Dwarven Shield of Deflection

Dwarven Shield of Deflection is a legendary armor in Landorya. Its known origin is The Dwarven Shield of Deflection was forged in the third century of the Iron Age by Haldrek Vorrund, Grand Rune-Smith of the Dwarves of the Iron Mountains, during the rare celestial event known as the Glacial Conjunction, a night every eighty years when the aurora descends low enough to touch the mountain peaks and raw aetheric energy saturates the stone. Haldrek worked in secret concert with a Frostborn rune-sage called Eirveth the Still, who inscribed the self-sustaining ward rune in Frostborn elder-script while Haldrek folded glacite into the duskstone alloy at temperatures only a Dwarven forge-master could sustain, binding the celestial energy permanently into the metal.. Its most cited abilities include Self-Sustaining Runic Ward: The central rune draws ambient magical energy from the environment to maintain itself indefinitely, requiring no external recharging, one of fewer than a dozen such enchantments known to exist in Landorya., Physical Deflection: Melee strikes that would land true are partially redirected by an invisible force-plane that extends inches beyond the shield's face, reducing impact force and often glancing bladed weapons harmlessly aside., and Magical Absorption: Directed spells of Uncommon tier or below are absorbed into the glacite matrix and dissipated as harmless frost-mist; spells of Rare tier and above are partially dampened rather than fully negated.. Accounts also warn of a drawback: The self-sustaining rune feeds not only on ambient magic but, in environments starved of aetheric energy, such as the dead zones left by the Celestial Order's…

The shield was first carried by Haldrek's own son, Borvun Vorrund, who bore it through the Siege of Ashenmoor when an Orc warhost descended on the Iron Mountains' southern passes, and legend holds that three separate fire-shamans broke their staffs attempting to blast through its ward. It passed from Clan Vorrund to the Eldorian king Serath Dawnmantle as a treaty-gift after the Pact of Worked Stone, only to be lost when Serath's convoy was ambushed in the Twilight Marches by agents of the Fey Court of the Eternal Twilight, who coveted the self-sustaining rune for study. The Fey Court held the shield for over a century in the Vault of Stolen Wonders beneath the Court's sovereign bower, until a Dwarven reclamation expedition, funded quietly by Clan Vorrund's surviving heirs, broke into the vault during the chaos of the War of Unraveling Thorns. As of the current age, the shield is rumored to reside in the deepest reliquary of the Iron Mountains' Grand Hall, locked behind three Dwarven runic seals, though Fey Court emissaries have never ceased demanding its return.