Tools:

In Everwealth, tools are the last trembling bridge between a dying world and the memory of one that once believed itself invincible. Most folk make do with crude implements no better than what the old world's great-grandparents once used, rope frayed to strings, bent shovels with handles half-rotted by rain, compasses that drift when the wind grows wrong. Simple gear like lanterns, chisels, cartographer’s chalk, rope, and hammers form the backbone of Everwealthy labor, and even these are precious. The collapse of industry during The Great Schism left blacksmiths and tinkerers relying on scrap and stubbornness rather than refined metals or precision craft. A miner’s toolkit may hold three generations of patched-together tools, each repaired so many times the original shape is a rumor. Yet these humble implements, passed hand to hand, remain the lifeblood of farm, forge, and field, for without them Everwealth would grind to a halt. Above such everyday tools looms a rarer, more coveted tier, pre-Schism devices, artifacts of The Lost Ages when science and magick walked side-by-side without flinching. These objects are relics of a civilization that engineered rather than guessed, and even in their broken state they command awe. Hand-radios bound by linked runes can whisper across miles if supplied with enough magickal charge, rangefinders and periscopes of the old armies remain sharp despite centuries of wear and compact surveying tools made from alloys no living smith can replicate fetch fortunes from nobles and scholars alike. Not enchanted in any romantic sense, their power lies in precision, gears cut so fine they still turn, lenses polished to unnatural clarity, casings of metals that do not rust. Those lucky enough to own such a device treat it as both treasure and necessity, for they know a day may come when the right tool means survival.   Between these two worlds exists the swollen, stumbling middle, post-Schism salvage. Tinkerers hammer together “hand-lights” made from old light bulbs that burn too bright before bursting, compasses that can tell the time and tell you where mages are, Hand Radios built from scavenged brass and cracked rune-plates that hum with interference like static ghosts. These makeshift tools are dangerous, unreliable, and often lethal, yet they function well enough that entire professions depend on them. Treasure Hunters, surveyors, ward-constables, river-pilots, and scholars carry belts jangling with patched gadgets, half-working signal mirrors, foldable scopes, Aether-meters that twitch at random, and pocket-watches powered by runic batteries that must be shaken to life like stubborn spirits. In a world where craftsmanship is dwindling and knowledge is half-lost, the ability to coax one more use out of a dying tool is considered its own art. For the powerful, tools are not merely utilities, they are symbols of dominion. A single functioning surveying monocular can redraw borders. Even maps have become luxuries, hand-inked, rarely accurate, and often copied from copies of copies until rivers bend the wrong way and roads lead into swamps. Yet tools endure because they must. Folk cling to whatever remnants remain, rusted pry-bars, cracked astrolabes, patched-together lamps, not out of love for progress, but because life in Everwealth demands them. In a land where both magick and nature devour the careless, the humblest tool becomes a lifeline. And so the world continues, upheld not by miracles, but by the trembling, stubborn persistence of things made to work long after their makers turned to dust.