Day 3,653 of the Lich's Shadow

The forge fire still roars, a stubborn little sun in these cursed times. Ten years. Ten years the stench of undeath has choked the air above. Ten years we've hammered and bled, and for what? That damnable lich still sits upon his throne of bones, mocking our efforts. The Suicide Squad…bah! Good steel and brave hearts, but they were sent on a fool's errand. Now, it's just us. The Deep-Forged. The last of the line, some would say.

I've lost count of how many axes I've hammered, how many spears I've sharpened until my eyes burned. I’ve made shield walls that would make the old smiths weep with pride. I've even crafted those thump-thump siege engines the engineers were always squabbling over, though my heart wasn't in it. They're too slow, too clumsy for the monsters that now swarm.

This war... it's not a battle of steel and muscle anymore, not on the surface. It's a battle of will. And our will, it's being ground away each dawn. I see it in the eyes of my kin, the younger ones, especially. That flicker of hope…dwindling like a candle in the wind.

So, they look to me. Grom Stonebeard, they call me, Master Smith. They see a stone face, calm as a mountain. They hear the rhythm of the hammer, steady as the heartbeat of the earth. And I, I tell them, “There’s more earth beneath us! More stone to claim.”

And that's why I built it. The Ironclad. A monstrosity of gears and plates, forged in the heat of desperation and the cold, burning need for survival. It moves with my own strength amplified a hundredfold, a thing of metal and muscle, a testament to dwarven craft. It’s a second skin, forged from fire and grit.

This old war hammer... I hammered more than just steel into it. I poured my fury, my grief, my stubborn hope into it too. It rings with a song only I can truly hear.

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Today, we go down. The path is carved, not by pick or shovel, but by Ironclad and hammer. The monsters screech, trying to block the way, but they are nothing beneath our feet. We smash our way through and into the deep. A score of dwarves follow, their axes and picks singing out in the darkness.

The surface above? Those fields, that sky. Let the monsters have them. Let the next generations believe it to be a myth. We will build our world beneath, as the old ones did when the mountains were young.

Day 36,530 – The First Century Down

A hundred years. A hundred years have passed since we buried the surface behind us. The days are not counted as the surface dwellers do. We don’t have time for their sun and moon. Our time is marked by the rhythm of the forge, the turning of the drills, and the steady expansion of our underground city.

Caverns have unfolded like petals from a flower buried deep. We found veins of mithril, so pure it seems to sing. We found obsidian like shattered night, and new rocks that hum with a strange energy. We’ve rebuilt, and in ways that put the surface cities to shame.

This new world…it’s not as dark as I thought it would be. We’ve harnessed the geothermal heat, lighting our halls with glowing crystals and steam-powered devices. We’ve dug deeper, carved living quarters into the rock, and erected workshops that would make the ancestors proud.

The children, the ones who have never seen the sky, they hear the stories of the surface. They are spoken of like legends, ancient tales of a forgotten age. They are curious, but not longing. They are the children of the Deep, just like us now.

And the Lore, it has grown. We speak of Stonebeard's Descent, the forging of Ironclad, the Battle for the Deep Paths. The young smiths now try to replicate Ironclad, though their craftsmanship is not yet up to the task, yet their ambition is admirable.

The war with the Lich is a distant memory, a dark shadow in our past. Here, in the deep, we are forging a new future. A future deeper than the earth itself.

We dig deeper, always. For that is the way of the dwarves. For our blood is as molten rock, flowing ever downwards. The surface may be lost, but the deep... the deep is ours. And it will be for as long as the heart of a dwarf beats within these stone halls.