The Dwarfen Mountain Holds measure their power not in numbers but in artifice, and no craft is more jealously guarded than the working of runes. A Dwarf Rune Axe is the fruit of that art, a weapon graven with sigils of ancestral power, forged to endure for centuries and to slay whatever the dwarfs have sworn to destroy.
The making of such a weapon falls to the Runesmiths, secretive masters who hammer the Runes of the Dwarfs into blade and haft in a process that is as much sacred rite as smithcraft. A rune of cutting might let the axe shear through the heaviest plate; a rune of fury might set it burning with cold blue light; a master rune of might could lend a single blow the force to fell a giant. No two rune axes are precisely alike, for each is tailored to its bearer and to the grudges he means to settle.
To a dwarf, a rune weapon is far more than a tool of war. Forged from gromril and inscribed with runes that will outlast their maker by ages, an ancestral axe becomes a repository of the clan's honour, its edge unblunted by the passing of generations. Such weapons are handed down from father to son, and to lose one to the enemy is a grudge grievous enough to be recorded and avenged for centuries. When a dwarf lord raises his rune axe, he wields not merely steel but the accumulated pride and vengeance of his entire line.
The armoury continues
