Sundabar
Sundabar, previously known as Citadel Sundbarr before its fall tot he orcs in the War of the Silver Marches, was one of the wealthiest and most militaristic cities within the nation of Luruar, or all of Faerûn for that matter. While it was originally a dwarven citadel built out over the fires of an underground volcano, it evolved as its demographics, exports and overall culture changed. A human city was built over the dwarven stronghold and flourished as humans and dwarves worked together.
History
During the War of the Silver Marches the entire city above ground was destroyed and the dwarves retreated into the depths of the mountain. Sundabar is now a dwarven city in its entirety; the human population is gone. Efforts to clear away rubble and debris from the attacks are slow, as most dwarves remain in the sheltered undercity, and those few who have duties on the surface have taken over the buildings with the least damage, scavenging stones from ruined structures to reinforce those that can be salvaged. Before the war, Sundabar’s surface streets were cobbled smooth, but many of those roads have been destroyed by falling stones, torn up for ammunition or to repair walls, or simply neglected. Now, the surface city is a hollowed-out ruin. Some believe that the city above will be allowed to wither into oblivion, with the exception of the sturdy double wall that surrounds it (and which the dwarves have already repaired). The temples of human deities stand abandoned. The walls are patrolled by a few sharp-eyed sentries, whose duty is to report what they see and to turn away unwanted visitors. In the center of the upper city, the Circle still stands around the ruin of the Masters Hall, ready to receive visiting caravans, livestock, and merchants. However, few such visitors arrive, and fewer still are welcomed, as Sundabar prefers to engage in trade nowadays only with other dwarven cities through the Underdark. Were it within the Forgemaster’s power, he would see to it that all commerce entering and leaving the city do so by means of under- ground traffic, so that most surface trade routes could be abandoned entirely. Sundarren trust of outsiders is low, and their assessment of humans lower still. During the war, of all the human cities, only Silverymoon made any attempt to aid Sundabar, and that aid was (to dwarven minds) far too little and too late. As a result, with the Silver Marches dissolving, Sundabar wasted no time withdrawing from the Lords’ Alliance as well, officially severing formal ties with the human realms of the North except for those necessary for trade. Given that such trade is now a rare occurrence, most of the human realms see Sundabar as jealously guarding its wealth and cravenly hiding beneath the surface, while the rest of the region does what it can to recover from the recent conflicts. Sundabar’s losses in buildings and in population have done nothing to diminish the contents of its overflowing coffers, and despite its current state, the city remains one of the wealthiest in the North, though most of that coin rarely leaves the city now. The notion of kingship has come up among the dwarves in the undercity, but the Forgemaster has rejected the idea. Let the dwarves tend to themselves, surely, but there should be no king in Sundabar. I don’t know whether Flamestoker’s reticence is false modesty or true wisdom, or if he is waiting for a warrior-king to claim Sundabar as part of a larger realm.
- Humans 54%
- Dwarves 33%
- Gnomes 8%
- Halflings 8%
- Half-elves 1%
- Others 1%
- Dwarves 100%
