Oriddus

The small, reclusive Clan Oriddus cultivates an air of pious mystery. Its members style their beards into braided loops strung with metal discs that bear Torag’s religious symbols and scriptural sayings in archaic runes. Many members of this Goldhilt clan wear prayer scrolls pinned to their persons, and draw inspiration from these in times of hardship, or give one as a gift to someone who seems likely to benefit from a well-chosen parable.   On high holy days, clan elders wear ancient masks during their sermons, a carryover from an old tradition little observed elsewhere in Highhelm. These masks, each of which is a centuries-old heirloom, signify that the individual dwarf’s identity is unimportant, but the continuity of the kingdom, and the clan, is all.   From a very young age, scions of Clan Oriddus are steeped in the religious traditions of the dwarven pantheon. They view themselves as keepers of the flame, and see as their duty not to convert newcomers or harangue their fellows into purity, but to protect Highhelm’s collective memory as archivists of the faith. Theirs is an inward-looking perspective, concerned less with others’ behaviour and more with preserving tales, traditions, and skills that might otherwise be lost. More than once, Highhelm’s smiths and engineers have found clues to solving novel problems by looking to Clan Oriddus’s memory of ancient solutions.   The Oriddus clan hall, located in Goldgate in King's Heart, is punctuated by hidden air shafts within its walls that curve out into trumpet-like protrusions along the eaves. These hollow shafts are connected to enormous bellows in the clan hall’s interior, enabling the clan’s priests to blow the holy horns and fill Highhelm with their deep, sonorous song. These herald major prayer services and the beginning or end of communal religious observations. On other occasions, the bellows may be filled with fragrant smoke, blowing clouds of purifying incense through Highhelm’s corridors.   The clan emphasizes small acts of direct service, such as counselling the grief-stricken and feeding the hungry. One wing of the Oriddus clan hall is a temple-hospital where all of Highhelm’s citizens are welcome to seek care, provided by the clan’s clerics and physicians without charge. Free treatment is, however, limited to citizens. All others pay standard fees.   Clanleader Geselm Oriddus is the haughty head of Clan Oriddus. They have little patience for the caprice of politics and are often openly derisive toward sudden shifts in public opinion. Instead, they choose to focus their efforts on aiding and sheltering the less fortunate. This can make it challenging to court their favour. However, Geselm is not a shortsighted leader; they simply see one’s actions as the truest measure of one’s character. Those who have proven themselves to the principled clanleader have little trouble obtaining the full backing of Clan Oriddus.