The Mythic Histories

The Dvar

In the very farthest reaches of the Northern lands, even farther than the men of Brondehal who live amongst the snow-capped hills of the North, there was once a people who were known as the Dvar. The Dvar were a reclusive and jealous folk who rarely sought the company of others and their ruler was a great tall man who went by the name of Andin. The land in the North was always harsh and mighty winds battered the landscape, burying the lowlands of the mountains in thick layers of snow. To protect themselves from the bitter cold the Dvar inhabited small shelters dug into the side of the rock, making stone halls in which they gathered to sing songs around the roaring fires. Andin decided that he would burrow into the mountains once more to sculpt a hall larger than any other before it and personally led the group of miners in their task. It was this group of miners who dug deep into the rock and struck a particularly hard vein of metal in the rock face. Puzzled, the miners chiseled out the ore and brought it before their king, who recognised it at once from a vision which he had been given in his sleep the night before the discovery. He ordered for it to be taken at once to one of the Dvar forges where it was quickly crafted into a fine and gleaming weapon, stronger than any that had been crafted by men before.

At once the Dvar rejoiced at their discovery and went back into the mountains to mine more of the great metal. The king went ahead of the host and walked towards the unscathed stone wall, he brushed his hand over the smooth surface and his followers looked on in anticipation. In a single moment Andin unsheathed his new weapon and raised it high above his head, he then swung the blade down hard where it crashed down into the stone wall and a loud crack echoed through out the hall. Astonishingly the axe swept straight through the rock and dislodged a large chunk of ore which came tumbling out of the debris; and the king had seemed to do with almost no effort at all. The Dvar who saw this all cheered in disbelief and the entire kingdom set about mining the ore and crafting tools and weapons so that each member of their people could possess the prized material.

News of this strange new metal spread like wildfire across Tor and the weapons of the Dvar became prized by all who heard of them.

Kings from southern realms heard tales of the brilliant metal and it was soon named Dvarrock by those that coveted it. May men ventured to Andin's stone hall and offered great treasures in exchange for a supply of the great ore, but each person that came was denied and left empty-handed from Andin's lands.

Eventually, Weslof, the god of the earth and the rocks, took notice of Andin and went to him in the form of a foreign king. The god went into the hall cloaked in a grey robe to hide his divine nature and kneeled before Andin and asked for ownership of the Dvarrock, for it was he and his father Westen, who had laden the lands with the treasure.

"Great Andin, good king of the Dvar, must you greedily hold your treasures away from those who request them? Are you the only one entitled to the fruits of our great lands?"

The Dvar king was furious and ordered for his warriors to seize the king. Weslof cast off his robe as the warriors approached him and they recoiled in fear before the godly being before them. Weslof moved towards Andin who sat in his throne in terror and ordered him to give up his ownership of the mysterious ore, however, the king would not give up. In a flash, Weslof had vanished and the hall fell silent as Andin anticipated some divine vengeance. But none came. Andin and the Dvar were left alone and continued their operations as usual. It was then that another king, cloaked as Weslof had been, came before Andin but he was more respectful of Andin's claim on the strange Dvarrock. The king asked for the services of the Dvar and requested that they aid him in a war in a far-off land. Andin was uncertain, until the hooded king produced a large bag of golden coins and placed it directly into Andin's hand. The king of the Dvar was weak to the temptations of gold, as were many of his peers and so upon touching the coins he was immediately persuaded to join the mysterious king's war, and in doing so doomed his entire race.

Andin proceeded to craft a breastplate for each Dvar and handed each of the warriors a mighty axe to wield into battle. It was not long until every one of the Dvar stood before the doors of Andin's hall adorned in armour which seemed to reflect the very starlight from the skies above it. When Andin had his army raised in this way and arranged in full battle array the mysterious king came before him again and kneeled, thanking him for completing his part of the bargain. Andin finally put on his own armour and took up his own great axe, however, he had set aside a treasure for himself alone. The king had forged a great shield of Dvarrock to guard himself in battle, but his greed prevented him from crafting the same shields for his comrades and instead he piled up hordes of Dvarrock in his hall.

The army set off on the march with the king leading the way and as he walked Andin wondered about the lands which lay before him on the path South and pictured rolling grassy hills unlike anything that he had seen before. The army came to the base of their great mountains when they were suddenly halted by a figure on the path ahead. When they came closer, Andin recognised him as the king who had asked for his assistance and approached him. The king simply walked away from Andin when he came near and the Dvar king was puzzled by this until a great flash erupted from the man and he vanished in an instant. Dread filled Andin as he realised that the mysterious king was in fact Weslof who had come to him before. Panicked, Andin's chest began to tighten and his breathing became heavy, however, no matter how much he tried to calm himself the feeling did not disappear. Andin turned towards his army to see them all clutching at their chests. To his horror the great breastplates of his warriors seemed to be disappearing and dissolving into their skin, vanishing from view but weighing them down all the more. He looked down and watched as his own armour welded with his body and disappeared before his eyes. The metal seemed to weigh more and more until Andin's warriors could hardly stand and their shoulders buckled under the weight.

The greed of Andin cost him more than most for when he tried to release his grip upon his shield, he found it to be welded to his hand, just as his armour was. The shield did not simply sink into his body as he had thought and instead his lower arm began to twist and bubble, as though his body was bubbling beneath the skin. the shield began to melt over the top of his fingers which also seemed to melt into the shield. Slowly the Dvarrock metal worked its way up the king's arm to his elbow, where it began to fuse even more tightly with his skin. In the end, Andin's left arm transformed into a crude lump of cold Dvarrock with no fingers or bones and no blood running through it. Andin's cries of pain could be heard by the entire army which despaired even more at the sound. Weslof, it is said, was sitting in a nearby tree and simply smiled gleefully as Dvar collapsed to the ground holding his clubhand in disbelief.

Terrified by the might of Weslof, the Dvar hastily went back to their stone halls and sealed the doors behind them, barring the gateways so that none of the gods could damage them anymore. The Dvar dug deeper and deeper into the earth and fell further and further from the sight of the gods, until they had all but forgotten about those who dwelt far above them. Hidden from the Anuden, the Dvar continued to live underground and struggled to live in their new home. The curse of the metal had left them weak and cumbersome, and so the Dvar slowly became shorter until they stood much smaller than a typical mortal. However, the Dvarrock made the the rock-dwellers stronger and stronger with each generation as their stature became wide and sturdy, their skin was tough and could endure much more than before Weslof's curse descended upon them. Andin grew bitter and renounced the gods entirely, ordering for all the shrines to the Anuden to be torn down and their statues be broken up into slabs to be placed as paving stones in their underground passages. He took the title of King Andin the Clubhanded and ruled over his people as they lived isolated in their stony homes. The Dvar claim that Andin took the title so that all Dvar who followed him would be reminded, by his name, of the cruelty and trickery of the gods.