Why Reliquaries
Raggard never called them reliquaries.
Not at first.
To him, they were simply boxes.
Wooden crates. Stone cases. Reinforced travel chests. The sort of containers every forge hall owned by the dozen.
It was the others who gave the work a name later.
The habit began after Emeraldvein.
After the pass was reclaimed.
After the dead were counted.
After the banners were folded and carried home instead of raised.
Raggard returned to Thornbeard Forge with a hammer that had struck more than iron.
He cleaned it that night by hand.
Slowly.
Not because it needed care.
But because he did.
The first box was meant for a family.
A widowed shield dwarf and her two sons.
Both boys had been too young to march when Xargus fell.
Both had been old enough to watch their father leave.
Raggard knew the woman only by sight.
He had passed her in the lower halls for years without learning her name.
He asked the quartermaster what the children liked.
What colors they favored.
Whether either of them had ever held a hammer properly.
It took longer than expected.
He returned to his own bench with a small bundle of pieces.
Nothing rare.
Nothing powerful.
A simple dice set carved from leftover stone blanks.
A small tower from an early pattern that had never been approved for full production.
A scrap of etched brass plate trimmed from a damaged shield face.
A folded page from a map that marked a road no longer safe.
He fit them together inside a plain wooden chest.
He lined it carefully.
He adjusted the balance of the tower twice so it would not rattle when opened.
He added a short note.
Not heroic.
Not formal.
Only true.
Your father walked with us.
The boys returned a week later.
They did not bring thanks.
They brought questions.
How tall had the giant been?
How loud had the towers sounded?
Had their father really broken a spear with his shield?
Raggard answered every one of them.
That night, he assembled another box.
It became easier after that.
Not emotionally.
Practically.
He learned how certain finishes caught light better when paired together.
How cold-toned stone made warm metal feel heavier.
How small details—the curve of a stair, the width of a channel, the angle of an opening—changed the way a hand lingered when something was lifted and turned.
He discovered something unexpected.
Matching pieces calmed him.
Not in the way drink dulled memory.
In the way alignment soothed strain.
Things belonged together.
They always had.
You simply had to listen long enough to hear it.
Farder noticed first.
“You’ve been hoarding half-finished projects,” his cousin said one evening, leaning against a rack of drying tower segments. “And giving them away.”
Raggard shrugged.
“They’re finished,” he replied.
“Just not for me.”
Dels noticed later.
“You arrange them like prayers,” the priest said quietly, watching Raggard test the fit of a small relic lid.
Raggard snorted.
“Then your god must have very particular taste in wood grain.”
Dels only smiled.
The truth was simpler than either of them guessed.
Raggard had spent most of his life building things meant to endure force.
Walls.
Armor.
Braces.
Towers.
Everything he forged for the forge was designed to survive impact.
To resist.
To hold.
But the relics were not meant to be struck.
They were meant to be opened.
Handled.
Turned over in careful hands.
Used at tables where laughter lived longer than fear.
He realized it fully the day Po visited Gunabash for the first time.
The goblin stood awkwardly in the forge hall, eyes wide at the glow of furnaces and polished steel.
Raggard handed him a small box.
Po opened it slowly.
Inside was a matched dice set, a tiny carved tower, and a scrap of green-veined stone cut from the reinforced ribs of Kneewater itself.
Po stared.
“For me?”
Raggard nodded.
“From your home.”
Po held the stone longer than anything else.
“You keep pieces,” he said quietly.
Raggard paused.
Then smiled.
“Aye.”
That was when the name finally made sense to him.
Reliquary.
Not a box for holy bones.
A vessel for memory.
For story.
For the quiet weight of places that would someday be rebuilt, abandoned, or forgotten entirely.
He was a brawler.
A soldier.
A craftsman.
A negotiator.
A man who had watched too many roads close and too many banners burn.
The reliquaries were not about profit.
They were about continuity.
If a tower fell.
If a pass was lost again.
If Kneewater sank beneath slow water and shifting stone.
If the Verdant Arcanum one day stood empty and silent at the edge of the Evergrey.
Then somewhere else—
At a kitchen table.
At a campfire.
At a gaming board scratched into old wood—
A small tower would still stand.
Dice would still fall.
Hands would still gather.
And someone would ask where it came from.
Raggard built reliquaries because not everything worth protecting could be defended with walls.
Some things needed to be carried forward.
Quietly.
On purpose.
One carefully chosen piece at a time.
