Deep within the mountain heart of Khaz-Dorum, where the air thrummed with the eternal song of hammers on anvils, Thane Borin Ironbeard stood before the great forge of his ancestors. The chamber was vast, carved from living stone over the course of three thousand years, its ceiling lost in shadows fifty feet above. Rivers of molten metal flowed through channels cut into the floor, their light painting everything in shades of orange and gold.
The Thane was an imposing figure even by dwarven standards. Broad as an oak barrel, his shoulders bore the weight of armor that had been worn by seventeen Thanes before him. His beard, a magnificent cascade of iron-gray that reached past his belt, was woven with platinum rings inscribed with the deeds of his lineage. His eyes, the color of storm-dark granite, surveyed the forge with the practiced gaze of one who had spent two hundred years mastering the craft of war.
