Mótsognir: the Dwarven King

Mótsognir was a dwarf who forsook his own kind to become a king of Midgard, ruling the humans of his lands from the castle at Konunsgard. A good ruler in his beginning, he was driven by his hunger for a legendary armor into cruelty and madness, and remembered ever after as the Bane of Mankind.

Exile from his kind#

Mótsognir was one of the sons of Ivaldi and a brother of Andvari. He was with his father in Niflheim when Ivaldi turned the realm's mists into a weapon and died as a result of his own work. Horrified at what his father had done, Mótsognir left behind a message warning any who traveled to Niflheim to flee, renounced his own kind, and declared his intent to go into exile in Midgard.

The Dwarven King#

In exile Mótsognir rose to become a king, with his own castle and dominion over the humans who lived in his lands. The territory he governed was vast, stretching across two regions. He set his subjects to hunt dragons and other monsters for him, beasts he took pleasure in collecting and keeping within his castle. One of the lands under his rule, Veithurgard, lay under constant assault by the Dark Elves.

For a time he was a good king. But a dream came to drive him toward a single obsession: the legendary dwarven armor Dvegræðikr, which he believed would spare his people a gruesome death.

Atrocity and madness#

To forge the armor, Mótsognir set out to gather its three terrible ingredients. He had three dragons captured to harvest their Fury, and he killed innocent people to harvest their Scream. The third ingredient eluded him, and his failure drove him gradually mad. He ordered his people to keep faith in their king regardless of his failures, and as time passed he became known as the Bane of Mankind.

In the end he understood that he had been a fool, and that only death could atone for what he had done. He traveled to Konunsgard, where he suddenly vanished.

The Ultimate Sacrifice#

Long after, Kratos and Atreus came upon writings about the Dwarven King and chose to investigate his castle, finding it largely in ruins, his captured beasts either still chained or loose and killing those nearby. Resolving to craft the very armor Mótsognir had craved, they gathered its three ingredients. At Konunsgard, Kratos found the king's corpse hidden in a secret room behind his throne. Mótsognir had been killed by Hel-Walkers, becoming the Ultimate Sacrifice, the third ingredient, himself.