Overview
The Anvil-Singer Dwarf is the patient, remembering voice of Karn Dun, the Deep Delve, an iron-skinned deep-dwelling dwarf of the delve who sings the forge-fire and the anvil, the clan's patient, remembering, and most steady voice. It stands little over a meter tall, watchful and clannish, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in sung oaths rather than years. Where the goblins of the warrens read the dark and the gnomes of the hollows see the machine, the Anvil-Singer dwarves of the delve sing the anvil, and they have been singing the first anvil in the first forge for a very long time.
Habitat
The Anvil-Singer Dwarf keeps to the forge-halls of Karn Dun, the Deep Delve, a range of deep, stone-fed ground where the forge-fire is a promise and the anvil is a treaty. Its dwellings are carved into the faces of the forge-walls, hollows of shaped stone and laid iron coaxed into a home that catches the warm forge-light on its inner face and the shelter of the delve on its outer. It favors the older halls where the forge-fire runs oldest and the song is deepest, the places where an anvil can be sung without the delve's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
An Anvil-Singer Dwarf stands about 1.42 m tall, broad and forge-bound, with warm red-brick, forge-weathered umber skin that reads as bright in the forge-light. Its beard is braided and ringed, iron-black, with five rank-rings worked into the braid, and the rings are the map of every oath it has sung. Its skin is warm red-brick, the color of the forge it has tended for years, and its Oath-Tattoos run iron-black on the left forearm, one for every anvil-line it has kept.
Behaviour
The Anvil-Singer Dwarf is watchful, slow, and profoundly certain, a creature of long songs and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it sings, often for hours, watching a hall or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the oath, and only then does it sing, and then with a steadiness that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by an Anvil-Singer dwarf is a debt the delve will keep long after the singer has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Anvil-Singer dwarf is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the anvil and the iron itself, not force. Its primary defense is the hall, for it knows every corner of the forge-halls and can lead a pursuer through Karn Dun for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, an Anvil-Singer dwarf is slow and precise, 4 m/s through the halls and steady, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a cable, dimming a light, or singing an anvil until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Anvil-Singer dwarf has no magic of its own, and it does not want any, and the not wanting is the whole of its way of dealing with the world, for a dwarf that has an anvil and a word and an iron does not need a spell. It is not attuned to any art, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the singing, which is not a magic but is a thing that the dwarves of the delve have sung for a very long time, and the singing is the keeping, and the keeping is the whole of its power.
Society
The Anvil-Singer Dwarves live in Karn Dun in small, watchful, and forge-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the songs they sing together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a dwarf that has sung the most and kept the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a singing and the singing is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the hall, by a company of brick-eyed singers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a dwarf that breaks a song is a dwarf that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Anvil-Singer Dwarf is a culture of the sung anvil, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is watchful and forge-bound is the only honest word in the delve. They keep no records, for a dwarf that has sung an anvil does not need a record, the singing is the record, and the singing is watchful and forge-bound and does not fade. Their stories are slow and watchful, told in the hall at the dusk, and they are stories of anvils sung and oaths kept and the watchful, forge-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is steady and means every singing.
Home
Karn Dun, the Deep Delve is the Anvil-Singer dwarf's home and its singing, a range of deep, stone-fed ground where the forge-fire is a promise and the anvil is a treaty, where the dwarves sing their anvils and their watchful, steady words. It is a strange and watchful place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Anvil-Singer dwarf has learned to live inside that iron rather than against it. The warm forge-light that runs up through the halls is the delve's own, a soft brick glow that the dwarves have come to read as the color of a sung anvil.
Relations
The Anvil-Singer Dwarf keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of Karn Dun, a truce of sung anvils that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the delve. To the warm forge-light of the forge-halls the Anvil-Singer dwarf is a watchful, forge-bound, and absolutely certain presence, a brick-eyed singer that is at home in the halls and in the iron, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the singings pass, for a dwarf that has sung you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the delve, the Anvil-Singer Dwarf is the watchful, slow edge of the tale, the place where the anvils are sung and an anvil is read and a keeping is read. It is the figure that sings a new anvil in the dusk and holds the iron very watchful and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the vein-dwarves grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old anvil watchful and forge-bound and absolutely certain.