1 {scene: still in the tavern}
1 Alvissa: So what's this Crown of Power?
1 Kyros: The god Bolkon forged it at the dawn of time to symbolise Divine Right.
2 Kyros: He took some of the essence of each intelligent race and captured it in one of ten glittering Soul Jewels, with which he adorned the Crown.
3 Kyros: The wisest kings wore it, until the War of Damnation scattered the Jewels to all corners of the world and the Crown was destroyed.
4 Lambert: Wow, how did you get to be so smart?
4 Kyros: I fudged my dice rolls during character generation.

Well... one question answered, and a heap more posed!

Who's this god Bolkon, what does he do, and is he still around? What are the other nine Soul Jewels? What powers over the intelligent races do they have? What are the ten intelligent races? What was the War of Damnation, why was it fought, between whom, and when? Where are all the other jewels? Was the Crown really destroyed??

You get a greater amount of intriguing backstory in one strip than in 900 pages of Tolkien, baby.

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2013-06-28 Rerun commentary: The god Bolkon actually comes from my ages-old custom fantasy setting, written before this comic ever began. Bolkon, The Blacksmith, is the god of artifice and creation. He embodies crafts such as woodworking and metalsmithing, as well as creativity, cleverness, and competence. His negative aspect represents destruction, restriction, unoriginality, stupidity, and incompetence. The dwarves consider Bolkon to be the creator of their race.

Some of the other Soul Jewels would finally be revealed (some seven years of story later) in strip #3174. Though if you're reading through this comic for the first time, I'd strongly suggest you don't click that link and skip ahead that far, since it'll spoil some of the story for you. For now, let's just say that the other Soul Jewels represent the ten intelligent races, with one of them being the Ruby of Dwarven Might. There are also jewels for the humans, elves, hobbits, lizard men, ... and five other races yet to be explored.

Wow. I think I've just convinced myself that I need to resurrect this comic one day.