Grimnor Deepdelver

The Prime Dwarf was given only one thing in his life: the name Grimnor. Everything else he earned. By the age of 11 he was a tunnel rat. The term used for the children put to work hauling waste stone in mines. By 13 he had promoted himself to miner by simply staying alive long enough to take a pick axe from a dead man. When challenged about his change in position, the foreman who was demanding he get back to work hauling stone was relieved of key parts of his skeleton. Grimnor announced himself the new foreman and got back to work. Over the next two decades he earned his surname: Deepdelver. His mining crews ventured farther down then all others in search of valuable ore and coal. This life of toil earned him strength but not much else. He was a peasant by birth, and no amount of work would change that. What could change his place in the world, was the Crusade of Light. When the call to war reached his village he rose up, bade his miners to follow him, and set out. For the second time in his life, those who thought themselves his better sought to keep him in place. He was told that the men of note would be off to seek glory in the war, but he and his people's place was in the mines. History actually records the man's name, as the story was a favorite among Grimnor's men. Earl Lochlan Mac an Rìgh was the local lord right up until he stood between Grimnor and his goal. After that moment Lochlan was just "that bit there" and "this bit here." There are no records indicating who the next Earl was, nor does history care, because within a year and a half Grimnor Deepdelver had already led Alverion's vanguard to victory in the Crusade of Light. Precise battle records from the war are nearly nonexistent. What stories survive have surely grown as they have been retold, but there are enough common points from various tales to form a rough picture of Grimnor's rise to Exarch. At the start of the war, he and the miners who had followed him were thrown in among the other peasant rabble sent to die, earning glory in Alverion's light, to soften the enemy lines. At the end of each battle, he and his men would be standing among the victorious soldiers, having led the push through enemy lines. Time and again he held against the dark horde, and after they had broken themselves against his resolve, he would lead the charge through their ranks. For his repeated survival in the face of certain defeat, he was made an Exarch, and became the anvil of Alverion's army, upon which Stormeye's hammer would crush the Shix. When the war was over, and Grimnor stood among the other heroes of the Crusade, he asked for nothing but the right to choose his own path; and the same choice for those of his men who had survived the war. Alverion said to him, "There are many riches to be had in the soil and stone of Bastion, are you up to the task of claiming them?" Grimnor's response, now holy words among the Dwarves, was, "I never feared darkness, even when it came alive to claw at my throat, and I will break the mountains of this new world just as I did the old." With that, Alverion remade Grimnor Deepdelver's body into a form as stout and powerful as his resolve. He became the Prime Dwarf, the first of a new race.