The Dwarven East Mercantile Company
A massive mercantile operation, the dwarves have (in typical dwarf fashion) managed to get their fingers into an awful lot of pies. There is an uneasy alliance with the Merchant and Sailors' Guild, whose legitimate business interests and those of the East Mercantile company often intersect, but dwarves are not very fond of humans as a rule. They have a long racial memory, and the loss of their war with the humans still stings many older dwarfs.
Public Agenda
Mythology & Lore
The Forge Covenant
Long ago, before the Dwarves sealed their gates to the world, there was a reckoning among the mountain clans. The gods of stone and steel decreed that dwarven hands were meant to shape, not to squander—that wealth was a flame, and only the worthy could hold it without being burned.
One among them, Thag Goldbinder, sought wisdom deep in the Kukiri Chasm, where even the eldest of dwarves feared to tread. There, in the blackened depths of Tellus, he met a being known only as The Veiled Smith—a figure wreathed in shadow and cinder, whose hammer rang with the sound of prophecy. “If the dwarves would not walk among men, then men must come to them,” the Smith intoned. “You shall be the voice, the hand, the gate. And in return, no wealth shall be beyond your grasp.”
Thag emerged from the caverns with a new doctrine—one that his kin called heresy, but which would become law. The dwarves would withdraw from the world, but not from power. The East Mercantile Company was founded as both a trade guild and a sacred order, tasked with upholding the Forge Covenant. They alone could deal with outsiders, and their contracts were said to be blessed by the very anvil upon which the world was forged.
To break a contract with them was not merely a slight—it was to invite ruin, as it was whispered that The Veiled Smith still watched over his chosen, ready to hammer betrayers into dust.
Divine Origins
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