Irma is an authority. respected, and occasionally feared — by those whose work brings them into contact with hers. Fear is not her aim; she expects competence, a willingness to be challenged, and an unsentimental approach to ideas that don’t hold up. She looks for like minds, the sort that tread the thin ridge between the rutted roads.
Her ideas shape the world around her, quite literally. Irma pours them into her work as a Structural Metallurgist, and the city of Gotts Keep grows in that direction. She has no interest in measuring herself against Evergild towers; she’s intent on the newer, still-forming craft of human architecture. The city’s developing style — its queer angles, implausible shapes, symmetry punctured by slant — owes something to her temperament. The buildings carry an artistic weight, but what excels even more is their function.
Her workshop sits in a tall stone building, spare and functional. Tools hang where they’re needed. Half-built contraptions lean against the walls. Prototypes sit on benches waiting for her attention. It’s a place shaped for thinking and for heat.
Work that calls on her skills as a Mechanist brings out a flicker of playfulness: hidden doors, ingeniously engineered safe boxes. Well-behaved giant gates, opened for a decade without tuning, that swing with one hand instead of seven burly lads. She began as a smith, testing the limits of metal, making rods that seemed too light and tools that lasted longer than they should, all without a sniff of magic or a single rare ore.
Her city is prospering, with a flavour and flourish all its own; part of its rise is hers. Most pass her in the street without knowing her name. Yet in her craft, she will not be forgotten.
Her friends are few, but many strive to apprentice under her, to have her appraise their designs or hardware. To her peers she’s approachable and often good company, though none forget the strike of iron through her core. And she dances — with a firmness that only just holds back from frenzy, dark eyes fixed ahead, feet striking the floor with the same energy she carries through her work and through her city.
Selected Works in Gotts Keep
The First High Line – stabilised two hillside buildings; became model for upper-city routes.
Chain-Stiffened Footbridge over Twist Lane – prototype, now iconic.
The Flat Causeway Bridge – early metal-stone composite span over the river.
Reinforcement Patterns – lintel braces, walkway anchors, Irma’s angle-joint