> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Ashen Forge > [![[Ashen_Forge_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Ashen_Forge.webp) > ###### Location Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Point of Interest | > Location | [[Val Noren]] | > Defining Feature | [[Stonesworn]] guild forge | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Active | The Ashen Forge is an ancient smithy in the Stoneheart Quarter of [[Val Noren]], and one of the oldest working forges of the [[Stonesworn]] guild. Its roof beams are blackened from the fires of the city's long occupation and the siege that ended it, but the forges beneath them never went cold; smiths have beaten iron and [[Renite Steel]] on its anvils for generations. It takes its name as much from that soot-darkened timber as from the grey ash that never quite leaves its floors. ## Location & Geography The Ashen Forge stands in the [[Stoneheart|Stoneheart Quarter]], the dense knot of ancient masonry and smithing yards on the higher northern bank of [[Val Noren]], clustered — like every forge of the Quarter — within the shadow of the great temple of [[Torgar Earthshaker]]. The smell of coal smoke is permanent in these streets, and the Forge sits among them as a low, broad hall of old stone, its walls older than most of the houses around it. Inside, the building is given over wholly to its work: a great open hearth, ranks of worn anvils, and the hanging tools of the trade, all lit by forge-glow against the cool dark of the stonework. The roof timbers overhead are charred black — scars of the siege fires that swept the Quarter, which was rebel-held through the heaviest fighting — yet the structure held, and the anvils beneath were barely stilled. ## The Guild Forge The Forge is a working house of the [[Stonesworn]], the guild in which the smiths and the priests of [[Torgar Earthshaker]] are one and the same; here the ring of hammer on anvil is counted a form of prayer. Its master is Helda Coalbraid, a Renite smith of the guild — tireless, blunt, and famed across the city for her craft — kept company by her apprentice, Milo Drass, an eager teenager more often underfoot than useful. The Forge's reputation rests on its mastery of [[Renite Steel]], the dark, resonant ore that is Val Noren's defining resource, which the Stonesworn alone know how to bind with magic and metal. ## [[The Bloody Nails|Campaign: The Bloody Nails]] #### [[Session 41 - Reclaim the Reclaimer]] [[Kai]] called at the Forge to collect a chain-whip he had commissioned from Helda. He offered her the cursed gauntlet of [[Dread General Gerard Blackmarsh]] as raw material, but she recoiled from the evil radiating off the metal and would not touch it. When she offered to do the commission for free, Kai paid her the full fifty gold regardless — a gesture that moved the blunt old smith to tears. #### [[Session 43 - The Shield of the North]] In the days after Val Noren's liberation, Kai returned with the purified remains of Blackmarsh's armour, cleansed of its curse in a vision of the Astral Plane. Helda took up the metal and fell into what she later called a fugue — her eyes glazing blue with channelled divine energy, her hands moving at superhuman speed for hours on end. When she came back to herself she had no memory of the work; what she had made was the [[Moonlit Aegis]]. She accepted Kai's payment of two hundred gold and went straight back to her anvil. The guild reckoned the forging a sign of [[Torgar Earthshaker]]'s direct favour, and the Ashen Forge has been spoken of with new reverence across the city ever since.