Summary: A history of dwarves as seen by the Vanha
Starting Location: laboratory in keep beneath the sinkhole — Session 3
Current Location: In Clodagh’s possession
Notes
Book Contents
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“We shaped light. They carved stone. We built with the Weave. They whispered to the bones of the world. And so we were fated to break each other.”
—Arch-Scholar Kelainen of Valonlähde
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Prologue: The Stone-Singers
Long before the Sundering, when the Weave flowed calm and unbroken, the Vanha discovered others within the deeps—the Durun-Khazad, whom we called Stone-Singers. They were not our kin, yet they were not our foes. At first. The Durun were children of weight and permanence. They listened to stone as we listened to stars. They carved halls with reverence. Their gods—the Forge Lords—spoke not in words, but in flame, hammer, and ore. It was a language of purpose. We respected them. We marveled at their devotion. But we did not share it.
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Chapter I: The Divergence
We, the Vanha, were architects of possibility. The Weave bent for us—not to imprison the world in what was, but to free it into what could be. The dwarves found this dangerous. They condemned our Rune-Weave cities. Our Soul-Forged blades. Our Lightwoven bridges. They accused us of defiling the mountain, of rewriting the bones of the world. They called it sacrilege. We called it progress.
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Chapter II: The Kehto-Maa
They feared what we had discovered—the Cradle of the Earth, the Kehto-Maa, a Vanha monolith buried beneath the Turahskal roots. It was not built. It was grown—a living node of the Weave itself. We sought to awaken it. To reshape the land, the sky, even time, into harmony. They sought to destroy it. What followed was the War of Sundering. A war not for land, but for reality.
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Chapter III: Fire and Fracture
The dwarves unleashed their most terrible weapons: the Tuhon-Sepät, the Smiths of Destruction. Runes of unmaking. Songs of silence that could unravel enchantment, soul, and stone alike. We fought with light and shadow. We tore time like cloth. We were winning—until we weren’t. The dwarves shattered the Kehto-Maa. And the Weave—screamed. The sky burned. The mountains tore free of the earth. Cities vanished. Valleys drowned. We were buried. So were they.
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Chapter IV: The Survivors
Some Durun-Khazad endured, but they were not what they were.
- The Ashenborn, cursed with emberblood, glow like forges.
- The Deep-Damned, who feed on stone and echo with madness.
- The Hollow Lords, preserved in fractures of time, still fighting a war that ended two millennia past.
Do they remember who they were? Do we?
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Chapter V: The Mirror in Ruin
We write this not in anger. Not in triumph. But in mourning. For when we saw ourselves mirrored in stone, we should have remembered: Even ash was once flame. Even stone was once alive. And now, both burn cold.
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Epilogue: Redacted and Censored
{Several passages here are struck through with thick, resin-blackened glyphs.}
— Translator’s Note: Repeated references to an unnamed “third people” erased. Possible precursor to the halflings? Further investigation required.