The Three Peaks: Part 1 - Golden Stellarim
The Fortress of Perfection
Stellarim had not always been golden. Four generations ago, it was stone and dwarven stubbornness—a single vein of ore and a pickaxe. But over decades, vision had transformed rough mountain into architecture, ore into art, survival into something approaching grace.
The great halls gleamed with marble and gold-leaf trim. The throne room rose seven levels high, its pillars carved from single blocks of rose quartz. The vaults held artifacts of such legendary craftsmanship that traders came from distant lands simply to glimpse them. Stellarim was a jewel, and like all jewels, it was hard, beautiful, and cold.
Urist McForgemaster stood in his workshop at the heart of the fortress, alone with the glow of his furnaces. Around him lay the tools of his trade: anvils of adamantine, hammers that had shaped masterworks, crucibles that had melted down goblins’ stolen steel and forged it anew into beauty. The flames painted him orange and shadow. He was seventy years old, still sharp-eyed, still strong.
He was also restless.
“You’re thinking again,” a voice said from the shadows.
Urist didn’t turn. He knew it was his wife, Drizzle, because only she walked that softly through the fortress.
“I’m always thinking,” he said.
“About the expeditions beyond the mountain.” She stepped into the firelight. She was sixty-five, her hair the color of iron, her face lined with the contentment of someone who had lived well. “Udil came by the workshop again.”
Udil. The merchant-noble who had practically run Stellarim for the past decade while the fortress’s traditional nobility argued amongst themselves. Udil Sparkstone had vision—the kind of vision that made Urist’s fingers twitch.
“What did she want?” Urist asked.
“To see if you’d reconsider.” Drizzle came to stand beside him, looking into the flames. “She wants to send expeditions. Trading parties, explorers, perhaps a satellite settlement. She believes there’s more out there—more ore, more land, more… opportunity.”
“There’s an opportunity right here,” Urist said flatly. “The marble vein isn’t exhausted. The adamantine reserves will last generations if managed properly. The trading routes are established and profitable.”
“And boring,” Drizzle said. It wasn’t a question.
Urist was quiet for a long moment.
“You’re the legendary smith of Stellarim,” Drizzle continued. “Your name is sung in taverns from here to the human kingdoms. You’ve created three masterworks. Your weapons have defended this fortress. Your tools have built it. But all of that was in service of something that already existed, Urist. Udil is asking you to help create something new.”
“I’m too old for something new,” Urist said.
“You’re the perfect age for something new,” Drizzle replied. “You’re experienced enough to do it right, and you’re tired enough that you know what right actually looks like.”
The Merchant-Noble’s Vision
Three days later, Urist found himself in Udil’s office—a room that overlooked Stellarim’s main trade route, where caravans arrived in regular procession, bearing wealth and goods from across the known world.
Udil Sparkstone was younger than Urist by fifteen years, but she carried herself with the authority of someone who had spent decades managing logistics, trade agreements, and the delicate balance of dwarven politics. Her beard was braided with silver thread—a merchant’s affectation, but one she wore with such confidence that it had become a status symbol in Stellarim.
“The mountains beyond the eastern pass,” Udil said, spreading a carefully drawn map across her desk. “Traders speak of them. Deep, mineral-rich, and largely unexplored by dwarven fortresses. The human kingdoms beyond don’t venture into them. Goblins are sparse in the region.”
“Why?” Urist asked.
“Unknown. Perhaps the locals—there are tales of strange things in deep places—but tales are thin. Reality is thick.” Udil pointed to the eastern route on the map. “We send trading parties regularly now. They report good game, good water, good stone. But no one has attempted settlement.”
“Because settlement is expensive, dangerous, and offers no guarantee of profit,” Urist said.
“Exactly,” Udil agreed. “Which is why Stellarim should do it. We have the resources. We have the surplus population. We have the craftsmanship to build something beautiful and defensible. And we have you.”
“I’m a smith, not a founder.”
“You’re a legend,” Udil corrected. “Your presence—your reputation—would secure the settlement’s legitimacy. Migrants would come. Investors would support the project. The fortress wouldn’t be built by dwarves looking to escape Stellarim. It would be built by dwarves coming to join something greater.”
Urist studied the map. Three hundred miles to the east. Ten days of travel, perhaps, through grassland and foothills. The eastern mountains rose like teeth in the drawing—high, jagged, promising.
“What are you proposing?” he asked.
“Lead the expedition. Survey the land. Select the site. Build the foundation. Get the first workshop operational—a forge, a workshop complex that can begin producing tools and weapons. Within two years, we’ll have a functioning settlement producing goods that will flow back to Stellarim. Within five, it will be a fortress in its own right.”
“That’s four to five years away from my family,” Urist said. “Away from Stellarim.”
“Yes,” Udil said. “It is. But you’ll be building something that lasts forever. Your name will be carved into mountains, Urist. Not just praised in taverns. Carved into the world.”
The Farewell
It took Urist two weeks to decide, and he decided not in a moment of inspiration but in a moment of looking at his own reflection in his forge-fire and barely recognizing the person looking back.
He was becoming a statue. Beautiful, admired, but unchanging. And statues, he reflected, were what happened to legends after they stopped living.
He gathered his family—three children, four grandchildren, his wife—and told them.
Drizzle simply nodded, as if she’d known all along.
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
His eldest daughter, Katrin, a skilled mason, volunteered to join the expedition as well. “Someone needs to keep you from building something crooked,” she said with a smile.
The journey east would leave in early spring. The fortress held a celebration, though it was tinged with an uncertain feeling—the sense that something was changing, that the stable, perfect world of Stellarim was about to crack open.
In the taverns, dwarves whispered. The legendary Urist McForgemaster was leaving. What did that mean for Stellarim’s future? Would the fortress decline without him? Or was this the beginning of something greater?
The Eastern Mountains
As the expedition caravan rolled east in the spring sunshine, loaded with tools, seeds, and supplies, Urist rode at its head on a mule, Drizzle beside him, Katrin three positions back organizing the wagons with typical mason-like precision.
The mountains grew larger on the horizon—real now, not just marks on a map. Urist could see them clearly: jagged peaks that promised wealth, mystery, and danger.
Behind him, Stellarim disappeared into the distance.
Neither of them looked back.
Next in the series: The Three Peaks: Part 2 - The Iron Ambition of Irondelve