Dwarves

Locations
The Forge, Dourkarst

Typical Physical Attributes
Their skin is dark and worn to deep wrinkles from the countless hours spent by the blazing heat of their forges. Permanent soot stains on their skin, clothes and beards are flaunted as badges of honor. All Dwarves above the age of ten years have beards, and even very young children are given knitted imitation beards, to keep away the evil they believe will befall any Dwarf whose neck is exposed.

Prevailing values
A grumpy, suspicious exterior hides a creative soul. They are imaginative, but tend to express this through their works - especially crafts. This imaginative spirit also causes them to come up with increasingly improbable ways for competing Dwarves to steal their precious secrets.

Aesthetics
Dwarves are a very practical people, and do not really go for ornamentation. This does not mean that Dwarven goods have no detail, but rather that all their detail serves a practical purpose, and is usually considered rather attractive.

On a more personal level, all respectable Dwarves have sturdy beards. The beard is there to protect the wearer’s neck from sneaky rivals.

History
As usual for the Dwarven people, little is known about their creation and emergence except through the items they created. Their earliest metal artefacts date back to the very dawning of the Second Age, before even the founding of The Forge, the great dwarven city burrowed within the Dourkarst Mountains, and much before other peoples even considered metalworking. A solid people who like solid things, they make things to last. It is said that true Dwarven steel never rusts.

For centuries the Dwarves toiled under the mountains, beyond the ken of Human, Elf or Orc. It was not until the end of the Second Age that Dwarves calling themselves the Brazenbrows cut their way through the Razor Mountains and brought Dwarven culture into direct contact with the outside world.

A darkness had stewed among the Dwarves for a long time, however, each clan becoming increasingly jealous about their crafting secrets. Now, though, the previously competitive but peaceful people turned against each other, murderous in their obsession with their secrets. The Brazenbrows, in an attempt to contain the bloody feuds, fortified the pass they had created. Beyond this stronghold of Eastgate, The Forge and its surroundings became warzone, many generations of Dwarves littering the ground with their bones as the multitude of cunning traps took their toll.

Not long ago, their centuries-long and bloody civil war, the Clanstrife, was brought to an end by a force of warriors known as the Sentinels of the Spark. These disciplined soldiers followed the teachings and leadership of Dwarven philosophers known as the Firegazers. The Firegazers argued that the Dwarven people had lost their way by prizing application over invention, destruction over creation. Tapping into these deep-seated sentiments among their people, they instituted ritual competitions to solve rivalries.

The scars of civil war still show in the character of a typical Dwarf. As the secrets of the crafts have been handed from generation to generation, so have old grudges, and it is exceedingly rare for a Dwarf to not be suspicious of a Dwarf from another clan.