Even before anyone had moved forward to use the knocker the door opened, exposing the sweaty and soot covered Hallbjorn. He waved his hand for them to enter the suffocating heat of his forge. "Come in, let's not dilly dally. We have work to do." Without waiting for a response he reentered the forge, leaving the door open so that they could enter.
At first everyone was surprised, having just heard of this smith from Rosalind. Even Rosalind herself was confused, not having suspected her employer to also be a teacher. This surprise only lasted a moment though before she quickly moved forward without hesitation. As she crossed the threshold she peered back to see the others following along.
Soon they were all within the now slightly cramped smithy. It had seemed spacious when it was just Strom and Rosalind, but now with the ten of them they were standing in a tight semicircle around the the main forge of the room with Strom standing in front of it, looking over each of his new students with an eerie calm, at least until his eyes crossed over Rosalind. A small smile meeting his lips as he gave her a light nod.
"I am Hallbjorn Strøm, you can refer to me as any combination of that. I don't want to be called Professor or Teacher, or anything else of the sort. I am and always will be nothing but a smith, and perhaps I will be able to make a smith out of a few of you." Strom swept his gaze over the group once more, this time taking more time in doing so, as if trying to determine who would be able to properly take up the craft.
The moment he had spoken Jien felt a familiar feeling at the back of his mind. He knew that name, but was not sure where from. This was one of the troubles with his Personal Library being the way it was in terms of construction. He was grouping knowledge by subject without keeping the knowledge separated into different books. Still, his eyes flashed momentarily with starry depths as he dug through everything in his repertoire of blacksmithing knowledge.
He finally came up on his answer after several moments. This man before him had produced the book that had been given to him on his birthday for smithing. Of course he still had the original book, a lot less worn than his alchemy one had been but still fairly weathered after the years. This man had been the source of his knowledge on arcane smithing.
Unfortunately, looking at the smithy they were now in, all starting to sweat through their uniforms due to the suffocating heat of the forge glowing in front of them. Noticing this fact rather quickly Strom walked over to the one of the benches of his workshop and placed what looked like a simple marble on a small indent on its corner. Moments later they all noticed the feeling akin to a bubble passing over them before the heat was all but snuffed out, leaving only a lukewarm temperature.
Strom looked back at them after with a much broader smile than before. "Sorry about that. I forget that my personal forge tends to run rather hot compared to others. Not that it will matter after today. You are only here in my personal forge for today, starting next time you will be going to the communal forges at the center of the district."
With that said he picked up a pair of long tongs, using them to grab a simple iron ingot and putting it within the forge to heat up. "So, who here besides Rosalind have actually tried their hand at smithing? Any kind is acceptable from the traditional to the arcane."
To this everyone but Julie and Andrew raised their hands. Julie had been too busy struggling for her life to be bothered with trying to craft anything. Andrew on the other hand had been more focused on studies of healing and medicine, leading him into work with alchemy over other trades.
Everyone was a little surprised to see Alys raise her hand. When so many eyes looked in her direction she directly scoffed. "How do you think a bunch of bandits continued to do what they did. They didn't just swap weapons and armor every time something took a bit of damage." This in itself made sense but they still looked at the girl's petite frame trying to envision her using a heavy smiths hammer to beat a heated ingot into shape.
Strom seemed to have ignored Alys's comment, knowing that not everyone that came to the Academy came from great backgrounds. He nodded at seeing that most of his class had at least attempted smithing in the past, though he wasn't sure of what type given that there were many. He also didn't ask.
"Today is going to be a deep dive of the very basics for preparation of a forge and safety. You'll have to forgive me for continuing to work but as your unit member would know, there is a lot of work yet to be done." With that he used his tongs to pull the glowing ingot from his forge, placing it on his anvil before picking up a rather plain looking hammer, if not for the fact that the head seemed disproportionate to its handle and the fact that they could see his arm strain under its weight as he lifted it despite the motion being smooth.
As he brought the hammer down with a controlled but fierce momentum he began his description of the basics of preparing a forge. Everything from the coals and different layers to keep the heat of the forge even and continuous, to stoking the flame without snuffing your fire or causing it to flare in an uncontrolled manner.
Jien and the others took out pen and paper, finding what surface they could to take notes. It was clear that this particular course would not be one for note taking, but one of action going forward.