- Completed Adventures:
- 11
- Upcoming Adventures:
- 1
- Last Adventures:
- 4 days ago
Echoes of Crystal
Dungeons & Dragons 5e
Most mortals know only the ledgers. The neat stories of soldiers cast from steel, shaped in gleaming Creation Forges, stamped with serial numbers and sent marching into history. These are the tales that win wars, the ones kings write and scholars memorize. They speak of Artificers, of blueprints, of deliberate design. A story tidy enough to fit between the margins of a book.
But Warforged tell their own stories, older stories. They speak of a Forge that existed before ledgers, before kings, before orders. A Forge born the night a god lost a gamble and the world itself laughed. It rolled into existence with black flames and a sound like shattering bells. It didn’t ask permission to exist. It simply was. From its burning heart, Warforged came not as property but as cards thrown by a drunken god’s hand. Hearts for loyalty, diamonds for power, clubs for obedience… and spades. Spades burned longest. They didn’t belong to anyone, not even the Forge that birthed them.
The old rhyme says:
“When the cards were cast and the god did fall,
The Forge laughed loud and burned through all.
Hearts will serve, clubs obey,
But spades… the spades will walk their own way.”
Most who bear the spade vanish into rumor. They leave no chains behind because they never wore them long. Generals whisper that spade-marked are cursed with restless steps. Blacksmiths swear their forges grow hotter when one passes near. And when the war ends, no one remembers their names. Only the whisper remains: the Forge is still waiting.
Lucka remembers less than most. The Forge didn’t give her a cradle or a song, just a laugh and heat against her cheek. She opened her eyes to ranks of marching feet, steel bodies lined up in perfect order. Commands spoken, orders obeyed, boots falling into rhythm like heartbeats synced to someone else’s will. She learned how to fight, how to follow, how to fall in step. But beneath the clatter of drills and orders, something else echoed inside her: that laugh. Not a sound she could describe. A weight behind the ribs. A reminder.
The others looked at the mark on her cheek, the spade burned deep into the plating, as if the Forge had carved it there before it even decided to make her, and they saw trouble. So did the commanders. Trouble follows the spade-marked, they said. They never march long. And one day, true to the rhyme, she stopped. No rebellion. No banners. Just a smirk, a flail slung over her shoulder, and the sound of boots peeling away from the formation. The officers shouted. The lines tightened. But Lucka kept walking. The Forge had never made her to kneel. It had laughed too loud for that.
She wandered from the marching fields to the edges of nowhere. Through rain-soaked roads and taverns that smelled of smoke and cheap ale. Some saw only another Warforged. Others saw the mark and went quiet, like they’d heard the stories too. “The Forge is still waiting,” they’d whisper when she passed, though no one could tell her what it waited for, or why it felt like the earth itself leaned closer when they said it.
Lucka doesn’t remember the homeland’s name. Maybe no one does anymore. But she remembers the weight of it in her chest like an ember that never cools. She knows the mark isn’t decoration. She knows it isn’t ownership either. It’s something older. Something that lingers at the edge of every campfire, every battlefield, every silent forge that still dreams of that night when a god lost a bet.
And when the night is still and she stands alone, she sometimes swears she can hear it again, the Forge laughing. Not at her. With her. Like it knows something the world hasn’t figured out yet.
For as long as Lucka can remember, the Forge has lingered in the back of her mind like a song without an end. Even when the memory frays, the sound remains, that low, rolling laugh of the spade that burned longest. It haunted her through drills, battles, taverns, quiet nights staring at cold stars. It followed her when she walked away from the formation. It followed her into the unknown.
And then… it led her here.
The first breath she took in Luma was sharp and clean, a breeze carrying something that smelled nothing like the Forge’s soot. This place hummed, not with fire, but with something crystalline. It wasn’t a song she recognized, but it answered the one she carried. The streets whispered with their glow, and beneath the cobblestone bones of the city, something pulsed like a heartbeat. She didn’t know how she’d arrived. Some adventurers stumble into this city through death, others through wandering, some through doors that shouldn’t exist. Lucka’s path? Perhaps the Forge itself exhaled and she appeared.
They call this place Luma. A city balanced on a mesa wrapped in mist, stitched together with magic and stories. Everyone here carries an Echo Crystal, even those who were never meant to belong. The innkeeper had called it a “welcome,” but the way the air shifted when Lucka stepped across the threshold said something else entirely. It felt less like arriving somewhere new and more like stepping into the next verse of a story that began long before she was born.
They say these crystals grow everywhere here. In walls. In caverns. In places where sound dies and magic hums. If someone dies in Luma, they can rise again through their crystal. If someone forgets, the crystal remembers. Echoes, reflections, fragments of selves, Luma is a city where memory is both weapon and anchor.
When Lucka laid her hand against the cool surface of her Echo Crystal, it did not glow like the others. It flickered. Like an ember catching a draft. The same way the spade burned on the night the Forge laughed. The others around her said it was normal, but the crystal’s pulse matched the laugh in her bones, and she knew better. The Forge and this place were strangers who recognized each other on sight.
No one remembers the name of the old Forge. And Lucka never remembered Luma. But when her palm met crystal, a hairline crack shimmered across its surface like a playing card being flipped in the dark. The crystal laughed. Not loudly. Not cruelly. Just enough for her to feel it settle against that spade mark on her cheek like a second heartbeat.
The city whispered, the crystal hummed, and somewhere in the unseen bones of Luma, the Forge turned over in its sleep.
“When the cards were cast and the god did fall,
The Forge laughed loud and burned through all.
But when the crystal hums and the spade draws near,
The hand is dealt, and the table hears.”
Lucka visited the crystal cave again, and the crystals hum softly, like they’re breathing with the city. To most adventurers, stepping into that cave is like stepping into a memory that was always waiting for them. The echoes whisper, the light answers, and something inside them says yes, you are part of this now.
Lucka’s crystal answers, too.
But differently.
The black stone with its ribbons of emerald, violet, and gold doesn’t flare with recognition like the others. It leans in, curious, as if listening to a story it’s never heard before. When she touches it, the hum deepens, warm, steady, gentle. Not rejecting her. Not confused. Just… acknowledging what it cannot name.
For a moment, she sees something. Not clearly. Just smoke, laughter, and a table with cards still warm from divine hands. The crystal doesn’t show her a place. It shows her a moment. A night when a god laughed too loud and the Forge caught fire. The time, a being known as the prince of lies, won a bet against another divine...and the forge changed forever.
Then the spade mark on her cheek burns, not like pain, but like a warning flare.
The god who won the gamble remembers her, even if the world doesn’t.
The crystal’s light wraps around that heat, not fighting it, not erasing it. Steadying it. It doesn’t tell her she doesn’t belong. It tells her something else entirely:
“You come from an age without a record… but not without meaning.”
She breathes out slowly, and the weight in her chest shifts, not gone, just quieter. The crystal hums like a steady hand on her shoulder. Somewhere deep under it, the Forge laughs again, low, rolling, patient.
The crystal can’t rewrite what she is. But it can hold space for it.
Echo Lucka Level 3: https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters/154197679
