Grudge Thrower

The Dwarfen Mountain Holds forget no wrong done to them, and their war-engines are built to repay those wrongs in stone and iron. Foremost among their artillery is the Grudge Thrower, a great stone-hurling catapult whose every missile carries the weight of an ancestral vendetta.

The engine itself is a marvel of dwarf engineering, squat, immensely strong, and reinforced with runes to keep it firing long after a lesser machine would have splintered apart. But it is the ammunition that gives the grudge thrower its name. Before a battle, the crew carve the names of hated foes and specific wrongs onto the very boulders they mean to fling, drawing from the endless tally kept in the Great Book of Grudges. Each stone that arcs over the battlefield is thus a settled account, crashing down upon the enemy with the full and righteous fury of the hold.

Grudge throwers are worked by grim, methodical crews who take a craftsman's pride in their aim, adjusting their engines with runic instruments until a boulder can be dropped squarely upon a distant regiment or war-beast. Reinforced with runes of accuracy and power, the great catapults rarely miss twice. To the dwarfs there is a deep and abiding satisfaction in watching a grudge, recorded perhaps centuries before, answered at last by a falling ton of rock, a debt paid in the only currency their enemies truly understand.