The Royal Artificery Society - IC

[Prehysterical]

Imperial Records and Customs office
The Imperial Records and Customs office is much the same as it was when Bolten visited it last. After presenting himself and the business he came on Bolten is pointed to a waiting room and informed that someone should come to meet with him within an hour. Apparently it takes slightly more people to appraise his prototype than it took to simply provide information for the job, and it will take a bit of time to gather them. The waiting room is fairly large, and filled with benches for people to sit on and rest, but there are also desks, ink and paper available for those that want to do some work while waiting.

Eventually a bespectacled man in his late twenties came to pick up Bolten and guided him to another sizeable room, about 4 meters wide by 8 meters long. There where tables at the two short ends of the room and at the room's center, as well as a system of numbered shutters at both ends of the room. its purpose was not immediately clear, but it might normally be sued for sorting large amounts of documents or the like. Today it was not in use for its normal purpose. Waiting for Bolten was the elf he met earlier, Lurel, as well as two humans, a man and a woman. The woman was advanced in age, likely past her 60th birthday already with shoulder-length white hair and wearing a pair of glasses and a simple, powder-grey dress. The man was in his early forties, with a bald head and full brown beard. He was wearing slightly stained workman's clothes and near him on the large central table a large toolbox was set.

"Mister Bolten, welcome, and thank you for your patience. I hadn't expected you to turn up today with a prototype, so it took a bit of work to gather a small committee to take a look at your invention." Lurel greeted the dwarf, the introduce her companions, starting with the elderly woman. "This is Marga, a manager with the notice drafting department. The gentleman with the tools is Victor. He is a facility manager here and has knowledge of all kinds of mechanisms and devices. Lastly there's Thomas." Lurel indicated the man that had brought Bolten to the room." He works in the record keeping department and would be one of the people who would regularly make use of your device if we were to choose your design."

Once introductions were done Bolten was invited to give a demonstration and explain his invention.

Bolten makes sure to greet each member of the evaluation committee with a respectful nod. "Thank you all for coming on such short notice. I make it my aim not to disappoint on that account." So saying, Bolten takes out the small prototype press from his backpack and sets out on the central table.

"I have been told by the city guard that the magic that animates the copying pens has a tendency to stray and deteriorate. I thought it might be more economical to make the parts that fail more mechanical. Much easier to shape a piece of metal than a spell, after all.

What you see before you is a letter press. Parchment can be loaded into this tray here and the slate with the letters can be loaded here." Bolten points out spots on the contraption as he goes. "A full alphabet and number set of tiles can be made out to load into the slate for whatever configuration you set up beforehand. For the purposes of this demonstration, I have made a copy of the whole form that I recently filled out at the city gate." He provides the original copy of the form for the committee's inspection before showing them the slate. They might have been confused to see the letters and words arranged backwards instead of forwards.

"These tiles can be infused with ink from the machine that will bead out from the small pores that you see at the bottom. This ink will be released in the shape of the letters, ideally reducing any stray ink blotches. Once a tile set has been set up, all that needs to happen is that parchment is continuously fed into the machine for the pattern to be copied out. This could be set up on a timer with a belt attached to clockwork gears, but I decided to stick with a simple lever here on the side for this particular prototype. After all, this is more a proof of concept than anything else. Depending on your tolerances for security clearances, a version of this machine could be made that even melts wax and provides stamped seals to authenticate government documents. That is an option that I will leave to your superior judgments in that regard."

Finally clasping his hands together in excitement, Bolten looks between them and asks, "So, would anyone like to try it for themselves? Accessibility was a key factor in my design for this press, so that serves just as much a test as anything."