Signs of Isenbrad

...instruct the university to research into the life and signs of Isenbrad, the steinr runesmith and paragon of Wisdom. The caves under their forge has been consecrated to Wisdom with true liao and it is time to pilgrims of wisdom know more about this shining example of wisdom.

Jared of the Suns of Couros Lepidean Librarian

Overview

In Summer 385YE, the Lepidean Librarian asked the Library to research the life and signs of Isenbrad. Given Isenbrad's focus and importance in the north, the Library asked, Marko Siwarsbairn, of the Department of Historical Research, to undertake this task, on behalf of the library.

Often, researchers start with a reasonably obscure target - known to scholars, perhaps, but not to the everyday souls of the Empire. Not so with Isenbrad, who is a subject of stories long and varied, too many to list. “Isenbrad tales” are a common form of folk tale, found across the Empire — especially in its north-western parts — and featuring certain key elements. They have somewhat fallen out of fashion in recent times, but the documentary and oral evidence that Marko was able to uncover suggests this is quite normal, part of the general ebb and flow of time and memory.

Isenbrad Tales

In many tales, Isenbrad is not the main character or protagonist. Sometimes, he is a close ally and friend to the protagonist, as in “The Saga of Godric Trollbane”, an epic scop’s poem (which itself has many variations) recounting Godric's quest beyond the Silver Peaks to defeat a troll, armed with weapons forged by Isenbrad. Often Isenbrad is an incidental but crucial figure: a wise mentor, a stranger on the road who offers choice words of advice, a learned master of the crafter’s arts that the protagonist seeks out, that sort of thing.

Those tales that do feature Isenbrad often present a humble story of the smith learning his craft or imparting his learning to the next generation. The idea of Wisdom, especially cleverness, is very apparent. While Isenbrad is often considered to be the epitome of the Steinr tradition, every icewalker would recognise themselves in the story of Isenbrad and the Empty Space. In this story, Isenbrad tricks a short-sighted troll into believing he is a servant of the Lady of the Loom in order to learn the art of working star-metal from them. The troll demands Isenbrad answer three riddles, the first one Isenbrad answers easily, the second he learns the answer to by listening to the troll talking in its sleep but the third he cannot answer. Instead he provides the troll with a riddle of his own and promises to bring him the answer by next dawn. Thus it repeats for a year and a day, with Isenbrad creating a new riddle the troll cannot answer every morning. Eventually he gains the mastery he seeks, leaving the third riddle unanswered.

In most of the more famous tales of Isenbrad, he offers advice and counsel. Even beyond his skill as an artisan — Isenbrad's greatest quality is usually portrayed as his sage advice or wise insight. In some tales, this advice is explicit, the tale a fable constructed around this wisdom. In others, the advice is not stated, but implicit: the emphasis is on the act of giving advice, not on the advice itself. In some esoteric tales, found especially in the oral traditions of the Kallavesa marshes, Isenbrad’s advice is given, but it is cryptic: it is often understood by the characters of the tale but not by the listener. Some devotees of the paragon study these mysteries and meditate upon them. In an old, forgotten library in the Necropolis, I found fragments of a work entitled “Turning The Stone: The Riddles of Isenbrad”: this esoteric piece of poetry claims to compile many of the more cryptic pieces of Isenbrad advice that I have found in other works, and seems to have been the work of an obscure Highborn chapter known as the Apprentices of Innermost Wisdom.

Isenbrad was probably a terse man of few words. He rarely speaks in the stories, outside of his famous advice. When he does speak, the speech is often reported — “Isenbrad said to the crowd that they ought to depart to their homes” — rather than directly quoted.

Stories of Isenbrad often comment about how plain his appearance was. We know he was short and stocky with rough-hair and thickset eyebrows. Descriptions about him that describe how intelligent and wise he was often note how unremarkable he appears at first glance. Isenbrad seems to have been aware of this himself, there are a few tales in which he appears to have made self-deprecating comments about his appearance. The tale of the Black Parador, features a young young Freeborn woman who runs away from her family to become a blacksmith who admires a smith from the north who teaches her the art of runes that states "Isenbrad would joke that he was most pleasing to the eye when covered in the dirt of the forge."

In some stories he is explicitly described as “a friend to orcs and humans alike”. While his involvement in the conflict with the trolls is well-attested, he appears to have otherwise given his advice and worked his art for orcs and humans. There are many Winterfolk tales in which the smith helps save a hall by appearing at the darkest hour to help their smith fashion weapons for the people to fight off an attack by orcs. But even in tales of the Winterfolk, he is not always described as being a foe of the Jotun: indeed, in some, he studies with a Jotun smith as an apprentice.

Some of the orcs who now dwell in the Marches, who were once thralls of the Jotun recognised the figure of Isenbrad, and relayed tales they had heard of a wyrd-faced human who came from the east long ago. According to them, this figure outwits the Jotun smith, Arna Karlsdottir, and steals the lore of the runes from her. Curiously, the stories don't seem to despise Isenbrad for this: they refer to him defeating the Jotun in a battle of wits because he was "touched by Raðljóst". They do not regard him as someone of honour but nevertheless there is a grudging respect present in the stories.

The thralls also told tales of the same human smith helping the Jotun to arm themselves against a coming threat. It is not clear why Isenbrad would do this, though there are long periods in the past when Wintermark was at pace with the Jotun, which might explain it. There are parallel tales in Wintermark, in which he is portrayed in story after story playing a key role in battles with enemies of the Winterfolk. He appears at the darkest hour to provide crucial insight to a thane before he deploys his warriors for battle, helping icewalkers defeat some evil magic of their enemies, or showing a maggot how to find an important treasure.

Isenbrad was clearly a master of runelore. There are tales appear to contradict each other on whether he created the runes. There are accounts in which he invents the runes but others where he is simply said to "perfect" the runes having learned the art from others. There are known to be items that are now marked with runes that are older than the tales of Isenbrad which would tend to imply he did not actually create them.

What is not in doubt is that he was foundational to the Steinr’s mastery of the art of runic crafting and that he spread knowledge of the runes across the Empire. Tales of Isenbrad are most common across the north, but he appears to have travelled widely and shared his knowledge freely with those he encountered. There are stories of a wise smith who shares knowledge of the runes in every nation in the Empire, all of whom name him as Isenbrad or describe him as a plain-faced smith from the north.

Sometimes the advice he gives might be, say, pithy romantic wisdom (as in the Dawnish ballad The Knight Who Sought The Chimera-Heart, in which Isenbrad appears), but it is often illustrated by analogy to or with reference to the runes. (In that tale, the close resemblance between Yoorn and Ull is used to illustrate a point about the way that the end of one relationship creates the infinite potential of the heart that seeks new love.)

A Typical Tale

What follows is a fairly typical Isenbrad Tale: this one in particular I heard from an old Marcher of the Mournwold, who said that his grandmother used to tell it to him.

There was in a town, many years ago, a certain alderman, an innkeeper, whose name was Walter Dyer. Now, Walter had a daughter, Hilda Forge, who was a shrewd blacksmith. So it was that Walter was proud of his daughter and her cunning ways. Nothing wrong with that, except Walter fancied himself something of a scholar himself, and an orator, and more besides, and would fill up his days saying many words and nothing, from behind his bar, and always boasting of his daughter and her exceptional skill and brilliant cunning, and how none could teach her anything about the art of smithing for she knew it all.

Hilda loved her father, but she didn't so much love this boasting, for she knew that empty words fill rotten casks and as skilled as she was at the forge, she knew there was still much to learn. What she desired more than anything was to find someone who teach her more, but having long ago finished her first apprenticeship, and completed her masterwork, there was none left in the Marches who could help her.

So it was that she decided to set a competition, advertised at her father's inn, and news of it was cast about near and far, travelling as it did along the trods that went their way across the land. She said that she was making a piece unlike any other, and that what she promised was the one who could offer the wisest criticism would earn her loyal service in apprenticeship.

What it was that she made I couldn't say. Some say that it was a sword so sharp it could cleave the spirit in twain. Some say it was an intricate mechanism designed to keep time so well it would trap spare seconds within its gears. Some say it was a simple wooden club. Whatever it was, it was a fine, fine piece indeed. You can bet that Walter Dyer offered many thoughts on it, fiercely proud as he was of his daughter's work, so that many were too scared to offer any words of criticism at all, lest they face his wrath. But there were masters in the world, and they found their way to that town to look upon the work of Hilda Forge and offer up their words.

One, she was a brilliant artisan from Urizen. She talked at length about the form and function of Hilda's piece: how it had much to commend it, how it held each ratio in near perfection, but how the geometries were not in true accordance with the most perfect geometries of the human body, and so, over time, it would wear down the user to a stub.

Well, it was a fine criticism, but it took awfully long to deliver. Hilda hummed and hawed and sent that certain master of the spires away. She knew that she would grow better under her tutelage. Yet, yet, she knew that this was not the wisdom she sought. She waited.

In time there came a second master of craft, who hailed from Casinea. He spoke of virtue, of its expression in craft, and on this he had much and more to say, onwards and onwards. "Is this truly what mastery means?", thought Hilda? "To grow so in love with your own thoughts?" She began to doubt that she was on the right path. And this happened again, and again. Each time each master identified something that was certainly a flaw in her work, certainly something that taught her something: but each time she was struck by the thought that in teaching her they were doing something more for themselves than any other.

Then finally there came a strange-faced man from the north, a master-smith there came, ice-forged his tools he came, Isenbrad his name he came. He walked into her workshop, picked up the piece, looked at it, turned it over and over - but where others had launched into their theories and hypotheses, that man of the north remained silent. Finally, after an age, he put down the piece. He picked up a piece of drafting-chalk from the workshop, and went to the wall. On the wall he drew four runes. I can't tell you what runes they were. If you know, you know, it's said: to know the four runes of Hilda Forge is to understand the crafting art beyond all measure. Nevertheless she looked at these four runes - or was it five, for they say the Unnamed rune was also there upon the wall - and saw within their form and contrast the perfect critique of her work. There, in all its simplicity, was the wisdom she had sought.

Well, she picked up a hammer and chisel and worked her piece, and in the end it didn't take so long until she had finished the changes that she now knew were needed: small changes, nothing fancy, but it made it so much better, whatever it was. Anyway, she turned to the strange-faced man, looked him square in his eye, and said, will you take me, then, as your apprenticeship, until I've learnt from you all I can? The man nodded, and he told her that she would be his apprentice "until the ice melts on the Kalpamark.”

That, then, was the day Hilda Forge left, to follow the stranger with his odd brow and his runic hammer and his wisdom clear as ice. It's said that she never did return, and what happened to her I couldn't say, but I like to think that she found something else to learn until the day she died: and that man of the north he never did, for Wisdom is eternal. Walter Dyer grieved his daughter's journey in sorrow, but her workshop he kept, and it's said that the wall on which those runes were drawn still stands. And maybe the next time someone came to the inn, he waxed less lyrical - instead, he would take them to the workshop, and there they'd look at the chalk marks, in silence, and see the truth that lay within. That's what I heard, anyway.

Attempts to find the “wall” in question, came up short. There were many who knew the tale and claimed to know where it had happened. There are nine small hamlets and villages across Upwold which claim to have “Hilda’s Wall”. Most of them are near Ashill, but all of them have a different set of four runes carved on them, with no sense or pattern to any of them. It is impossible to tell if there is a historical truth to this at all, or whetherit is simply myth.

Biography

Getting any kind of actual biography is nearly impossible due to Isenbrad's great age but he was definitely born after the foundation of modern Wintermark, when Hahnmark. Sermersuaq, and Kallavesa joined into a single nation. Most stories of Isenbrad have a timeless quality, but there a pair of tales in which the smith appears to offer council to the Wintermark king. In each, the price he rquires for his aid is the Crown of Three Tears. When the offer is refused, the smith gives his help anyway, but leaves before the sun rises at which point disaster follows. It is possible that the two tales are actually one incident, they feature common elements and a common structure but the names of the two monarchs are different.

He seems to have lived somewhere in what is today the Hanhmark for many years, which is the place the greatest diversity and number of Isenbrad tales are found, but he travelled often: in many, many tales, he is encountered at a wayside inn (accordingly, he is also a popular appearance in many Navarri narratives!) During his life, he probably took apprentices, though there is some evidence that the tradition of actually publicly declaring oneself an Apprentice of Isenbrad started after his death, as a way of declaring yourself a devotee of the tradition of shrewd counsel and deft craft that he exemplified.

After Isenbrad died, one such apprentice discovered that their aura contained the rune Irremais. Nobody is certain how that happened, or when it happened, but it had certainly never been noticed before. A group of Kallavesi mystics made a point of seeking out other individuals who were known to have received wisdom or advice from Isenbrad and discovered that they also had the rune Irremais in their aura. As far as anyone can tell, their auras were marked by the rune at the point of Isenbrad's death. Obviously, it is not possible to create such a mark with the rite of Testimony.

Every story is very clear that Isenbrad's body was interred in the Sovevann. Eye-witness accounts of this happening describe powerful people from all over Wintermark coming to the Sovevann to pay their respects to the wise smith by witnessing this final act. There are records in Kalpaheim describing arrangements for the Queen of Wintermark, Queen Gytha, and her entourage to travel to the Sovevann to "be present for the passing of the great smith, Isenbrad the Rune Scribe". He appears to have died peacefully in his bed of old age, and been interred in the swamp with all due dignity that Wintermark accords to the greatest of its heroes.

The Signs

To summarise his signs, then:

Liberation: No-one has ever had a past life vision of being Isenbrad although there are visions in which Isenbrad appears to speak with others. On one occasion, a visionary was discovered to have Irremais in their aura after encountering the smith in a past life vision.

Benevolence: Isenbrad's generosity is a recurrent theme in story after story. In some tales he asks a power figures like a king or an earl to provide something of great significance in return for Iesnbrad's help, but if that request was refused he invariably provides the aid anyway (though these stories often end badly for the ruler). Those without power or status are invariably given his aid freely and his spirit of cooperation was relentless. He is always seen as a Benevolent figure in his tales, one who dispenses crucial Wisdom and counsel to those who most need it.

Inspiration: comes from people asking “what would Isenbrad have done”, and from the tales that many authors write about him to this day. It is understood that they may not have truly happened, of course - the point of an Isenbrad tale is to inspire some form of wisdom in the listener, though, and in this sense his inspiration shines.

Miracles: The most common miracle attributed to him is the forging of weapons from ice. In some versions of this he merely used ice in the forging of weapons. However there are a dozen different stories of Isenbrad appearing at the darkest hour to give people aid to defend themselves against some terrible threat, usually orcs, in which he finds miraculous ways to aid them. In one story he takes them to a played-out mine and they discover new seams of metal, but in most of these stories he fashions weapons from ice, and then marks them with runes to make them strong enough to use in battle. The weapons invariably melt, but not til after the battle is won.

Many have claimed that he possessed a miraculous understanding of the magic of runes. It was his intuitive grasp of the inner mysteries of the runes, through which he could work feats never seen since. In many tales, he uses combinations of runes: it is quite rare for a smith or magic-worker to use runes in pairs, and certainly never in triplets: while one might invoke them in sequence, one rarely does so simultaneously, and this is generally regarded as foolish. Yet in many tales he is attested to have done this. It is possible he percieved a higher meaning in the runes that no other shared in: this is surely a miracle no less than the forging of a weapon from ice.

Pilgrimage: There is no doubt of any kind that Isenbrad wandered the Empire both learning from the wise and in turn dispensing Wisdom to all who needed it. There is an account of Isenbrad coming to Bastion. That story focuses on him aiding a baker by carving a rune into their oven to allow them to bake enough loaves to feed an army of cataphracts. It makes no mention of the Way but it is hard to imagine that someone so learned and Wise would not have engaged in conversation with priests on spiritual matters. Regardless, his journeys around the Empire, clearly constitute a pilgrimage.

Legacy: The runes are Isenbrad's legacy. Though they are literally carved on the walls of Runegrott, a place of great power left behind after his dead, it is the runic tradition itself that is his true legacy. This is unambiguous and quite clear, regardless of whether he discovered the runes or learned of them from others. Without Isenbrad, study of the runes would be the preserve of obscure scholars, or perhaps they would simply be entirely unknown.

Salvation: His sign of Salvation is the way in which he spread Wisdom everywhere he travelled, teaching people not to bow to tradition, never to accept the inevitable and to be constantly searching for new ways to accomplish things. He is the reason that Wisdom stands proudly amongst the traits of the archetypal hero in the Mark, and he promoted Wisdom across the Empire. In this sense he has surely brought many to virtue.