Dwarves

The History of Dwarves
Created at the Dawn of Rebirth by Moradin, the dwarves were then very different from what they are today. Tall, strong and beautiful, the dwarves were perhaps the most perfect race of mortals ever created, almost rivaling the gods in beauty. Of course, back then, they were not called "dwarves", but something else.

Moradin gave them the gifts of building and creation, and they soon set upon building and creating. At first it was walled villages, but as the years passed, they started to build towns and cities as well. They lived in harmony with the other races, and taught them freely most of their secrets.

As time passed and racial tensions grew, the dwarves moved deep underground, ordered so by Moradin. They hid deep beneath the earth, and there, during their exile, they perfected the art of building and built the first of six dwarven wonders, the ancient city of Tor Hal.

Unfortunately for the dwarves, they dug too deep, too far below in their search of the perfect stones for Tor Hal. They dug too close to a place of mystical energies and those energies were unleashed, or freed, as some sages speculate. No one knows for sure the nature of the energies that were unleashed, but they weren't brutal nor quick. The foul energies slowly infected and changed the dwarves. For a while, it was not noticeable, but as soon as the dwarves realized that something was wrong, it was too late. They prayed and prayed to Moradin, but to no avail. There was nothing he could do, or nothing that he would do. The became smaller, stockier and surlier, just as most dwarves are today. Their love of beards, ale and gold grew, almost to the point of it being a problem. Dwarven sages have named it The Curse of the Deep, or just The Curse for short.

Years later, after the Sibling War had ended and after coming to terms with their new appearance, the dwarves wanted to rejoin the other races once again, so they moved closer to the surface, closing up all their cities deep underground and started building new ones near the surface.

Once they got started on the building, they could almost not stop. A couple of hundred years after returning to the rest of Era, the dwarves celebrated 2000 years since their creation. King Torak III set a plan to reestablish the dwarven race as the dominant one in motion. The dwarves were going to demonstrate the superiority of their craft. All the five other Dwarven Wonders are from this period. First Tor Keep, an exact replica of Tor Hal and then Ker Moradin. Some years later, the dwarves continued their quest to put permanent and spectacular marks upon Era, when they first built the Pillars of Fire, then the Great Bridge and finished by perhaps the most spectacular of all, Tor Durnek.

At this point, the dwarves were at their peak. Maybe they were individually less than what they were before the corruption of their bodies and souls, but together, they had achieve more than all other races combined. They dominated the lands of Era from their castle-cities in the mountains, trading with those that would and waging war with those that would.

Now, a bit more than two thousands years later, the dwarven kingdoms and empires are no more. In fact, most of their once so great cities are in ruins, only inhabited by the dead and the undead.

The race is now splintered. Not every dwarf prays to Moradin. Most notably two factions of the race have struck out on their own, finding new gods. The Deep Dwarves who were the first to leave the fold of the All-Father now worship The Raven Queen and obsess about death and dying while the Iron Dwarves have turned to Bane and seek dwarven rule over all lands. Actually, the splintering of the dwarven race started much earlier, after Tor Hal was finished, but the divide has become more obvious in the later years, as both Deep and Iron Dwarves have gained significantly more power.

Playing a Dwarf
If you are playing a (regular) dwarf, you probably love your ale and your gold, although probably not in that order. You worship Moradin, and regularly thank him for sticking with you, even though you now are just a stunted version of what he conceived. You most assuredly mourn the days when the dwarven race was dominant and built the greatest cities Era has ever seen, often commenting on how the humans (or any other race for that matter) produce shoddy workmanship. You might dream of making a pilgrimage to one of the six Dwarven Wonders or discover one of the many lost underground dwarven cities.

If you are playing an Iron Dwarf, you still love your gold, but instead of loving ale, you despise it. You see it as a weakness, a coping mechanism that dwarves use in order to get through their miserable lives. Instead, you live for power, for war. You hate Moradin with a passion, having renounced him countless of times since you were born. You thank Bane for saving you from Moradin and his weakness who allowed the dwarven race to fall from it's former heights. You dream of the days to come, when the dwarves will once again rule the other races.