Over nine hundred years have passed since song and hammerfall rang beneath the snows of Ice-Cloak. The remnants of the dwarves live in exile in the human kingdoms, eking out their survival as itinerant tinkers and farriers. The young dwarf-maid Tourmaline dreams of better things than mending pots for the humans. When horror strikes her caravan, she and a desperate band of dwarves escape into the wild north in pursuit of a fool's hope. Ice-Cloak and its heroes might be little more than old forge tales, but that doesn't make Tourmaline yearn any less to live the life of a true dwarf beneath the stone.