Dhargar the Iron-Beards

The stone never forgets, never forgives
There was a time long ago in the memory and hearts of the Dhargar, a time before the grievances, the betrayals when the only burden we carried was the well being of our brother and sister dwarves. Our mountain fortresses stood tall, our gates unbreakable, our forges ever a glow and halls ringing with the falling hammers of our crafters. From the deeps the brave duergar who held the Doors of the Dark Vaults closed traded to us rare riches, from the lush hills and their misty valleys the Hargar brought us fine wood and food. Together we worked wonders. We were the heart and soul of the Dwarven people and were proud to stand tall in our mountain halls. We stood resolute and reliant upon no one against the giants, our keeps weathered the storms of war time and again until the Ghoblyns and orcs came and even then when our Hargar kin lost their homes to the rampaging orcs and their Ghoblyn masters we protected them in our mountain forts and we held the tide that was the enemy at bay, and we could have held until the last of them withered and died of old age! Yet the Hargar seen fit to bring us into an alliance with fickle gnomes, conniving elves and lazy halflings. We could not deny they had the right to do so and the Golden Alliance was good, it brought us victory, made our holds fat with new riches from trade and allowed us to retake every inch of ground we had lost. Yet never did it sit well with us to be too relient on others, to let anyone see we had suffered for showing weakness of any kind is not the Dhargar way.
Big Brother is best brother
Among the first dwarven kings our peoples father Dharnok the Smith-King was eldest brother and thus we the Dhargar took upon ourselves the duty of guiding and protecting the other Dwarves. We wanted to show them our strength and resolve, what it truly meant to have souls of stone and iron. Emotion became a private thing, reserved for close family and friends or when none could see you loose face we could not let our kin see weakness or anything but steely resolve. We wrote the first laws, we formed the first professional armies, we shaped the dwarves as if they were stone and we master sculptors. Always though we knew the Dhargars duty was to be the stern older brother, to protect our kin from themselves and from the outsiders who would use them.
A face of stone hides a shattered heart
After an age of golden success we felt it was time to free our brothers of the burdens of the duty of leadership by declaring ourselves the sole rulers of our empire. The Mountain Kings act would free our kin from political duty and allow them to better focus on their crafts and other works. Or so had the Duergar told us, but we can not blame them entirely for it was we who agreed to this and voted for the act inspire of the Hargars adamant arguments. The War of My Brother Axe seen generations of co-existence shattered, dwarf spat hateful grudges against fellow dwarves, we were accused of tyranny and lusting after power and the Hargar gave us no choice but to subdue their rebellions'.
Duty demanded we wage that war, duty drove us to don our mail and take up arms against our brothers and in those fields of blood soaked battle behind our iron war masks our stone hearts cracked. We won a victory but at what cost? Most of the Hargar left and what few remained were a defeated people the spark of fire in their hearts smashed to dying cinders. The Duergar knew it we think, they knew how in our hearts where we thought none could see we were just as passionate and just as caring as any other dwarf and it made their coup all the more effective.
The Grey Betrayers
When they came they were changed, ancient unseelie magic had warped them given them resistances and abilities not natural for dwarves and worse then this transformation they allied themselves with our sworn enemies, Orcs, the Degenerate Goblinoids and Giants. They had forsaken the Dwarven Way and turned on us in their greed and petty egotism. I will spare you the details of the war but in the end we won, most of the Duergar were driven beyond the Vaults into the wilderness of the underworld and we remained, we endured and we stood stoic in the face of our near extinction. We gazed upon our once empire, upon the empty lands that would be reclaimed by nature, the deep tunnels that could have to be collapsed for safety and all that we had lost. Yet we are dwarves we are sons of stone and iron and we endured this. We rebuilt, we watched our borders shrink but we did not wallow in such loss we went on with a grim determination and learned to stand strong once more.
The Dwarven Way
We have learned not to trust easily, we have learned that even friends and family can turn upon you, we have learned that foolishness comes in allowing control to slip for even a moment. They call us isolationists we say that we are self-relient, they call us stubborn we say that we do not budge because we know the right of it, they accuse us of being dour and we can not deny that but it is a lesson taught us by history. We are the Dhargar the Kings and Queens under the mountain, the big brother of the Dwarven People and even if the world is to end we will face it with stone and iron in our souls and we will prove that our way, the dwarven way is the best way!