Mad Kaboomist

Durn Stonemarrow was once a brilliant spellwright. He left the hallowed halls of Grimbardun to study the leylines buried deep beneath the mountains. He was expected back within the season.

Instead, he stayed for decades.

Some say it was the horrors of the Deep that broke his sanity. Others blame the fey magic of the leylines themselves. Whatever the cause, when he returned, his beard had gone white, he laughed without reason, and his eyes were… wrong. Off-kilter. Like they’d seen things no dwarf was ever meant to see.

As Fithe Bladestone and his contingent marched out the gates of Grimbardun and down the spine of the Agniavas into the Great Lowlands, Durn muttered under his breath the entire way. The others sometimes caught snippets, like:

“I’ve seen the shape of the enemy. It has too many elbows.”

“It must be unmade from the inside out, or it will molt again and whisper new lies.”

“They buried the key in a memory that doesn't remember them, but it remembers me.”

No one knew what Durn meant. But after the first battle against Oridum Graybrow and his conclave cronies, no one cared that he was as mad as a badger in a blasting barrel.

Because despite those off-kilter eyes, Durn cast his spells with crazy precision, picking off targets one by one and afflicting them with a rot that no healer could mend.

After the dwarves retreated and made camp, Durn sat beside the fire and whispered to the flames. The others spoke in hushed tones, wondering if it was because of his misaligned eyes that his spells flew so true. Maybe he could see through the veil between worlds.

Or maybe he saw something they couldn’t.