Acrizia Champion Lore
Just like the above-ground cities built by other species, the vast Dwarven undermountain metropolis of Gloomdeep Hold consists of crowded central districts and dangerous, sparsely populated outskirts. In the deepest and farthest tunnels, civilized Dwarven society and the reach of its laws and force of arms begin to fade into an unknowably, unthinkably vast underworld of unmapped caves and tunnels. From this abyss creep forth abominations, monsters unknown to surface dwellers and kept at bay through constant Dwarven vigilance. The 36th Patrol and its commanding officer, Acrizia, was just one cog in the vast machinery of that vigilance. Her patrols were crucial to the expansion of the frontier, for the good of her people and their ever-growing needs.
Even so, every outing was a deadly roll of the dice. Though Acrizia and her shieldmates had vanquished giant spiders, blind albino great-bears, and foul troglodytic things that dwelt in dankness and stench, a cave-in was what felled them. When the dust cleared and the reverberations died down, Acrizia discovered she was the sole survivor, and with one leg snapped by a boulder, she seemed likely to join her dead comrades. But Dwarves give up nothing without a bitter show of stubbornness, so Acrizia crawled in agony amid the rubble, looking for a way out. Her excellent memory and orientation were useless — the terrain had been rearranged by the sudden quake and rockfall, and she was completely disoriented.
Slowly bleeding to death and near despair, Acrizia heard a voice giving her clear, firm commands. She quickly understood it to be her own voice — not a mental monologue, but heard as though through her own two ears, a voice from her higher self taking command of her flagging spirit. The voice told her to keep going, that she was succumbing to shock and the chill of the underground. It reminded her of her standard issue flint and tinder ration, and she warmed herself. It coaxed back her old rock-knapping skills, and with typically ingenious Dwarven craftsmanship she was able to splint her broken leg and make a crude stone crutch.
Other survivors of wilderness isolation scenarios, with no one to turn to in their direst need, have reported a similar voice-of—oneself phenomenon. In many cases it led to their salvation. In Acrizia’s case, there may be a more sinister explanation.
On the atheism of the Dwarves, a prefect of the Sacred Order once famously said: ‘their folly is to disregard the gods, without guarantees that the gods disregard back.’ Though the gods are held at great remove from Teleria and can influence it only tenuously, their reach is long and their yearnings are eternal. The gods that Acrizia had no instinct to pray to, even in crisis, may yet have called out to her. But which god? Let it be said only that the deep places are rarely friends of Light, but home of Darkness and Shadow.
The bodies of the 36th’s dead were eventually recovered, and the missing Acrizia given up as lost. When she re-entered known Telerian history, it is in a very different area of the Dwarven borderlands, far from the site of her disappearance. She was reportedly clad in a fierce horned helm and sinister spiked armor, bearing a blazing blade said to burn with the molten blood of the earth. Some said figures walked beside her, hunched and misshapen or else tall and eerie. Others dismissed them as a trick of the shadows cast by her burning sword.
Concerned by the very idea of a maverick Dwarf, the Mountain King of Gloomdeep Hold dispatched elite Dwarven rangers to retrieve Acrizia, by force if necessary. Many did not return, and those who did had strange and contradictory explanations for their failures and the disappearances of their comrades. Many swore that their fellow rangers were drawn too close to Acrizia, following her as she evaded the rest of the patrol and then never regrouping. Subsequent encounters confirmed Acrizia was in fact followed by Dwarves, as well as the strange humanoid lurkers.
The Dwarf who came to be known as the Lost Daughter of the 36th continues to stalk those dark caverns that lie beyond the clockwork order of Gloomdeep Hold. But what purpose do Acrizia and her growing entourage serve, and what master? Soon, the world may know.