As told by Anx, a dwarf of Aiov in the northwest

After the Shattering, when the King Over the Isles fell at the Battle of Two Lakes, the Sea Peoples took our homelands from us. Those they did not enslave were forced to flee, but they did so without reason or purpose. The King Over the Isles was also the high priest of Dvagnchi the Dayfather, and his queen was high priestess of Qingvnir the Nightmother, you see.

When the King Over the Isles died, the throne would pass to his designated successor and his wife. If he died suddenly without an heir, the dwarves would call a Great Council made up of all the heads of the Great Holds in the Shattered Isles to elect one among their number to succeed. They would be girded thereafter with the Isthmus Blade as a solemn token of office.

But the Two Lakes was such a crushing defeat that not only was the King slain, but every dwarf who was a possible member of the Great Council had died or was captured. The Isthmus Blade, so they say, was thrown into the great pile of weapons melted down and reforged after the battle. The Sea Peoples poking their new dwarves with their own iron, now that must have made their cruel hearts smile!

One of the few noble dwarves to survive a free man was Tivej. He had this notion that the Isthmus Blade was less of a real thing you could hold than a ghost, a spirit that inhabited a metal shell as a gift from Dvangchi and Qingvnir. He declared that his own humble sword had been imbued with that spirit, and that the Dayfather and Nightmother had told him so in a dream.

For the next eight years, Tivej wielded his sword, imbued with the ghost of the Isthmus Blade (or so he claimed) against the Sea Peoples. He fostered slave revolts, led the free dwarves in guerilla warfare, and eventually declared himself King Over the Isles. When he was betrayed by one of his men, who sold his liege for the Sea Peoples’ gold, Tivej fell in battle, refusing to surrender.

And his sword, the one he said to be possessed of the spirit of old? It was never found. Many since have claimed to have it, or to have another sword possessed by the same spirit, in the centuries since.

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