If Velisara is the god of the first try, Thorin is the god of the hundredth. Where she presides over beginnings, he presides over what endures: the good steel that does not crack, the oath that is kept across years, the friendship that survives a falling-out and resumes without explanation. He is, in temple terms, the god of sworn things — but the sworn thing in his theology is not the formal oath alone; it is also the unsworn promise, the implicit agreement, the look between two people that means I will not let you fall.
He is the patron of smiths most plainly, of stonecutters and shipwrights and joiners less plainly, and of contractors, lawyers, and married couples by implication. The Anvilbound clans of Ironvale claim descent from him; the temple, when asked, neither confirms nor denies the claim, and the Anvilbound do not require the temple’s view on the matter.
His altars are physically the heaviest of the Seven. The main figure is a smith — sometimes male, sometimes female, depending on the artisan tradition of the isle — leaning over an anvil, hammer half- raised. The figure is always cast in iron rather than carved in stone or painted in wood, even on isles where iron is dear. The hammer is unfinished in the casting — the head is shaped, but the hammer is paused mid-strike, never completed in motion. This is deliberate. Thorin does not finish his work in the casting. The priests will tell you, if asked, that the work is finished by the worshippers, every day, in every smithy and every kept word.
His priests wear dark grey wool, often patched, often visibly worn at the elbows. Most are men, though the Anvilbound priesthood of Ironvale is mixed and the temple does not press the southern tradition on them. A priest of Thorin is recognized as much by his hands as his cloth — calloused, scarred, often missing a finger joint or two. A priest who has done no manual work in a year is, by custom, sent to spend a season at a working forge before returning to the altar.
The Stoneshare, on the third of Anvilmonth, is his principal feast and the only feast in the temple calendar that smiths acknowledge. They bank their forges for one day, drink in the morning, and gift small iron tokens to friends and household. A Stoneshare token, kept in a pocket, is supposed to ward against broken oaths. Most adults in the Reaches carry one without remembering where it came from; the tokens travel through families and friendships and end up in the strangest places. Junior brasswrights in the Copper Ring are given one, formally, by their mentor at the conclusion of their apprenticeship. Most carry it for life.
Folk-rituals associated with Thorin are practical and unromantic:
- A new tool is “introduced” to its owner’s home by being placed on the threshold for one night before being brought in. The temple does not require this. Smiths require it
- A handshake on a serious agreement is followed, in many Middle Reach traditions, by a brief touch of both hands to a piece of iron — a hearth-rail, a kettle-stand, a doorknob, anything. This is enough to “set” the agreement in Thorin’s view
- A friend who has wronged another and returns to make it right is greeted, by old custom, with the host’s hand on his hammer. The hammer is not raised. It is simply held. The gesture means I remember, and we go on
Thorin is not invoked for new ventures or for risk-taking. The temple will not perform his rites for any matter that requires gambling, speculation, or hope. He is the god of what is already between us, and what is between people, in his teaching, is the hardest material to work and the only one that lasts.
“Made him a knife when he was twelve. Bad steel. I knew it when I was at the anvil. Did not say so. Twenty years later he gave it back, broken at the tang. He had used it every day. He had not known it was bad steel. I made him a better one and we did not speak of the first. He carried the new one for thirty more years. They were buried with him, both. The bad and the good.”
— inscription on a memorial plaque in the smiths’ wing, Highforge temple, undated, attributed to Master Smith Borg Anvilbound