The Story of Dwarf Song:

The saddest of the many tales that have been passed down through the ages across all the lands of Illantul involves a dwarven king and his forbidden love of a half-elven bard.  Near the start of the endless winter the dwarven king fell under the spell of a bard he heard playing late one night at the Lazy Griffin.  Some say her songs contained sorcery, others that she had been a dwarven princess in another life, but consensus amongst the inhabitants of the dwarven castle was that the king’s love of drink clouded his mind the night they met.  The king spirited away his new-found love to his castle, deep in the mountains of Uhl, where she would play and sing only for him. The king was warned by his top advisor that his love of a half-elf would draw the attention of the gods and would end in tragedy, but he heeded not such words and had his advisor chained in the dungeons. That very night, a dragon, not seen in Uhl since the age of the winds, unleashed terror upon the castle.  Scores of dwarves lost their lives, but most notable was the death of the king and his half-elven lover, burned beyond recognition as she sang to her king in his throne room. Within a fortnight of the tragedy the dwarven smiths had forged Dwarf Song, a blade for the hand of the next king so that he would never forget his brother’s folly.  The spike at the top of the blade was forged from an extremely rare metal harvested from the very necklace the now dead king had given to his bard lover. It is said that in the heat of battle Dwarf Song begins to emit the haunting sound of the dead bard’s voice which render’s the wielder’s foes defenseless to its bloody work.

Actual Design and Construction:

The axe head is a reclaimed high carbon steel head that I ground back to clean steel and shaped into its current form.  On one side I hand etched an image of the half-eleven bard in the Lazy Griffin.  The opposite side shows the dragon that ended the king’s forbidden love.  The octagonal handle is made of hickory.  I made a brass plate to cover the knob of the axe, and a ½ in thick brass cap covering the eye.  The cap is affixed with a threaded brass spike and both pieces were given a heavy patina.

Specifications:

Axe Head Length: 7.5 inches

Axe Head Width at widest point: 3.5 inches

Handle Length: 14 inches

Overall Axe length: 15.5 inches

Overall Axe Weight: 2 lbs 1.9 oz