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Ashduar

The Ashduar survived slavery, the Reclamation, and the cold by binding themselves to the Oath, the Forlorn, and Ar. Those choices still keep Pyre alive, but each use of the old powers costs lives, Ish remains close, and the Oath still points them toward revenge against humanity.

Key Characteristics

  • Ethos: Stoicism, Necromancy
  • Government:
  • The king is also called Oathwarden.
  • Constitution written as symbols
  • Religion:
  • The Oathwarden's oath is to keep the Fire Primeval there.
  • The Oath is what keeps dwarves together.
  • The Oath also calls for revenge against humans.
  • The Oath was formed when they had to survive in the cold.
  • The king must marry the Older Sister of the Religion of the Depth. The king can keep the previous wife too.
  • Heritage: The Old Stock
  • Language: Tugrän
  • Traditions:
  • Only the Strong Survive: Strength and resilience are highly valued.
  • Dead in Service: Forlorn are integrated into society.
  • Winter Borne: Acceptance of cold as part of existence.
  • Forbearing: Patience and restraint in the face of adversity.
  • Name: Ashduar
  • Mountain: Grungred (grung: hot + graed: block)
  • Common Name:
  • Ember: Used to communicate resilience. It refers to the survivors.

Society and Daily Life

In General

  • Cuisine: Harsh diet
  • Dietary Adaptations:
    • Cave Ecosystems: Fungi, mosses, and cave-dwelling insects provide primary nutrition.
    • Volcanic Activity: Used for cooking, preserving food, and supporting unique ecosystems.
    • Plant Cultivation: Stone channels carry warm, mineral-rich water beneath rows of vegetables and herbs, whose roots hang directly into the flow.
  • Technological and Cultural Developments:
    • Advanced Tools: For harvesting and processing food.
    • Social Cooperation: Coordinated foraging and knowledge sharing.
  • Harsh Conditions and Food Scarcity:
    • The extreme cold outside made food incredibly scarce, forcing the Ashduar to rely heavily on limited cave resources.
  • Other Foods:
    • The Vine: a vegetable that the dwarves grind and then eat.
    • They keep underground honey bees for their honey.
  • Arts and Culture:
  • Heft: The Ashduar have no term for art. They have a term for an "object of heavy weight." The heaviness is intended in moral terms, but they often make physically heavy objects as well.
  • Art is used to assert dominance. It can only show the great ancestors winning.
  • Dramaturg - Forgenmelt: A notable book.
  • Brab Michɑ (Out of the Cage): A book by a prisoner detailing escape and revenge against humans, symbolizing mental freedom. The book describes the mind as a crystal cage. Its walls are difficult to see because they are transparent, and difficult to abandon because they are alluring. It warns that revenge can fade from sight in the same way if the Ashduar stop looking for it.
  • Clothing and Attire: Near Pyre, the Ashduar wear sleeveless tunics woven from the Vine and patched rat- or mole-hide aprons. Farther from the fire, they add felted underfur combed from tunnel moles, hoods lined with buzzard or roc feathers, and ash-glass lenses against ash, snow glare, and sunlight. Horn-beetle shell is used for clasps. Steel or Ironmound fastenings mark important garments.

Undeath and Necromancy

  • Necromancy was widely used in the first ages. It is different now and survives only among the Ashduar.
  • The warding must never stop, so the Forlorn are kept working, and necromancy is an office of the Oath.
  • They learned necromancy on their own through the Forgenmelt. Many of the entities inside it helped them.
  • Forlorn are people who lost part of themselves and became undead-like. They keep reason, but have no emotions. They are rare, but not unusual.
  • There are towers occupied by dwarf necromancers who became too mad and began strange experiments. The results of their experiments may roam nearby at night.
  • They believe the Forlorn should serve the living.

Industry and Technology

  • Rat Breeding and Training: Rats are bred to detect dangers in tunnels (e.g., gases, crevasses, demons, maladies).
  • Ironmound and Steel Hybrid Weapons:
  • Benefits:
    • Ironmound Core: Lightweight, strong, corrosion-resistant, and flexible.
    • Steel Blade: Sharp, durable, and retains edge well.
  • Applications:
    • Spears: Ironmound shaft for lightness and balance, steel tip for sharpness.
    • Halberds: Ironmound shaft for durability, steel head for cutting and thrusting.
    • Armor: Ironmound core for lightweight and corrosion resistance, steel plates for enhanced protection.
  • Shielded Forging: Deep vents in Grungred release an air that neither burns nor feeds flame. The Ashduar channel it into sealed forges to keep ordinary air from spoiling the metal.
  • Geothermal Energy: Harnessed for warmth, energy, and melting glacier ice.
  • Insect Farming: Crickets and mealworms are raised for protein.
  • Some creatures need no sun or prey. They gather around old stone that dies grain by grain and drink the warmth it releases.
  • Mushroom Farming: Cultivated near geothermal vents.
  • The dwarves have moles to help with tunnels.
  • Golems were used in large numbers in the past, but they exist no more.

Crime and Punishment

  • Cinerated: The punishment for the worst crimes, being dropped into the volcano.
  • Muddled: A common punishment, being used as fertilizer.
  • Keep: the place where disgraced dwarves, either through punishment or shame, decide to become endarkened and become Forlorn.

Mythology and Beliefs

  • Sentient Pillar of Fire: Ar is inside Pyre with the Ashduar. They worship him because they need him, but as a people they hate him. He is revered as both creator and destroyer, the source of warmth, guidance, and spiritual power.
  • Ice Primeval: A powerful entity that hates the dwarves for imprisoning the Fire Primeval.

Societal Challenges

  • Fire's Demand for Fuel: Ar demands living fuel.
  • Encroaching Ice: Threats from the eternal blizzard and the Ice Primeval's wrath.
  • Necromantic Control: Efforts to regulate necromancy and prevent rogue practitioners.
  • Dwarves accustomed to the deepest tunnels suffer sun sickness when they reach the surface. They cover their eyes and expose themselves to daylight gradually, but most never fully adapt.

Artifacts

  • The Weight: An artifact keeping the Fire Primeval here.
  • Bone Throne: A throne made from the bones of the Chammy, old magic creatures. It was stolen from the Aelves and placed in an Ashduar fortress. Years later, it was discovered to have belonged to an ancient vampire queen.

Ashduar fortresses are crowded with Hefts made by their ancestors and artifacts taken during raids in the old times, not from recent raids. Their value comes from the deeds attached to them, so displaying a captured object is a claim of dominance rather than wealth.

Social Hierarchy

  • The hammerer (a special function/judge)

Names

Mokdath, Tein, Twub, Lorvath, Mafren

Usual Way of Saying

  • Motto: "Death is my companion"
  • When this is done, guard my bones from the moles.
  • Any place is better. I must press on.
  • Dwarves living near a volcano call one another "ash bastards."
  • He was left in the cold: Abandoned.
  • Unfreezer: Someone who can resist the cold.
  • Battle wish: "Fortune in battle."
  • Vrain Dust: Dust from rocs or demons that causes illusions.

Festivals and Celebrations

  • Night of No Flame: Annual event where the pillar of fire dims, symbolizing reliance on and reverence for the fire. During this time, all Ashduar walk their city in total darkness, a communal act of resilience and introspection. The return of the flame marks a renewal of spirit and civilization.
  • Shadow March: Silent procession through dark tunnels, held throughout the year for all Ashduar. It ends in the Trial of Chains.
  • Forge-Binding Ceremony: Rite of passage where a young Ashduar makes their first Heft in the communal forges. A Heft is a made thing weighed by what it means rather than by how well it was made. The ceremony recalls the First Forge Legend, which tells of the crafting of the Weight and embodies the civilization's resilience.
  • Trial of Chains: Endurance test for young Ashduar, undertaken once in a lifetime at the end of the Shadow March, where they bear heavy chains through treacherous paths.
  • Ancestor Veneration: Honoring forebears by inscribing names and deeds on family anvils.
  • Circle of Embers: Ritual combat arena for resolving disputes over the Weight and interpreting the fire's will.
  • Ashen Rites: Rituals that involve scattering ash to symbolize the cycle of life and death, reflecting the Ashduar's acceptance of their environment's harsh realities.
  • Breath of the Mountain: The wind through Grungred follows known cycles. The Ashduar use its changes to judge when tunnels are safe, when cold is coming, and when the deep air has turned dangerous.

Sacrifices

They drop sacrifices into the volcano. Most are dangerous creatures they keep at bay, usually giants, ettins, and cyclopes.

Army and Martial Customs

  • Martial Customs: Both males and females participate in martial practices.
  • They play a war rhythm before battle by clashing weapons and making guttural sounds.

History and Heritage

Historical Events

  • Enslaved in an important Keeper city under the mountain.
  • Survived the Reclamation by the Keeper, who butchered other dwarven clans.
  • Wardens of the Fire Primeval, which angered the Ice Primeval.
  • Drugar, the Long King, an undead ruler, was overthrown by Mokdath.

The Keeper City

They lived in an important Keeper city far beneath the mountain. It became especially useful during the transition from Brilliance to Nebula. Brilliance still worked a little at that depth, while Nebula was weaker beneath the earth.

They never rebelled, and the Keeper bred them, retaining the most obedient and skilled workers.

They were used as a workforce in multiple mountains.

When the Keeper left and never returned, the Ashduar kept Ar in Pyre. Ish remained imprisoned within Grungred, where she made her home inside a geode. She can leave it and roam nearby, still seeking Ar.

Only those inside the city survived because they kept the Fire Primeval.

During the Keeper's final years, Drugar, an undead dwarf, was chosen for an experiment intended to create a dwarf mage. Whether the experiment truly succeeded is not recorded.

They were the only dwarves who were enslaved by the Keeper.

The other dwarves were betrayed and utterly butchered by the Keeper during the Reclamation.

To survive here they had to accept harsh and inhuman rules.

The Undead Dwarves

The alliance against the Keeper included dwarves who surrendered their lives and returned as undead warriors. The Ashduar took no part in this sacrifice.

Words

Words were forbidden.

The Aelves managed to use them because the ogre magi allowed them to.

Only a few words were allowed, because words might let the species organize and revolt.

The revolt against the ogre mage was led by the Aelves, and the dwarves learned words and writing from them.

The original Aelven language was connected to magic because the Aelves were allowed to use only magical words.

The War from the Deep

A dark entity came out of the depths and warred against the dwarves for two centuries. Its name and nature were erased during the fighting. The Ashduar won, but many deep tunnels have remained closed ever since.

Drugar, the Long King

Drugar was the first Ashduar king and ruled for centuries as the Long King. When he visited Mokdath, the dwarf who would become the Warden, his host built a beautiful room in his honor. Drugar and his necromancer wife slept there. Mokdath sealed the room, opened a hidden passage to the volcano, and filled it with lava, killing them both.

The Abandoned Fortresses

Abandoned fortresses surround Grungred. The Ashduar say some populations moved away and others died, but the records do not identify which fate belongs to each fortress.

Notable Factions

Burrowers

  • Burrowers are the caste of miners. They can become powerful terraforgers only in the deepest reaches. The more they use this power, the more of them die.

Watermans

  • Watermans handle the aqueducts. They are highly skilled and have created multiple safe rooms that can release water onto fires.

Crawlers

  • Crawlers are soldiers specialized in fighting in the deep.

Outwalkers

  • Outwalkers: Warriors and scouts sent beyond the mountain into the eternal blizzard. Those who returned carried reports of distant peoples, strange tracks, and beings seen only through the snow.

Necromancers

  • Usually, only necromancers receive advanced education.
  • They try to keep necromancers under their control, so necromancy is forbidden outside the military without Mokdath's approval.
  • Mokdath secretly uses The Art of Dying to train a small circle of necromancers loyal to him rather than to the military. Its zircon cover and title turn his fondness for blue dye into a private joke about dying and dyeing.

Notable People

  • Mokdath the Oathless: Current Warden, a necromancer and former soldier. Known for his rock-bone helm and blue dye. He is called Oathless because he rules but is not recognized as king or Oathwarden.
  • Tein: A former dungeon master who left on a journey after her imprisonment. After her return, the fortress came to sympathize with her.
  • Twub: A doctor and former chief of the guard.
  • Lorvath: Necromancer and leader of an elite troop.
  • Mafren: Leader of the army and an elite troop.

Notable Settlements