Thaldrik Forgevein the Uniter

In the dark years following the Fracture Wars, the Seven Dwarven Clans of the Bellever Mountains were little more than fortified city-states, locked in bitter cycles of sabotage, pride, and isolation. Trade had ceased, ancient tunnels were collapsed out of spite, and the deepfires of cooperation had long gone cold. It was into this broken legacy that Thaldrik Forgevein was born — a smith by trade, but a philosopher by heart, whose greatest forge was not made of iron and flame, but of trust. Thaldrik believed that the Clans had mistaken stubbornness for strength and that true endurance was found not in the solitude of stone, but in its connections. He spent decades journeying from hold to hold, crafting not only weapons and tools but gifts infused with runes of shared lineage, subtly reminding each recipient that they were shaped from the same bedrock. His crowning achievement was the Treaty of the Seven Fires, a document carved into a single slab of Bellever basalt and signed using molten metal from each clan's sacred forge — the first time in recorded history such a ritual was performed in unity. Thaldrik’s influence gave birth to the Accord of Stone and Ember, the system of rotational monarchy that now governs Dwarven society. Though he never ruled himself, his image is carved above the entrance of every forgehall — not as a king or warrior, but as a bearded dwarf holding out an open hand, palm scarred from countless hours of smithing. Some call him a dreamer. Others, a manipulator. But to most dwarves, Thaldrik Forgevein was — and still is — the hammer that reforged a broken people. To this day, the Festival of Forgevein is held once every seven years in the central city of Dûm-Kharran, drawing artisans, engineers, and runepriests from all corners of the mountain realms. The event honours not just Thaldrik’s diplomatic triumphs, but his belief in the shared soul of Dwarvenkind — a soul shaped by toil, tempered by adversity, and polished through unity. In the glow of communal forges and under banners bearing his sigil — an open palm over crossed hammers — dwarves raise their mugs not to conquest or bloodline, but to the simple, stubborn vision of one smith who dared to believe they could be better.