I hope it is not presumptuous of me, but if I may, I'd like to add something to this amazing epic? The story of how the Dwarves extinction began...
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Once, it is said, Dwarves worshipped a being known as Baros Buriedplagues, the god of death, the god of murder, the god of rebirth, the god of day, the god of light. He was a vengeful god, jealous of the creations of his fellow gods in Dwarves and Humans, and so, he made a third race, a race born from the reborn souls of his chosen, the harbingers of death, murderers, rapists, hammerers, sociopaths, those who would normally be denied a calm afterlife. And so the first Goblins were born. Baros wished that his light filled world would be one of constant death and rebirth, one of constant murder. The corpses of the fallen would feed the soil and through it, the living. He altered the cycle of reincarnation,the souls of the dead, who should have been reborn as Dwarves, instead were reborn as Goblins. He had his children steal the offspring of the Dwarves and Humans, the creations of he fellow Gods and the objects of his envy. Baros had sewn the seeds of the end of Dwarvish Kind.
Baros, the mad god of Light, let his creations wage war on the Dwarves, and as the short, bearded race, favored of the gods, was driven further and further back. Baros revealed himself to the high priest of the mountain home. "Your kind, with your love of darkness, your light only from burning earth and stone, are finished. But I am not an unkind god. I shall give your kind one chance to live. Abandon your depths and your delves, and revel in the light alongside Human and Goblin kind in my blood filled Daylight. Do this, abandon my brothers and sisters, and your kind will thrive again!" The high priest stood aghast, for no dwarf would worship such a mad god. He abjured the "demon" as he called Baros to leave him and go back to his blinding light, his murder filled days, and to leave the Dwarves to their depths, to their hallowed halls. Baros sneered, and said "Very well, you deny me, and so I shall tell you that your kind shall be driven to extinction, and the last hold you ever build will be a place of torture and murder, if your kind will not give me worship during your lives, your forgotten dead will stalk you, and demons will plague your heals. Go now, and know you have doomed your kind." The High Priest's name was Townclenched, and his children's children would be the ones cursed to over see the final extinction of the dwarves...
And so in time, Weatherwires, carved into the heart of a volcano, would become the last bastion of Dwarf kind. The dukes and leaders never knowing their fall had been foretold, the souls of their dead cursed to walk the earth forever more or to be reborn as goblins, the hand of the mad god Baros Buriedplagues, carved their every path, guided them to their doom. They sought to build a utopia, but Baros would not let them forget their crime, to have been created by another god and then denied him by retreating deep into the earth. In the early days, Baros even considered being lenient, they still traveled to the surface, they still interacted with it, surely they must come to see that the depths would be their doom. Imagine his rage when the obstinate little rebels continued to defy him! Imagine his rage when they delved deeper and deeper, carving their dome and sealing their exits. He rallied his children, sent dreams to them through the puppets and aspects he appeared to them in, and sent them to the ruins. He had them defile the tombs, to draw the Dwarves out, expecting them to be slaughtered... only to find his children's attack blunted and the tombs moved. Seeing that a violent attack would do nothing, Baros began another approach...
The dead grew more and more restless... and Baros looked amongst the unremembered dead, trying to find one who would give him what he needed, one whose heart was filled with murderous rage against the living who forgot them. And so he found Ilral Visioncloistered, a wood cutter who fell into the depths of the earth, dieing of thirst and dehydration long before his body every crashed into the magma sea far below. Ilral's rage knew no limits, it was bottomless in it's fury, and he gladly accepted Baros' bargain... Baros simply gave him the direction needed to return to Weatherwires, all in return for doing what Ilral already wanted to do, slay and maim and murder all the living who had dared to forget him after his years of service!
When the demons beat at the doors of Weatherwires, mad Baros, the luminous one, laughed in his high heavens. The other dwarven gods lain low long before now, each transformed into various ☼Godbone☼ and ☼Godleather☼ clothing and tools, his cup was crafted from Ilon Crushseizes' own skull... his throne from the bones of Idrath, his robes from Onol's Hide, his dagger carved from Thoth's own sharp, silvery tongue. Only Baros' wife, Iltang, remained... and she did nothing to stop him, reveling in the misery and torture their children brought to their former worshipers. In a chance to make the foolish little rebels repent, he sent down his light through stone and earth, and made green grass grow far below the surface. Many would only barely remember it, but they WOULD remember his name, they would know who it was that caused their doom, and who they must turn to if they wished to avoid it.
Baros' mockery, rather than demoralizing the dwarves, seemed to have the reverse effect. They would neither surrender to the perverse Deity who had abandoned their race, nor would they die quietly. They unsealed the gates of hell and lost a third of their numbers fighting what they were certain would be a doomed battle. They found themselves victorious, perhaps a lingering blessing of their dead gods. And so they went even further. They sought to build a monument on the sladic plains of hell itself, filled with the monuments and relics of their race, sealed with the most finely crafted door ever made, determined to preserve something of their kind as far from the lights of Baros as they could, in the very core of the planet... And they did so, though their numbers were reduced to a pitiful few in the attempt... and once more, Baros laughed, for who would ever see such a mark? Who would tell of the stories of vaunted Weatherwires? Baros was determined to see to it that no one ever did.
No one would escape Weatherwires. Baros saw their pitiful attempts, and as the dwarves railed and raged against their sole remaining gods, he had prepaired his children once more, to wipe out the remaining members of their despised cousins, to absorb the remaining souls left and begin the next war against the humans in the name of the mad and twisted god and father. The dwarves fought valiantly to seal Weatherwires once more, and even succeed, the stupid troll slaves of the Goblins sealing the passage out... only one dwarf remained, Solon Townclenched, descendent of the defiant high priest who denied Baros. He had been sure to see to it that she survived, and her tortured last gasps, as she carved the dieing story of her kind, filled him with joy. No one would know of the heroic last stand of Èzum Openeddoors the Robust Stoker of Lances, whose sheer rage and conviction allowed him to withstand the heats of the earth's life blood until his foes lay dead before him, went unrecorded... Weatherwires lay lost, forgotten, and empty but for the few of Baros' children who he abandoned to the depths, their ghosts to fill the halls as well.
In a last act of malice against those who would so openly defy him. Baros weaved a great spell of blinding light over the mountain of Weatherwires. The history would forever lay unread by outsiders. Adventurers who came too close would find themselves blinded and struck down as Baros' murderous light seared into their eyes, through their brains, and wiped their existence away. No one would learn of Weatherwire's triumphs and failures, of the sad story of a dieing race. Humans and Goblins would tell tales of the place, the name only known because of the Goblin invaders who sought to plunder it's riches, now lost forever in Hell and behind the curse of Baros. The final days of the Dwarves, of the Mountainkin, will lie buried and forgotten, Solon Townclenched's last, hopefilled, act futile, a fitting end, Baros felt, for the ones who has struck his hand aside when he had offered them a way out. Now only the laughter of the mad god and his wife, and the clash of battling ghosts, fills the halls of Weatherwires, sounds that will never touch a living ear for all time.
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Topic: The Saga of Weatherwires: Children of Dwarves (spoilers + image heavy) (Read 159479 times)