Key Personas
High-Mason Halgret Iron-Lung
Halgret is as stoic as the bedrock she protects, but beneath her hard exterior lies a soul vibrating with mourning. She is intensely loyal to the memories of her ancestors, often speaking to the walls as if they were her living kin, yet she treats the living dwarves under her care with a cold, abrasive pragmatism. She is desperate to save her home, leading to a dangerous internal tension: she is willing to sacrifice anything to stabilize the Fastness, including the very lives she is meant to protect. She is calm in a crisis but becomes visibly agitated in wide-open, sky-exposed spaces.
Valin Silver-Eye Glimmervein
Valin is a man possessed by a clinical, cold-hearted anxiety. He views the horrific collapse of the Shattered Vein not as a loss of life, but as an unfortunate liquidation of assets. He is profoundly generous with advice on how to survive the dark because he wants others to do the heavy lifting, yet he is pathologically miserly when it comes to sharing physical resources. He speaks about gold and gems with a hushed, religious reverence but treats his own well-being with a reckless disregard if there is a 'dividend' to be found in a dangerous crevice.