Introduction – The Goblin and the Spark
Some stories begin with kingdoms. Some begin with heroes.
This one begins with a sound - deep, rhythmic, ancient — a pulse that only a
goblin could love.
The mountains of the Ironspire Range rose like the ribs of the world, capped in
snow and whispering with the breath of forges long gone cold. In their roots,
among tunnels forgotten by both dwarves and men, something still lived. Not
alive in the way of beasts or men, but alive the way a storm is — aware of its
weight, dreaming of motion.
That is where Gizmo was born.
He wasn't born with a name. Goblins rarely were. They earned them the way
they earned scars — through mistakes, through luck, through sheer refusal to
die. His first name came from the dwarves who reluctantly tolerated him in the
Ironspire mines. "Greasefinger," they called him, half curse, half compliment.
When a pump seized or a drill screamed, they yelled for the green pest with the
uncanny knack for fixing what even stone didn't want to cooperate with.
But there was something about Gizmo that didn't fit.
He didn't laugh the way other goblins did, sharp and mean. He didn't steal for
hunger or fight for dominance. His mind lived in movement — in the twitch of
a lever, the song of a gear aligning just right, the heartbeat of a working
engine. He spoke to machines the way priests spoke to gods, only his gods
answered.
He would sit for hours listening to the tunnels breathe. To most, it was silence.
To him, it was a symphony — the mountain itself exhaling in frequencies no
ear but his could catch. He began to hear patterns in the vibrations. Messages.
Questions.
Until one night, the mountain answered.
A tremor shuddered through the tunnels. Miners fled, Gizmo stayed...
Following that pulse, he went deeper than any map dared chart. Down through
the sleeping veins of ore, down past the smell of stone and soot. Down where
air grew heavy and the hum turned to heartbeat. What he found there was not a
cavern, but a tomb of forges.
They stretched into darkness, built by hands far older than dwarves, their metal
ribs glowing with faint blue light. Chains hung like roots from a ceiling lost to
shadow. An anvil sat in the center, cracked through the middle. And upon it
hovered a sphere of blue fire — small, perfect, impossibly patient.
When Gizmo touched it, the world changed.
The mountain screamed like a living thing. Sparks exploded in rivers of light.
Runes flared across the stone and crawled up his arm, branding him in symbols
that glowed like stars before settling into scars. The hammer split in two. The
forge flared and then fell still.
When he woke, his arm burned with power and pain. The sphere floated above
him, dim now, as though exhausted. But it stayed. Always within reach.
Always watching.
He named it the Orb, because calling it anything grander felt like lying.
Weeks passed. He built, and the Orb learned. He spoke, and it listened.
Sometimes, when he dreamed, he saw shapes in the forge-fire — figures
hammering light into form, whispering the same word again and again:
Remember.
He didn't know what it meant. He only knew it mattered.
The mountain eventually grew quiet again. Its pulse slowed, and the forges
dimmed to embers. Gizmo took what tools he could carry, strapped the dying
forge's heart to his wrist, and began to climb.
Days turned to weeks. His rations ran out. He nearly froze three times. Once,
he considered turning back — but when he did, the Orb pulsed, faint but steady. And he kept going.
At last, he saw it: light, not from rune or ember, but from the sun. His first
sunrise. It hit him like a hammer strike — warmth and color and noise all at
once.
He stood there for a long time, snow up to his knees, eyes watering from
brightness. The Orb floated beside him, catching dawn's light and scattering it
in a thousand blues.
"Guess we made it," he said.
The Orb blinked once — confirmation.
And for the first time, Gizmo smiled without the forge's fire behind him.
He didn't know it yet, but that smile would become legend — the moment a
goblin born in darkness stepped into the light, carrying the first heartbeat of a
forgotten age.
That was the spark.
The beginning of the Maker's Echo.