The dwarven smith’s journal is a leather-bound book handwritten in Dwarvish, left in an apartment in Vault 18 of the sealed Underforge Vaults beneath Argentum. Three of its entries describe a fire that destroyed the lower foundries.1
Description
Appearance
The journal is badly damaged. A chemical burn goes right through it in one place, and a shard of a ceramic jug that broke beside it is embedded in it. Many of its entries have faded, and it has some water damage, but three entries are fairly legible.1 Ink has blotted out the month in each entry’s date.1
The writer was a smith who worked in the foundries, perhaps the foundry vaults the party had surveyed the day before.1
Entries
Parts of the three legible entries are lost under ink.1
The first, on the 15th:
The Everfire awakened.
At first I took it for the usual heat in the lower ways, but the stone gave answer. A groaning underfoot, deep and ill. Then the fire came up all at once, as if the chambers had been struck from below.
The lower foundries are lost. The closest workshops with them. Flame took beam, bellows, and store. We could not stop it.
[…] dead. […] dead. Forgemaster Ruby-Eye is dead. May they be received in honor.
The second, on the 16th:
The smoke does not leave.
The passage down is barred. No one goes below without leave and name. The Vigilant stand thick in the halls. Questions for all who came up. I do not think they will find answers.
The lower ways are blackened. Iron has run where it should not. Stone split and lifted. I found one of my chisels melted fast into the floor. I str[…]oose and broke the hammer for my trouble.
[…]e burns on, it seems to have calmed. I d[…] trust it.
The third, on the 18th:
We counted the dead again.
There are always more. There are always more than first reckoning. Found in corners, under fall, in the stair.
The smoke is finally clearing below, and the upper levels are largely intact. A few minor injuries, mostly things falling off shelves. And of course, the surface fortress is undamaged. The city stands. The walls stand. Wa[…] cold and clean. S[…] homes are unburnt. […] holds, as it has always held.
But it has been dealt a wound that I do not think will ever heal.
The entries name Ruby-Eye and the Vigilant.1
History
Session 11
Luma found the journal behind a broken ceramic jug on the Vigil of Remembrance, 1714 PSF, and drew herself a pair of gloves to handle it, so as not to leave fingerprints or disturb the dust.1 She read the three entries aloud, copied them in Dwarvish and Common, and left the journal where it was.1 She told Hazel she thought it described what had happened in the foundry vault with the great hole: the Everfire had exploded, like the lamp in the plaza but far bigger.1