Dwarf

The dwarves of Ostrov originate on the Eastern Continent and many of their descendants have stayed there. Like dwarves elsewhere in the multiverse they find great joy in craft and forge, creating beautiful and functional works of art out of metal, gems, and stone. Because of this inborn tendency, they are frequent devotees of Natanis. Beatrice spent several centuries among the early dwarf artisans teaching them and learning from them. She is still revered as the great Master Smith in many of their communities in the east.

Civilization and Culture

History

The history of the dwarves of the Western Continent begins with Elfdirka the Maligned. Born in 790RM she was a child of Filus with ambitions to power and an overinflated sense of her own skill at leadership. As a demigod, she had the magical power to make many of her ambitions a reality, and her reign is considered one of the most disastrous periods in dwarven history. While she never ruled all of the dwarves, by 1000 RM she amassed a following of perhaps a quarter of them, either directly under her rule or in communities beholden to her. She cared little for the craftsmanship and expertise of her subjects, convinced that it was better to do absolutely everything with magic. She build citadels that were held up by magic, and supplied her people’s food and drink magically, disregarding both infrastructure and trade in favor of the arcane arts. She recruited and trained as many mages as she could to create her planned civilization, and this succeeded for a time, but was inevitably doomed to failure. The resulting societal collapse in 1056RM left many of the dwarves either dead or destitute. Those who survived often cursed the very idea of magic itself for the way it had destroyed their lives. Out of these ashes came Hrofgar the Stoneblessed. He had been a child in the last days of Elfdirka’s reign and carried bitter memories about the chaos and deprivation he suffered in his youth. He began to preach a new idea to the dwarves: the rejection of magic and of all the gods. He understood enough of both arcane and divine magic to know that it was descent from a god that granted magical powers, and that while many different people had traces of divine blood, two powerful mages having a child together would be more likely to have a child with great magical potential as well. He taught his followers to reject all uses of magic, calling upon them to return to The Stone which was the only thing they could really rely upon. Historical accounts differ about what Hrolfgar originally meant when he spoke of the Stone. It may have simply been a metaphor for the dwarves closeness with the earth and an encouragement to rely on the work of their own industry and labor. It may also have been more mystical, suggesting that the land itself had a greater power than even the gods and that their ancestors disconnection from that power was the cause of much of their strife. Either way, he found no shortage of followers to flock to his call.
Unfortunately such a strict requirement to shun all magic inevitably brought Hrolfgar’s followers into conflict with their neighbors, both dwarven and non-dwarven alike. While the other nations of the east were nowhere near as magically reliant as Elfdirka’s kingdom had been, all of them used magic in their day to day affairs and all of them welcomed temples to one or more of the gods. Several short, but violent wars were fought between Hrolfgar’s people and militias from the various nearby kingdoms. All of these were equally matched enough to end in stalemate, and Hrolfgar might have continued to press his luck in order to spread his message further, had he not run up against Denawyn. Most other armies were religiously pluralistic, and while many of the soldiers who fought in the earlier wars had been personally devoted to their gods, the conflict stemmed more from a desire to avoid Hfrolfgar’s extreme puritanism regarding magic. In facing the army of Denawyn however, the dwarves faced the devoted followers of the god of war, and it did not end well for them. Jedrak had no desire for this group of upstart dwarves to get any closer to his theocracy, and as part of his ongoing efforts to keep any outside religious movements out of Denawyn he came down on Hrolfgar like a hammer. It is said that Highprince Denawyn  himself struck the fatal blow against the dwarven zealot.
In all ways but one Jedrak’s campaign was a success. He had halted the dwarves advance, killed many of their people, and proved their ideas of their own invulnerability false, but he had also created a martyr in Hrolfgar. The memorialization of their leader may be why the movement endured after the calamitous final battle on the Denawyn border. The remnants of Hrolfgar’s army retreated in disarray, demoralized and leaderless, until Hrolfgar’s daughter Galda gave them a way forward. She knew that her people could not succeed as conquerors, nor would their neighbors tolerate their existence, so the only path left was to leave, and to forge a new civilization somewhere else, free of the decadent corruption of the other nations and their 'god-taint'.
At this point in history the eastern continent was already populated by multiple nations, and those areas with fewer people were not suited to the mountain and hill loving dwarves. Through her studies, Galda knew that there was another continent to the west, but she also knew that without relying on magic to get there her people might not survive the journey. The dwarves of Oros still tell tales of the full day and night Galda spend meditating on and with the stone, seeking a solution to her problem and a way forward for her people. In the end she determined that death was preferable to corruption, and her people began the harrowing journey west without any magical means. Several of their ships were lost to the deeps of the Great Ocean, as the passage between east and west was extremely hazardous, even with mages to calm the wind and weather. It is probable that none whatsoever would have survived had Namhu not noticed them and taken an interest. The great Bronze Dragon kept himself hidden from the floundering flotilla, and used his powerful connection to the sea to calm their path just enough that three of Galda’s ships made successful landfall in the west.
They trekked overland until they reached the mountains that form the spine of the western continent. That continent was more sparsely populated in that time. Humans lived primarily in Ekzieth in the west and in what would become the Azure Kingdom in the east. most of the continent’s interior belonged then, as it still does, to the Orc. The dwarves successfully parlayed with several of the great orc chieftains, who in the end had no objection to dwarves moving in under the mountain, provided they limited their above-ground settlements. Free at last to live as they wished, Galda and her followers founded the Kingdom of Oros and hewed great halls and cities into its stones. Once they had established themselves, and lived several generations entirely free of magic, they felt secure enough in themselves and their beliefs to allow a small amount of trade with the outside world. They may have been insular and xenophobic, but they were still dwarves, and needed an outlet for their fine weapons, armor, and tools. In an ironic twist, one of their nearest trade neighbor was the elven settlement of Aran Anadil, where magic was both common and highly valued. The elves found their puritanical neighbors odd in the extreme, but the value of trade allowed both parties to overlook the aspects of the other’s culture that they found odious.
For all that the dwarves of Oros rejected magic, magic has not always rejected them. The divine blood among them is not particularly concentrated, but it is there, and every so often a dwarf among them is born with the innate abilities of a mage. This has traditionally led to one of three outcomes: the dwarf manages to hide or suppress their talent and it is never discovered (very rare), the dwarf is exiled (most common), or the dwarf is recruited into a secret society called the Blighted.