from the Journals of Morningstar 776 Series C, Warforged Wizard
by Richard Smyth
CHAPTER TWELVE
Date: 5 Olarune 997YK
The Lord of Blades takes me, alone, on an elemental-powered landcart for a full-day's ride into--or under--the Glass Plateau. We have spent the last few days together, going over logistics, troop count and hierarchy, strategy. Today he says he has a surprise.
The Glass Plateau, from afar, looks as though the sky shattered and fell to the earth in jagged shards, sticking into the earth and jutting upward in a fractured hodgepodge of geometries. The outer edges are translucent, lighter like the thick glass of tavern mugs, but toward the middle it becomes darker and darker until, right in the center of the cluster, the glass is almost black, shining like obsidian.
As we enter the maze-like shelter of the Plateau, he points to the markings and code that direct him toward our destination. We go deeper until, toward the black center of the mass, we enter caverns that run deep into the earth. Eventually, we come to a central cave where the hidden forge, source of so many rumors, is kept. Several warforged surround the device, firing the furnace, shaping the metal, sculpting the materials into what will be a living form.
"So this is what so many fear," I manage to say.
"Yes," the Lord of Blades replies. "What we want is their fear. This forge is a symbol of our independence, of our frustration, of our determination. It is meaningless as a source of true threat, for production is slow and often goes awry. Our true strength comes from those such as yourself, who come to us disaffected by the treatment we receive in the wider world. Humans created us as their warriors, and now they create us as their foes. And we will meet their expectations now just as we did then!"
We continue through to the other side of the Plateau, emerging near the outer edge of the Field of Ruins. We travel right up to the edge of a battlefield frozen in time: soldiers in mid-strike, weapons poised above their targets; faces fixed in silent death-rattles; swords plunged deep into bodies; skulls cloven by battle-axes; flags undulating in a long-forgotten breeze. Thousands of soldiers frozen in mid-battle, perfectly preserved by some strange magic through the years following the Day of Mourning, as if a living tableau were created in a vast museum under the stars, in memory of the darkest moment in Khorvaire's history.
The Lord of Blades gestured at the vast battlefield. "And this is how we arm our warriors."