by Dusty Dionne
The Dwarves died out long ago. The stories etched in their empty halls say the world was not born. They said Alahn, from whom the world took it's name, forged it. Alahn was their creatrix: first fire, first law, first mother of stone that learned to walk. In the oldest rites she lifted the hammer and struck mountain from magma, river from steam, and a people from the living rock. The Dwarves were her work as surely as the mountains were. The hammer was not Alahn. It was her instrument. The only thing in the first age hard enough to shape a world and still answer to her will. When the last Dwarven halls went dark, creatrix and hammer both passed out of living reach. Today, after the last great war is but a far living memory, a fellowship must come together to search for the only thing that can forge the weapons to drive back the coming darkness: The Hammer of Alahn.
