Faercrafting

Faercrafting is a technique of crafting artifacts by embedding faeries into objects, resulting in magical artifacts able to hold elemental cores thanks to the Will of the embedded faerie. Even thought the premise of faercrafting is fairly straightforward, the art itself is exceptionally difficult to master and only very few master smiths and artificers are able to craft well-functioning artifacts using faercrafting.

Technique

To faercraft, a faerie needs to be bound to an object using cursemagic. As with all artifacts, faercrafters need to limit and direct an artifact’s usage as strictly as possible to avoid unforeseen negative effects. Considering a faercrafted artifact’s unlimited magical use, this is exceptionally important when crafting said artifact.
Additionally, strict regulation of the artifact is also important because the embedded faerie has a Will of their own. While most faeries can be bound to an artifact voluntarily, they might not obey the artifact’s user and instead continue to act on their own. A well crafted artifact limits the faerie’s possible actions as much as possible, while still allowing creative usage of the artifact’s intended magical properties.

Magical properties

Faercrafted artifacts function like normal artifacts of the same kind, with the exception that the artifact can hold elemental cores and thus can recharge instead of having a limited amount of usages. One or more elemental cores are bound to the Will of the faerie. Thanks to the cursemagic used when crafting the artifact, an artifact’s user can produce elemental magic based on the elemental cores of the faerie simply by applying their Will on the artifact. Faercrafting is seen as a viable alternative to crafting artifacts from everstone due to this.

A magical sword made using faercrafting, displaying a distinct glow.

Image of Kaskert, a living armor created by the legendary artificer Hereka using faercrafting.

Risks

Even though faercrafted and evercrafted artifacts can have similar magical properties, there is one important downside to faercrafting: the artifacts magical properties depend on the faerie.
As faeries are intelligent beings with their own personalities and sometimes even ambitions, a faerie might object certain uses of the artifact it is tied to. Some faeries seem to have a particular taste for certain acts, resulting in the artifact to malfunction when not keeping their magical host content. Other faeries develop close bonds to their users, refusing to serve anyone they do not deem worthy or acquiring the personality traits of their (previous) users.
While cursemagic can limit a faerie’s possible actions, a determined and cunning faeries will find ways to manipulate and hamper their artifact’s uses if they wish to. On the other hand, having a good bond with the artifact’s host can make the artifact even stronger. Some artificers even intentionally create animated objects using faercrafting!

Known Faercrafters

Hereka, a legendary artificer of Tenerim