DWARF DWARVES

History:
Why are we here? What is our purpose in life? Who created us?
 
These are questions which many members of many different races ask themselves.
 
The dwarves, however, do not ask these questions. They already know the
answers. The answers are written deep within their very bones, and recorded
in their most ancient and well-preserved records.
 
According to dwarven legends (which any dwarf will devoutly proclaim to be
history, not legend), in the early days of the world, when Aabahran was still
young, its surface was flat and unshaped. For many years it remained so, until
one day, Aabahran was visited by a race of godlike creatures whom the dwarves
call the Forefathers. Delighted by the beauty of the young world, they tarried
for some time, but soon grew bored with the flat terrain and decided to shape
it.
 
The Forefathers sang to the stone-soul of the world, and mighty mountain peaks
rose to the sky. They whispered to the flatlands, and the earth split asunder,
forming deep canyons. League by league they reshaped the world, throwing
up vast mountain chains, deep valleys, and rolling hills. Long did the
Forefathers sing to the soul of the Stone, until no inch of the world remained
untouched. Only then were the Forefathers satisfied, and only then did they
rest.
 
The time would eventually come when the Forefathers would have to leave
Aabahran. And yet, they were loathe to depart from what they regarded as their
seminal work without leaving behind guardians to protect it. And so, one last
time did the Forefathers sing to the stone-soul of the world, a beautiful, 
indescribable song beyond words. And as they sang, a miracle occurred. Their
song wakened the souls of the earth itself, as sentient creatures were
suddenly birthed from the very Stone of the world itself. The Forefathers saw
that these creatures were as hardy, durable, and tough as the stone spine of
the world itself, and that they loved the mountains, canyons, and caverns as
much as the Forefathers themselves.
 
Pleased with their final, penultimate creation, the Forefathers named these
creatures 'dwarves', meaning 'earth-children' in their tongue. They made a
gift of all the mountains and caverns of the world to their children, trusting
that the dwarves would love and cherish it as much as they themselves did.
They taught the dwarves a fraction of their stonecunning, enough to ensure
that the dwarves would be good stewards of their creation, and laid down the
laws of the Elder Codex, before finally departing from Aabahran, confident
that their masterpiece would forever endure. The Elder Codex forms the
backbone of dwarven society as well as dwarven law, and also contains within
it the history of the creation of the dwarves. The prohibitions within the
Codex are few but strongly worded and thus rarely breached; when they are,
calamity often follows. A famous one is the enjoinder against dwarves shedding
the blood of other dwarves. Whenever this prohibition has been breached in
significant numbers, disaster has always followed. The strongest of all
prohibitions was the injunction against delving into the Elder Earth, and the
greatest of disasters fell upon the heads of Clan Ranidon when it was broken
(see the history of the duergar).
 
Over time, the thirteen largest families of dwarves worked together with the
skills they were taught to build their famous mountain kingdom, Khoranduin.
There, the founders of Khoranduin set up political-social groupings they
called Clans, who became the rulers of Khoranduin, subject only to an elected
dwarf-King or dwarf-Queen. In those early ages, the Ruling Clans of the
dwarvenkin numbered thirteen, one for each of the founding families. But
disaster struck Clan Ranidon, as discussed in the tragic history of the
duergar, and the thirteen became the Twelve Great Clans, which have stayed
in power to this very day.
 
Usual Height: 
Dwarves rarely grow to be much more than four and a half feet tall, with
most averaging around four feet in height. A five-foot tall dwarf would be
considered an incredibly rare freak of nature. Dwarves are however, incredibly
dense, muscular, and stocky; despite being so much shorter than humans,
only the smallest of dwarves might be outweighed by the largest of humans.
 
Hometown: 
Khoranduin
 
See also: DWARF2