Brenda was born in the fourth age in the year 1267. Her mother and father were both of low born descent in the outer reaches of the Méaróg kingdom. Her parents, whose names have been lost to the ages, both worked in the mines, as was common for the lower class. Brenda had hopes of becoming a great forge smith, a near impossible task for anyone not born into wealth.
In order to set out on her desired path she would have to steal and trick her way into a new life. Because Méaróg’s greatest export was their soldiers. The state claimed complete ownership of all of the iron that was mined from their mountain range, so if Brenda had ever been caught with the ores that she would pocket throughout her time in the mines she would have been sentenced to death, no trial. Luckily, one of only two family heirlooms that had been passed down to her was a bag of holding, the perfect place to hide away as much of the ore as she needed.
When she was not working the mines she was posted up at her forge. She had made her way into an abandoned mine shaft, where she knew no one would think to bother her. And started digging further down until finally she had found a hot spot where she could set up her forge. It wasn’t until far later that she had realized that her forge was positioned dangerously close to the Underdark. She constantly had to fight the urge to continue digging until lost, as her mind was being pulled down by the Illithid that hoped to add her to their collection of other imprisoned dwarves.
Brenda worked the furnace, heating and shaping her metal. And once her weapons were smoothed to an edge, she would try her hand at carving runes into the blades. It took many tries for the runes to actually take any effect, but the good thing about metal is that it can be melted down and reshaped continually until she could get it right.
After she had a few dozen successes she decided to find some buyers. Now, since all iron belonged to the kingdom of Méaróg she could not sell her work inside the mountain so she would venture out into the greater world, traveling between small towns that would not otherwise have access to fine crafted weapons, towns that needed protection from the encroaching dangers of the natural world. And when she had nothing left to sell, she would return to the mountain and start all over.
She would invest all her wealth into educating herself in areas that would allow her to improve her weapon crafting abilities.
