Mizzen Foundry Ruins

In a shaded crook of the hillside, an old two-story stone building is caving slowly around a missing lower wall. It and the banyan-like olive trees which have grown to incredible thickness in their collapsing wooden planters, are contained in a low mortar-less wall that curls, gate-less and simple, around to an opening on the western side, just beside the sad remains of a door with a jutting trade sign sticking out with remaining pride.

Deeper: Nestled into a long overgrown olive grove is a two-story ruin of the Mizzen Foundry. The building has been grown through by one palatial trunk and the remains smell of musty manure.
Hafts of ball-peen hammers, rusted ends of tongs and the collapsing funnel of a stone chimney give rise to the easy understanding that the place made and forged metal. Couple that with the less-revealing waist-wide stumps set in peculiar pattern near an empty, raised cistern grown stagnant black, and similar conclusions might be reached.
More curious perhaps though is the excavation beneath a solid trapdoor in the old foundry's NE corner. A great bulk of incredible metal 8' wide, hollow like a clam shell has been excavated around, but remains largely buried in the crawlspace.
1 on a d10 chance that apprentices Kurl & Wilmsing are here making ineffective progress at heating, banging, and cutting at the metal for their master, Smith Ore Handly who is encamped in the nearby hills.
Handly is obsessed with the products of the Mizzen Foundry, unsure of how the original company, now long defunct, managed to extract the metal and forge it into the Mizzen Blades, a series of nine simple longsword blade each initially gifted and treasured, and now mostly dispersed and lost. Each has a numeral inscribed '# of 9', has a hilt wrapped in one of nine rare hides or pelts, and Smith Ore Handly is in proud possession of #4.
His piece is, unknowingly to him, is a forgery, though the hilt is truly thinned and bound raze scale.
Any time PC's finds a blade in Corrhéo, it can be checked for a Mizzen mark (1:10) as the foundry was wide in its produce and distribution; if so, it can be checked again to determine whether it were one made by the master bladesmith, and if so, of the Metal of the Shell (1:100).
The Mizzen Foundry went obsolete when forgeries became so commonplace that the founders and smiths of the Foundry could no longer make reasonable business. As a result, a mizzen sword is a certain hilt, cut, and length, but it is not always a Mizzen sword, which is a different beast altogether.
Directions on how to craft the pelt & hide-wrapped rune-hilts can be found in the well-looted bookcase in the office. What appear to be scratches in the wood provide access to a cubby in which they're stashed.
Too, the hilt is made of a repeated trapping & drawing rune done in strands of twisted metal, each wrapped in various hides. This rune is etched in its singular instance as a brand for the old foundry and still hangs as that trade sign jutting above the front door. Magic-users will find this dampens their power within range of the building.

The metal shell is an old companion pod used by two prison escapees from the ring of Hold high above in the sky, many many many years ago. It is made of illanium, a highly heat-resistant metal.
The building with its single wall missing is also on the mental map of many of the hillside's sheep farmers as an excellent night stay as they herd about the area and a low rock wall has been built to keep wolves and coyotes and worse at bay.