Sir Ironstripe - Grand Knight of the Underdeep

Sir Ironstripe

In the deepest reaches of the earth, where tunnels hum with the slow heartbeat of Deepstone and the air tastes of iron and dust, lives Sir Ironstripe, the most unyielding warrior of the Badgerfolk and one of the last true masters of the Deep Warrens.

The Badgerfolk are born of depth and grit: miners and smiths, explorers of the lightless reaches, and the tireless defenders of the Underdeep. Their halls are chiseled from living bedrock, their forges run white-hot with ore pulled from veins older than the forest above. 

Among them, Ironstripe stands unmatched. Broad-shouldered and low of stance, with arms shaped by decades of hammering stone into halls and horrors into dust. Ironstripe embodies every tradition the Badgerfolk hold sacred. His armour is smelted from ore he unearthed with his own claws, each rivet forged in the heat of his clan’s ancestral forge.

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The Stoneward Order

Though Badgerfolk rarely swear themselves to surface-born oaths, there exists one ancient pact: The Stoneward Order, an order pledged in fealty to the Stagbound Circle themselves. Formed in ages past when tunnels and forest paths still mirrored each other as one interconnected world, the Stoneward stand as the Stagbound’ allies beneath the soil, guarding the unseen passages where corruption seeps from the depths. Ironstripe is one of their Grand Knights… but not by choice.

When Ironstripe was only a cub, a mining collapse tore open a hidden cavern, revealing a buried chamber no Badgerfolk had ever mapped. Inside writhed one of the Deepwood’s ancient horrors, a thing of chittering hunger and shadow-clad limbs, older and crueler than most mortal strength could ever hope to match.

His parents fought, as all Badgerfolk do, but the creatures were beyond them. Ironstripe would have been swallowed by the darkness had fate not cracked the stone twice that day, the collapse splitting open a fissure at the mountain’s base, where, by chance, a patrol of the Stagbound Circle were passing through.

Hearing the screams echoing from within and the unmistakable sound of something ripping life apart, the patrol rushed into the mountain without hesitation. From that day, Ironstripe carried two truths like heavy Deepstone on his shoulders: that debt is a stone no Badger leaves uncarried, and that the Deepwood, above or below, hungers for the unwary. Thus, he swore into the Stoneward Order, not out of desire, but out of memory and gratitude. He serves because honour demands it, and because the circle once stepped into the dark for him.

Still, deep in his heart, he believes the Badgerfolk’s way is the truer way.

Roots wander. Paths change. Stone endures

© Fracti Cerebrum (Peter Caulkett-McClelland)