22th of Felsite.
Today, my opinion of High elves has fallen even lower. It wasn’t very high to begin with, with all of their pompousness, and “holier than thou” attitude, but today I saw their true nature. They came here to sell, among other things, a tigerwoman in a cage as a pet. Now I don’t care if they think that dwarves are too racist and stupid to recognize Tigermen as an intelligent species, but from them, who are supposedly attuned to the nature this is a bit too much. Thankfully, our overseer was also disgusted by such act, and scrambled metal smiths to produce some goods so that they could take her from those elves. Tiger also was rather interested in this elven slave. Gee, I wonder why.
8th of Hematite.
Today, Anvil (That’s our weapon smith. What happened to dwarven names while I was away?) has started, by the orders of our overseer, to make various weapons. And her first creation was a flawless masterpiece. Also, standardized uniforms had been decided upon, and information posters about them could had been seen around the fortress. This can only bode well for our military, which means that Tiger will be able to return to a trade that she actually likes. I too, will probably join militiamen, as making stone into furniture can only be interesting for so long.
21st of Hematite.
Splint has promoted Tigerwoman to his secretary, and started teaching her how to write proper dwarven. She seems a capable student, although her hands make it difficult to hold a feather. Also, there was a commotion about mayoral elections, but I have to admit, I was too drunk to care. I can understand that alcohol is safer to drink than water from shallow pools or stagnant cavern water, but do they have to make even simple ale that strong? My first encounter with dwarven brews was at a drinking contest. At that time, I was human, and my challenger was a dwarf. Bets were fifteen to four against me, but since several of my friends put their money on my win, I was determined to win. Shapeshifters can block out any sort of feelings, emotion or physical for up to several hours, so after third barrel dwarf fell over inebriated, as crowd cheered my name. Later on, I woke up in the middle of the night, from having my brain killed by alcohol. I was paralyzed for the whole time of regenerating and I was in great pain thorough the whole thing. It took me several days to use up all alcohol in my blood. After contest it was probably something closer to wine running through my veins.
15th of Galena.
Human caravan came, and with it, a few chaos dwarves snatchers. It was bad news for everyone here, including myself. It is impossible to take over a chaos dwarf due to their nature. Yes, I do know more of them than the fact that they originate from The Hardy Castle. After the fall of this grand nation, I and some of my shapeshifter friends decided that it was a great opportunity to grab some valuables while everything was amiss. Close to Hardy Castle’s mountainhomes we encountered chaos dwarves. At first, we thought that they we common dwarves, so we were surprised when they attacked us on sight. We were further surprised by their ferocity. My good friend Solomyr was too injured in this battle to regenerate properly, so we did what we could. We knocked out one of our enemies unconscious, and dragged his limp body to Solomyr. After Solomyr took over the Chaos dwarf, he told us that he remembered everything that happened in this dwarf’s life. When one of us takes up a new mortal vessel, we destroy the mind of the previous occupant along with all memories. If Solomyr remembered this body’s previous life, the mind was still there. Before he went mad, he managed to tell us what happened. As all dwarves know, or at least have heard legends, deep underground there can be found fabled metal – adamantine. Incredibly light and hard as a diamond metal that is rightfully most expensive material known to current civilizations. As quite a few less know, or have heard legends about, under the metal lie gates to another plane, inhabited by foul demons that charge at any life they meet with intention to kill. Dwarves of Hardy Castle’s were a greedy, but clever bunch. They determined a point where adamantine ends and demons begin, and made many traps to prepare for upcoming fight. Among those traps there were a few cave in traps, that determined creation of chaos dwarves. As huge slabs of stone fell upon the demons, a part of mountain collapse, and dwarves were cut off from main fortress and their food supplies. Of course, dwarves tried to dig their way out, but it was too much stone, and the food supplies they had were too low. Not wanting to die from hunger, they butchered and ate demons they had killed. Demons are a curious bunch. They go to battle so fearlessly because they don’t die in the same way as other races do. As their body decays, the spirit inhabiting said body is freed, and reforms in a new body inside of glowing pits. When dwarves consumed demonic flesh, however, it became part of them. If there was only a single demon there, its soul fragments would had gradually taken over the dwarves. But there were many. In each chaos dwarf there are numerous shards of many demonic spirits. The infighting forbids any side to gain control, but overwhelming will to sew chaos that is common to all shards combines into an undeniable need. That is a chaos dwarf. Hell in a dwarf shaped container.
Chaos dwarf lore included.