Каладрун: Кланы дварфов

Каладрун

On the eastern border of Eredane, the hills rise up, and up, and even higher still; growing into mountains whose tops scrape the very vault of the heavens. These are the Kaladrun Mountains, the greatest mountain range on the continent. Like the Great Forest of Erethor, the Kaladruns run the entire length of Eredane, from the frozen north to the warm seas of the south. It has long been a home and a refuge of the dwarven clans, both in the narrow valleys amongst its peaks and in the caverns nestled in the very roots of the mountains.
This chapter presents detaailed information on the history, geography, culture, and forces at work in the Kaladruns and in the coastal areas of Eredane. The text of this chapter is designated as closed content.

Кланы дварфов

The Kaladruns are an ancient mountain chain that reaches from the frozen north along the eastern coast of Eredane to the Kasmael Sea in the south. They form a vast realm of steep granite, broken only occasionally by basalt cliffs and volcanic slopes. In the north and at higher elevations, deep snow and ice are present year round, and glaciers rest in narrow valleys, their meltwater feeding countless streams and cold mountain lakes. The Kaladruns’ western slopes begin as rugged, grassy foothills on the high plains and climb quickly. The eastern slopes tumble to arid coastal deserts where the land is covered by broken rock and low, shifting sand dunes.
There are many passes through the Kaladruns, but most are treacherous and open only in high summer. The mountains are riddled with natural caverns and dwarven tunnels, some of which in past times were part of the trade routes from the lowlands. Old dwarven ruins can be found throughout this range: surface cities, fortresses, and underground holdfasts destroyed by the forces of the Shadow and long abandoned. Signs of the elder fey are tucked into lost valleys, towers, and crumbled ruins, hiding ancient secrets. Some say there are older things in the deepest underground caverns: remnants of a people older even than the elthedar.
The high peaks of the Kaladruns are always cold, from the frozen north to the tropical south, where the mountains are still capped in snow year round. The climates of the lower elevations show more seasonal variation, matching those of the surrounding lowlands. The western slopes are usually dry but receive heavy rains in the late winter and spring. The eastern slopes are hidden in the mountains’ rain shadow and turn to arid desert before they reach the sea.

История

 The dwarves of the Kaladruns were once a peaceful people, content to pursue their great arts: building cities of stone and crafting metal goods to trade with the other peoples of Eredane. Though often contentious and stubborn, the clans were of noble stock. Family relations, intermarriage, and trade kept them closely allied.
Then, in the Time of Years, the orcs came. According to legends told among other fey peoples, the orcs were friends and allies of the dwarves in the ancient times, but dwarves bitterly reject the very idea after thousands of years of war. When orc raiders came out of the northern mountains as Izrador prodded them into hostility, they slaughtered thousands before the dwarves were able to muster real defenses. The dwarves turned their crafting skills to building fortifications and forging weapons, eventually becoming experts in such things. Their great strength and fortitude served them well as they trained for battle.
By the time the Dorns brought true war to Eredane, the dwarves were well prepared to meet the threat, having been tempered in their ongoing skirmishes with the orcs. By the time Izrador made his first bid for power, the dwarves were hardened and cunning soldiers; they were key to the victory at Eris Aman. When the Sarcosans invaded, those riders of the open plains quickly learned to leave the stout and formidable warriors to their mountains, and when the Shadow rose a second time, the long warrior tradition of the dwarves was one of the only reasons Eredane was not lost. By the end of the Second Age, the greatest builders and craftspeople in all Eredane had become the greatest warriors as well.
In the thousand years of the Third Age, while the other peoples lived in relative peace, the dwarven clans were forced to continue the war against the Shadow. Izrador’s orcs and his other minions had held the northern Icewall Mountains since before the First Age, and during the Third, they continued to force their way into the southern mountains. The dwarves continued to fight, but as they suffered attrition, the orcs only seemed to grow in numbers.
As the Third Age wore on and the human lands descended into a battered age of civil war and economic ruin, the dwarven clans became even more isolated in their mountain realm. They abandoned trade and any craft not used to battle the Shadow’s forces. Their lives became endless rounds of patrols, watches, fighting, and weapon making, and if a skill or craft did not kill the minions of Izrador, it was of no value to the dwarves. Their cities decayed as their fortresses grew, and deep holdfasts were expanded as the surface was permanently abandoned for the relative safety of the underground. Not only did the dwarves sever ties with the lowlands, but the clans also began to lose contact with each other. Travel had become too dangerous, and there were not enough resources to trade or share as it was. Isolation increased, and over time, many clans lost touch altogether.
Now the Kaladrun Mountains are a realm contested by the minions of Izrador in the north and the fractured dwarven clanholds in the south. The dwarves have become an isolated, haunted people who live only to battle the orc legions and their foul allies. The clans have become distrustful even of each other, and paranoia is common among the clanholds’ leaders. The only hope to which most dwarves now aspire is to kill a few more orcs before they themselves die in battle.

Население

There were once as many as six hundred dwarven clans in the Kaladruns, each with thousands of kin living in hundreds of settlements and outposts from the Icewall Mountains in the north to the fabled city of Bodrun in the south. Now, through the isolation and attrition of endless war, there are fewer than two hundred living clans, and some of these have as few as one hundred members.
Fewer than 160,000 dwarven clanfolk now survive in the Kaladruns. Of these, most live underground, but perhaps 25,000 are Kurgun, the “surface dwellers,” living in the decaying cities from more peaceful times. There are also humans living in the western valleys of the Kaladruns, and a few have even earned membership in Durgis Clan. They are refugees from Dornish towns such as Low Rock, and most are members of House Orin, historical allies and trade partners of the dwarves. Perhaps 10,000 human refugee descendants live and fight beside the dwarves.

Поселения

In the distant past, most dwarven settlements were built in hidden mountain valleys. They were constructed on the surface of the world, made of unmatched stonework or cut from living rock. The grand scale, beauty, and clever architecture of these cities were unmatched in their time and by anything since. Slender towers, ornate walls, pillared halls, grand fountains, massive bridges, and great domes were crafted with such skill that their fantastic size, delicacy, and durability seemed magical. Mountain streams provided water that was stored in vast underground cisterns, and terraced mountainsides provided crops and pastureland. Long, narrow roads cut and tunneled along cliff faces and through high passes, connecting each town to many others.
The dwarves always excavated extensive underground chambers and caverns as part of their mining efforts. They used them as storage, treasuries, foundries, and refuges against raids by Shadow forces. In the centuries after the Dornish invasion, the dwarves expanded these warrens into viable settlements, and over time, they abandoned many of the surface cities in favor of these safer holdfasts beneath the ground. They provided greater protection against Izrador’s minions and supported the ethic of isolation already beginning to grow among the dwarven people.
Now the surface cities lie empty, resources stripped, buildings crumbling, waterways clogged, and terraces overgrown. Their only inhabitants are occupying armies of the Shadow and the Kurgun, the dwarves who still cling to life on the surface. The Kurgun live in huge and ancient citadels that they keep in good repair, or in fortified quarters of otherwise ruined cities.
Over the long centuries, the dwarven holdfasts have expanded into mazelike complexes. They feature endless passages and halls and link to mines and natural caverns that reach to great depths. The living spaces include apartments, workshops, gathering halls, plazas, training yards, dungeons, fighting pits, and anything else needed to guarantee the survival and self-sufficiency of a community. Subterranean streams power waterwheels used to run forge bellows and lift water into community cisterns. The stream water is also used in the mines and to carry away waste. Most spaces are unlit, but larger public areas feature sconces and great fires that burn with heatless arcane light.
Those dwarves who have survived the endless warring have done so in part by turning their holdfasts and surrounding caverns into veritable killing zones. They have installed devious and lethal traps of every sort. There are murder holes, suspended rockfalls, and deep, water-filled pits covered with false floors. There are countless bolt-holes and hidden passages that offer shortcuts to places normally accessed by more time-consuming routes. Every approach to a holdfast is well guarded, and massive stone gates trap potential invaders in open killing chambers. Guards with ranged weapons crew high, hidden ledges, and floodgates allow huge cisterns to fill the chambers with water.
The attrition of endless war has left most holdfasts sparsely inhabited, and large sections of many have been abandoned or sealed off as additional defense against invaders. Others have been abandoned altogether, as members of a given clan consolidate their numbers into more viable communities.

Язык

The traditional language of the mountain fey is Old Dwarven. The tongue is as ancient as the people and has changed little in thousands of years. The various clans have always had their own regional accents and colloquialisms that have led to distinct clan dialects. Over the past millennium, however, the increasing isolation of the clans has exaggerated these dialects so that most are now unique languages.
Clans within a given region can usually understand each other’s dialects, but those separated by much distance cannot. Unfortunately, the lack of trade and communication means that many dwarves have never learned Old Dwarven and can speak only their local tongue.
Many dwarves are also fluent in Orcish or the Shadow Tongue, for knowing the language of one’s enemy can provide an advantage
in combat. Though many dwarves once spoke the language of their gnome cousins, only the oldest know it now and see scant reason to pass it on to the young. The Kurgun are a more open culture, as shown by their linguistic choices. Indeed, in order to survive, they must learn a wide variety of languages, including Orcish, Shadow Tongue, Trader’s Tongue, Erenlander, and Norther.

Правительство

The dwarves have never had a centralized government. Instead, they pay allegiance to individual clans that were founded in the Time of Years and consist of allied groups of extended families. Clans are autonomous and are ruled by chieftains called the clan dor, or “stone.” The lands over which a clan has control are called its clanhold, and each settlement within a clanhold is governed by a clan noble called a dorthane, or “lesser stone.”
The position of stone is not necessarily a hereditary one, as each stone grooms one or two young protégés to take over when they die or are no longer able to fulfill their duties. Nonetheless, these stones-to-be are often the child or some other relative of the ruling stone, and so the line is often hereditary by default.
Over the past centuries of constant warfare, a rite of formal challenge has evolved among most clans that allows clan members to challenge the leadership of a dor or dorthane. The challenge is a martial one in which the challenger calls out the stone in single combat. Particularly aged or ill stones can rely on loyal champions if they choose. The combat is traditionally fought unarmored, with matching axes, and to the death. If the stone or their second wins, the stone remains ruler, but if the challenger wins, the challenger becomes stone. When this happens, the new stone must often face a rash of challengers loyal to the displaced stone.
Most stones keep councils of experienced advisors who assist them in governing their people. Clan councilor is an honored position, and most dor once served as councilors in their time.
In the past, large delegations from each clan gathered every few years or when the dwarven people as a whole faced certain issues, such as the Dornish invasion or the construction of the Fortress Wall. These gatherings were called clanmoots and were as close as the dwarves ever came to a unified government. Clanmoots served not only political purposes but also important social ones, helping to spread knowledge and news from clan to clan and to maintain alliances. It has been centuries since the last clanmoot and perhaps 1,500 years since the last that included a majority of the clans. The loss of the clanmoot tradition has only led to the further isolation and weakening of the dwarven people.

Религия

The dwarves long ago abandoned their faith in the Lost Gods, and in their fatalistic way, they are certain that the gods have forsaken the people of Aryth forever. What little faith they have has been transferred to the powerful spirits that inhabit the natural world. The spirits of the mountains are even more enigmatic and ethereal than those of the Great Wood or the plains, manifesting in subtle ways if at all. As a result, many dwarves simply do not believe in them or at least refuse to pay them homage.
Those who do believe honor a powerful but subtle entity they call the Dorogin, or the “Spirit of the Rock.” They believe that the Dorogin manifests in the echoes that pass from cavern to cavern. Many dwarves claim that these echoes are voices of the rock that impart wisdom and warning to those who listen carefully. Many believe that these echoes can convey the best routes to the surface, where to hunt orts, or warnings of approaching enemies. Though subtle echoes and vibrations can indeed give away the footfalls of the Shadow’s troops, most younger dwarves think the Dorogin is nonsense and holds no more power in the underground than the superstitions of the old.

The Sun and the Moon

The dwarves have not always lived underground, and the skies of Aryth are not unknown to them. Since the First Age, dwarves have told stories of Father Sun and Mother Moon. Though they are not worshiped as gods, the sun and the moon play key roles in dwarven mythology. Endless fables tell how the sun and the moon created the world and the fey. They tell how the sun is a great warrior and punisher of the wicked. They tell that the moon is the mother of all and the source of the world’s magic. The warnings and morals the tales offer are used by dwarven parents to guide their children and serve to define what is honorable and what is not among adults. The fables are rich in meaning, history, and social tradition and could do much to teach outlanders about dwarven culture and explain their ways. Many are also simply meant to be entertaining—adventurous, funny, or frightening. 
According to the fables, when they are not crossing the sky, the sun and moon rest deep within the underground. This is why, the dwarves say, they rise from and sink into the earth with the passing of each day. Many say it is the hot, yellow blood of Father Sun that seeps through the ground to form veins of gold and the cool, white blood of Mother Moon that forms silver. As a consequence, stylized suns and moons are common motifs in dwarven art, especially on objects made of these metals. Sun and moon designs are found in all dwarven crafts, from the shape of a city gate and the engravings on the head of an axe to the traditional moon amulets of the dwarven loremasters.

Торговля и ремесло

Dwarves are likely the most talented crafters of stone and steel in Eredane, and even centuries of war have not entirely dulled their skills, even if it has killed their artistry.

Stonecunning

Dwarves are masters of stoneworking and stone architecture. Their ancient cities and holdfasts are fantastic examples of their craft, and it once seemed as if there were no limits to what they could build from rock. At the height of Erenland culture, dwarven architects and builders were in great demand across the human realm and played key roles in the construction of edifices such as the Bridge Towers of the Kalif in Alvedara and the Great Badrua in Sharuun.
Though the fundamental skills may still exist, the pride of art that once went into dwarven stonework is all but lost. Most stone craft goes into repair and upkeep, and few things new are built. The rare exceptions are constructed in haste and serve only function. The ancient traditions, though not quite dead, are surely dying.

Masters of Metal

If the dwarven people can be said to have a spirit, then that spirit surely manifests itself in their metalworking. All dwarves have some level of aptitude for metalworking, but many aspire to greatness. Whether making jewelry, armor, blades, gears, wheels, or children’s toys, the dwarves work metal with such skill and passion it seems a kind of magic. Indeed, most dwarven arcane practices focus on working and enchanting metal and metal objects. Both their magical and mundane metallurgical techniques are closely guarded secrets, and their foundries and workshops are as clever as they are mysterious.
In the process of becoming master smiths, dwarves also became master miners. The millennia they have spent digging in the earth after ore have made them experts in the art of finding precious metals and in the science of underground engineering. These practices, combined with their stoneworking skills, are what ultimately allowed the dwarves to master the underground and build their vast holdfasts.
Metal goods, especially tools, weapons, and armor, were once the core commodities of dwarven trade with other peoples. Dwarven wares were highly coveted by the cultures of Eredane and were traded for cloth, leather, tobacco, wine, medicine, and magics across the realms. Ultimately, the peoples of the plains became so dependent on dwarven metal goods that as the dwarves became increasingly isolated, these other peoples discovered that time and neglect had cost them much of their own metalworking skills. Never has this loss been so telling as it is today.
Sadly, the pride and joy with which the dwarves once pursued the art of metalworking have been lost in the long years of warfare with the Shadow. Beauty and delicacy have been supplanted by the pursuit of lethal function. Few smiths forge anything now but weapons and armor and the tools to make them. Though these specific skills have been honed to perfection, the artistic ones, dedicated to form and beauty, have been lost to the ravages of war. Most dwarven smiths no longer have either the time or the soul to mourn their passing.

Gift of the mMoon

There is a legend among the dwarves that Mother Moon took a handful of fire from Father Sun’s crown and cooled it in her silver grasp. She then buried it in the roots of the Kaladrun Mountains where her dwarven children would someday find it. In doing so, Mother Moon is said to have given the dwarves the priceless gift of mithral.
Mithral is a wondrous ore that only the dwarves know how to find and smelt, and its forging is perhaps the most closely guarded of their secrets. Mithral is a rare, silvery metal that is far lighter and stronger than seems natural. Armor made from mithral provides superior protection, and weapons crafted from it make the keenest cuts, all while remaining amazingly light. Mithral arms are incredibly rare, even in dwarven lands.

Food and Fare

Dwarves have voracious appetites and are willing to eat just about anything to fill their bellies. Unfortunately, their mostly underground world offers a limited and often unsavory fare.
Dwarves depend on orts—large and vicious subterranean rodents that can reach 60 pounds or more—as a staple food and provider of resources. Their greasy meat is eaten, and broths are made from their blood and bone meal. Their hides are used to make boots and other leather goods, and even their hair can be used to spin crude yarn. Orts are usually hunted; while many holdfasts keep semidomestic orts, they are loud, smell foul, and make for vicious livestock.
Underground dwarves compost their waste and use it to farm mushrooms of many kinds. Some are large and flavorless but rich in nutrition. Others are small and pungent and add flavor to other foods. Some are even used in medicines and poultices that prevent infection.
The Kurgun are the farmers of the mountains, raising crops of rich grain, rice, potatoes, and various vegetables, as well as maintaining livestock like goats, mountain pigs, game hens, and rabbits. The surface dwarves trade this produce with the subterranean clans for raw ore, worked metal, and mushrooms.

Пути и традиции

These are the traditions that can be found amongst the dwarven people. Though war has worn on these traditions, the bones of their ways still remain.

Clans of the Dwarves

The dwarven clan structure is the basis and focus of dwarven culture. The ambitions and needs of the clan outweigh those of its individual members, and loyalty is not only a matter of honor but is ingrained in the soul of every dwarf. The weight of history and the threat of the Shadow demand that the clan comes first, and all but the most craven dwarf would rather die than betray their clan or another member of it.
The histories recorded in each clanhold’s hall of heroes describe the purported origins of the clan. Many record mythic references to a great hero of the Time of Years who founded the clan as one of their many exploits. Some read as if the clan had always existed, like some aspect of primal nature. Some even claim that Mother Moon spawned each clan’s original stone and scattered them across the Kaladruns. Many loremasters believe the clans arose slowly as the elder fey refugees who fled into the mountains established cohesive groups and began to become their own people.
At the height of dwarven culture in the midst of the Second Age, there were as many as six hundred different clans. Now there are fewer than two hundred. Attrition in the constant war against the Shadow has been brutal, and many clans that have not been wiped out entirely have been forced to join with their cousins simply to survive.

Thedron Clan

Thedron Clan was once the largest and most influential clan among the dwarves. Its wealth and holdings were vast and its weapon enchanters unmatched. It often led the clanmoots and frequently spoke for the clanmoots in parley with other peoples. Thedron Clan built the wondrous Stone City at Calador and later constructed the largest of the dwarven holdfasts beneath it.
Now, the clan is all but broken. The Stone City lies in ruins, destroyed by an army of orcs and giants, and the remaining clan members now live in an almost constant state of siege. They are virtually trapped in their own holdfast, confined to a small region of the underground by the Shadow forces arrayed against them.

Fodrin Clan

Fodrin Clan was a large clan once well-known across Eredane as metal traders and stone architects. In fact, the dwarves of Fodrin Clan supervised the construction of the Bridge Towers in Alvedara. Fodrin Clan built the vast holdfast of Idenor, one of the most elaborate and beautiful cities of the underground.
No one knows for sure what happened to Fodrin Clan, but it disappeared soon after the coming of Izrador. No survivors or witnesses have spread rumors about its extinction, a likely sign that its fate was dramatic, sudden, and cruel. All that remains of the holdfast at Idenor now are ruin-filled caverns blasted by terrible magics and half flooded by a breached spring.

Durgis Clan

Durgis Clan is one of the few clans that make up the Kurgun, those dwarves who still live predominantly on the surface. Durgis Clan was never a large one and was often looked down upon by other dwarves, as it was the only clan that would accept outsiders into its ranks. Durgis Clan had long been willing to accept dwarves who had been banished from other clans and so were often considered a clan of criminals and miscreants.
The willingness to accept outsiders would eventually prove a boon to Durgis Clan. The outcasts they embraced have typically been so grateful to have a home that their loyalty verges on fanaticism. Their openness also meant that the attrition of the Third Age did not have as great a net effect on Durgis Clan. In fact, as refugees from other clans continue to join, Clan Durgis has become one of the largest dwarven clans in existence today.
There are rumors among the other clans that one of the branches of Durgis Clan has even accepted the membership of a group of orc dissidents who fled the north. They are opposed to the ways of Izrador and are said to fight alongside the dwarves as allies against the Shadow.

Gorand Clan

Gorand Clan is one of the only clans that is a mixture of underground-dwelling and Kurgun dwarves. They live in the southern city of Bodrun and its surrounding settlements. In the early years of the Third Age, Gorand Clan sent warriors north to help their kin fight the Shadow, but by the middle of the age, they withdrew from what little was left of collective dwarven culture. Though the minions of Izrador occasionally make raids from the conquered holdfast of Drumlen, they have not yet moved far enough south within the mountains to be a constant threat to Gorand Clan. As a result, the lifestyle of Gorand Clan is more like that of ancient dwarves than that of other clans.
Gorand Clan still actively trades with the humans in the isolated coastal town of Landfall, and up to three hundred dwarves can be found in that town at any time. The clan also still trades with the human freeriders of Erenland, though in well-guarded secret. Gnomes and humans run caravans into the foothills south of Bodrun, where they are met by dwarves who have come through hidden ways to the surface. The dwarves trade weapons and armor for medicine, wine, magical elixirs, and news of the outside world.

The Fallen Odrud Clan

The clanhold of Dorin Clan was one of the northernmost of all the clans, hidden among the steep crags of the Icewall Mountains. In the years ending the Second Age, long before the final rise of the Shadow, Izrador’s minions tired of the roadblock these warriors represented to their movement through the mountains. They unleashed a horde of insidious magical creatures into the Icewall Mountains, and these creatures sought out and possessed individual dwarves of Dorin Clan. A terrible but brief civil war ensued, as the possessed turned on their one-time kin, slaughtering them all.
Now, generations later, the kin of Dorin Clan have become truly evil worshippers of Izrador and hate the other dwarves with the same passion as their orc allies. They battle frequently with other clans and divulge dwarven secrets to the Shadow. They infiltrate dwarven settlements posing as refugees and then betray them from within, fostering distrust among the other clans. The other clans have grown to despise the Dorin and often refer to them as the Odrud, or “Poison Blood,” Clan. On the rare occasions when members of the Odrud are captured, they are brought back alive and subjected to slow torture before being thrown into pits with packs of half-starved orts.
There are persistent stories, supported by a few eyewitness accounts, that the great smiths among the Odrud Clan forged a quartet of enchanted mithral weapons for Izrador’s Night Kings: a terrible sword, a pale staff, and a cruel spear, each imbued with frightful and devastating enchantments. While a weapon was supposedly forged for the dragon called the Wrath of Shadow, the tale has the behemoth consuming the item as soon as it was presented.

Outcasting

Dwarves who commit crimes against their clans or otherwise break clan traditions, oaths, or taboos are typically punished with outcasting. When banished, a criminal is branded on their right cheek with a symbol of their crime and on their left with a symbol of their former clan, then taken to the borders of their former clanhold and forbidden to return on punishment of death. Most other clans typically refuse such criminals succor and may even kill them on sight. The only clan to accept such outcasts is Durgis Clan, and even it will not accept those branded for murder, treason, or other equally vile crimes.

Loremasters

Dwarven loremasters are channelers of significant power who have dedicated their lives to the arcane protection of their clans. Their magic helps shield the clanholds from the spies and agents of the Shadow and assists the dor in setting their defenses and anticipating the actions of the enemy. Loremasters also help with food production and often create powerful enchantments for weapons and armor.
Most importantly, however, is the loremasters’ role as keepers of history and law. They maintain the clans’ halls of heroes, and it is their sacred duty to ensure that the clan always knows their past, even in the face of their despair for the future. In past times, every settlement had a loremaster, who in turn had many apprentices who helped with research and lesser magics. In time, these apprentices would become loremasters themselves and take on their own trainees. During the Third Age, the terrible attrition cost many clans their loremasters as well as their warriors. The elders were often killed in raids, and few younger dwarves are willing to forego battling the Shadow forces for the subtler ways of loremaster apprenticeship.

Hall of Heroes

Every older clan settlement has a building or chamber called the hall of heroes. Here the loremaster and their assistants record the history of their clan on thick stone pillars. Some pillars list significant battles and events. Others hold descriptions of the exploits of great dwarven heroes who died in combat, and still others are covered in bas-reliefs of ancient myths and legends. The walls are typically lined with cherished works of clan art and items of historical significance. Huge books with metal pages, and some rarer ones with paper leaves, are displayed in these halls, as are the weapons of ancient heroes when they are not carried into battle by the current clan champions.
Over the centuries, the dwarven reverence for histories and artifacts of their past has increased in proportion to their despair for the future. It is as though its past glory and honor is all that remains of a clan, despite the fact that its people may live on. Pride in the past seems to have replaced any sense of hope for the future among the dwarven holdfasts of the Kaladruns.

Foe hunters

During their long wars with the forces of Izrador, the dwarves have become experts in the ways of orcs, goblin-kin, and giants. Not only have they learned their battle tactics and how best to fight them, but they have also learned much about their cultures, languages, and religious beliefs. This knowledge allows the dwarves to exploit weaknesses or to predict the sorts of responses they might get from tactical raids, bluffs, and torture. This knowledge has been hard won and is carefully passed on to younger warriors in hopes that it might keep them alive a little longer, allowing them to kill just a few more Shadow soldiers before they are cut down. 

Pit Fights

Over the past several centuries, a gruesome tradition has evolved among the more bloodthirsty dwarven clans. Many holdfasts, and even a few Kurgun cities, now feature small arenas where captured minions of the Shadow are used as fodder in brutal pit fights. These bloody combats serve several purposes and have become a major aspect of life in some clans.
Dwarven adolescents are first blooded in the pits in a ceremony that marks their transition to adulthood. A young warrior is typically pitted against a half-starved goblin or an orc whose leg has been broken. If the young person survives, they are awarded full status in the clan.
The pits are also used to train warriors under realistically dangerous circumstances against living enemies. Pit training is one of the reasons even young dwarves are formidable fighters against the Shadow’s legions. The pits are also used when challenges are made against a clan’s dor. This is typically where the formal combat takes place so that it can be witnessed by the entire settlement.
Finally, the most subtle and perhaps disturbing purpose for the pit fighting is its entertainment value. Life in the dwarven lands is harsh and brutal, with no relief from the oppression of constant war. In the arenas, wild animals are set against enemy captives simply for the cathartic, primal thrill of experiencing the bloodshed. Dwarf champions also fight the captives. These are often the best-attended combats, and the more formidable the opponents, or the better the weapons they are given, the bigger the thrill of the audience. Skilled or lucky captives have killed not a few dwarven warriors, and yet the tradition continues.

Против Тени

The Last Age is just a continuation of millennia of war for the dwarves against the Shadow. Over thousands of years, no people have grown more familiar with war than the dwarves.

The Brothers Kurgun

Most of the dwarven heroes of the war with the Shadow die in obscurity. Few become known outside their own clans, and fewer still are ever known beyond the Kaladruns. Most are warriors, seldom smiths or stoneworkers. That is, until the brothers Kurgun left their mountain home and traveled into the lands of humans. The stories of their exploits are hard to believe, if for no other reason than that they seem to have traveled everywhere and done everything, despite the reign of the Shadow.
The tales claim they rid an Erenlander town of a whole garrison of enemy soldiers simply by challenging them to single combat. They are said to have taught a thousand children to forge blades and to have repaired the Bridge Towers of the Kalif right under the nose of Othaeron the Night King. Whatever the truth of the many stories of the brothers Kurgun, they seem to have become a kind of everyman’s myth and are now a permanent part of the lore of the Last Age.

Harrek of Brendol Clan

Harrek of Brendol Clan is the greatest hero of the surviving dwarves. His clan is small and faces extinction, but his feats of strength, cunning, and skill in combat are unrivaled in modern times. He has killed so many enemy soldiers that even the minions of Izrador know of him, naming him Sorgrander, or “Death Wielder” in the Shadow Tongue.
Harrek is the quintessential dwarf. He despises orcs and lives only to fight them. He has no concept of hope and suffers his own existence simply to protect his kin and shed enemy blood. His only ambition is that his axe be enshrined in the hall of heroes when he is finally killed. He knows just where he wants it to hang and is certain it will only be a matter of time before it joins the weapons of his ancestors.

Kala the Clanless

Kala is the warrior leader of a band of nomadic dwarves who travel the mountains ambushing Shadow forces and surviving off what resources they can steal during their raids. Her small band is all that remains of her clan after ogres overran her clanhold several years ago, killing almost everyone and driving them from their ancestral lands. Kala was only a young fighter then but has matured into an able warrior, and her wisdom and prowess have made her the natural leader of her roving clan.
The band spends most of its time hunting the underground for the Shadow’s minions. They have taken to patrolling the lands of the smaller clanholds, fighting as phantom guardians for the lesser clans. They sometimes shadow other dwarf hunting parties and charge to the rescue if they are attacked. As signs of their patronage, they often leave the severed heads of the enemies they kill near the gates of the holdfasts they protect. Many of the people in these clanholds have come to call their unknown benefactors the Valgard, or the “ancestor ghosts,” and believe they are the shades of their forebears, returned to protect the people.

Loremaster of Calador

The loremaster of Calador is perhaps the oldest dwarf in the Kaladruns and likely the most powerful channeler remaining among the dwarves. She is so old, in fact, that none who live remember her name, honoring her simply as “loremaster.” Her body is weak and wizened, and her eyes are cloudy and blind. Her wit, however, is as sharp as ever, and she has the kind of sight that allows her to peer beyond the chambers of the holdfast and the confines of time. Her counsel has long been one of the only things keeping the besieged dwarven settlement from falling to the orc legions, and her magic is all that sometimes stands between her people and starvation. To all outward appearances, the loremaster is forever positive and confident that her people will survive. In her heart, however, she is convinced that, though she may not live to see it, her people, and eventually all the Kaladruns, will fall to Izrador and pass into eternal darkness.

Smugglers’ Ways

As the dwarves began their retreat into the underground during the Second Age, they maintained many of their old trade routes by excavating connecting passages to the surface. These tunnels led though natural caverns to secret trade rendezvous beyond the mountains, in the foothills, and even out in the high plains. Using the tunnels, the dwarves were able to link their underground communities to their old trade partners without having to use the rambling mountain roads or risk encountering the increasingly frequent orc raiders.
During the Third Age, the passages became known as smugglers’ tunnels and were vital to the maintenance of trade as the dwarves became even more isolationist and the Shadow’s forces more numerous. By the last centuries of the Third Age, the dwarves were trading only with the gnomes, and only through their secret tunnels.
Now, in the face of conquest, many of the tunnels have been sealed by dwarven engineers to protect their holdfasts. Others have caved in through neglect, and still others are forgotten. A very few still host some traffic, as gnome smugglers and spies, human resistance fighters, and a few stubborn dwarves use them to trade information, weapons, and magic. These few are ever wary, however, as many of the secret smugglers’ tunnels of the dwarves have been found by the agents of the Shadow and are no longer so secret.

Sarriors to the Death

The dwarves have fought with the Shadow’s orcs since the early days of the First Age. The dwarves long held the upper hand, but Izrador’s vile influence has constantly set the orcs to wage war against the mountain fey. At the end of the second war with Izrador, his forces withdrew from the human and other fey lands, but they remained in the Kaladruns. They continued to wage war against the dwarves throughout the Third Age and to the present day, slowly gaining better access to supplies and to divine magic in the form of legates. For the dwarves, the conquest of Izrador is not something that happened only one hundred years ago. For them it is something that started a thousand years ago and continues in the battles they fight every day.
Modern dwarven culture is focused entirely on the continuing war effort. Everything dwarves do is somehow related to battle and the warrior craft. It has been this way as long as any remember, and it will continue to be so until the last dwarf falls. Almost without exception, dwarves are fatalistic about the future. They have no hope that Izrador will be defeated, and they have no hope that the dwarves will survive as a people. They are a strangely stoic people who know they are doomed, and yet passionately throw themselves into battle. The only thing the dwarven people have left to care about is the fleeting glory of bringing death to their foes.

Места и особенности

These are a few important locations in the Kaladruns. Many of the great dwarven cities of the past have been shattered and destroyed in war, and now the most important strategic locations tend to be underground.

Calador

Calador, known as Caladale in the old tongue, is one of the oldest and largest of the dwarven settlements and is home to Thedron Clan. Calador was originally founded on the terraced slopes of Cardred Mountain, but as it grew, it took over the very mountain itself. The entire peak was terraced from the green dales of the surrounding valley to the summit, and over the centuries, the mountain came to look less like a thing of nature and more like a dwarven vision of heaven. The living mountain was cut inside and out to form walls, towers, buildings, great halls, individual dwellings, wells, roads, and plazas, all of fantastic architecture and stunning grandeur. By the end of the First Age, the physical distinction between mountain and settlement was lost, and the place simply became known as the Stone City. It was such a wondrous place that even the elves of Erethor made the long journey to Calador simply to see it with their own eyes.
During the Third Age, as the dwarves retreated to the underground, the city was slowly abandoned and began to suffer from neglect. By the time dwarven trade with the outside world had ceased, Calador was all but empty, a shadow of its former glory.
The Calador of today is a vast holdfast far beneath the old city. It is the largest of the underground settlements and home to more than ten thousand dwarves. Most of the surrounding surface and underground regions are held by the forces of Izrador, and the city is under an almost constant state of siege. As a result, the Calador holdfast is one of the most secure, with defense works, traps, and deadfalls guarding every approach. All but a few passages to the surface have been permanently sealed off, and every citizen strong enough to carry a weapon does so. The soldiers of Calador even leave the decapitated bodies of slain orcs piled in the surrounding caverns in hopes of encouraging hungry predators to begin hunting among enemy lines.

Caverns of the Darguul

Since long before the First Age, the dwarves have known that they were not the first peoples to inhabit the underground, and as they dug deeper into the mountains during the later ages, they discovered more about this lost race than perhaps they should have.
The dwarves call them the Darguul, or the “masters of the dark,” and record of their presence is most often revealed in vast caverns inadvertently discovered in the deepest reaches of the Kaladruns by dwarf miners and explorers. Their ruins are ancient, appearing to predate even those of the elder fey. The dwellings, sculptures, and other enigmatic structures they left behind lack a form or logic dwarven engineers can understand and fail to even reveal if their makers were humanoid or monstrous. The few artifacts that remain are also enigmatic, though many practically glow with arcane energy.
The few dwarves who have visited such ruins claim that a palpable sense of evil pervades them and shatters the minds of those who linger too long. Terrible beings reside in some of these places, and whether they are the degenerate descendants of the original inhabitants or simply the foul heirs to a lost kingdom of evil, no one knows. Few who have encountered these entities have lived to tell about it. Even the minions of Izrador seem loath to enter the caverns of the Darguul and take pains to avoid regions of the underground known to hide them.

Drumlen

When the orc hordes came to Drumlen, they anticipated an easy victory. Decades later, their enslaved captives maintain a garrison and village bustling with activity. The Shadow forces worm steadily closer to the old dwarven hold; meanwhile, the captives learn what they can from dwarven artifacts recovered from their diggings.

Falter Pass

During the long centuries of peace, Falter Pass housed soldiers’ families as they served on the Fortress Wall. Here, children and nonfighting family members built a life in the cold wilderness far from their kin. The ruins of those lives still cling to the shattered town, remnants of a time not quite yet forgotten.

Garol

In happier days, weary dwarves gathered at Garol for festivals. Eventually the festival site became a seasonal market, then a permanent settlement dedicated to trade. In the Last Age, weary dwarves still muster at Garol, though now their endeavors tend toward slaughter rather than commerce.

Idenor

Idenor was once the great holdfast of Fodrin Clan and large enough to rival Calador. More than eighty years ago, a terrible earthquake shook the region and even the intermittent contact some clans had with Idenor was lost. The few who have braved the journey there and made it back again claim that Idenor is now nothing but a dead ruin that reeks of fell power. Many of the original chambers are caved in and impassable. Other sections lie broken and half flooded by seeping spring water that once fed the city’s nowsundered reservoir. Strange creatures dwell in those black waters, and other denizens of the underground make their lair within the exposed structures. Some explorers even claim that a vast cavern lies exposed beneath the lowest levels of the Idenor ruins, possibly revealed by the earthquake.
Nowhere is there sign of the dwarves that once inhabited the holdfast. No bones, no cast-off armor or weapons, nothing to show where, how, or even if they died. Some say the inhabitants fled the destruction of the earthquake, which was likely caused by servants of Izrador. Others believe the earthquake unleashed foul demons trapped in a previously undiscovered Darguul cavern. Still others wonder if the Idenor’s inhabitants delved too deep and loosed the wrath of something that should not have been disturbed.

lardun

Once a dwarven city with a subterranean holdfast, now orc legionaries muster in the graffiti-painted halls of ruined Lardun. Supplies from Low Rock feed the war machine as it presses ever southward into dwarven clan lands. Rebels occasionally try to stop the caravans, but each attempt so far ended in utter disaster. Local rebels fear Izrador’s commanders may well know their every move either through magic or some more mundane means.

Coastal Regions

The far eastern coasts of Eredane are largely arid and mainly uninhabited, except for some dwarven clans and isolated human settlements.

Asmadar

The island of Asmadar is a large landmass off the southeast coast of Eredane. It is a rugged place with high central mountains, dense forest, dry plains, and coastal deserts. It is also home to the Asmadarins.
The Asmadarin people are descendants of the original Sarcosan invaders who came to Eredane almost three thousand years ago. They settled the island in preference to the mainland and have lived as traditional horse nomads ever since. To outlanders, they seem a hard and even wild people, but they are also honorable, loyal, and possessed of a rare passion for life.
The Asmadarins live in large extended families joined into interrelated tribes. They no longer live by the social classes of the mainland Sarcosans, but they do have a strict honor code that governs their interactions with each other and their responsibilities to their tribes. They speak an older, more formal version of Colonial with significant colloquial vocabulary, phrases, and syntax. The Asmadarins have no permanent settlements, but they have many traditional campsites where various tribes come together throughout the year for trade, celebrations, and marriages.
When the colonial Sarcosan and Dorn alliance fought against the Old Empire for independence, many Asmadarins joined the fray. They were motivated as much by their passion for living free as by their passion for glory in combat. When the Conclave of Rulers formed the Kingdom of Erenland, a delegation of Asmadarins was in attendance, but the Asmadarins had little interest in the governance of the mainland and returned to their island, content to be left to their ways.
By the time Izrador invaded the Southlands, Asmadar and its inhabitants had long been considered a people apart from the concerns of Erenland, and any Asmadarin who visited the mainland seemed as foreign as any of the outland traders from overseas. The Asmadarins also considered their world a separate one, and all they knew of the war with Izrador was what a few straggling groups of refugees were able to tell them. That is, until recently. Though the Shadow armies have yet to invade Asmadar, the Shadow’s influence appears to have come to the island nonetheless and now threatens the island people.
Ruins lie scattered across Asmadar, and though even the elves do not know this, they predate the remnants of elthedar civilization. These ancient places were built and destroyed long before Asmadar drifted away from the mainland, and still they linger as mysterious ruins in the loneliest and darkest reaches of the island. The islanders have always known they existed, but for as long as memory, the ruins have been taboo. No Asmadarin has been allowed to enter them on pain of being cast out from their tribe. For just as long, Asmadarins have told frightening tales about the ruins and the fell creatures believed to inhabit them, known as horsha, or “white beasts.” These tales were most often used to frighten children away from the ruins, but there has always been an unsettling earnestness to them. Now, recent events bear out the truth of these stories, and it seems that the evil of Izrador has finally been unleashed on the Asmadarins.
For several years now, camps made near any of the old ruins have been plagued by attacks of strange, humanlike beings so pallid as to almost glow in the dark of night. They appear silently and strike without sound. They fight if attacked but are most intent on capturing islanders alive and spiriting them away. If tracked, the creatures’ trails invariably lead back to the ruins, but there is never any further sign of their existence or that of their captives.
Why the horsha take humans and what power Izrador has over them is unknown, but the attacks have begun to change the attitudes of the Asmadarins. They are no longer blissful in their ignorance of the Shadow, and they realize that it is time for their people to fight. Unfortunately, they do not yet know what it is they battle or how it might be defeated.

Traders’ Camp

This is a large, haphazardly populated coastal camp on the island’s northwestern shore, where merchant ships from the mainland used to come several times a year to trade with the islanders. The Erenlanders exchanged weapons and tools for the Asmadarins’ pureblooded horse stock and the exceptional diamonds they collected in the island’s eastern desert. That camp is still occupied, but it has become a huddling community strangled by fear. Its residents, generally those Asmadarins who are too old or too sick to travel, are subject to bullying and intimidation by the pirates of Stormhold, the collaborators of Hallisport, and even insurgents from the mainland demanding hiding places.

Kasmael coast

The southern coast of Erenland is warm and windswept. The vast sea of sword grass meets the endless sea of water in this place, and the two blend together in trackless salt marshes, estuaries, and tidal flats. The land is awash in life of all sorts, and until the last century, the shore had seldom known the footsteps of human or fey.
Once home only to wildlanders and isolated fishing villages, the region was long left to the animals that lived there. As with so many things, the invasion of Izrador’s hordes has changed this, driving thousands of southern Erenlanders into the coastal wilds seeking refuge. The tiny villages there have swelled in population, and small hamlets dot the coastline. Life is hard, as the descendants of city dwellers are forced to become reluctant fishers and hunters and do so with little expertise and few resources. The terrain is deceptively inviting but dangerous with its deep muds, tidal currents, and lack of landmarks. Insects are legion, and many are poisonous; unfortunately, the dangers of navigating the open water are evenly matched by the hunger of the large predators of the coastal marshes.
The Shadow’s minions, for some unknown reason, loathe the ocean and by preference avoid its shores as much as possible. In consequence, the coastal settlements are seldom bothered by raids or enslavers—a hollow boon, as life is hard enough, and most such villages have nothing of value in the first place.

Stormhold

When the pirates of Stormhold realized they could not hold out against Izrador, they traded their honor for safety. Now the former scourges of the Pale Ocean
and Kasmael Sea must bow when the Shadow calls. In return, the traitor princes and warlords grant their ships safe passage though Shadow-controlled waters and access to the slave market in Hallisport. This arrangement brought much needed wealth to the decaying city, allowing the petty captains to build massive palaces atop ancient but still sound foundations that were likely laid down in the First Age.
White Desert The eastern shore of Eredane is a narrow coastal desert created by the rain shadow of the high Kaladruns. The foothills are arid, with scrubby vegetation watered by spring melt, and they are home to a few small Kurgun villages and only the hardiest of wildlife.
Between the foothills and the coast, the desert becomes a lifeless, trackless waste of rocky ground and shifting dunes. Reptiles, insects, and the haunting spirits of the Lost are the only things that dwell in this place, and even in the glory days of the First Age, the most intrepid adventurers avoided it.
The coast itself, though still arid, is at least habitable. The humidity of the sea supports hardy plants, and the ocean’s bounty means that fishers can enjoy a simple coastal existence. Before the coming of the Shadow, few people braved the isolation and hard life of the eastern coast. Now, many human and even some dwarven refugees have found their way to the shore of the Pale Ocean and live a quiet existence, hoping that the wrath of Izrador might pass over their desert land.

Landfall

Landfall is an old settlement that started as a Sarcosan fishing village founded not long after the initial Sarcosan invasion of Eredane. During the centuries of conquest and trade that followed, it became a final provisioning stop for ships plying the trade routes between Eredane and the Old Empire. In time, it became an important trading post in its own right, as several dwarven clans used it as a place to sell their metal wares to merchants from overseas. Even through the economic decline of the Third Age, the city’s isolation insulated it from most of the troubles of the time, as localized free trade with foreign companies continued.
When the flow of trade from the mainland stopped, however, and refugees brought word of what was happening over the mountains, the sussar of Landfall prepared their officers to protect the city. No attack came, though, and life in Landfall slowly returned to a semblance of normalcy. Though on the surface, daily routines seem to continue as they always have, there is an overlying layer of uncertainty that grates on the nerves of Landfall’s inhabitants and creates a palpable tension. They cannot help but wonder when the wave of conquest will come ashore.
Today, under the darkness of the Shadow, Landfall remains the only sizable city almost completely ignored by Izrador’s conquest of Erenland. Whether it is because of its isolation or lack of strategic value, the city has yet to be attacked or occupied by the forces of the fallen god.
This does mean Landfall remains unaffected; without the regular trade goods it used to receive from Erenlander merchant vessels, the city has very meager resources. There is still a life-sustaining trickle of trade with the dwarves of the southernmost Kaladruns and the rogues who sail out of Stormhold, but not enough to make this desert oasis a worthwhile destination for foreign merchants from far lands. Even if it was, no one can remember the last time they saw a foreign trading vessel, and some wonder if Izrador has somehow managed to still the winds around Eredane to prevent aid or an avenue of escape from reaching the beleaguered continent’s shores.
Landfall has perhaps 12,000 human residents and roughly 300 dwarven inhabitants. It also contains about 1,500 residents of human and nonhuman peoples from across the sea who, at least temporarily, make their homes in Landfall. The city sits at the mouth of a small river that barely makes the trek from the Kaladruns to the sea. Careful irrigation supports the agricultural needs of the city, and a large fishing fleet provides the city’s meat. Most of the larger buildings are low, dwarf-built structures that are cool in the desert heat and will likely stand for 10,000 years. The waterfront is large and busy with fishers, and there is usually a ship or three in port at all times.
White Province Nomads and fishers from the White Desert once gathered at White Province to sell produce to merchants who in turn sold to the soldiers’ families in Falter Pass. When Falter Pass fell, the desert dwellers faded back into the wastes. Meanwhile, the stranded merchants struggled to survive until the orc legions finally claimed their homes. That conquest provided the Shadow with an unexpected dividend: trained merchants willing to do anything to survive. They became, and continue to supply, many of the clerks who record and organize the movement and distribution of the orc legions’ supplies.