Forum

In 821, Garmar Four-Beard captured Teramalda, and having failed to strip her of her armour, decided to bake her alive. That went badly, and to this day the undead Teramalda and her armour roam Ravenland. The only way to kill her is to remove the magical iron spike driven through her chest (which requires a FORMIDABLE MIGHT roll, which is less impressive than it sounds, as modifications don't affect base dice, so your combat character will still be rolling 4+ dice).

Where did the magical iron spike come from?

It can't be from Garmar. He wanted her humiliated, or, failing that, dead; dead in a different way that left her armour mostly intact isn't something he'd have wanted.

It can't be from the Rust brothers later on: Teramalda needed to be undead before they decided that she was the poster child of "mess with the Rust brothers and undead are gonna get you".

Also, why could Teramalda's armour not be opened? Armour is designed to resist bad guys with swords, but not armour-wearers who would like a rest now that the fight is over, and not have to cart around many kilos of plate mail. If you've subdued someone wearing armour, you can find the buckles and catches that let you remove armour pieces bit by bit.

So I think what happened is that someone found a wounded (possibly dying) Teramalda on the battlefield of the First Alder War, and they made a pact that by driving a magical spike into her heart as she was dying, she would come back to unlife instead, driven by a desire to kill basically anyone. Garmar was merely unlucky, as he didn't recognise that the "living human" he decided to roast alive was in fact an animatronic already planning to kill him.

So: who drove a magical spike into Teramalda?

Both the gods Rust AND *Huge are entwined in the story of Teramalda. The gods, in turn, are intentionally left in a cloud of mystery and theological debate, not really meant for player characters to interact with beyond their followers. The spike might be an intentional addition to the monster Teramalda, so as to provide a brunt-force solution to an otherwise magical/divine problem (which wouldn't fit the dark fantasy setting). If you wished to make more sense of it in the context of the events of her creation, the spike might be a broken tip from an pick-axe from when they attempted to pry her out.

*Teramalda is wearing ceremonial armor stolen from dwarves, despite the size difference between the kin. Based on the illustrations and descriptions, Teramalda is also massive. Possibly the armor itself was magical, making its wearer appear like an avatar for the dwarven god, Huge. It is likely this nature is also why the armor could not be dismantled like regular armor.
But this also introduces the possibility that Huge had a part in creating Tremalda: maybe she is an avatar of sorts, testing the dwarves. Its reasonable to assume, that her hunting dwarves would eventually lead to a dwarven adversary, who will wrench the iron spike out and become a champion amongst their people.