- See also: Item: Bardin's Folly
Codex text
A dwarven rune crafter named Bardin made this for his lover, Mayla, a nobleman's wife who was fond of dalliances. As the story goes, Bardin fell hard for Mayla, and after a few passionate nights, he presented her with a beautiful handcrafted ring. Feeling sorry for the love-struck fool, she graciously accepted the gift.
Unfortunately for Bardin, his fine workmanship had become well known, and Mayla's husband immediately recognized the handiwork. No one knows exactly what happened to the rune crafter, but he disappeared from Orzammar shorty after. It's said that the nobleman tracked him down, tied him up, carved runes on every square inch of his body, and tossed the sinewy mess into a river of magma outside Orzammar.
Mayla fled for the surface with the ring. Some versions of the story have her making it to Orlais, while others involve Mayla getting hopelessly lost in the Deep Roads, never to be seen again. The ring, however, turned up years later in a merchant's stash outside Ostwick.