Recipe: Furious Maintenance Oil

Recipe: Furious Maintenance Oil rests on the workshop bench like a found key, its parchment label curling at the edges, the glass vial inside catching the lamplight in a slow coppery shimmer. The bottle is small, hand-blown, with ridges that fit the fingers as if designed for a known smith’s grip. The oil itself is viscous and warm to the touch, a burnished amber that clings to the skin for a heartbeat longer than comfort would allow. A faint bite of cured resin and metal hangs in the air, a scent that tells you this isn’t a casual polish but a tool born in the noise of belts and gears. The recipe's ink is a stubborn brown, letters looping like vines around a sketch of a gear, a sigil of the old Ironworks pressed into the margin. It speaks of furious precision: you oil a heart of a machine, coax a whistle back into its bearings, coax a wheel to bite the air with a sudden, furious grin. In the margins, a note about “a spark of temper” that should be used only under heat and caution. Lore merchants claim it was concocted by a cranky master engineer who preferred audacious results to cautious, patient work. They say the “Furious” in the name is less about anger and more about the moment when machines remember how to move, when gears sing through the friction of nerves and time. In gameplay, the recipe teaches you to craft a consumable that, when applied to siege engines, repair kits, or field tools, temporarily enhances maintenance efficiency, reduces overheating, and speeds up repairs. It belongs to a family of items used by engineers in the field to keep war machines alive—crossbows, ballistae, and siege engines—when the drums of combat beat loud. It’s not a weapon; it’s a pact with your own machinery, a guarantee that your tools will press on a few breaths longer. On the market road, the old carts of the Saddlebag Exchange whisper about price and scarcity. A pristine copy, carefully preserved, can fetch a few silvers, maybe more in a crowded festival week, depending on the crowd and the mood of the gearsmiths who barter. Traders speak in cautious tones, weighing risk against demand, and they know how quickly a single oil can spark a dozen repairs in a single ruin crawl. To hold the recipe is to hold a thread of a larger story: the ongoing work of engineers who walk between camps, patching gear while a world outside shakes with storms. The oil becomes a symbol of resilience, not the glory of direct victory but the stubborn art of making do with what remains. In that sense, its worth isn’t measured only in coins but in the assurance that, when a caravan creaks, there are hands with oil-streaked sleeves ready to answer the call. Even the smallest bottle of this oil can become a talisman for a caravan’s future, whispered among lanterns as rumors of a forge mend.