The Fall of the Kingdom of the Dwarves

Disaster / Destruction

The accidental discovery of the twisted domain of the Underdark leads to the downfall of the ancient Kingdom of the Dwarves.

The Dwarves, once maligned following their actions in the Treacherous War many years before, were eventually welcomed back into the fray as active contributors to the political sphere of Timberfell. With peace secured in the wake of the combined victory over Tyrucel, a new age of prosperity blanketed the continent, and expansion followed as a natural result. The Elves of Pren’hafan made tentative attempts to contact their distant cousins who had fled to the Feywild many years before, though were met with crushing silence. Groups of brave frontiersmen and women set out to explore the mostly uncharted territories beyond the Talon Pass that separates the Cinderpeak Sierra and the Silverspire Mountains into two distinct ranges. Tabaxi and Tortles from the jungles of Zhotao and the sandy coasts of the Venkator Peninsula made contact with the rebuilding communities of Timberfell, and a new age of prosperity and trade began to dawn - centuries of turmoil seemed to finally be behind the people of Timberfel, and they settled into a new golden agel.

The Dwarven Kingdoms, attempting to mine a route under the Cinderpeak Sierra to build a permanent path to Western Timberfell, continued to dig ever deeper into the earth, building a glittering underground metropolis as they went. The fabled artistry of the Dwarves drew curious peoples from far and wide, and the once isolationist Dwarven Kingdoms happily welcomed their neighbours in to examine the intricate stonework and luminescent mosses that lined the walls of their underground network named Terra’s Depths. Technology progressed rapidly as the peaceful political climate allowed for collaboration and unfettered discovery, and prosperity seized the continent.

But it could not last. Almost four hundred years after the establishment of the Sicarian Empire, a catastrophic tremor tore through the corridors of Terra’s Depths, rending open the earth and spilling grotesque, twisted monsters into the caverns below the Silverspires. The Dwarves, venturing ever deeper into the earth, had broken through to the Underdark.

To this day, the nature of the Underdark is a mystery to most of the peoples of Timberfell, even most of the dwarves. All that most know is that the Underdark predates the Cataclysm, and that for the knowledge of the Underdark to have been lost to the history of even the dwarves and the elves means it must have been created or discovered eons ago. That is enough for most - all they need to know is that this tremor that rent the earth in two was the beginning of the end of the peaceful prosperity enjoyed by the Dwarven Kingdoms.

Brightstone fell first. The ancestral seat of the Dwarven Kingdoms was besieged by a flood of malevolent creatures and King Sildar Stonecleaver slain. Rabid, violent armies of aberrations and twisted reflections of the races above lay waste to its glittering halls and fabled treasure rooms, slaughtering most of the nobility as they surged through the throne rooms of the kingdom. The killing and pillaging continued unabated, with great swathes of dwarven civilisation destroyed and many thousands of well trained soldiers slain, until the desperate decision was taken to seal off the conquered portions of Terra’s Depths.

Ferocious debate raged for days over the morality and logistics of sealing hundreds of dwarves behind hastily constructed arcane barriers. It soon became clear as the encroaching hordes continued to consume everything in their path that this was the only option. Spellcasters of all races joined forces to seal the corridors of Terra’s Depths, irrevocably fracturing the highways of the Dwarven Kingdoms. The death toll was catastrophic. Whole swathes of the dwarves’ underground metropolis were lost, and the the community was left leaderless and without direction following the destruction of Brightstone.

Many dwarves left Terra’s Depths behind forever, unable to live in any sort of peace in the wake of the horrors they had seen. These dwarves took to the surface, starting new lives in the towns and cities of the Emerald Pines or venturing to the Western Frontiers and the Obsidian Coast. Others remained, seeking to salvage something out of the destruction. Those that stayed banded together and, in the absence of any real leadership and with no known heirs to the throne, formed a council of respected elders and guildmasters that would become the leaders of a new community known as the Dwarven Republics. They called the scant remnants of their peoples to the underground city of Earthengate, relatively untouched following the Underdark disaster, where they resolved to rebuild.