At any rate, there are a few small wooden totems out there that grant a small portion of the Steinhammer fighting spirit to it's carrier.
It's a 5 inch statue carved in the likeness of ole Steinhammer, holding his trusty hammer, of course. Cory described it to me years ago, when we played 3rd edition D&D on FantasyGrounds/Scype. It was a magic item that Cory invented (just for me, I think), which could only be activated by sharing a beer with the statue. You'd have to get two beers, of the best quality you could find, and drink one, and hold one up to the statue's mouth, which he would drink. In the next battle you fought, you would be granted Bull Strength, just like the spell. I think it was +1D4 Strength or something.
I think my Dwarven Character would carry around many extra waterskins full of beer, just in case. Every time we stopped and the other characters cleaned their weapons or tended to their wounds, for my Dwarf, it would be beer time.
It was one of the more memorable and fun magic items I've had during my time gaming. It wasn't even that powerful of an item, but that isn't really what gaming is about, is it. Whenever we'd go to a bar, and get beers, I would get the best one because I was worried that Steinhammer might not work if the beer sucked. Cory never even said anything about that, but I figured that's how it worked.
So this year for Christmas, Cullen gave me my own Thorgrim Steinhammer beer tap handle for my homebrew. He made this bad boy by hand, and put a threaded tap handle mount in the bottom.
It's about 5.8 times better than I imagined it would be. He's wearing scalemail, has a 70's mustache like my old football coach, and his short handled, Dwarven hammer looks heavier than a dumpster full of concrete.
Check out the pipes on this mamma-jamma. Two tickets to the gun show.
And here's one next to my minion for scale.
Holy Hammer of Grimnir that thing is about the greatest Christmas present I've ever seen! Wow! Just...wow! Awesome present bonus award goes to Cullen for Xmas 2011, no doubt about it.
ReplyDeleteYour epic dwarf warrior, Garsim Cinderheart, has had appearances in games I've run since then whenever I need a bad-ass dwarf NPC, and in games I've played online I've created a simulacrum of Garsim wherever I needed to be the Fighter.
As for making up the magic item in the first place, yeah, I remember I was thinking about my last Catholic Easter mass in LN (with Grandma) and then started thinking about how a Dwarf religion would work with the reliquaries and aspergillums (i.e. holy water sprinklers) and whatnot. It only seemed natural that the brewing of beers would be important enough to the bearded ones that an offering of a fine stout brew would bring you favor with their gods of Heavy Metal and the Smashing of Goblin Faces.
Yeah, Garsim was a NPC in our game too. I did actually roll up his epic strength, but when you run a game, you tend to roll up a lot of characters.
ReplyDeleteIn third edition, it seems that strength matters more. When it gets up into the 20s and you're swinging with both hands, and swinging for the fence with the Power Attack, the results can be quite impressive.
At any rate, I'd like to think that there are a handful of those statues out there.