-shit-up-and-turning-you-into-a-freaking-cyborg if you ask me. As such, I had to take a good bit of time to think about how I wanted to do this. I honestly wanted to make him an Artificer, but that's from the Eberron campaign setting of Dungeons and Dragons and I honestly couldn't find a plausible means to displace him into this setting. So I settled for the next best thing.

Now for reviews! (all four of them lol)

Allen Blaster- Now Al, I know I gave you the info in a PM, but I would like you to keep in mind that devils and demons are different in this setting. They are literally two different species that live in to different hellish dimensions. So that means when and if I say devil, I don't mean a demon. :)

Golem XIV- You are half correct about Slade; he IS selling and reselling Raven for money. But the question is...why?

XxPhoniexFlightxX- I'll go ahead and give you a spoiler. Jericho IS in this and yes, he IS a bard! He's part of a three person group of traveling bards called "The Wanderers". I won't tell you who the other two people are, but it isn't hard to figure out lol.

RPGPersona- Nay sir, the dwarf is not. He'll be seen again in a few chapters, but that'll be the last time. I honestly haven't given him a name, but if you want to shoot me one I'll use it. And yes...there are several magical ties between Raven and Slade. None which are pleasant.

The fire roared to life as the bellows belched air into the forge, the sound of crackling filling the air around the man as he heated his latest piece of work. Beneath his armored right foot, a small and strange contraption of his design shifted under his weight, causing a chain reaction to the bellows in which it was connect to. The bellows inflated with air once more and sent their charge into the base of the flame.

Minutes later, the man took his heavy iron tongs and withdrew the hot bar of metal from the forge. He set it upon his anvil and rummaged through his hammer belt, precariously perched at an angle across his armored waist. Grasping his largest hammer, he proceeded to beat the metal.

He started at the tip, relentlessly pounding it with his heavy hammer into a more pointed shape, turning the bar to and fro as he needed. After it was considerably more triangular, he reheated the bar and replaced it on the anvil. For a lengthy bit of time, he beat it down into a flatter bar, reheating it as necessary. As he did so, the width of the bar grew by a quarter or so, which pleased him. Things were going well.

It took him some time, but he made his way down towards the bottom of the bar, where it tapered off into the tang, or handle. He set about heating and beating that down into shape as well. He didn't need much, just a solid piece in which to install the crossguard, hilt, and pommel. For this he used his medium weighted hammer since the tang was smaller and more likely to-

SNAP

The man looked down at the broken piece of iron on the ground. He stared at it. He glared at it. He opened his mouth and spat curses so foul the undead in the slums shivered.

He glared down at the bar upon the anvil, his eyes daring it to further offend him. Despite its non-existent reaction, he roared in anger and threw his hammer across the room, sending it straight through the wall and into the street. Snatching the offensive piece of iron up, he slung it away from him. It bounced about his blacksmithy for a moment, knocking all sorts of tools over. In his fury, he kicked over his anvil, sending it crashing to the ground with a loud clang. The sound settled him, somewhat.

He looked around the room and saw his mess. He had lost his temper with his work again and his shop took the minuscule amount of damage this time instead of his hired hands. Sitting upon the anvil, he placed one metal hand upon his head and rubbed his temple.

Ever since his "accident", he had had a problem readjusting to his life's work. It's not that the work was complicated, for he had done it since he was a child. Blacksmithing was in his blood, the knowledge and talents passed down for ten generations in his family. He himself was what the more educated folk called a prodigy. He had done things with steel and iron that left dwarves and elves scratching their heads in confusion. It wasn't as robust as dwarven work, nor was it beautiful like elven. It was hardy and strong, just what the people of Luskan needed. His steel was common on the market and his work was always high in demand.

Well…that's how things had been before the he almost died.

He and a close friend, a sworn blood brother in fact, had decided to take a trip to Mirabar to stretch their adventuring legs. It had been some time since they had been out seeing the world together and both were restless and ready to explore. So they chose Mirabar as their destination. Nothing bizarre or out of reach, just up the river to the dwarven citadel. Sure, it was a few tendays journey away, but that's what made it fun. Anything could happen on the road, they had figured.

And anything is precisely what happened.

Six days from Luskan, they were set upon by a small band of brigands. The poor fools came at them with such weak steel that his friend actually killed one on accident by hitting the fellows' sword too hard with his mace. The shattered blade slashed deep into the mans' face and he bleed to death, screaming. The remaining thieves opted to retreat instead of keep attacking. A foolish choice, truth be told. Had they pressed a little harder, they might have been able to overwhelm to two young men. Instead, they died one by one as his friend tracked them through the wilderness and picked them off with his long bow.

Anyone who thought they could run from a ranger in the woods was a fool.

They left the corpses to the carrion crows after stripping them of anything valuable. That being said, they didn't get much more than a handful of silver coins off the entire lot, along with a pretty but small ruby. They truly were a sad bunch.

Other than passing a rather curious looking dwarf with two glassteel morning stars strapped across his back, nothing interesting happened on their journey to the dwarven fortress.

The dwarven citadel of Mirabar stands on a knoll on the north banks of the River Mirar, two tendays from Luskan by foot. On the surface, Mirabar is populated with great multitude of squat stone buildings and stone towers. It is arranged in such a way as to provide great efficiency, both to traveling merchants and to its military. Its walls are extremely thick and sloping, a unique design intended for extensive winter combat. Upon being sieged, the dwarves would pour water down the slopes. The frigid air would freeze the water, and provide a surface far too slippery to traverse. The area around the city is riddled with open mines and heaps of slag, the stone refuse that was discarded constantly. Roads lead to its major mines in the Spine of the World Mountains, which yielded a wide range of metals and gemstones. Those are amongst the most guarded part of Mirabarran society, protected by the Axe of Mirabar, the heavily armed and heavily trained army that guarded the city as well.

Neither of the young men had ever been much further inside the citadel than the Hall of All Fires, which was lined by hundreds of working furnaces. It was simply too hot for them after spending a half a fortnight in the wilderness.

Still, wandering around the city and talking to the citizens had proven to be entertaining. Dwarves were proud folk, in a funny way. Pick on them just a little bit about the right things and they got so angry. Three bar fights and two death threats later, the young men had left the city in high spirits with no hard feelings towards their hosts. They only came by to annoy the dwarves and the hardy mountain folk knew this. It wasn't their first trip there, after all.

Unfortunately, they did run into trouble just a day's travel from the citadel. Said trouble came in the form of a trio of lost ogres, who were rather hungry.

Despite the blacksmiths rather sturdy frame, topping off at six and half feet tall and well over two hundred pounds of work hardened muscle, he had been pummeled and crushed beneath the might of the towering giantkin. His friend, smaller and much faster, had managed to evade the hulking brutes long enough to drop one of them with a well-placed arrow to the eye. The death of their comrade only infuriated the ogres even more and their rampage almost flattened the blacksmith into a fine paste. Both of the friends were in dire straits at this point; one was badly injured, the other was quickly becoming exhausted from trying to stay alive.

Tymora must have smiled upon them that day, for rescue arrived shortly. It came in the form of a snorting, squealing, and flamingmass of laughing death, but it still came to their rescue.

The half-dead blacksmith watched as a black bearded dwarf with a pair of morning stars brawled with the ogres, his fiery warpig hopping around the brutes bashing. It gored them with its tusks at every chance as its master cracked his weapons into whatever he could reach. The dwarf was as mad as Cyric himself, for he laughed the entirety of the fight. His bwahahaha's echoed throughout the area just as loudly as did the ogre's roars.

Before the blacksmith had realized it, his friend had rejoined the fray, furiously striking the back of the knee of one of the ogres. When the giantkin howled in pain and staggered forward, his companion had dropped his mace and shimmied straight up the monsters' back. With a roar of his own, the young man activated the curious enchantment on the odd gauntlets he wore.

The enchantment had sprouted a pair of long claw-like fixtures on the back of each hand, hooking slightly up and over the knuckles on his hand. Though they had the appearance of elongated thorns, they were little more than spikes.

Whatever they were supposed to be, they worked quite well as he plunged foot and a half long spikes deep into the ears of the ogre. The creature only grunted once as it toppled forward. His friend pulled the spikes and tumbled from the back of the creature, rolling into the leg of the remaining one. Luckily enough, the ogre was already very off balance and was sent tumbling backwards. The mad dwarf immediately hopped up onto the monster and struck it mercilessly in the face until it stopped moving.

To this day, the blacksmith could only barely remember his friend and the dwarf loading him upon onto the flaming warpig and taking off for Mirabar at a dead run. He barely remembered falling off the snorting beast twice. He barely remembered arriving at the city.

But he most certainly remembered that the pig had startled a group of human quarry workers so badly that, in their haste to escape the creature, they knocked over a scaffolding that knocked over two more scaffoldings that hit another one that held several tons of stone from a mine entrance a little higher up. This chain reaction dropped said stone directly onto the blacksmith and his impromptu mount.

He never did figure out what happened to the pig or the dwarf. But then again, he was unconscious for everything that happened after that.

And boy, was he ever grateful for that.

When he awoke, two things immediately caught his attention. First, he couldn't see out of his left eye. Second, several of his limbs felt…odd. He had raised his left hand and found it to be armored. It was of a curious looking craftsmanship. It was strangely dwarven, but it had the subtle curving of elven make as well, almost as if the two races had worked together to make the gauntlet. Pushing his curiosity aside, he reached up with his other hand and removed the glove.

Only, it wouldn't come off.

His confusion grew more and more as he realized that this gauntlet reached well past his forearm. In fact, it seemed to cover his whole arm. He sat up and looked at his body in horror. Well over three quarters was now covered in a nearly seamless, silvery blue metal with runes etched deep into it surface.

His screams awoke everyone well within earshot and many that didn't know that they were within earshot of the infirmary.

His friend had been the first one in the room, followed closely by three elves and four dwarves. There was a priest amongst the elves and two amongst the dwarves, all of which rushed past the others towards their screaming patient. It had taken them well over two hours to calm him down enough to explain what happened.

It turned out that, in addition to his previous injuries, the blacksmiths' body had been effectively pulverized by the quarrystone. The vast majority of his bones had been crushed, his muscles left mangled and limp, and his many of his organs had ruptured. The left side of his head was practically caved in. He was, in short, as good as dead.

The Lady of Luck smiled once more upon the blacksmith, however. He was renowned enough in the city (his wares had made their way to the dwarven capital more than a few times) that many of the citizens reacted instantly to the accident. The dwarves tackled the stone instantly, the human set about shoveling shale, and the few elves used their magic to locate the mangled man below the rubble.

In truth none of the holy men present had the power to deal with the sheer volume of damage present on the blacksmith. His limbs were truly beyond useless at this point; they were damaged beyond repair even with the most powerful of their available holy magic. The muscles and nerves could be healed, yes, but his bones were shattered in too many places. It would be borderline impossible to magically reassemble the bones and even if it were to happen he would spend his life in extreme pain due to the minute bone fragments scattered about his muscles.

And that's were things took a turn for the worse, at least to the blacksmith. For, you see, the citizens of Mirabar had done the one thing the young man most certainly did not want to do, even if it cost him his life.

They took him to his father, who lived deep within Mirabar.

The young blacksmith hadn't had a good relationship with his father in a very long time. The parental figure, if he could be called that, was more obsessed with his life's work than anything. It was a wonder the man had even found a wife and sired a child, so much time did he spend on his research. The man was an alchemist and a mage with a penchant for making golems. As strange as that sounded, the truth was that he was absolutely convinced that it was golems that would be best suited to protecting his home. Nobody was quite sure why he thought this, only that when he had arrived at Mirabar decades before that he had the look of a haunted man about him. The only other odd thing about the blacksmiths father was the red robe he always wore. He had asked his father about it once and the man had merely replied "It is a reminder of the horrible things I've seen, things I must protect you from."

With that being said, his father was absolutely distraught when they arrived with his son. He was in a full blown panic within seconds, completely flipping out when he was told about the accident at the quarry. He alternated between screaming at the quarry owner and asking about his sons injuries before the accident. At some point the priests had interrupted his verbal rampage and informed him that his son was on the brink of death and they couldn't keep him alive much longer. It was then and there that he made a decision that would change the very existence of his son.

He used a transmutation circle to turn his own son into a half golem.

From what the blacksmith understood, it was more than a little bizarre of a process that baffled everyone present. As the metal bonded to his flesh, replaced bones, and covered ruptures on his organs, the priests had come inside the circle and continually cast healing magic upon him. It made his organic body meld with the metal in ways that no one could explain. On the outside, several elven and dwarven blacksmiths molded the outer metal (which was liquefied and warm, therefore easy to maneuver) into more refined shapes, producing strong but correctly proportional limbs. The metal would come to encase the bulk of his body, as well as roughly half of his head. Someone had had the mind to place a pure ruby where his left eye had once been.

After the metal work was done, the dwarves had taken it upon themselves to etch into the metal runes of protection. His metallic parts were immune to flame, they were unbreakable, and weighed exactly as much as his living limbs had. Of course, the elves present stepped up their game as well. Upon the ruby eye, they bestowed enchantments of their own. He couldn't be hypnotized, psionics wouldn't be able to control him, and it would shine a light when a simple cantrip was recited.

It was very obvious to many that a god must have had a hand in the blacksmith's survival. But the question was…who? Was it Gond, the god of artifice, craftwork, construction, and smithwork? Or perhaps, since this was a dwarven hold, it was Moradin, the dwarven god of creation, smithing, protection, metalcraft, and stonework? Would a dwarven god feel pity for a human? What about the elven god Corellon Larethian, who held sway over craftsmanship as well? It was a known fact that the blacksmith's wares had reached elven hands and had been used by them. Would this god have saved this human out of respect for his abilities?

No one knew the answer and they never would.

The blacksmith was more confused at that moment (the end of the story they told him) than he had even been before in his life. Why the elves and dwarves had given him all these things was beyond him at the time, but he would later learn that his friend had guilt tripped the entire damned kingdom into helping his injured friend, quite profusely blaming them for having terrible workers and terrible working conditions. He had always known his blood brother was persuasive, but this was ridiculous.

He remembered calling his friend "The craziest damned ball of hair Faerun had ever seen.", to which his companion laughed and said "Well then, metal man, guess that makes you crazier for roaming with me!".

A small knock on the door roused the blacksmith from his thoughts.

"Come in." He called out gruffly. The door eased open and a street urchin, perhaps ten winters, poked her head in. Behind the child, the smith could see that it was dark out. He had missed another day, it seemed.

"Mista' Blacksmith, ser, I brought your hammer." The child said.

The man nodded. "Good lass. Come inside and warm yourself by the fire."

The girl eagerly entered and presented the tool to the man. The blacksmith took it and set it back in its proper hoop on his belt. The girl sat silently on an upturned bucket as he watched the mostly-metal man set about returning his workshop to normal. It took some time, but he eventually got it back to normal and then sat back down on the anvil with the recovered pieces of his broken sword. He stared wistfully at them, wishing they would magically rejoin so that he could continue working.

"Wot you gonna do with that?" The girl asked.

"I'm not sure now." The smith shrugged. "I broke it, so it's useless as a sword."

"But ser, couldn't you just make a shorter sword?"

The blacksmith raised his only eyebrow at the child, then held up the iron bar for inspection. Yes, he could make a short sword out of this. Or good dirk. A pair of knives. The larger scraps he could turn into arrowheads. There was always a need for more arrowheads.

The metal man grinned. "Good idea. That, Melvin, is why you get five silvers a day."

The girl smiled and took the coins offered. When she was nice and warm, she set off for wherever she bunked at night. The smith returned to his work. He needed to get something done this evening to make up for the loss of a good sword. In the morning he would be headed to the market to sell his finer pieces to traveling adventurers and sellswords, probably even to those in employ of the Ships as well.

He paused in thought. Tomorrow was the day the slavers came through. The crowds would be full of pickpocket's moreso than usual.

Oh well. He was going to have a good day regardless.

A/N: That was a pain in the ass to write, tbh. I scrapped it and rewrote it three times before I was satisfied with it.