Kethrim

Kethrim, the Forge Master, is the god of creation through heat, labor, and precision. He embodies the divine force of craftsmanship—not art for beauty, but construction for purpose. Stone, metal, fire, and discipline: these are the tenets of his being. Where other gods dream, Kethrim builds.

Appearing as a towering, soot-stained dwarf clad in blackened mithril, Kethrim’s eyes burn like furnace coals. His voice is the echo of hammer on anvil, his breath a plume of forge smoke. He bears the first hammer ever forged—a tool said to have cracked the bones of mountains to shape the world’s foundation.

His realm, The Smelted Deep, is a roaring underworld of anvils the size of fortresses and rivers of molten ore. The clang of divine industry echoes endlessly as cyclopean automatons and divine apprentices labor to realize blueprints far beyond mortal comprehension. Time has no sway there—only process.

Kethrim is a lawful evil deity not out of malice, but by design: he values order, control, and perfection above compassion. He is unsparing in his standards. Failure is weakness. Emotion is flaw. Even beauty must serve function. Once a Greater Deity, he was demoted to Lesser status after bestowing divine status to a dwarven blacksmith in which he saw promise. However, the blacksmith, Vulcan of the Rotanian pantheon, fell ill with Giant's sickness. He speaks little of this mistake, but bears its weight as both shame and fuel for his endless labor.

Despite his fall, many artisans, engineers, and battle-smiths revere him—especially dwarves, who view Kethrim as both creator and judge. His temples are found in foundries, beneath mountains, or carved into obsidian fortresses. Worship is done through labor: forging weapons, raising structures, building machines that will outlast their makers.

Though often misunderstood, Kethrim is not cruel. He simply believes that creation must be earned through discipline and that strength should not be given, but forged. He rarely allies with other gods, but is sometimes respected by Veridius (civilization), Eryndor (innovation), and grudgingly tolerated by Sylvaroo, whose wild domains contrast Kethrim’s need to impose form upon chaos.

Miracles tied to Kethrim include unbreakable weapons forged from cursed ore, forges that burn without fuel, or structures that stand for millennia despite no builder’s hand. Some say he still labors to perfect the one creation that failed him—an unnamed blade hidden in a vault of iron silence.

Campaign Specific Interactions

Kethrim was revealed to be the god that gave divine status to Vulcan, and had pledged that he was worthy of the title. Kethrim was reprimanded for his mistake, and his power has since been greatly reduced. Despite the eventual fall of Vulcan, Kethrim is still atoning for his error with endless labor to the gods until time he can redeem himself.