Stone Fields

The Arc of Time weighed heavy upon the dwarves, so that they marked the length of their lives in years; they were the first to do so. Unless harm befell them, the greater part of the dwarves lived four or five centuries, though the strong willed lived much longer than that. When their bodies played out and died, the breath of life broke free of the body and the flesh returned to stone. The breath of life, freed from its physical form, wandered listless in the world, without house or home. Eventually the spirits of the departed drifted upon the Arc of Time and followed it through the Maelstrom where the Arc pooled at the edge of all. Here the breath of life lingered in the dark pools of spent creation, neither living, nor utterly unmade. The Maelstrom threatened to devour them, so that they would be utterly lost.

Seeing this, the All Father was not pleased, so he took the houseless souls and rose above the Maelstrom and looked out into the Great Empty. There he cast a thought upon the Void and made a place for the breath to dwell; a land of mist where matter assumed the form of the breath’s desire. There he set the breath, the souls, to dwell, until the Gonfod should come.

The breath of life of the dwarven dead dwelt in the space the All Father created, and made of it a field of their own liking. In time, more dwarves died and they, too, rose and took the path laid out for the noble dead to the plane of mist, there to mingle with their fallen kinsmen, to build their own dreaming. Soon the plane was peopled with the souls of departed dwarves and they made of it a world of stone, with high mountains, green fields, and blue skies. They built pillars of stone to honor their memories and to help them remember what and who they had been. And these pillars dotted the landscape. Thus these fields earned their name, the Stone Fields, and there the dead came to dwell.

~The Codex of Aihrde