Stonebreaker Hall

As told to The Jezebels by Stronin Stonebreaker when they encountered him and his two brothers deep inside the Old Mine of Cerro Rico.

"My two brothers, Droli and Newcomen, and I traveled here twenty years ago, from the Ernthor Mountains, on a special contract to upgrade the mining operations here. You see, the mithril seams of this mountain slant downward at an average 58 degrees..."

"57.5" Droli interrupted

"Well it depends on whether you mean median or mean" Newt countered

"Whatever. Not relevant" Stronin continued, hushing his two brothers. "Anyway, the Vetrini had exhausted most of the mithril they knew how to get at. They needed to dig deep, really deep. Stonebreakers know how to dig deep. Everyone knows the dwarves of Ernthor are the best miners in the world, and the Stonebreaker clan are the best of the dwarves. So we came but I tell you we made them pay for it. Those Vetrini shit silver though, so they pony'd up.

I'll tell you though, we may be getting paid a kings ransom for our services, but if we had known what a shitshow this place was, and how evil the Vetrini were we would never have come. We normally don’t give much of a shit what the humans do to each other but even we got our limits. They treated each other worse then dogs, worse then vermin.

Once we figured it all out we tried to leave, but that didn’t get far and pretty soon we found we were prisoners, and slaves in all but name. Well treated and valuable slaves, but slaves none the less.

We kept working, didn’t have much choice, plus most of the things we built saved lived. That was what kept us going really, trying to make these wretched souls' lives a little better, Newt's engines delivered better air, safer diggings. Plus I gotta admit, putting in the Deep Workings was a hell of a challenge, even for us. Then that idiot Overseer Lucius Vetrini ended up blowing the whole thing up despite all our warnings.

When the idiot management blew the mine the first time, we knew enough not to go down in that hole until the firedamp had time to clear out. They didn’t listen but no way me and my brothers were going down there, and we managed to make that stick even though Lucius was foaming at the mouth about it. So, we survived the second explosion. That was one hell of a big blowup too. Killed pretty much everyone, they had all hands working down there on the rescue teams, left only a handful of folk scattered around up top.

At the time that seemed like an opportunity. Thought we might actually escape after all.

Until we ran into Vermithor walking these halls in his human form. Turns out “Ezio Vetrini” the number two man of the whole operation. was an imposter, he'd been a dragon the whole time he’d been here. Vermithor told me he’d killed the real Ezio on arrival, and took his place, manipulating, working his way up the ranks of the company, taking things over from the inside. I guess that’s one way to build a hoard. Explains why the digging had gotten so frantic these last few years too, those dragons and their lust for treasure.

Once most everyone was dead, Vermithor figured there wasn’t much point in continuing the charade of him being human, so he changed back into his dragon form and finished the job. He called it "Assuming direct management of company assets in a time of crisis and executing a regrettable but necessary downsizing of company staff, in order to support a new strategic direction."

I don’t think the dragon was intending anything like what happened though, nor was he responsible for all the strange creatures that came pouring out of the underbelly of the mine. He didn't like that at all, bitched a lot about how much treasure there was still down there waiting to be dug up.

Just like the Vetrini before him he found us useful for a time, made us gather together all the treasure from the upper mine, and warehouses, make a big bed of silver and mithril for him to sleep on. Typical dragon shit. He also had us seal the lower mines so those cursed souls couldn’t get out so easy, why I think they weren’t his idea. Dragon thought he was, he seemed almost scared of them and never went below if he could help it.

After we stopped being useful to him he sealed us up too, though he let us lay in stores first. Called it "Mothballing company assets for future need". Told us to sit tight that he was working on a plan to get the digging operational again. That was a couple years ago though.

The idiot thought he could use stone to cage the Stonebreakers. We dug ourselves out quick enough but without a ship there ain’t no way off this hellhole.