It is said that the great dead city beneath the Dreaming Moon is surrounded on all sides by a petrified forest, where the poisoned minerals of the soil have leeched into the living trees and slain them. I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down what I have heard of one place near the Dead River where, rather than stone, pure iron had leeched into the trees, leaving trunks of pure metal. A branch of one such tree of metal once made its way to the City of Bronze, where it was fitted with a handle and sharpened.
Now such a weapon would be impractical for combat, as it could not hope to best a steel blade and would be brittle, to say nothing of its many sharp branches. But it was highly valued as a curiosity, enough so that it was stolen from the Sultan’s personal armory by one who wished to “return” it to those poisoned shores. The Sultan informs me that he sent a party after the man, but that the single survivor spoke only of a grove where all was made iron, bearing with him a man’s severed hand made entirely of wrought metal.
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