Eartheart
Eartheart was the primary settlement of the gold dwarves in Faerun and their cultural and spiritual heart.
Government
After the fall of Underhome, the government seat of the Deep Kingdom, the ruling council of Deep Lords relocated to Eartheart. Since it was already a major city within the kingdom and the spiritual heart of the kingdom, the Deep Lords argued it was ideal as the new seat of government as well. It also helped in that most of the other major cities were also all-but devastated by the Great Collapse.
Defences
A lot of the higher levels were filled with sunlight, while in the lower levels the perpetual darkness was fended off with dim watch lanterns and magical lights. These were meant to guard against off the monsters and drow that came up from the Underdark.
Ringing Eartheart was a curtain wall interspersed with great towers known as the Riftedge Towers, each with a garrison of soldiers. These were intended to watch for incursions from the Underdark, but because the towers can't watch the entire breach, they regularly send out patrols of the area in hopes of discovering any new assault before it could made it to the walls.
They maintained a standing militia called the Steel Shields, consisting of over 14,000 dwarven fighters. They diligently monitored all movement in and out of the city.
Infrastructure
After the fall of Underhome as a result of the weight of sea and stone, the gold dwarves fled their broken home to take refuge in this more secure settlement. Other peoples and other dwarf races fled to Eartheart from their old homes and the surface. With the massive influx of people they had to expand the city, a challenge the innovative dwarves met. Whenever they found a level surface, they built a small community, and if none were found their engineers excavated living spaces from the stone so that the communities could bulge from the chasm walls. In order to connect the city's communities, the dwarves created dizzying switchback staircases so narrow that they could only be used in single file. As another way to connect the communities, they bred griffons to facilitate travel and carry messages around the city, but the training of such beasts was costly in money and lives.
Points of interest
Unlike most other temples, those in Eartheart are true dwarven temples: that is, instead of building up, they were built DOWN. The temples would all seem like simple shrines on the surface, but inside would be a spiral descent through extravagant temples where the Mysteries could be explored as they were meant to be: priests in the roots of the earth.
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