Borne of Fire

Chapter 15

The Asimari Mountains and the wilds which they stood upon were the setting for many stories which had circulated around Brookdale. As both Randyl and Braxter could testify, most of them had some kind of moral or meaning behind them and were normally used by parents as a way of persuading, if not outright scaring, children into performing various chores.

"If you don't do your chores then the wights from Asimari will come for you" was a common threat but was never actually followed up with an abduction of an offending child as far as anybody knew. The stories were so prevalent however that such proof was not needed by most children in order for the perceived threat to be believed. The necessary chore was completed and subsequent visitation and abduction by wight or other living nightmare was avoided. It was simply accepted by everyone in Brookdale, and as far as Randyl or Braxter knew, everyone else nearby that the Asimari Mountains were a bad place where bad things lived and bad things happened.

Best to be avoided at all costs.

Most of the stories concerned one of the ancient dwarven clans who, having been defeated in a feudal war, were banished from their homelands and duly travelled South searching for the two things that dwarves were renowned for seeking out - gold and adventure. As they travelled south, they came in sight of the Asimari Mountains in the distance and decided that this was where they should make their new home.

While journeying over rolling hills and green oceans of grassland, which would eventually come to be known as the Asimari wilds, many of the travelling dwarf clan began to feel as though they were being watched by unseen eyes. These concerns were voiced to the Dwarf Lord who dismissed them arrogantly, saying that if they were being looked upon, then the owners of those eyes would be well warned not to interfere with the clan lest they should lose those eyes along with their heads. He carried a great battle axe across his back at all times which he called "Cleaver" and kept a tally of the number of heads it had severed while in his service by notching the haft every time a fresh kill was made.

In truth, the Dwarf Lord was suffering greatly from a wound picked up during the feudal war which had seen him defeated and ousted from his lands. Rather than being of the physical kind however, this was an injury to his pride which festered and gnawed away at him. He relished the chance at being able to once again prove himself in battle and restore the clan's faith in him as a leader, which he believed to be faltering after his recent defeat. Until he did this, feelings of paranoia and mistrust were rife in all he saw and did.

From this point on the stories of the dwarf clan and what happened to them varied dramatically in their telling. Though they seemed to have reached the Asimari Mountains without incident, they then succumbed to a fate which was as varied in detail as the leaves on a tree.

Some said that the mountain was already inhabited and a great Orc army took up arms against the dwarves, slaughtering every one of them the moment they set foot inside. Others say that the Dwarf Lord was driven insane by his growing paranoia and was convinced that one of his nephews would kill him in his sleep in order to usurp him as leader of the clan. He systematically began to murder his nephews using any triviality as an excuse for their execution, until eventually his evil deeds brought the attentions of an ancient evil which had laid dormant under the mountain for hundreds of years. A dark pact was made with this fell spirit and with every soul the Dwarf Lord offered, he found his own strength increased. He began to kill the members of his clan indiscriminately until, as the last remaining soul was sent on its way, he realised what he had done and took his own life in a fit of guilt and grief.

The souls of the murdered dwarves are said to haunt the mountain still and their screams can be heard across the wilds if one were to listen hard enough.