Steelsong

I don't care where you say they're from, there ain't naught to choose between them. Dwarves be dwarves and that's all there is to it.

— Rinard Josefson

The Rebellion

Near the end of the Great Spell Plague, the king of the dwarves was stricken with the disease and died, mercifully without being raised as undead. The Stone Throne in Uftlon was contested by his two sons, the eldest from his first marriage was Damien Steelsong, and the younger, from his second marriage, was Erth Orehart. The reasons and facts of the story of the dispossession and ouster of Damien Steelsong from the Dwarven Kingdom is hotly debated, but the outcome is not disputed. Damien Steelstong and his supporters were ejected from the Draak'thor Massiff and the largest migration of dwarves ever to set foot outside the eastern mountain range - twenty thousand men, women and children began.

The Wandering

Dwarves are builders. Their nature is to root deep in stone, and the mass exodus was difficult as there was no location to which they were bound. Their numbers were large, but not so large that the nations that they entered felt precisely threatened, although it was obvious that seven thousand well trained axe men could cause serious trouble were they so inclined. While there were some hotheads amongst the refugees, Damien Steelsong himself was in search of a new home for his people, not trouble.

The Wanderings

Steelsong Exodus

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At the end of the Great Spell Plague, a dynastic contest for the Dwarven Stone Throne led to the expulsion of the Sttelsong Clan from the Draa'kthor Massiff.

But trouble there was. The Humans in the Southern Kingdom of Edera were uninterested in accommodating the displaced dwarves. They already struggled with the arid land they had settled after the loss of the Northern Kingdom, and the relationship between the humans and the new ruler of the Stone Throne was - well, cordial enough - that their leader did not offer asylum to the estranged dwarves. It would be a thousand years before open hostilities between humans and dwarves erupted during the Lost War.
To the North, The Orcish Plains were a somewhat better opportunity, but posed their own problems – namely orcs. Though the land appeared uninhabited and was riddled with underground caves, it was not only the homeland of the orcs, but it is the location of the constantly moving Whispering Plains, the home of the ghostly Eternal Conflict. Further, orcs have no central government, so any negotiations would have to be done with individual orcish tribal leaders, and as the concept of land ownership among orcs is sketchy, the negotiations would have to be successful with every individual tribe as every tribe claimed rights to inhabit the entire land.
After considering the problem, Damien Steelsong decided that the only opportunity he had to settle his clan in the Orcish Plains was to garner the support of Yulasta, the orcish goddess of hearth and home. This seemed confirmed by a dream he had where he was instructed by the All Father to seek out the orcish goddess. He led the dwarves to Arinn to meet with Yulasta.

The journey was a costly mistake. The orcs interpreted the dwarven migration towards Arrin as hostile even in spite of repeated parleys with tribal leaders. Unlike more civilized peoples, orcish war parties typically include their women and children. The fact that the dwarves traveled with theirs did nothing to allay orcish suspicions. The dwarves travel towards the holy site of Elysium were viewed suspiciously and were periodically dealt with violently. The dwarves lost over five hundred warriors to the orcs in raids and skirmishes designed to test the dwarven intent.
When they arrived at Arinn, Yulasta was sympathetic, but made it clear that the Orcish Plains were not a suitable dwarven homeland, but only a stop along their journey to a new home. She foresaw these dwarves would settle in the South Spiral Mountain Range, and she created a map to guide them to the other side of the continent where these mountains were located. This map, “The Journey Home”, inscribed by the finger of a goddess, on cloth she wove herself from fibers taken from the World Tree, is still enshrined in the The Hall of Judgment as one of their holiest documents.

There is a place of hearth and home for every creature, but the plains of the orcs are not yours. For you, this place is but a camp, a respite of healing for the thirsty before you must go on to the trials that will beset you. For you are dwarves, called of Yarl the All Father, and you must journey to the place he has for you, to carve out your hearth and home from the roots of the mountains where you belong.

— Yulasta

Now rested and refreshed, and provided with the gift of a clear destination, the dwarves set out with renewed purpose. They traveled across the Orcish Plains, and then, turning south at Arcadia, they journeyed along the Tiny River to the southlands of Kodumaa, the Land of the Short.
At this point, food supplies brought by the dwarves from Uftlon were running short. After their visit to Yulasta, they had been permitted to hunt in the Orcish Plains, but in settled farmland, they had no foraging opportunities. The local natural resources in Kadumaa were already being used by gnomes and haflings who had a good understanding of what acceptable use looked like to the pixies and sprites who protected them. The dwarves found they were able to trade with the gnomes on the basis of applying their skills with the efficient extraction of valuable metals from stone. Haflings though, were farmers and they had the foodstuffs, cloth and leather goods that the dwarves needed, but little interest in ore extraction and manipulation. The dwarves had little beyond family heirlooms taken with them from the Draak'thor Massiff to trade, and Steelsong would not allow them to steal.
Several families rebelled against the leader that this point. A formal challenge to his leadership was issued by Tremain Stonesong, and by dwarven law, Damien Steelsong was obliged to respond. Dwarves being dwarves, this challenge took the form of a duel with axes which ended with the bloody death of the challenger. After this episode, Steelsong's position of authority was cemented, and the people turned to referring to the rank and position of WarChief as "The Damien". Grumbling against the leader was quelled for a period of several years. The dwarves traded their family heirlooms for food and passed through the lands of the hafling farmers. Many dwarves were eventually able to return to these farmers and redeem their heirlooms, but others never did. Today these artifacts are cherished heirlooms for the hafling families whose ancestors traded for them, and historical curiosities that reside in museums of antiquities.

The Pioneers

Eventually, the dwarves reached the South Spiral Mountain Range, but this land was not a panacea for their wandering state. The Spiral Mountains are young mountains, and geothermally active. On top of that, the northern end of the Spiral Mountain Range had been the site of the Dragon War, which left the entire mountain range arcanely unstable. Unlike volcanos they had experienced in the Draak'thor Massiff, the Spiral Mountain tectonic rifts were long and deep. Sheer ridges of obsidian cliffs rose hundreds of meters from the surface and stretched for miles. The granite mountains were impassable, and valleys were few and far between.
But challenges of mountain and stone are second nature to dwarves. Are there no caves for shelter? Build your own from stone carved from the mountain itself. Is the ground too hot to walk on? Create a sorcerer’s engine to convert the excess geothermal energy into magic. Are there flows of molten stone? Build stone escarpments that direct the scorching rivers away from habitations and into wilderness areas. Are clouds of ash spewing from local mountains making the air unfit to breathe? Build your cities on the windward side of the source, facing your homes into the wind so that fresh air circulates into them. Is the watershed contaminated from ash and soot? Direct the water from the mountains and rainfall into large ponds and channels where it perks down through sandy, coal laden soil to emerge refreshed from deep wells. And over it all, befriend the children of Saynleh who master the skies above you, and cast arcane protections from wind and stone and water over your land.
And so, the dwarves gave themselves to the wild land, and labored upon it, and it became a home. But their journey and the harsh land had changed them, and they also became other, more than what they had been.
They became Steelsong.