Over some breakfast since leaving the 1st Gate, Alexis is thinking aloud
“Without Drennos I can go back to my musings.” after a little pause Alexis continues.
“I’m still thinking about the Hammer and Crown, and what the Collegium is supposed to be kept from knowing. What about the history or the nature of those artifacts is supposed to stay hidden? Since nobody but villains talks to non-humans” Alexis says with sarcasm “it seems reasonable that the knowledge that the Collegium doesn’t have was acquired from non-humans… perhaps from some long-lived creature or from some lost library.”
“Perhaps the Crown and Hammer could be items that Dwarves would rally behind, but it seems like they would have to be held by a Dwarf, otherwise they wouldn’t be objects to trade, but objects to use.”
“The simple explanation, the uneducated explanation, is that these items are connected and together they form a symbol of royalty. Similar to a crown and scepter.”
“Less intuitive is that they are somehow items used by some ‘rightful chosen of the Maker’, and the hammer is the real item. It forges something. But this gets into wild speculation.”
“What would be a threat to our enemies, or a great boon to them, from those items, that the Collegium wouldn’t be aware of?” Alexis thinks on this while they all eat together.
“Didn’t you say something about an enchanted forge in that same treasure pile?”
“There was a forge, all right. But the forge was very different from the hammer and crown. The hammer and crown clearly belonged to together. The forge was entirely different. Different aesthetic.” Alexis looks a bit crestfallen.
“Wish I could have gotten that wonder out of that place. I was more tempted than I’d like to admit to send that forge to the bottom of the lake as a safe place for the forge until I could come back for it.”
“At this point, we won’t see it until the 3rd great age; the 3rd alliance.”
Rask looks at Alexis very skeptically at the words “3rd alliance.”
“Hmm, I thought perhaps a hammer and a forge… but maybe you are right, a crown is certainly a sign of leadership… and kings. Did the the hammer seem like a weapon or a tool? Was it functional as either?”
“Having seen other dwarven tools and weapons, the hammer wasn’t either. Although it was well enough made, and possibly magically powerful enough, that it could do either one.
“Similar to how a magical elven short-sword was used as a common machete earlier in our adventures. It did the job very well, but it was most definitely not made for the work, and the magic was being stripped from it slowly by it being used against its purpose.
“Now the poor thing is very far away and I’m not sure we’ll ever see it again.”
Rask looks disgusted at the idea of a fine blade, even one–or perhaps especially–one made by The Betrayers of Humanity, being used as a machete and a not a tool of death.
“Sounds like the ‘hammer’ was ceremonial too me. Didn’t you say that it was to be traded for a Tear of Avv?”
Alexis nods “both the crown and the hammer for the tear under Mount Sutheron.”