Khurdan

Khurdan - The Capital of the Obsidian Concord

Khurdan is not merely a city—it is the spine of the world, carved into the cold bones of a mountain that has never The Tribunal sits in the Hall of Echoes, where every case is etched into the walls in molten script. Hidden deep beneath the eternally snow-capped peak of Mount Valthrun, Khurdan is both fortress and tomb, monument and engine, echoing with the quiet churn of ancient machinery and the weight of time unbroken.

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“Stone remembers what flesh forgets.”

The Concord does not build anew—it excavates, reclaims, reforges. Every hall in Khurdan has existed before, in some form, merely repurposed or expanded with painstaking care. The city is layered, both vertically and historically, with civilizations stacked atop one another like strata in the earth.

The City Itself:

• The Halls of Khurdan – The uppermost level of the capital, closest to the surface, houses the administrative caste, merchant lords, and the Iron Tribunal. Towers of blackglass and steel-stone pierce upward into cavernous vaults, their interiors lit by luminous gem-veins running through the rock like stars frozen in place.
• The Firevaults – Beneath the Crown lies the industrial heart of Khurdan, a thunderous region of forge-clusters, magma channels, and hammer-strikes that echo like drums of war. Here, Deepforged Titans are awakened in halls the size of cities. The air is thick with soot, steam, and whispered oaths.
• The Wyrmroots – The oldest layers of the city, largely abandoned and sealed, are rumored to hold the remains of ancient alliances with forgotten gods, and deep things that still crawl behind the obsidian walls. No light reaches the Wyrmroots, and even the Iron Tribunal dares not pass judgment there.

The Deepforged Titans

These towering constructs, plated in rune-etched obsidian and brass, are animated by the spirits of long-dead kings who refused the afterlife. When the city is threatened, they awaken. Their eyes burn with magma. Their hearts beat with the rhythm of anvils.

• They are rarely seen outside the Crucibles, but their footsteps are felt in every stone of Khurdan.

Caste and Control

While the Concord claims unity beneath the mountain, power flows like molten gold—from the highborn down. Bloodlines dictate privilege. The lowest castes, often gnomes and non-dwarven folk, work the forges and mines, their lives bound to debts they did not incur.

• Their only hope of rising is through contracted glory in the surface world, or service to the Tribunal.

The Sealed Depths

Far below Khurdan lie tunnels older than history, barred with runes of binding, warding, and forgetting. Whispers tell of nameless engines that once powered cities beneath the Concord, and of beings that carved the first runes in the world.

The Tribunal does not speak of what lies there. They simply ensure no one ever returns.

Khurdan’s Philosophy

“We do not move forward. We dig deeper. We refine.”

In Khurdan, change is seen as weakness, and stability as divinity. The surface world’s empires burn and rebuild—Khurdan endures, layered in certainty, buried in tradition, and fortified by law that has never once bent.