The Exile of the Mror Dwarves

Political event

The exiles of the Dwarven clans prove to be the empires salvation.

Twelve millennia ago, a large number of dwarven clans migrated from their ancestral home on the arctic continent of the Frostfell to the Ironroot Mountains of northeastern Khorvaire to escape the oppression of the frost giants—ancient colonists from Xen’drik—who governed much of that frigid land. Though the true origins of the dwarven kingdoms of Khorvaire are now lost to the mists of prehistory, it is known that soon after their arrival in Khorvaire a unified dwarven nation was established by the clans from the Frostfell that spread deep beneath the Ironroots. Within this kingdom, recalled in dwarven legend as the Kingdom of Stone, it came to pass that twelve dwarven warriors were exiled to the surface for the commission of crimes that produced barbarism and unrest.

These exiles were forced to leave their underground homes with their followers by Lord Kordran Mror, the ruler of the Kingdom of Stone. The gateways to the Kingdom of Stone below were closed off using powerful runic magic and the dwarven exiles were told by Lord Mror that they would remain apart from their brethren in the deeps until they had discovered the honor that their barbaric ways had prevented them from earning. Alongside the exiles, a clan of wardens was sent to the lands above to watch over these gates and reopen them when the time came—a clan called Kundarak.

For thousands of years to come, these exile dwarven clans fought among themselves for control of the lands that they ironically named the Mror Holds, both for dominance and for the right to return to the Kingdom of Stone. The Mror dwarves also repeatedly fought the original inhabitants of the Ironroot Mountains, the orcish clans known as the Jhorash’tar, for control over the region’s rich mineral resources of iron, copper, gems and other precious metals. Even the when the Material Gods who named himself Kundarak after the clan, granted the Mark of Warding to the Kundarak clan, it did nothing to stem the inter-dwarven conflict; indeed, it fast became a source of bitterness and distrust among the other clans, who were granted no such godmarks. When Prince Karrn ir’Wynarn annexed the lands around the Ironroot Mountains for his father King Galifar I several years before the founding of the United Kingdom of Galifar on Khorvaire, the fractious Mror clans were easily subdued by the human armies.

As it happened, the dwarves’ subjugation by Galifar proved to be the instrument of their salvation. Forced to set aside their violent feuds by their human overlords, the dwarven exiles created a common culture and found the honor they had long sought. In the end, though, this understanding came too late. When the heirs of Kundarak, at last, opened the sealed runic gates for the rest of the Holds, the Kingdom of Stone was gone, its people destroyed by the invasion of the daelkyr while the twelve Mror clans had made war on each other.