Duncan is a hero from the Giant War. In the mainland, that's all he's known for, as he was on the south side of the quarry when it became poisoned.
His primary feature is his right hand, coming from his involvement with the dreamer's cult. It is formless, and appears in the shape of an abstract, clawed hand. It looks like the starry night sky viewed through a sheet of water. Since the hand is formless, it can change shape and size, but it's normally unnecessary and takes concentration.
Duncan was actually the creator of the Dream Forge, in a way. The dreamers could only sleep for so long, and this was impacting their ability to forge. So they made a deal with one of their mercenary guards (Duncan). The dreamers inverted the forging process by force (while dreaming of course) while Duncan held his hand in the manifestor. It was painless, at least. The result is that the inversion stuck to his hand; now, anything he touched with that hand would be demanifested from reality to dream. To all bystanders, this looks like he's got a wicked antimatter paw that deletes everything. No one knows this anymore, and Duncan was the only one that knew the ups and downs of it.
Right, so anyway, this was exactly what the dreamers were hoping for. They spent a couple days running tests to confirm it. Then they had Duncan kill them all. Sort of. If he makes his hand big enough to engulf a skull, he can make them a permanent dreamer. It's funny, he's basically their savior, and no one knows it but them and they don't talk much in dreams. They could have easily made a whole squadron of annihilators, but they were eager to dream forever, churning out weapons for a war long ended. Duncan realized this was a great power that could help in the war front, so he moved down south. The research team didn't have enough time to tell him if it was a problem to turn monsters into dreamers (and the topic was a bit taboo), so he decided on his own that he should avoid doing it.
Duncan was probably paid in concubines. I imagine he had a few tagging along with him down south. He's basically one-handed anyway, so he needs help with some things. He could have had a gauntlet commissioned to constrain his hand, but he was too caught up in other things to go back north for it. Since his hand destroys without his consent or awareness, he has to be careful not to hit allies or himself. Luckily this dude enjoyed glory, so he ended up being a solo fighter (with his hos on standby for support). He had to have a sort of splint for his right arm to sleep safely, but luckily the dreamer research team made one for him before he left.
He lost a couple of concubines during the war, of course. He's great at offense, but he can't really defend others. Since they were from the dreamer temple, he agreed to render them to dream before they died. He settled down after this, not pursuing the giants further south with the front lines. Him and some other tired fighters made a little village. Duncan's power proved pretty handy for terraforming and shaping material for tools.
Years went by, and a new monster came. This one didn't have a form, and it brought sickness and nightmares. The reality was that it was feeding off of Duncan, who hasn't been doing well mentally. Duncan decides that a dream monster requires dream soldiers, and convinces the others to sacrifice cubs because they're strong at dreaming. Sacrifice to Duncan's hand, of course. And this seems to work temporarily. A few years go by, and the sacrifices have slowly increased to where there are several. Duncan dies of a stroke. Perhaps he realized the truth before he died, but if he did, it was not known. But everyone else noticed that the monster went away after his death, and so they decided that the monster was Duncan all along. They cursed his memory and cast his remains to the sea. His hand crystallized into a powerful relic, but no one dares tread the sea.
born a child of victims
duncan, the annihilator
grown aside from war
but eager in man's duty
hired by the dreamers
in safeguard of their beds
a forge was made within their dreams
but their coils left them bound
so they bargained with duncan
for one hand, a wish
flesh turned to haze
blood to emptiness
bone to starlight
what once was real now was dream
and with a stroke the world would wake
duncan was the savior for a day
now the dreamers would dream eternal
a string of luck brought them here
turning a joke into a factory of war
the giants would fall
the mainland would claim its peace
duncan relished this new might
he marched south and no foe could withstand his claw
the power was terrible and left him short of allies
save for dreamer's concubine
but duncan was glad for the glory
glad to fight, glad to erase wrong
strength was naught before his hand
giants were brought low
he's remembered as a hero in the north
as the great trench forbade passage home
the war never truly ended
it merely moved further south
supply lines lost
new homes were needed
duncan, though, his lover was struck down
his hand led her to dream
the man was changed
he stayed when the line pushed on
a new home was made
tired men struggling to rest
they did not rest
they tore security out of the land
there was more to glory than killing the enemy
destruction can be used to build
wood turned to mist
water to whispers
stone to stain
what once held fast would hold no more
and with a stroke the world would forget
a new monster was borne out of the years
one without form
sacrifices were made
children became dreamers
a temporary defense
more and more were needed
but when duncan died
the monster was gone
who will snuff the cubs?
duncan will
the hand of duncan lies in the sea
a cursed and broken dream
power turned to glass
dreamers to victims
glory to regret
what once was truth has turned to lie
and with a stroke he left the world
The Dreamer's Forge was the breakthrough for winning the Giant War. It churns out reality-denying weapons. This is done in combination of two things: the cult of dreamers and the dream manifestor.
The cult of dreamers was an odd cult, not based on the teachings of a saint. They just really loved dreaming. They got very little accomplished because of this, but on their own, they managed to get respect for scrying. Now, the necrobuilders had a bit of humor in them, and they built a big stone temple for these guys. They didn't build temples other than that one, so people looking back on it probably think the dreamers were hot shit to be able to get preferential treatment for their cult. Right, so, the dreamers moved in there, and a bunch of others went with them and they all had a weird little society there where the dreamers just slept a lot and everyone else took care of them. If not for the war, it probably would have turned into a curious kingdom.The actual followers of the cult were the dreamers. But they counted on others to help them elevate their "craft" because they couldn't be bothered. So in the hierarchy of this society, the second place guys were the researchers that figured out methods to satisfy the dreamers. Drugs to put you to sleep, loose studies of metaphysics (actually super dangerous in this setting, but it didn't go far), methods to maximize dream quality, etc. The third place guys were the guards, which were generally hired mercenaries. The necrobuilders weren't trying to make a serious place to live, so the fortifications sucked and demanded a standing guard.
The dream manifestor is a soul steel device that forces a space to be both reality and dream, with the intention of items from dreams being pulled into reality. This was another stroke of luck, really. A curious wizard came to investigate this cult of dreamers because of rumors he had heard, and after talking with the research team, (the dreamers were mostly asleep) they came to negotiate the idea of dream forging. Giving a point to all the dreaming, how novel. The dreamers were about as interested as they could be when they were told about it, but did agree to go for it. So the wizard crafted the manifestor. It's sort of a large panel on the floor, which generates a column of distorted space. It feels weird being inside it, but it's not really dangerous. While the landscape of dreams isn't exactly coherent, the research team had already worked out methods of communal dreaming, so what ended up being made in the dream side was a communal workshop featuring a copy of the temple. Anytime they made a new weapon, they just needed to haul it to the dream version of the manifestor. Then it would manifest once they operated a control mechanism (there are ontological problems with persistent manifestation). The weapon has to be retrieved and the panel left clear in order to send something over.
The results were really cool, but it wasn't until Duncan's upgrade that it became a factory of war. The wizard had left sometime before, satisfied with his success and ready to make gaudy castles somewhere. Once the output was going steady, it attracted military forces because these weapons were crazy strong. It was important to keep them all put to use in the war, so the temple became an important military location (and I say military loosely, as there was very little formal structuring) with a dedicated place in the lines of supply. Gradually, the social order shifted to rely on the military occupation. The cult was basically gone, anyway, because Duncan killed all the faithful. The research team got co-opted into researching the weapons. There was no longer a reliable way to communicate with the dreamers (at best, you can dream and watch them, but talking is incoherent), so no one knew what each new weapon did. Some of these weapons were crazy strong and too dangerous to be used normally, some would kill, blind, or maim the researchers just trying to retrieve them from the manifestor. They had to make a dedicated retrieval squad because of this.
Once the war ended, vaults were constructed to organize and store the weapons. Once the Knights formed, this became an important location to construct an armory around. There's quite an arsenal here now, and not just from the dream forge.
Now, the dreamers only output weapons of war to the manifestor. There's about 10 dreamers total working on this. The output is kinda random. Some of them are bad at it. Sometimes they all work together on one. Combined with the matter of time distortion, the production rate is random. So there has to be a retrieval unit on duty 24/7 to keep the manifestor clear. Even though the dreamers didn't live much, they did know about the giant monsters. They each had seen at least one directly, and the rest they heard stories about. Part of their dream-side forging process is constructing giants and using these weapons to kill them (the dreamers are basically immortal now). Part of the problem is that they occasionally make a weapon to kill something specific that doesn't exist, so the weapon seems useless. Another problem, mentioned earlier, is that they forget what normal limits of flesh are, so the weapons might be too volatile to use safely.
