“Better than gold is a tale rightly told.”

Dwarven Proverb


At the beginning of Creation, there was naught but darkness and void. Then came light: a single lump of coal, glowing red.

Moradin the Creator breathed upon the coal, and it grew hot. He plucked it from the firmament with his tongs, and placed it into his forge. There it burned brightly, neither dimming nor diminishing in heat for a tenday.

Moradin scooped clay from the earth, and from it made a mold in his own image. He worked the soft clay with his fingers, denting it to create hollows into which molten metal would flow. A thumbprint became a face, surrounded by nail-scored lines for the hair. The chest was a deeper hollow, with more lines upon it that would be the beard. The body he made stout and solid, so that his creation might hold its ground in the face of adversity, as unmoving as a mountain. The legs were the length and breadth of Moradin’s thumb; the arms the length of his strong forefinger.

When the two halves of the mold were done, he set them by the forge to dry.

Once the pieces of the mold were hard, Moradin lifted them and bound the two halves together with a strand of his own hair. He set a crucible upon his forge, and into it put the four noble metals: silver, gold, platinum, and mithril. Those he heated and stirred, until the mixture of molten metals was pleasing to his eye. Then he lifted the crucible from the forge, and poured the swirling liquid into the mold.

When the pouring was done, Moradin set his crucible aside and lifted the mold to his lips. He blew upon it, cooling it. Then he opened the mold, lifted the figure he had made, and cut off the sprue, leaving a mark in the middle of the figure’s belly. He looked upon what he had made, and saw that it was good and true.

Berronar Truesilver, bride to Moradin, came to him then and placed a hand upon her husband’s arm. She, too, looked upon the casting. It was she who said that a man without a companion on life’s path was like a pick without a pail: each was equally needed to mine the earth’s wealth.

Moradin realized the wisdom of her words, and fashioned a second mold in Berronar’s image, with hips suitable for bearing children and breasts for suckling babes. And thus the second casting created woman.

For a tenday, the coal glowed in the forge. For a tenday, Moradin worked-pouring, casting, cutting, and cooling. From his forge sprang men and women, some with hair of gold, some with hair of silver, or hair a fiery copper red, or hair as dark as soot. Moradin took special joy in that adornment, and commanded his creations neither to cut their hair nor to let it grow unkempt, but to braid it and keep it in a manner similar to his own luxuriant beard.

He further commanded his people to spread across the land and multiply, for the riches of the earth were wide. He gave unto his creations the knowledge of mining, smelting, and smithing, of working stone and gemcutting, that they might prosper.

Moradin then breathed into their ears all the secrets of the earth, all the mysteries of the places deep in stone. He set them upon the face of Faerun, and bid them always to worship him, to keep him as secure in their hearts as a gem within its setting.

Thus was the dwarf race forged.

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