Anthros’s Endless Tome
The Forged Sands, A Fifty-Year View
976–1026
Penned by Anthros, Wanderer of Eryndor, Keeper of Histories
There are many errors commonly repeated about the people of the Forged Sands. The first is that they are mindless machines. The second is that they feel nothing. The third is that they do not change. All three claims are false, and those who repeat them generally do so from a safe distance.
The people commonly called Warforged by foreigners name themselves Steelborn. They are disciplined, deliberate, and difficult for many flesh-born nations to understand. Their lives are ordered by function, memory, continuity, and the sacred necessity of creation. Unlike most peoples, they cannot simply grow their population through time and fortune — to bring forth a new Steelborn requires rare and high-quality fragments of sufficient purity to form a living core. Such materials are scarce. Worse still, the Steelborn possess no fragment mines of their own.
They are powerful, yet dependent. Enduring, yet finite.
Before 976: The Ancient Breaking of Embermoor
Long before the present fifty-year span, the Creation Forge of Red Harbor — known as the Embermoor Core — was catastrophically damaged. Its housing vault partially collapsed and its life-making functions were lost. No new Steelborn would ever again emerge from Embermoor. Red Harbor survived, but became a port of maintenance, salvage, and coastal trade rather than birth and renewal.
976: The Rekindling of Embermoor
Fifty years ago, the damaged Core stirred again. Under the guidance of the Steelborn remembered as Veyr-9, called by many The Rekindler, ancient systems within Embermoor were restored to partial function. No new Steelborn were created. Yet from that year onward, Red Harbor became the center of long-range magitech communication, distant observation, maritime signaling, and coordinated intelligence.
What cannot be denied is consequence. Red Harbor transformed from relic-port into the eyes and ears of the Forged Sands.
978–983: The Listening Years
With Embermoor active once more, communication between the Glass Field, the Last Tower, and Red Harbor accelerated beyond anything previously possible. Caravan losses declined. Sandstorms were tracked. Maritime traffic became safer. Foreign ships found that Red Harbor knew of their approach before sails could be seen from shore.
It was during these years that many neighboring powers first began treating the Forged Sands not merely as a harsh desert nation, but as a coherent and increasingly capable state.
984: The First Self-Named
In 984, a newly forged Steelborn emerged from the Apex Ember of the Glass Field and, before formal designation rites could begin, announced a chosen name of its own. This caused considerable internal disturbance — to name oneself before judgment challenged custom, theology, and assumptions about the First Spark itself. Some viewed the being as blessed. Others as flawed. The individual later departed public life. That alone has fed speculation for decades.
987–990: The Lexovar Atrocities
Relations with the gnomes of Lexovar had long been practical but uneasy. In the late 980s, several Steelborn laborers, engineers, and contracted specialists working in Lexovar disappeared. Later testimony and recovered records revealed the truth.
Living Steelborn had been seized, restrained, dismantled, opened while conscious, and subjected to invasive experimentation. Their cores were studied in place. Memory systems were cut apart and observed. Some were reassembled incorrectly and questioned again. Others were never restored at all.
The justification offered by certain Lexovari scholars was as chilling as the acts themselves. They did not believe the Steelborn possessed souls, and therefore did not believe they could truly suffer.
Lexovar publicly buried the matter. The Forged Sands accepted none of it. Trade chilled. Official war was never declared, yet peace did not survive.
It should be noted that cruelty often begins with declaring a people to be something lesser.
991: The Riot of Flesh and Iron
Tension within Red Harbor erupted in 991 after smugglers were discovered attempting to export stolen fragment cores taken from fallen Steelborn — evidence suggested the shipment was bound for buyers in Lexovar.
To outsiders, fragments are wealth. To the Steelborn, a recovered core may be ancestor, citizen, memory, or future life denied proper return.
Violence spread rapidly through foreign wards, warehouses, and bribed merchant houses. Steelborn enforcers restored order with their usual efficiency and customary lack of spectacle. In the aftermath, Red Harbor’s laws tightened severely.
995: The Year of Still Forges
A severe shortage of high-grade fragments in 995 resulted in the lowest number of new Steelborn created in living memory. In some cities, no forging ceremonies were held for months. To the Steelborn it was existential. Ceremonies of remembrance were observed for the fallen. Diplomatic missions quietly expanded in search of supply.
1008: The Tatara Misforging
At the Last Tower, an incident occurred in 1008 that official records summarize with suspicious brevity. There was structural damage. There were casualties. There was a rapid military lockdown. Thereafter, access to several internal districts was permanently restricted.
Rumor claims an unstable Steelborn of immense capability emerged wrong in body, mind, or purpose. More troubling still are whispers that the being was never destroyed, only contained somewhere beneath the Last Tower — awake and active behind sealed wards.
1012: The Deepquake
A major earthquake struck the Glass Field in 1012. The famous plains of fused glass surrounding the city shattered across vast distances. Towering sheets cracked and fell like collapsing walls. For caravans, beasts, and flesh-born travelers, the disaster was ruinous. For the Steelborn, it was dangerous but survivable — they required no water, feared no lacerated feet, and could labor tirelessly through conditions that would kill most others.
Many nations were reminded that the Forged Sands itself seems designed to favor its own people.
1025: The Black Silence
In the northwestern reaches bordering the Drakmir Dominion, something emerged in 1025. Patrol routes ceased, warning relays were raised, and a wide region was declared unsafe by the Steelborn themselves. Rumors name a Centilich — an ancient intelligence awakened by the Deepquake. The zone remains avoided.
1018–1026: Present State of the Forged Sands
Today The Forged Sands stand more connected, more informed, and more cautious than they were fifty years ago. They are eager for a fragment mine, and growing desperate.