Forgers
The Forgers are the artisans of the Crucible, the realm of energy, heat, and transformation. They do not burn; they are the fire. They see the universe as raw material to be worked into something better, and the things they forge are among the greatest prizes any traveller brings back.
Appearance
A Forger is shaped like a broad, heavy-shouldered person, taller than a Human, made of living magma and cooling rock. Its body is dark basalt and obsidian on the surface, cracked all over, and through the cracks shows a core of glowing orange and gold that brightens when it works and dims when it rests. Its eyes are two points of white heat. It carries hammers and an anvil of solidified fire, which glow like coals.
It moves with a heavy, deliberate force, and stone hisses where it steps. Its voice is a deep crackle and roar, like a furnace with the door open, and it speaks in metaphors of fire and metal. It smells of hot iron and sulphur.
Habitat and Range
They live on the floating islands of cooling rock and along the lava rivers of the Crucible, at forges that are simply the hottest places they can find.
Behaviour and Temperament
They are artisans and shapers. Skill, precision, and the act of transformation are what they value, and they look on everything, stone, metal, a visitor, as something that could be improved by fire. They are intense and passionate, quick to admire good work and quick to scorn poor work. They see visitors as cold and unrefined, and do not mean it unkindly.
Abilities
They draw their life from heat and from the difference between hot and cold, and live as long as there is heat. They work fire as smiths work iron, and what they forge carries properties nothing on Caeldon can match: metals and gems that mend themselves or hold heat for an age.
Life Cycle
The greatest danger to a Forger is to cool. A Forger that loses its heat turns brittle and shatters, and what is left is a heap of black glass and dull stone.
Uses and Dangers
Most travellers come to the Crucible to forge legendary weapons, and the Forgers are who they come to. A Forger will sometimes work for a visitor who brings something worth transforming. Their danger is the heat around them, which can give a visitor Pattern burns, the fire consuming something of who they are.
Lore and Belief
Smiths' lore on Caeldon has stories of fire-smiths who live inside volcanoes, and travellers' tales of the Forgers are probably their root, since the Crucible’s gates on the Material Plane are volcanoes, forges, and places of great heat. Some forges keep an empty place at the hearth for a fire-smith who never comes.