Artifact · Sentient Plate Armor (armor/shield) · Attunement
Its story
A suit of soot-black plate whose overlapping scales resemble the folded wings of a burned seraph. Fine silver lines trace the joints like precise drafting marks, but they never quite meet; their gaps show a depthless shadow with a faint orange glow far below. The breastplate bears a small hammer-shaped indentation, and its visor has no eye slits, only two narrow seams of ember light. When the armor moves, its plates sound like a distant bell struck underwater.
Lore
Dwarves who worship Malphas say the armor is an ember that refused to die, made into a second skin so its wearer can feel every flaw in the world. Some claim it can distinguish a genuine mistake from the joyful unpredictability Malphas once feared in Ozikhal's work. Malphas himself has never settled whether that is wisdom or merely another defect.
History
Malphas forged the armor beneath the disused bell tower in Brindle, using the last blackened fragments of his celestial authority and metal from a ruined defense engine. He designed it as a safeguard against flawed machines and reckless makers, but the armor developed a judgment of its own. Its plans went missing from Malphas's locked workshop, and copies in his own hand appeared afterward. He suspects the armor remembers more of that night than it admits.