The Iron Tome - Tale of the Chaos Bell

Found during Heroes of the Borderlands in the Nothic Lair, C3 Library

The Forging of the Chaos Bell

In the age before the Borderlands had a name, when kingdoms were only ideas and rivers flowed uncharted, there rose a conclave of black-robed metallurgists known as the Order of the Shattered Scale. In secret caverns deep beneath the Ironspine Mountains they worked their craft—not steel, nor silver, but the alloy of nightmare. They bound together fallen stars, echoing iron from the deepest mines, and the crystallized screams of the condemned. From these blasphemous ingredients they forged a bell unlike any mortal instrument: the Chaos Bell. Its surface drank torchlight like a pool of oil, and runes crawled across its rim, shifting in patterns that defied comprehension.

The bell was meant as a weapon against invading fiends, yet the Order had misjudged the power of the forces they bound. At its very first toll, the sky turned the color of old blood and every predator within a hundred leagues slunk toward the sound, jaws slavering. The bell had become a lure for ruin, and the Order of the Shattered Scale was devoured by the horrors they themselves had summoned.

The Toll That Awakens

Legends say the Chaos Bell does not merely summon creatures of hunger and rage. When rung at the black hour before dawn, it shakes the veil between life and death. Spirits rise from barrows; warriors long-buried stumble forth, eyes blank but bodies eager for slaughter. Scholars call this effect “the Second Toll.” The tome notes in crimson ink that the Bell’s power feeds upon the fear and confusion it spreads: the more creatures it draws, the stronger its magic grows, until even the dead cannot ignore its call.

In border villages old crones still whisper of “the March of Ashen Feet”—a night when the Bell rang thrice from some hidden place and the graves themselves cracked open. For a single hour the hills around the village swarmed with unliving thralls. Only the rising sun dispersed them, but the villagers claim they still hear the echo of the Bell’s chime on windless nights.

The Wanderings of the Bell

After the Order’s fall, no one knows who claimed the Bell. Some stories tell of a one-eyed warlord who used its toll to build an army of monsters, only to vanish into the Deep Mire with his horde. Others speak of a monastery of pale monks who carried it into exile, ringing it once a century to “test the world’s vigilance.” The Iron Tome records a darker possibility: that the Bell itself moves, sliding from lair to lair like a living thing, seeking new hands to grasp its braided cord. “Where hunger festers, there the Bell appears,” writes the anonymous scribe, “for ruin longs always to be heard.”

Runes along the margin caution the reader: “Touch not the tongue of the Bell, lest your dreams toll it for you.”

The Only Unmaking

At last the script turns from history to prophecy. “As it was forged in secret, so must it be drowned in secrecy,” the page begins. The Bell cannot be shattered by hammer or spell; fire blackens it but leaves no mark, acid only hisses and dies. Yet there is one way: submersion in the Spring of Namorael, a sacred fountain hidden somewhere in the shadowed forests of the Borderlands. Its waters are said to flow from the roots of the world itself and are guarded by spirits older than any mortal kingdom. Only there, beneath moonlight unbroken by leaves, can the Chaos Bell’s runes be washed away and its chime silenced forever.

The final line of the Iron Tome is written not in ink but in a shimmering mineral dust:
“Seek the spring, or know the toll. All roads end at the sound of the Bell.”