The light flickered in a distant forge. As the Smith glanced up from His
work, the misty form of a dwarf resolved out of the smoke and fumes of
the fire. "Oh, My child," Phaestus murmured, a tear coming to His eye as
He reached out to the shade.

~ ~ ~

Two days earlier, Thingol, camp leader of the Siroccian dwarves, scowled
at the pile of rocks in front of him. "Clean it away," he ordered the
nearby group of miners. "This tunnel's been blocked for years. It ain't
right." The dwarves quickly leapt to obey.

When the rocks were gone, Thingol peered into the chamber the miners had
uncovered at the end of the passageway. Sheer walls of vitreous stone
soared up into shadow, forming a cathedral-like space deep within the
mine. What caught Thingol's attention, though, was the strange
rune-inscribed armband half-embedded in the far wall. After a cursory
inspection, Thingol left the chamber, hurrying past the quizzical miners
in his rush to reach his tent.

It was only a day before Graf Stonecutter, a dwarf in the service of
Lord Phaestus, received Thingol's letter and summoned Fendo Sehr'asa,
the Hand of Phaestus, to discuss its contents. Thingol had discovered
some sort of relic deep within his mines, he said, and wanted the Chosen
of Phaestus to ensure nothing was wrong. "It's probably not a worry," he
remarked, "but better safe than sorry."

Setting out for the mountains, the small group of Fendo, Faur, and
Lavinia found Thingol in the underground chamber once more. While
attempting to remove the object from the wall for their inspection, he
was thrown across the room and into the wall by some strange force.
Though he was unharmed, a mysterious, spectral dwarf dressed in a
shadowy cloak appeared and spoke, telling Thingol that he wasn't to
touch the armband and instructing him to have the Phaesteans take it to
a cave in the southern Siroccians.

Against Thingol's objections, warning that the band was cursed and they
should not to listen to the dwarf, the Phaesteans began to slowly chip
away at the stone with a battleaxe, and the armband slipped free.
Reflexively, Thingol flung himself forward, catching the relic before it
could hit the ground. Suddenly a great explosion of heat and light
filled the chamber, leaving the Phaesteans blinded.

When their sight returned, Thingol was gone.

Only a charred spot on the floor and the deceptively innocent iron form
of the relic marked where the dwarven leader had stood. The Phaesteans
merely gasped in horror, and before they could act, the mine foreman,
second in command to Thingol, nearly flew into the cavern. Following a
babbled explanation, the foreman bowed his head and asked that the
Phaesteans leave, and take the armband with them. They complied.

With no doubt in their minds that the spectral dwarf's instructions
should be followed, the Phaesteans made a beeline for the cave in the
Siroccians. When they reached it, they were met by the strange dwarf, in
physical form, to whom they handed over the armband with little
preamble.

The dwarf blinked. "They told me it was going to be harder than that,"
he murmured to himself." The Phaesteans questioned him fiercely as to
the fate of Thingol and the nature of the relic, but he gave little
away, except that he worked for a mysterious clan whose name
Warchieftain Faur was able to guess: Boulderscorch. Muttering in horror,
the dwarf vanished, leaving the Chosen of Phaestus with only questions
in return for the lost armband.

~ ~ ~

The Siroccian encampment has since held that rare and momentous of
events among dwarves, a Moot, to select its new chieftain, a brave
former gatekeeper by the name of Adalgar, a scion of Clan Orcsplitter.
He has taken up the great battleaxe and oaken throne of his predecessor,
and has vowed to lead the Siroccian sept to new glory, honouring the
legacy of their ancestors. What this shift in stance will mean for the
world is unclear, but the corpses of orcs littered about their makeshift
village show clearly what it means for the age-old enemies of the
dwarven people.

Penned by My hand on the 8th of Scarlatan, in the year 567 AF.