If “Harken Darken” sounds like a joke of a name that’s because it is.  It was made in the rush of finding a bunch of druid-whipped guards pouring over the ruins of the home you had made after they had decided to locked the doors and burn it down while nearly everyone, everyone who wasn’t the newly named “Harken” was inside.

See, that’s the thing about the damn druids.  It’s not just a fight against them, it’s a fight against our sissy leaders who decided that it would just be easier to fall in line, to bend their knee, and offer a coward’s “Thank you very much,” when they got a scrap from the damn tree lovers.  They think that’ll one day be able to get more, just play nice like a good dog and you’ll get your treat when they don’t realize their just the children being fattened up for the slaughter.

Druids are just trying to make us all fat and stupid so that when they are ready to make their next move we’ll all be too used to sitting on our asses to oppose them.  They’re not warriors, they’re opportunists who take advantage of whatever situation then can.

Fucking druids…

What?  Yeah yeah, fine, go get me another drink and I’ll…no wait, never mind I’ve got one right here. Yeah, that’s the stuff.

So, yes I was not born Harken Darken, shades what a dumb name, my name is Marcus.  No, I’m not going to give you anything beyond that.  Besides, there isn’t a lot more.  I was one of those orphaned boys, What?  Yeah yeah tragic.  Never knew my father, mother died when a section of Ingeon burned down.  What?  No, I don’t consider that fucking ironic.  I consider it a fucking sign of how little the leaders here actually give a damn about the people.

Anyways, when you’re a kid on their own, the key is to find something that keeps you from freezing in the winters and starving during the anytime.  Stealing only works for solving one of those, and it’s supposed to be one of the ‘great’ benefits of civilization that everyone is supposed to have a profession.  I happen to find mine under a curmudgeon of a blacksmith.  Now, you want to find a group really oppressed by druids then you talk to blacksmiths.  Can’t mine for coal, can’t mine for ore, can’t cut trees down for charcoal, the smoke is a bother to the trees.  Shades, the group most responsible for any sense of civilization and they get shat upon the most in our new world.

But yeah, they’re still there and the role is real physical.  Not just the swinging the hammer work, but the running barrels of coal, pounding up coal into dust, feeding and fanning the flames.  Blacksmith wants to hit things just right with a hammer, and because of the shaft the town has agreed to give them the only labor a smith can afford to help with everything else is some dumb child off the street.

Still, best deal I could hope for.  No one wants a snot nose kid otherwise, and a night next to the banked coals of the furnace, making sure the fire didn’t go out, was a warm night.  My master also taught me a bit of the craft and I suppose that’s where I got my start.

What?  No, the armor wasn’t the first thing I worked on.  You know how hard armor is to craft?  It was nails and then horse shoes.  But yes, I took those lessons, and eventually what coppers or slivers of silver the old smith was willing to pay me to get some scrap that let me ply my own trade when I wasn’t working for him.

The thing is, almost no one makes metal armor anymore, certainly no one but the city controlled smiths.  Ore was too expensive, and besides who needed armor when it wasn’t like we were gonna go and fight the druids.

That essentially brings us to the part your looking after.  How did I find the Cross Hammers?  I found them because they were like me, people betrayed and abandoned by a city that would never work up the nerve to do anything about it.

Specifically, a met a member who came asking my boss for some help with a project and when my boss refused to help him, viewing the work as a waste, I offered to complete it.  I’d learn enough from that cantankerous old man and it was time to move on.  Went fully into my own craft to keep me fed and sheltered but I put all my spare time into the Hammers.

See, they had found some of the old books, don’t know how and I don’t care, but it gave us a look into the old days of industry.  Gave us ways to better craft the metal, harder but also more durable.  With them I didn’t start immediately working on my masterpiece.  It was too early, and I didn’t know that I would both want and need it yet.  I just reveled in learning those forgotten crafts

And also I met her.

Rebecca wasn’t a brute of a hammer swinger like me.  She was deft in hand no matter if it was placing rivets or sewing cloth.  We met when I had need for some fine metalwork, cloth wasn’t going to cut it, and even the finest links of chain mail that I could loop and string out together was too bulky.  So I got referenced to her and for reasons I’ll never understand she took an interest in me.  We worked on projects together, her fine craft running beneath the bulky plates I hammered out.  It was a beautiful pairing, each of us coming together to make wondrous things.  Rippling metal scales held together by her wires, each dancing in the wind, coils that were pliable as cloth until you hit them just right and then they locked into a board strong enough to make bridges out of.

I would’ve happily spent my days building the finest pieces you’d ever seen, things that would’ve made the world better, improved people’s lives, if they weren’t just so fucking afraid to see what was possible.

Huh?  Yeah yeah, the armor, I’m getting to it.  Hold on to your horses.

The key to it was Rebecca’s finding.  Several of those books they spoke of ways to channel…power, magic, lightning, hells take your pick of your force that backs our shitty little world.  Others had been working on it but I figured it was all beyond what we could do, better to stick with refining the steels, building better forges.  Sign again of Rebecca’s superiority to me was that.  She worked on uncovering that secret and by my word she was the one who cracked it.  Yes, she had figured out all kinds of wondrous thing.  Wires that could hold that power, could move it about, use it to contract and extend, could make a living being out of gear and shaft.  She worked on that, a metal man to fill our ranks, had nearly finished the first when…

What?  What does it matter what I was doing during all of this?

Yes of course we protested, what do you think all my earlier rants were for?  Being calm and peaceful?  We needed people to see that better things were possible, more immediately we needed more metal than what we could pull from the scraps the town would let us have.  You ever try to create a plate as hard as dragon scales out of nothing but old nails?  It was a fucking insult to what we were capable of, but what we were limited to because people couldn’t look to the future or pull their heads from cowering between their legs.  Frankly it was fun to put some of the crafts to use, see the inferior iron that the world considered its best split easily before my crafts.  If Ingenious wanted to keep their precious coal and ore then they should’ve protected it better.  To me, our stealing it was just proof that we were the more deserving craftsmen.

I see you getting ready to ask again, so shut your trap, I’m getting to the fucking end of the story.  We were a bit stupid, made too much of ruckus, garnered a bit too much attention when we only had the crafts to make a difference but not the people.  Town couldn’t tolerate the change we were preaching and even the best gonne runs out of slugs when faced with enough bodies…at least I like to think that.

Where was I that day?

That’s for me to know you fucking nosy prick.  All you need to know is your first question, where the armor came from.  That metal man I spoke of, all wires and power.  Well metal does a great job surviving little sissy fires and while Rebecca’s creation wasn’t done, didn’t have a mind to control it yet, I realized I could just as easily fill in.  That strength from it, punches that would shatter a fucking door, that was all the more perfect once I applied my craft and coated the whole thing in my finest plates.  So yeah, you’re not just fighting me when I’m in my suit, your fighting the last creation of her’s and trust me, that’s what make it truly dangerous.

Which brings us to my question.  Do you think I didn’t fucking notice your friends settling in around us while you played the sympathetic ear?  No no no, I wanted you arseholes to get nice and close.  Get a great view of her work.

BLAM!