Thorin's perspective will be written by myself.
The sodden hills of Dunland were a harsh comparison to the glorious halls and chambers of Erebor. Despite myself being of such a young age with the coming of Smaug, I still remember every second of the horror that befell us. From the scalding heat of fiery breath, to the vivid screams of the fallen, to the moment we realised we would receive no aid from Thranduil and his forces. It was that day the Dwarven clan of Durin's folk realised that we were truly helpless.
While Smaug took up residence in our once mighty and infallible stronghold, we were reduced to living in comparative poverty. Our noble house stood little more than neighbours to the wildmen of Dunland. For all the high regard our past held, we had nothing aside from the kin at our shoulders and the axe's upon our back to remind us of our heritage.
Then came the day Thrór left us. It took weeks for his only companion, Nar, to return to us and deliver us a most tragic message; that of how our great king had been brutalised and butchered by the filth that inhabited Moria.
A week later the war cry went out, to all corners of the world inhabited by our kind. "This cannot be borne!" sparked a united surge of Dwarven forces, under the common banner of vengeance. We convened on Azanulbizar in vast numbers and when the vile goblins responded with an army we considered adequately sized, we knew that heroes would rise out of the ensuing bloodshed and warriors would fall. We heard their chants, in their rude black tongue, and responded with our own rallying call.
"Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!" was followed by the thundering charge and clash of Dwarven steel into weak goblin skulls. Our armies collided, and we battled valiantly for hours to follow. Long, hard hours of physicality led to my endurance being tested and by the time he appeared I felt as though I couldn't swing another axe. Azog the Defiler stood towering above his own kind, white skinned aside from streaks of dirt and blood, both red and black. Wielding a sizeable mace and a lengthy scimitar, he'd established himself a barbaric fighter. These tools of war, under his command, had stolen too many lives to go unnoticed and unchallenged. Suddenly I felt no weariness, no pain and no hesitation. I began towards him, motivated by an influx of pride and determination, and as he brought the barbed end of his mace over his head, I raised my shield only to feel it shatter on my forearm. I raised my axe as a secondary defence to block his sword, yet it was no match for the momentum behind his next hammering swing and as the mace collided with my chest plate I was launched backwards to the sodden dirt. It was there, while I lay battered, bruised, tattered and torn, that I acquired the source of my epithet. The thick bulk of a fallen oak branch replaced the shield on my arm, and proved itself to be more effective than the product of a Dwarven smith. The powerful mace could not fracture the replacement, and his blade could barely scratch it, and with it I found my feet and fought back. Azog's arm was all I could take him from that day as a permanent piece of revenge, but in my mind there is no doubt for him to be dead.
A black tar layered the grounds of battle, and their corpses piled high as our forces fought bravely and driven by newly inspired purpose as we saw them begin to fall back. Many brave kin fell, and many more were wounded savagely and we were supreme when the final axe came down and the waves of Orc's subsided and retreated to their dank pits.
Yet Moria was not a home to us, and when Dáin, son of Náin gazed into the mines, he glimpsed upon the omen that told him to warn us of what Moria lay host to. There was a creature, of myth and legend that resided in our ancient home: The Balrog known as Durin's Bane.
With that, Thráin my father took our house back to Dunland, and then on to the Blue Mountains. The rock and core and earth was where we were comfortable, more so at least than the barren hills of Dunland that had for so long been our only substitute for home. Now we were given a chance to rebuild, and we did so in the ruins of Belegost; an ancient city from ages long since passed.
Four decades went by, and in that time we had achieved something long thought impossible. Our house had found a new home. Not our true home, but one we could yet become proud of. It was 2841 when my father, in the same restless manner as his father before him abandoned our colony in a mindless expedition to seek long abandoned refuge. Yet Moria was not his target. Instead, he set his path to Wilderland, with hopes of returning to the Lonely Mountain. It was here the dark reach of evil long since thought extinguished followed, and my father was taken from our ranks. When his company returned shortly after they'd left with confusing news, it fell to me to take some level of charge. Every day I envisioned my father once again returning to us and living out his final years as a king of his people, yet every day that passed left me questioning this expectation.
Years followed with hints of unrest, and with it, I feared the onset of the same restlessness that befell my fathers. For me, I argued, it was a different kind. I could not rest till I knew of Thrain's fate, yet the initial group had never found a trace of him. So I would look for him once more.
"Balin. You must stay in my absence. You are one of the wisest of our people. Please do this for me now, and I will return you with great trust when the time comes my friend."
I took with me instead a small party of our warriors, just twenty in number, integrated with other Dwarves of necessary ability and skills, bringing our group to thirty and one. Our party left Belegost and travelled east once again, just as my father had years before. The journey itself took us months of perseverance and wasn't without its hardships, that much is fair to say. But nothing could have prepared us for what we faced on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains, in the long abandoned battle ground of Drimrill Dale.