The Heart of the Mountain
- A dwarven plane in the Divine Realms
The Heart of the Mountain is the home of the Bahrazel, the Firstborn of the dwarves and is acknowledged as one of the Divine Realms of the Embodied Godsin the Standard Multiversal Model. Although it has been described in many ways over the long years of dwarves, the Iron Verses, among the most famous of the dwarven religious epics, describe:
A vast cavern hundreds and hundreds of feet across, with endless tunnels that leave the cave in all directions, many wide and brightly lit by crystal lanterns, others narrow, some nearly vanished into the shadows. Small motes of light that float in the air, causing the flecks of white gemstones and silver veins that run through the walls of the cave to glitter and sparkle. In the center of the open space is a perfectly smooth pool of water, deep and dark. The only sound is the distant, rhythmic clang of hammer on iron, ringing almost like a bell, the tempo slow but steady.
The Forge of Names
The Heart of the Mountain is perhaps the most well-known of the Divine Realms, for its connection to the dwarven ritual of Name-Taking. While the sacred details are not revealed to outsiders, many dwarves will tell of the journey, of finding themselves at the center of a cavern where pool meets the stone, in a mystical place where the divine presence of the Bahrâzel can be felt and heard. The Rite of Name-Taking is often described to outsiders as a ritual of passage, but to the dwarves it is more than this. It is a binding, a forging of soul and duty, as each dwarf leaves behind a fragment of themselves in the Heart of the Mountain, a debt owed to the Bahrazel in exchange for the magic of their people. In dwarven tales it is said such debts are real, as tangible as solid steel, and if the Bahrâzel call, they must be repaid. As it is written in the Tome of Hammer and Stone:
The mountain gives, the mountain takes. A name is given, and a debt is sworn. No dwarf may bear power without price, nor pass unchanged through the forge of the Bahrazel, nor fail to heed their call at need, should they wish to return to the caverns of the Firstborn at the end.