The Forge Masters of the Scarred Lands are various in race, religion and desire.

We are not talking about the local or city forgers who are among those great enough to wrought from iron and carbon, steel creations, at the level of perfection to hold magic — though this is certainly a level most blacksmiths never achieve. We are talking about the truly great masters, artists, and workers of steel, for whom that level of perfection is merely the starting point for what they would see as worthy to bring from the fires into the light of day, or to uncover to the eyes of their deity.

Each of these masters seek something else from the metal, something other than a weapon, or piece of armor, or object of note, in fact the object is rarely the goal. There is something inside the forge, that they can see happen between the fire and the metal, which they seek to capture, to understand, to control.

It is there, this unknown thing, inside their eyes as they pump the bellows and fan the coals, though none of them (even with the talent of the bard), could tell you exactly what it is; it is there, and they know the substance of the thing when they see it enter the blade. A life perhaps, that lives between the fire, the breath of the bellows, and the sound of the hammer — which each master believes, in the hidden place of their heart, they could capture into the blade, if only their hammers fell with pure understanding.

These masters rarely talk about this feeling, this insight into steel and the forge — with good reason. It has not been so long ago, that there was a life in the forge, and that life was terrible indeed. In the not so distant past, forge masters of several nations sought out advice and council outside the forge, to understand what they saw and felt in the ringing blows of the hammer and the steel, only to be outcast, banned from the fires, and in some cases, thrown into their own fires — never understanding if what their townsfolk feared was really true, or not.

We, ourselves will also, slowly, back away from the mystical, and the misunderstood, to look at the men and women of the forge, those who are masters of fire, and steel, and the wrought of the blade.

We will start in the City of Mithril, where the Knights work the forges of their priests, in the dedication of their god Corean, where each knight, before he can seek a mount, must first forge his blade. Where clerics move in the heat and darkness and glow of forges which rarely cease to burn, chanting their prayers, and creating worship objects of beauty, tools of grace, and weapons of keen destruction, from steel and mithril.

In Mithril we will meet Clauis Elbeer, the master of the Clerical Forge of Corean.