Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Anvils

Anvil myths and legends

From the mists of time and from the haze of the eastern steppes came a story
of a dragon. This was a very wise dragon who talked with the stars and knew
the deep paths of the earth. At some point every dragon gives up its old
life
of hunting and decides to start hoarding. Most dragons hoard gold and
jewels,
but this dragon that we speak of now decided to hoard iron and anvils. The
other dragons heard of this and thought, "How silly, nobody cares for scrap
metal or large lumps of iron. How stupid." However, just as the other
dragons heard of it, so did the Blacksmiths, and they realized where their
materials and tools had been dissappearing to. Individually (for
blacksmiths
are just that, individuals), the smiths searched for the hoard of the "Iron
Dragon". As the smiths one-by-one found the dragon's lair, they discovered
that the lair was in the heart of a volcano and was the home of heat far
greater than of the great grass-fires or of the black-rock-that-burns. The
smiths that came to reclaim their materials and tools stayed to work wrought
iron and make weapons and great art in metal. The wise dragon gave the
surplus goods of poor quality to kings and khans the ruled neighbouring
lands,
and they prospered in conquest and further trade. The other dragons, in
collecting only gold and jewels did not meet with neighbouring kings and
khans
except to plunder and protect their hoard. The kings and khans sent
warriors
against the "Gold Dragons" to get their own gold (and possibly some new
gold)
back from the hoards. The Gold Dragons saw the mark of the Iron Dragon on
the
weapons of the warriors and thought enough to plot against the Iron Dragon.
(This is probably the only time when dragons could forego their mutual
hatreds
to act together.) At the start of the "season of the foal" the Gold Dragons
gathered over the volcano of the Iron Dragon and attacked. The first thing
that the Iron Dragon did was to protect his beloved workers, and then he
went
out to counter-attack. The Iron Dragon had laid in his hoard of metal for
so
long that his sking had taken on scales of iron, and it had hardened in the
fires of the volcano while he slept. Thus, the Iron Dragon was armoured in
the hardness of swords and spear heads, while the Gold Dragons had only
precious but soft gold on their skins. The Iron Dragon killed two Gold
Dragons for every injury that he received, but there were too many Gold
Dragons. In the end the Iron Dragon fell from the sky into his great crater
of
a volcano with a fatal wound. The Gold Dragons with all of their remaining
power, went to destroy the lair in the volcano. But they stopped when the
saw
all of the beautiful items created by men from iron inside the lair. None
of
the Gold Dragons wanted the items because they were made of iron, but they
could not destroy the items because of their beauty. So, they sealed the
volcano with rocks and landslides, and the blacksmiths were sealed inside
along with the dragon and the fire from within the earth. They are still
there today, in the far eastern lands, sealed in the-heart-of-fire crafting
objects of great beauty from the Iron-Dragon-that-fell-from-the-sky.

Someday a great volcano will open in the far-north of the far-east and
skilled
artisans will bring forth some really interesting stuff.