Pull Up a Chair. The Ale's Strong and the Stories Are Stronger.

Narag Baruk does not announce itself. There is no gate, no carved arch, no inscription welcoming those who arrive. There is only the passage — narrow at first, then opening into something that should not exist underground: space. Real space, the kind that swallows sound and returns it changed. The pillars are not decorative. They are structural, load-bearing against a ceiling so high that the torchlight loses it entirely. The dwarves who built Narag Baruk did not build upward. They found what was already there and shaped it to their purpose. The hall is natural cavern, expanded and finished over six generations into something that feels inevitable — as though the mountain always intended this room and only needed dwarven hands to reveal it.

His rage is a weapon. His oath is the hand that holds it. Thorin Ironbeard has never known peace. Not since the battle-rage first took him at fourteen — a red tide that rose without warning and didn't fall until three men were dead and he was standing in the middle of what they used to be, hands shaking, not entirely sure which parts of the last few minutes were real. The elders of Clan Ironbeard called it a gift. His mother called it what it was: something that lived inside him that was not entirely him, and that would one day decide it no longer needed a host. He has carried it for twenty years since. He has learned to use it. He has learned, more or less, to aim it. But he has never learned to stop it once it starts — and in the quiet hours, in the dark, he knows that there is a version of this story where the rage finishes what it started on that first night, and the only question is whose name is attached to the ending. So he takes an oath. Not to abandon the rage — he's not fool enough to think he could, and not strategist enough to want to. The rage is what he is in a fight. It is the thing that keeps him standing when standing should be impossible, the thing that turns a losing battle into something else entirely. He does not want to be without it. He wants to be the one holding it. I will carry the fire. The fire will not carry me. Twelve words, spoken alone on a ridge above Narag Baruk with no witnesses and no ceremony, because a dwarf who needs witnesses for his oaths is already asking permission from the wrong audience. The oath is between him and the thing inside him. The terms are simple: in a fight that requires it, he opens the door. When the fight is done, he closes it again. The rage serves the purpose. The purpose does not serve the rage. It works. Not cleanly — the closing of the door is always the hardest part, always the moment where the rage leans against the frame and reminds him how good it feels to let it run. But he closes it. Every time.

The axe did not begin as a saga. It began as a gift — a father's gift, passed from Thorin's father to his son before the old warrior's hands could no longer hold it. But the axe itself is older than that inheritance. It was forged by Aldric Coppersworth, master bladesmith of the hold, and the metal he worked was not iron. It was Drakvorn. Dragon Steel. Dragon Steel — known in the old dwarven tongue as Drakvorn — is not smelted. It is recovered. The metal forms naturally in seams deep below volcanic roots, where draconic flame once burned through stone for centuries. Ancient dwarven miners believed that dragons, when they died deep underground, left their heat in the rock itself. Modern dwarven scholars call this superstition. Neither side can fully explain why Drakvorn seams only appear where the rock shows signs of sustained, centuries-long thermal scarring. The metal's dark, light-absorbing quality comes from its crystalline structure. Unlike iron or steel, which have loose grain patterns that scatter light, Drakvorn's lattice is so densely packed it traps most wavelengths entirely. Only blue-spectrum light escapes, giving that faint cold sheen. Dwarven bladesmiths call this the Breath — the soul of the heat that made it, still trapped inside. It holds an edge because it simply does not deform at the microscopic level the way conventional steel does. Other metals blunt because their crystal grains slide against each other under pressure. Drakvorn's grains are locked. The edge is not sharpened so much as revealed — the grains already want to align that way. Drakvorn cannot be worked hot. Conventional smithing heats metal to make it pliable, but Dragon Steel resists temperatures a normal forge can reach — you would need draconic fire itself to bring it to a workable state. Instead, dwarven masters work it cold, through a process of extreme pressure and grinding over weeks or months. This means Dragon Steel weapons cannot be repaired by ordinary smiths. A chip or a crack is permanent. The metal that leaves the stone is the only metal you will ever have. Drakvorn seams are thin — rarely more than a forearm's width — and run unpredictably. They cannot be prospected for with conventional techniques. Most are found by accident, when miners following an iron or copper seam break into a thermal zone and find a dark streak running through it. A single seam might yield enough metal for one sword, a few arrowheads, and a handful of ingots. There are dwarven holds that have gone three generations without a single find. Weapons made from Drakvorn are heirlooms, not equipment. They have names. They have histories. To own one is to hold something older than your bloodline, and dwarven law in most holds forbids their sale — only inheritance or gift. There are stories of wars fought over single blades. There are also stories of the metal choosing its wielder, of edges that go dull in hands they find unworthy. Most dwarven smiths dismiss this. Most of them have never held one. Because Drakvorn is so rare and prized, there is a whole shadow economy of blackened steel treated to mimic its appearance. A skilled eye can tell — the fake will pick up lamplight the way ordinary steel does. The real thing seems to refuse it. The cold-working process also means Drakvorn cannot be reshaped once finished. A broken blade stays broken. It can be reground into a shorter weapon — a snapped sword becomes a long knife — but the metal cannot be remelted and recast. Some dwarven families keep shards as heirlooms even after a weapon is destroyed beyond use. Cultural weight varies by hold. A mountain clan that found a rich seam three generations ago might treat Drakvorn as common enough to arm their finest warriors. A clan that has never found any might treat a single Drakvorn dagger as something close to sacred — something displayed rather than carried. Thorin's axe sits somewhere between. It is used. It is carried. And every dwarf who has seen it knows exactly what they are looking at.

Spoken low, almost a chant, hands flat against the stone: Khar uth ishkar-zin. Stone, take our fallen-kin. Ulgath ba khazum. The soft earth is not home. Khar khazum, khar morakh. Stone is home, stone is rest. Soot-hund, baruk thurin. Soot-named, the hammer is stilled. Gund khar, nar dum. Under stone, light in the deep. Morakh-tha. Khazum-tha. Rest now. Home now.