BECMI Chapter 317 - Unforging
Elder Merkelbrocht finally bowed his head to the human warrior. “I apologize for my unfounded accusation, Lord McMikal. It is obvious that the damage done to the Forge was by the troll. There has never been outsiders inside the room of the Forge before, be they human or monstrous things, and we are quite uncomfortable with your presence here,” he admitted unwillingly.
The Mick held his gray eyes for a moment, then just nodded and waved it off. “Well, then, this be not your Forge o’ Power anymore, so that be not a problem, aye?” He turned his attention back to the Forge as the dwarves all gasped. “Summat went into the Forge through the top vent and be messing around with the Runework on the inside o’ here. Not bein’ too sure what he was trying to do, but ye feed and fire this up, our Cryptomancer say this be going to explode. If it merely take out the chamber or take out the holding, be hard to tell.”
The dwarves all gasped in shock. “You, you can see the Runework inside the Forge?” the elder priest squeaked in a combination of outrage and disbelief.
“Aye, ‘tis a simple enough thing for a student o’ the Crystal Dragon disciplines,” the Mick replied with a totally straight face, as if it were inconsequential. “Did me a circuit, and someone definitely changed the Runes inside, it were not matching the primary picture o’ the other two Forges o’ Power I’ve seen up close like this.” He also ignored the way their jaws dropped in disbelief. “Also, ye’ve definitely got the old and inferior style o’ Runework here. ‘Tis really inefficient and leans towards a darkness bias on yer Earthpower binding. The best Forges run on tapping Fire and Earth together. Leaving the Forge cold to accumulate Earthpower instead o’ working it to fire up the ash be extremely stupid for a hard-workin’ clan o’ dwarves.”
They blinked at him in shock. “Old?” repeated the shocked dwarf-priest blankly. “Inferior?” he went on in disbelief.
“”Tis a Forge, dwarf, not a Nexus. It be stupid to be losing the benefits o’ tapping the Earthpower while using it for what it were made, aye?” He squinted at the Runework. “Not up to Commander Briggs’ work, o’ course, but probably naught on the planet be. Ye’ve either got to bring a specialist in here to rework the Runes back to the initial state, which be unwise, or ye need to tear it down and put a proper one into place. ‘Tis a good time to do so, neither option be easy, and ye can’t use the Forge for aught right now.” He waved his hand in the air. “Ye feel it, can’t ye? The edge in the magic, like something be tensed an’ teasing, waiting t’ break free?”
The elder dwarf stepped forward reluctantly, his hammer still in hand, and placed his old and callused hand on the slumbering stones of the Forge. He closed his eyes, reached out… and snatched his hand back with a gasp, a frown stamping itself on his face.
“The Forge is defiled!” he exclaimed, his hands shaking with his outrage, oaths and curses ringing out in answer from the dwarven smiths and warriors around him.
“Our best guess be this Gargantua wizard wanted to test something out, an’ went inside to make the alterations, probably making off with yer entire supply of Dark Ash as he did so.” More oaths rang out, and the priest’s face went gray with dismay. The empowered Ash represented literally years of the Forge laying idle to collect and condense the Earthpower that flowed through it! It was a great secret of the dwarves, yet plainly this human and others knew about it as nothing special! “Ye can fix an inferior thing, or take the chance to make a better one. Neither choice be cheap in time nor labor-”
“Unless Lady Edge gets involved,” Laurentine muttered under her breath, but the dwarves heard her quite clearly.
“-but the one clearly be a better choice,” the Mick went on smoothly. “Ye’ve not seen the new Forges at Trogelheim and Ugvierheim, I gather.” Actually, they were of Moorian design, the dwarves there having no attachment at all to the designs Clangyr had given His worshipers, and they had been suitably upgraded to be able to meet the demands of a technological society.
That had included Lady Edge going over them with a fine-tooth comb and Commander Briggs updating the Runecraft from a Crafting basis, not a magical basis. Given how the dwarves fell all over themselves to see his and Sama’s craftwork, the Moorians had no problems letting him revise and improve their new ‘ancestral relic’.
“Those dwarves be of clans with no tie to Rukheim,” Elder Merkelbrocht said uneasily, but it was clear he was curious what that might entail. After all, their clan had left Rukheim for a reason, long ago, and their beliefs in Clangyr and what dwarves were meant to be and do had to have changed over the generations that had come and gone since then.
They were a weak dwarf clan. They could hold their own against the likes of orcs and goblins, but when a mighty foe had come, they had fallen almost instantly, and in doing so failed their forefathers.
“Entirely true,” the Mick confirmed easily. “Probably something you’re very curious about, as I bet your legends say that only the dwarves of Rukheim are true dwarves, and there are no others.” He tilted his head slightly. “But, you know, there were dwarves in Darkmoor, and that was, what, two thousand years before Rukheim rose?”
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The dwarves all gaped on him. “Darkmoor?” the elder repeated blankly. “The legendary kingdom of elves and humans?” he went on pointedly.
“And dwarves and hyn, aye.” The Mick glanced at him. “Left that out of the legends, did they?”
The dwarves were staring at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “You cannot be serious, Lord McMikal!” the dwarf-priest finally gasped.
“Oh, I be dead serious. Who do ye think helped keep us wildly ambitious humans an’ silly elves in line? The dwarves an’ the hyn, of course. Certainly ye don’t think we humans could have built all those great wonders up so quickly in the time Darkmoor existed without dwarven help, do ye? I mean, humans have some good engineering, but even I be admitting that dwarves outwork us, an’ they be having a talent for stone an’ metal that me folk have always wanted.” He turned his head. “Laur, think ye could arrange fer a quick visit to the new Forges for the elder t’ inspect? His acolyte could oversee the clean-up here, an’ as long as they don’t light the Forge, they won’t be blowin’ themselves to the Charlands an’ back.”
“Of course. If the elder would like to go now, we can be in Trogelheim in seconds. I’m sure they will welcome a fellow dwarven elder warmly,” Laurentine agreed without blinking an eye.
The dwarf-priest was naturally a bit gobsmacked at that revelation he could literally leave for another dwarfhold and be there instantly. “I… right now?” he hedged, blinking rather foolishly and looking around.
“Elder, the only thing yer kin need ye for here is to reconsecrate the Forge… and ye’re not going to do that, considering what has been done to it. Ye aren’t capable of repairing it yerself, aye?” The Mick knew this was true just by the dwarf’s Level, and the way the elder’s eyes drooped showed he knew it, too.
He just wasn’t strong enough to do all the things a truly great dwarf-priest could do, and given his age, he didn’t have the drive or desire to attain those skills, either.
“If ye dinna want t’ visit another Clanhold, no skin off our nose. We’ll leave ye be, and the favor ye owe to the Commander be between you and yours.”
Which meant if he did want to visit later, he’d have to trek overland for days, instead of popping there on the wings of magic in seconds.
He was old, but he definitely wasn’t a fool. “And you’ll bring me back home as well, when my visit is done?” he demanded shrewdly, waving his hammer at her.
“Myself? Probably not. But there are other wizards at Trogelheim who can certainly deliver you home with minimal effort, elder. It is not an imposition, and there is no danger to you,” Laurentine said soothingly. “I expect you’ll be visiting and touring for several days, and we are kept quite busy by the Commander.”
The dwarf-priest looked around at the wreckage made of the smithing stations in the chamber, the massive corpse that had to be disposed of, and the remains of the dwarves who had died valiantly and fruitlessly to stop these creatures from defiling their sacred place of power.
These non-dwarves had handled the problem with almost dismissive ease, armed with Weapons the like of the clan could not even forge successfully, Armor finer than any worn by his clan, and likely skills and aptitude not even the dead Clanholder Kramwron could have matched in battle.
Suddenly he felt very tired of trying to hold to the ancestor’s ways, which were just not working. His clan was fading into the shadows, a victim rather than a power, seen as an easier thing to strike at than this surging human realm coming out of nowhere to establish itself.
If the foul wizard who made these monsters feared the wrath of the dwarves, he would not have attacked here with his monsters, would he? No, he had picked the weakest dwarf-clan he could find and attacked with impunity and assurance that there was nothing they could do to stop him… and he had been right.
They were weak… and they were poor. The ancestors who had wanted to get out from under the dwarf-kings and the grip of power of the other clans, going out into the world and applying dwarven skill and tenacity to forging their own road and will, had been proud and determined.
But the reality had been harsher, time had worn down on them, and fortune had not been with them. The mining had not been profitable, working stone did not lead to great wealth, and the lore and great skills of master craftsmen had eluded them or been lost to time and the ineptitude of their descendants.
Clangyr had been silent on this matter. Their god wasn’t suddenly going to give them all great skill without the work that went into it, make iron appear in endless veins and gold leap out of the ground into their hands. They had chosen a road away from the ancestral kingdom their god had given them, and would live or fall on their own merits, exactly as their ancestors had dared to dream.
They had failed at the dream. What would he tell his forefathers when they met in the halls of Clangyr now? Kramwron had been the mightiest of them, a match for any ogre, orc, or goblin who had come to threaten them, and yet he had fallen so swiftly, taking the best of the clan’s warriors with him as they fed themselves into the maws of unstoppable monstrosities wrought by a mad human wizard.
His clan needed something more. If these distant cousins, not native to Clangyr’s realm, were truly dwarves and might share their lore, their strength, and rebuild the Schmeide clan into something no puling human wizard would dare tempt… than that was worth it.
The ancestors had left Rukheim because the warrior and noble clans looked down on them and their trades. At least humans had no such problems, and were not looking down on them…
“I will go,” he said, to the utter shock of most of his clan who knew him, including his acolyte Crinwurt, who could scarce believe the Forge would be left in his care. “And I will see what these unknown dwarf-clans have to offer that you seem to think so highly of.”
The Mick carefully did not smile. This was the real reason he’d been sent here, after all. Promises of trade treaties and military aid meant very little. More dwarven blood joining the Eismark Federation was a good thing, and the Commander’s real wish. The holds of the dwarves on these mountains were close-knit, but poor as such went, with pride that had to be broken to be useful.
That shouldn’t be a problem with the wonders this dwarf-priest was about to behold in Trogelheim.