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The Heart of Courage
Relevant Knowledges: History, Literature, Regional (Cathilcarn)
Long ago, it is said, the crags of Cathilcarn stood over a flourishing dwarven kingdom. Today, their banners lie cloaked in dust, their halls empty but for ghosts. Their forges stand cold, their iron long rusted. Only snow plumes from the vents that once blew great pennants of smoke, and only scattered stories survive of their lore.
One of these stories -- one of the few to have filtered, in bits and pieces, from dwarf-lore into the talespinnings of human bards -- concerns the Heart of Courage, and the disaster that ended the kingdom under the mountains.
The tale begins at the height of the dwarves' wealth and power, when they traded throughout Aridoc and Ardashir, and their metalwork was famed to the far corners of Meditra. Their greatest treasure, however, they kept to themselves: a white diamond variously known as the Heart of Courage, the Mountain's Heart, and the Heart of Cathilcarn. Ancient scribes claimed that the Heart of Courage was the size of a dwarf's heart, and as no one but its dwarven keepers beheld the stone for centuries after, this description is accepted as authoritative.
Clan lore held that the diamond possessed enormous power, and that the dwarves of Cathilcarn would be invulnerable to attack so long as they kept it. To protect the Heart of Courage, the dwarves built an immense and deadly labyrinth in the deepest recesses of the mountains. The secrets of its traps died with their creators; no map was ever made. Only the dwarf-king held the keys to the vaults, and those were guarded as jealously as the king's own person.
Generations passed in peace. The dwarves of Cathilcarn enjoyed rising prosperity, year after year, while the diamond lay locked in their vaults. And then rumor of their treasure reached the ears of a dragon -- Ulrazhirraul the Red, one of the dread wyrms of the world -- and sorrow came to shadow the gates of Cathilcarn.
Ulrazhirraul was as greedy as he was cruel, and once the dragon set his mind on a treasure, no power in the world could move him. He summoned a host of orcs and giants, fell beasts and fiends, and he laid siege to Cathilcarn.
The tales of the dwarves' resistance could fill libraries. In some exiles' collections, they do. The dwarves of Cathilcarn fought back staunchly, and might well have broken the back of the siege, had they not been betrayed from within.
Lisandra -- the False Councillor, one of the most hated figures in dwarven history -- was the instrument of Cathilcarn's fall. Lisandra is only remembered by the name that humans gave her, as the False Councillor's true-name and clan-name were utterly extirpated from the records of her own people. She was the last king's most trusted advisor, and she betrayed him along with all the dwarves of Cathilcarn, committing one of the gravest sins in clan lore.
Lisandra whispered poison into the king's ear. She conjured fears of treachery and treason in his mind, isolating the king from his other advisors and compelling him to place all his trust in her alone. She caused him to believe that the Heart of Cathilcarn was threatened by internal enemies, and that the jewel would be safest if removed from the vaults -- and so she was able to winkle the keys from his keeping.
With the vault's keys in her possession, Lisandra went into the mountain's bowels to claim her prize. Though she was able to seize the diamond, she was not able to remove it from the labyrinth. The traps that guarded the Heart of Cathilcarn kept her imprisoned with the stone, and it is said that she died there, clutching the diamond that had become more precious to her than water or air. Some say that her sins and her treachery condemned her to undeath. Other tales hold that Lisandra was herself betrayed in the end, and that the Walker in Shadows did not reward her with power as he had promised, but instead cast her wailing and impotent soul to Luorre's judgment after death. All the legends agree, however, that she died in the vaults.
In the human tellings, it is said that Lisandra forfeited her clan identity and, indeed, her very dwarfhood by her act of betrayal. The few dwarves who can be convinced to speak of the matter insist that it is not so simple, but will not elaborate. Whatever the truth of the False Councillor's fate, it seems clear that her betrayal broke the prophecy of Cathilcarn's sanctity. Within a year of Lisandra's treachery, the dragon took the dwarven halls.
The legends say that Ulrazhirraul still lairs in Cathilcarn, dreaming over the diamond that waits beneath him and plotting with his lich-councillor Thaulrinn to recover the stone. The dwarves of Cathilcarn are scattered or dead, and what became of the Heart of Courage, no one knows.
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