The Dwarves: Masters of Stone and Steel
Distinct Traits and Culture
The Dwarves are a sturdy and industrious people, renowned for their craftsmanship, resilience, and unyielding spirit. Short and broad, their physiques are as solid as the mountains they call home. With long, elaborately braided beards often adorned with trinkets that signify their clans or achievements, they embody tradition and pride.
Dwarven culture revolves around their craftsmanship, reverence for ancestry, and communal strength. Their work in metal and stone is unparalleled, producing tools, weapons, and structures that last for generations.
The Deepforged Halls, their ancestral home, are a testament to their skill—a sprawling network of subterranean cities and fortresses carved into the Spine mountains. Honor and loyalty guide their lives, and their connection to
The Anvilborn, their pantheon of gods, shapes their worldview.
Before the Cataclysm: The Golden Age of Isolation
Before the Cataclysm, the Dwarves thrived within the Deepforged Halls, a magnificent subterranean kingdom that stretched deep beneath the Spine mountains. This network of caverns, forges, and great halls was a bastion of dwarven ingenuity and culture. Their society was organized into powerful clans, each contributing to the kingdom’s prosperity through mining, crafting, or religious devotion.
The Dwarves remained largely isolated from the surface world, focused on their own advancement and the veneration of their gods, the Anvilborn. Few outsiders knew of their vast subterranean realm, and fewer still had ventured into its depths. The Dwarves viewed their separation as a necessary safeguard for their cultural purity and resources, avoiding entanglement in the conflicts and chaos of the surface.
Within their isolation, they mastered the forging of adamantine and mithral, crafting artifacts of unparalleled strength and beauty. Their temples to the Anvilborn were centers of both faith and industry, where prayers and molten metal flowed together in harmony.
After the Cataclysm: A People Displaced
The Cataclysm marked the Dwarves' greatest trial. Violent earthquakes and magical surges shattered the Deepforged Halls, collapsing entire cities and severing the intricate network of tunnels. Many Dwarves perished in the chaos, and those who survived were forced to flee to the surface—a realm they had long avoided.
Adapting to life above ground, the displaced Dwarves built new settlements, including Balingsgag and Ghazabul, at the foothills of the Spine. These communities became hubs of resilience and determination, where the Dwarves sought to preserve their traditions while enduring the hardships of exile. Despite their loss, the Dwarves maintained their cultural identity, clinging to the hope of one day reclaiming their ancestral home.
The surface brought challenges, including interaction with other heritages. Though initially wary, the Dwarves found allies and trade opportunities among the Humans, Elves, and other ancestries. These new relationships added depth to their society, even as they longed for their secluded past.
Legacy of the Anvilborn
The Dwarves’ enduring faith in the Anvilborn, their pantheon of gods tied to metal and stone, has been a source of strength throughout their trials. From Copperbeard’s blessing in trade to Adamantus’s guidance in resilience, the Anvilborn remain central to dwarven life. Temples and forges dedicated to these gods are maintained even in their new surface settlements, ensuring that the spiritual essence of the Deepforged Halls endures alongside their physical efforts to reclaim it.
Led by the warrior-king
Tharatin Grimthane, the Dwarves continue to wage campaigns to retake the Deepforged Halls. Their steadfastness and unity have made them a symbol of endurance, and their craftsmanship remains highly sought after across Anzentochi.
