The Silver Warlord
U N D E R H O L D
Deep beneath Silver Peak, the world breathed fire and shadow.
The great gates of the Underhold still yawned open to the pale light above, but within the mountain the air was thick with motion, the pulse of a titan stirring after an age of dreamless sleep. The forges had awakened, and with them, the mountain itself. Steam hissed from veins of stone as if the world were sweating beneath the weight of its rebirth. Chains groaned, gears screamed, and rivers of molten ore surged through transparent conduits, filling the air with the slow rhythm of creation. The veins of ancient technology surged with life once more, casting its radiance ever outwards, it was impossible to tell where the machines ended and the mountain began, and perhaps there had never been a difference at all.
The Underhold was alive. No fortress could contain its scale. It was a subterranean kingdom, a city hewn from the bones of the world, vast enough to drown a fleet within its depths. The grand arteries of the Underhold stretched for miles, lit by the glow of flowing metal and magma. Columns the width of warships rose like petrified gods, each carved with the names of generations who had vanished into the stone. Balconies overlooked molten chasms; bridges of beskar crossed gorges of liquid fire. From the lowest vaults, where magma coursed through rune-etched sluices, to the highest galleries beneath the mountain's crown, light shimmered through a lattice of veins, molten beskar, glowing blue-silver like the blood of a god running through the heart of the Veshkaar Mountains.
Beneath that living light moved the children of Clan Bruul. They filled the halls like a tide of iron and shadow, Taung and human descendants both, armor polished to mirror brightness, banners unfurling in slow waves of silver and blue. Voices rose in low, guttural hymns, chants so old they blurred the line between word and vibration. Sparks rained from colossal anvils, welding torches hissed in rhythm with the forge drums, and from somewhere deep below, the mountain's heart gave a steady thrum. Zurak Bruul moved through them like the mountain's shadow given shape. His helm hung at his side, a concession to the heat that pressed in from every wall. Ash and forge-light clung to his scarred skin, painting him in living flame. The air was thick with the smell of smelted ore, the pulse of machinery, the heartbeat of home.
It should have felt perfect. It did, and yet, not entirely.
He paused at a great balcony overlooking the inner abyss, a vertical expanse so vast it seemed impossible to have been built by hands. The central shaft descended for miles, its edges lined with living quarters, armories, archives, and suspended bridges like veins spiraling downward into the molten dark. Elevators of beskar moved on silent chains. Lights glimmered like stars along the walls, each one a forge rekindled, a memory reclaimed. From somewhere far below came the roar of a reawakened foundry, the Hall of Sparks where the first ore of Silver Peak had ever been born to flame. It was right, he told himself. The mountain lived again. His people's exile had ended; the silence had been broken. And yet…
He looked upward, toward the distant fissures in the stone where daylight spilled down like liquid silver. The light seemed fragile, thin, pale, uncertain, compared to the fire below. The surface world waited beyond it, a galaxy of noise and hunger and hollow oaths. He had not forgotten the reason his ancestors sealed the gates. The Taung had buried themselves to preserve something purer, harder, uncorrupted by the softening of the ages. Now that purity stood in the open air once more. Would the galaxy temper it, or taint it? The forge answered with its deep hum, and Zurak found no comfort in it. He did not need comfort. He needed purpose. He descended the spiral walkway to the Hall of the First Sparks, where the great anvil awaited, cracked, massive, glowing from within. It had never cooled, even through centuries of darkness. His forgemasters knelt around it, their visors down, their voices murmuring in prayer. Zurak approached, each step a tremor that rippled through the stone floor. He reached out and laid his calloused hand on the anvil's surface. It burned, not with heat, but with memory, the pulse of every generation that had struck this metal before him.
"Tor choruk dura." He murmured. The anvil's glow brightened in answer, as though the mountain itself acknowledged him. For a long while, he stood there, the Lord of the Underhold, the Alor of Clan Bruul, the last scions of the first Mandalorians. Around him the forges sang, the walls pulsed with molten veins, and the mountain's breath filled his lungs. The Underhold was alive once more. His people were reborn. But far above, in the pale sky of Mandalore, other powers stirred. Ships had been sighted on the horizon. Visitors, Allies, Emissaries, or Opportunists, would soon arrive, drawn by the light of a mountain they thought long dead. Zurak Bruul looked up through the shafts of silver daylight, the reflection of flame flickering in his eyes.
"Let them come." He said quietly, his voice echoing through the hall like a promise. "Let the galaxy remember what was lost. What we return to them." Just then, deep within the Veshkaar Mountains, the forge answered, it was a sound like thunder in the bones of the world.
