At the dawn of time, Armok and the elder gods looked upon their first world. They had made five peoples, but the peoples were not happy. To make ammends and to create a better world, they fashioned five gifts. To the humans, they gave the agriculture of the sun, the power to grow their crops in the warm air and to harvest in the open sky. To goblins they gave the agriculture of the dark, to harvest fungus deep underground. To elves, they gave nature. The power to befriend the brook and the tree, to live in harmony with the beasts. To orcs, they gave strength. To lead great armies and to hunt ferociously. Finally, they gave to the dwarves the knowledge of iron and the power of steel. The ability to fashion firm armors and weapons, to defend their claims of land and to defend their rights of life. All was good for a short time, but the dwarves were soon hungry. They asked their gods if they might have a way to obtain food, to feed their starving children. The gods thought them greedy and struck them with an aversion to the sun. The dwarves fled underground and abandoned their old gods.
In the deep recesses of the earth, miserable and hungry, a dwarf happened upon a goblin. He saw that the goblin was not lacking for food, and asked how it was so. When the goblin told of their great farms and their wealth of food, the young dwarf began to plead for their knowledge. The goblins agreed, in exchange for the knowledge of iron. Happy to oblige, the dwarves gave them the secret of iron, and took the secret of agriculture. They were happy for a time, but they wanted to seek the gains of the surface world. A wise human visited and told them that the fruits of the sun would give them the power of sight on the surface, that they could live there again. Overjoyed, they offered the secret of steel for the other side of the power of agriculture. But the proud humans dared not trade them. Secretly, the dwarves set to work. They dug great tunnels and chambers under the human farms, and collapsed the earth. They found the fruits of the sun, but they were crushed and bruised, and had not been gained fairly. From these fruits the dwarves did indeed gain the power of agriculture, but their curse of the sun did not fade. The humans demanded recompense, but the dwarves, bitter and heartbroken, gave them only iron in return. They did not deserve their full gratitude, for still must they live in their caves.
For such a time, life went on. The dwarves began to accept their life and grew happy in the earth, enthralled by the work of the forge and the gleam of the gem, and their lifes slowly began to change. They began to live as long as the stone, and they slowly grew an ability to drink the water of the rivers and be not nauseated, but to find their thirst quenched. In time the dwarves grew to make their own metals, with the ancient craftmagics abounding in the fires of their forge. They mixed steel and silver, and the magics let it hold an edge for so long, and to cut so clean. They named it shimmersteel, metal of weapons. They mixed gold and steel, and the magics made blows bounce away like so many raindrops upon a mountain. They named it glowsteel, metal of armor. They fired clay and made goods from it, pottery and idols. They mixed bronze with the sunstone gem, and made sunbronze, that glows with its own light. They delved deeper than ever before into the mountains, and found liquid metal. Mythril, that turned into a gooey dough at the warmth of their hands. It was as beatiful as silver and much stronger than their new types of steel.
In a mine held equally by the dwarves and goblins, they struck a strange pocket in the earth, with walls made of a metal never before seen. They named it adamantine, and found it to be a metal of several states. It turned the miners picks to shreds, and so they broke the rock around it away from the wall and carried it to the master craftsmen. A worker slowly pried away the rock around it, and found it to be like a string. A clothier took some and wove it into a cloth, more durable than the sun and mountains. A smith turned some into thin wafers, and found it good for the crafting of weapons, armor, ammo, and even furniture for the king. In a mix-up involving the smelting of adamantine and two extremely clumsy dwarves, a silversmith and a steel-shaper, the dwarves discovered silvithril. A deep blue hue and uncontested strength, this truly was the metal of the gods. But it was a curious metal, for it held none of their craftmagic. The king decreed an experiment, and with the succesful mixing of silvithril and their two most magical metals, shimmersteel and glowsteel, they founded oldfire. It changed color constantly, and burned with magical cold-fire. The dwarves had become mighty in their knowledge of the metals, and slowly turned corrupt. They subjugated both goblin and orc, human and elf under their powerful regime. None could stand to a dwarven warrior, not outfitted as such.
It was a time before the workings of the dwarves were noted by both the elder gods, and their dark counterparts, the demons. As giant toads rended the heads from miners, and demons with flailing tentacles battled 6 or more civilians at once, the fallen angels took their charge. With burning fists and a look of desolation in their eye, they cut through the army easily. Not even oldfire could stop their fist from finding your heart. Many fled, but many more were lost in the tunnels. The might of the dwarves was shattered. They rebuilt far away, but they had not adamantine, and without it no silvithril, no oldfire. They tried mixing many metals, and found only one substitute. While nowhere near as strong as oldfire, with the use of copper they could make newfire. It had not the magical burn, but it still packed plenty of power. Armed thusly, the dwarves fended away the demons and migrated constantly to keep from attracting the attention of the main force of demons.
The goblins were embraced by the demons, and the demons quickly became the object of worship for the goblins. When the gods enacted fiery wrath upon the demons, the goblins leapt in front of harm and shielded the foul monsters. The gods had no choice but to imprison the demons, and so cast them a new cage, made from adamantine. Caught thusly, the demons had no power, and the goblins became hysterical. It appeared to be that only one demon escaped the cage, and the goblins fell into a frenzy worshipping it. They soon lost their power to speak, and remembered how to make only the crudest of weapons. In time, a second demon was found, and their was a schism. While they were not hostile to each other, there were now two civilizations of goblin. They bred quickly and soon each was as powerful as the first, and twice as numerous. When a third demon and the final escapee were found, a third civilization arose. The goblins were of great number and dominated much of the realm.
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Topic: Bronzecastles... To seek a new way of life. With immense backstory. (Read 1228 times)