Brunna Ashmantle – Forge-Master / Crucible Warden
“Deadlines don’t bury the dead. Bad joiners do.”
Name: Brunna Ashmantle
Race: Dwarf
Role/Class: Forge-Master / Crucible Warden
Appearance: Brunna Ashmantle is broad-shouldered and compact, built like a stone pillar that learned to move. Her skin is copper-warm beneath a permanent veil of soot, and her hands are stained dark at the creases no matter how often she washes. A jagged lace of old burn scars climbs her left cheek and disappears under her collar—pale marks that shine faintly when the forge light hits them.
Her hair is a thick auburn braid bound tight with copper wire, and her beard is kept short, braided into two stubby cords capped with blackened iron rings. She wears chain beneath a heavy leather apron, layered with heat-scorched gloves, and a cloak that smells faintly of smoke and salt wind. At her belt hang tongs, a punch set, and a small chalk stone used to mark cracks in metal and stone.
She doesn’t look like a hero. She looks like someone who has stopped disasters before anyone noticed they were coming.
Backstory
Brunna was raised in Thorn’del’s Crucible District, in the loud, heat-heavy world of foundries and cliff-carved galleries. As an apprentice, she survived a furnace backdraft that killed her master and warped a whole line of support brackets—an accident caused by venting shortcuts and “just this once” thinking.
She didn’t heal into fear. She healed into vigilance.
Brunna became obsessed with what fails first: the rivet that holds under normal stress, the hairline crack that grows in the cold, the vent chimney that sings wrong when pressure builds. She studied airflow and stone stress the way priests study scripture. Over time, she gained a reputation not only for impeccable craft, but for refusing unsafe work no matter who demanded it.
Today, she is Thorn’del’s forge-master in practice, even when the guild titles say otherwise. She trains apprentices, inspects supports, and has shut down entire work lines with a single sentence and a hard stare. Some merchants call her a bottleneck. Workers call her a shield.
Brunna has no taste for politics—but she keeps a private ledger of favors owed and promises traded, because she’s learned that safety is often a negotiation long before it becomes a rescue.
