"Who has disturbed my crypt?" wailed the ghostly figure. "Why have you come?"
The others turned to Tordek, who had no argument to defer to one of his allies as the spirit spoke in Dwarvish. He gripped the haft of his axe more for courage than in hope of defeating the semi-corporeal Andaron, should it come to a fight.
"We have come to quench the re-ignited fires of your forge, damned specter!" he thundered in his most authoritative voice. "We have come to slay the barghest who gathered your accursed weapons from their graves and seeks to conjure his infernal master from the Abyss. What say you to that, Andaron the Black?"
A hellish blast hurled the lid to Andaron's coffin against one of the high crenellations, smashing it to gravel that whipped around like hailstones. Gems and coins exploded from their containers on the funereal tables, and all the arms and blades hummed a murderous song upon the walls. The parchment writhed and twisted into a serpentine length that lunged past Tordek, between the bard's legs, and over Lidda's shoulder to thrust itself into a suit of dull, black plate armor. There it forced its fragile pages into the sleeves and greaves, rising to stand at the head of the open coffin.
The armored ghost reached up to the wall, heedless of the four blades raised to descend upon its body. It snatched down not a weapon but a helm, which it thrust down upon the tortured lump that formed its head. Once contained, a ragged face formed again, this time in still detail. The old parchment formed a visage not unlike a smith's leathery face, except for the runes that slanted and overlapped upon its nose and brow.
"What do I say to that? What do I say?" The ghost's voice crackled with heat. His hollow eyes fixed on Tordek's, and he said, "I say it is a noble answer."
"Loyal, every one," said the ghost. He spoke the Common tongue with a rolling accent. He gripped the rail with parchment fingers as he looked down upon dozens of mausoleums, far beneath his tomb. A few coins enchanted by Devis's light cantrips cast the marble walls into stark relief in the atramentous gloom of the chasm beneath Andaron's tomb.
"Your ancestors?" asked Tordek. He stood beside the spirit in what he hoped was a respectful posture, but every sinew of his body was taut with suspicion. Should the spirit make one false move, Tordek would be ready to defend himself.
"My counselors," he said. "They invoked me to reason. They conjured every sage argument, and yet I heard only Hargrimm's voice. Still, they gave themselves to death to perpetuate my own, unworthy life."
"Hargrimm?" asked Devis. "How could you come to trust such a demon? Why did your people ever accept him?"
"He was not always as you saw him," explained Andaron, still gazing out over the cemetery of his followers. "Once he was my nephew, a dwarf of boundless craft. This vessel in which he now exists was his gift for subverting my mind toward the designs of his master, whose name I shall not utter so near his gate."
"Are you saying Hargrimm is to blame for your disgrace?" said Devis.
Andaron glanced over his shoulder at the half-elf, then turned to Tordek. Even through the crude material of his face, his expression was unmistakably that of one who has been insulted by an idiot or an outlander.
"No," said Tordek. "Only Andaron is to blame for what befell this place. He accepts the responsibility for his crimes, and neither Moradin nor the hordes of the Abyss shall shield him from his mortal shame."
The ghost murmured his appreciation of Tordek's words, which spared him from the humiliation of speaking them himself.
"I wished to forge the mightiest weapons ever shaped by mortal hand, and I accepted any promise, any hint of the power I knew must be used to make such magic. When my own skills fell short, I turned to sorcerers, yet they could offer only those enchantments that have been born so many times again in this world that bards sing of them in every hall of humans, dwarves, and elves."
"Halflings, too," offered Lidda quietly. At a glance from Vadania, she cast her eyes to the floor and stilled her tongue.
A faint crinkle of mirth formed at the edge of Andaron's mouth, but it died as he remembered more of the past.
"Hargrimm spoke to me of ancient lore forbidden by jealous wizards, kings, and priests. In my pride-in my folly-I charged him with gathering me this knowledge that I might bend it to my own design and infuse my weapons with such puissance as to place my image uttermost in every forge, even beside that of the Soul-Forger."
Tordek stepped away from the blasphemy.
Andaron nodded sadly. "Aye, such was my depravity, and so was I justly abandoned by the gods."
"You say Hargrimm went on your quest for power," said Vadania.
Andaron nodded. "Indeed, and he returned to the hearth with the prize I craved. In tomes and scrolls and ancient stories whispered now only by the cults of Nerull and gods still more vile, he culled the forbidden knowledge and presented it to me as a gift of his devotion. My heart too greedy for achievement, I took it all and demanded more. After three decades and some years, he brought me all I desired, a design to infuse my greatest weapons with magic unknown on our mortal world.
"My engineers balked at the plans for the great forge, and my clerics rebuked me for the unholy images I set my artisans to carving. I listened to them all or pretended so. When their chests sagged for all the air they had blown, I dismissed their suits and continued, unmoved by their entreaties."
"Did you kill any of them?" asked Devis.
"What?"
"In your passion, did you order any of these wise counselors executed? Perhaps a close friend or relative."
Andaron turned to Tordek for a translation of the half-elf's inexplicable inquiry. "What mockery is this?"
Tordek narrowed his eyes and glared a warning at the bard, again to no avail.
"It's a common event in stories of this kind," shrugged Devis. "I just thought it might add some drama to the tale for when I tell it in…"
"YOU…!" Andaron's body rose, levitating from the ground as a sourceless white light shone up at him. He pointed at the bard as he intoned a harsh Dwarven curse before adding in Common, "If thou bandy my woeful chronicle with the least adulteration, minstrel, I shall harry thee to the very terminus of the world."
Tordek raised his axe, uncertain whether it would be better to smite the spirit or the bard. Lidda drew her short sword and stood bravely by Devi's side as he raised his hands in surrender.
Vadania stepped around them both to intercept the angry spirit.
"Your sins have roots, hammer-fist. Even now, centuries after your wickedness first sprang from this mountain, its sap runs through the sieves of your fastness and into the streams that feed the forest. Life withers, water curdles, children die in their mothers' dens, and everywhere your infamy makes a stain upon the land. Do you dare demand commendations from your grave?"
The illumination beneath Andaron turned bloody as his body shivered in its rage. Gradually, both the light and the fury dimmed to nothingness, and the ghost floated back down to the floor. His shoulders slumped, and his beard sagged upon his chest.
"You speak fairly," he conceded. "I deserve no pity nor even true remembrance…and yet I would you speak of me as I was and conjoin to my legend no crimes I did not undertake. I implore you."