The Ontarchs of Being

Metaphysics according to Bromm Deepforge, Philosopher-Miner of the Stone Collegium

"To the gods, creation is a breath. To a dwarf, it is a hammer strike. Each leaves an echo in the stone."
— Bromm Deepforge, Treatise on the Foundations of Existence

I. The Bedrock of Being

Where elves speak of starlight and memory, dwarves speak of bedrock — the immutable strata beneath thought, faith, and dream. To Bromm Deepforge, existence was not an abstraction but a material. Being itself, he claimed, is as tangible as granite: heavy, enduring, and layered.

All that lives or thinks is carved from this metaphysical bedrock. The act of living is the slow chisel against it, shaping identity from permanence. The gods may shape mountains, but mortals quarry meaning from the same stone.

II. The Forge of Existence

Deepforge taught that the universe was forged in three strokes of the Cosmic Hammer:

Strike of Form – Matter is shaped from void. The world gains weight and contour.
Strike of Motion – Time begins its flow, giving shape to change and decay.
Strike of Meaning – Consciousness is born, granting purpose to all that endures.

These three strikes, he argued, echo through every forge, mine, and mountain hall. To shape metal or stone is to imitate the gods in miniature — to reenact creation through craft.

III. The Ontarchs

Bromm proposed the existence of Ontarchs — divine embodiments of existence itself, whose slumbering forms make up the bones of the world. They are not gods of faith, but principles incarnate:

Khurn, the Weight – Patron of gravity, burden, and endurance.
Vathra, the Spark – Essence of creation, invention, and rebellion.
Durhal, the Silence – Lord of endings, rest, and return.

To worship them is not to pray, but to build, to endure, and to rest with purpose. Every stone laid in a wall, every flame kindled in a forge, is a hymn to the Ontarchs.

IV. The Layered Soul

Where others speak of spirit, Bromm spoke of grain — the invisible pattern in the soul that reveals its history. Like veins of ore in rock, every life holds traces of what came before.

A dwarf's sense of ancestry, their loyalty to craft and kin, stems from this philosophy: to know oneself is to trace the grain of one’s being back to the first quarry. Forgetting one’s grain is to become hollow stone — sound without structure.

V. The Weight of Words

Dwarven metaphysics rejects idle speech. Words, said Bromm, are chisels: each one strikes the world and leaves a mark. To speak falsely is to crack the stone of reality; to speak with truth is to polish it. Hence, dwarven oaths are binding not by law, but by ontology. The world itself enforces them.

Thus, when a dwarf swears by the Deepforge, it is not metaphor — it is the invocation of being. The lie that follows such an oath fractures both stone and soul.

VI. Death and Return

In Bromm’s cosmology, death is not a void but the Great Reclamation — the return of one’s grain to the cosmic bedrock. What was once carved becomes part of the next foundation. The dead are not gone; they are sediment beneath new generations.

Therefore, to mourn is not to despair, but to listen. The stone remembers every chisel. In the silence of caverns, the living may hear the resonance of those who carved before.

VII. Legacy

Among dwarves, Bromm Deepforge is revered not as a prophet, but as a mason of truth. His teachings shaped the Stone Collegium, where metaphysics is taught alongside mining and engineering. His words echo through their halls:

"To endure is divine. To craft is holy. To rest is to return to the stone."

Elves find his philosophy rigid, humans find it comforting, and dragons find it unyielding. Yet all agree: in a world where faith flickers, the mountain remains — and through it, Bromm speaks still.