Relics of the Deep Lode Forge
Lore
Well, I guess it is time to solidify old myths and bedtime stories of our youth into potential historical accounts. There appears to be more than a little bit of truth to the old legends of the Deep Lode Forge and the armor that was made.
For those that don't know... Legend has it that in the Time Of The Treaty, when the dwarves were the only modern peoples with the sophistication and good sense to make steel, all other nations came to us in peace to buy our perfect metals. But, as with any great nation, our neighbors grew jealous. Most simple cultures are prone to covet the success their superiors...
Anyway... The way my grandparents told it, the trolls initiated the attack. I hear that the trolls say that humans started it. It doesn't matter, now. All that matters is the fact that the good, hard working dwarves were slaughtered for no more reason than they were trying to provide exceptional steel for all and that the greedy "all" still had to take advantage of us. But I digress. The story ends with the great steel foundry being run by the humans and trolls with enslaved gnomes doing the actual labour. (Obviously... Like a human or a troll could smelt steel without catching their greasiness on fire).
So, of course, like in all legends... The great Deep Lode Forge was built with the help of sympathetic gods. Right in the center of the most magnetic deposits of iron below... Some mountain range... I don't remember what my grandmother said, I knew it was only a myth back then... And the valiant dwarves hammered out hundreds of thousands of sets of armor so magnetically charged that it was able to discharge lightning. The armies of dwarves then had no trouble taking back their steel foundry and, of course, are still the cleverest people.
Not much is said about what happened to the Deep Lode forge. I guess once the foundry was back in production, the forge was forgotten and eventually assumed to be the sort of story that grandmothers tell.
Anyway. I am convinced that it is true. The circulating rumours have the forge being discovered by gnomes that looted it and tried to sell their plunder to dwarves. Apparently they some how lost the sets of armour when a dwarven gang tried to rob them.
Now, the gnomes that did have it haven't been seen in weeks, and the dwarven gang that I suspect, Kurt's hooligans in Edel, won't deny being involved in the roughing up of a bunch of gnomes but Kurt doesn't seem to have it on him.
All I can get out of older dwarves (That don't insist the whole story is a myth) is that the Deep Lode armor used the magnetism of the whole world to generate the lightning and strike down enemies. They say that this magnetism of the armor makes it nearly impossible to wear without the right system of hooks and clips to hold it together. One old soldier from Juargan's who claims to have had ancestry that worked in the Deep Forge insists that it is nearly crippling to wear an odd number of Deep Lode pieces because it was engineered to be worn properly balanced.