Osgrun the Defiler Champion Lore
They were taken from me. Too early. They did not deserve death. Not then, not in that way. What was I supposed to do, just accept it? Go on as if nothing had happened?
I thought Dwarves were supposed to fight. To never give in, never relent. My banishment only revealed the weakness in my kind and showed I was better off without them.
Oh my people will stand against 0rc warbands, the Undead, Norr pirates, and the rest. But against our greatest enemy, they don ‘t even try. They have surrendered to death without so much as a whimper.
It can be thwarted! It can be controlled! The secrets lie in the right runes and magic! The way to bring back our lost, not as shambling, rotting monsters, but as they always were.
For wanting to achieve this I was dismissed from Gloomdeep Hold. Did I borrow from the tombs and catacombs? Yes. Did I – with enormous care – sample dangerous magic? Yes. I did these things to save lives. To replace sadness with joy. Yet no one cared. They cast me away. But in a sense they gave me freedom. Now there are no rules, no one to stop me.
I have learned much. Life-force itself is energy to me, to restore tired muscles and seal wounds. I can store, bind, and release the power of existence through enchanted jetstone of my own manufacture. With a gesture or word, the weak-minded will do as I order.
Because of this I now know also our ancestors were wrong to reject the gods wholesale. Siroth has given me much. Clues. Hints. Enough to carefully guide me yet not re veal that which I am not ready to find.
His most recent word was a single name. Gronjarr.
I spent months in the libraries of Ireth. I read tomes with script made of dried spiders’ legs. Cursed scrolls that made my eyes bleed every second they were unfurled. I lost many hours to battles with hungry shelf-shades and crazed knowledge-hoarders. But my efforts were rewarded.
Gronjarr was at the Fall of the Dwarves. At Gloomdeep Hold. He disappeared while storming runescript archives. The I’ve never been uncovered or explored in all the centuries since. Whatever was destroyed, I can repair.
I will return home, delve deep, find the archives, uncover their secrets.
Then I shall be more powerful than ever before, and yet closer to restoring my loves to true life.