"This is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence."
- Leonard Nimoy
Yorick Presents "The Throne of Night"
Campaign Background
Two hundred years ago, the dwarven capital of Dammerhall detonated without warning. All six great bridges that connected the mountain stronghold to the outside collapsed. The gates shut. The city burned. To this day, no one is believed to have survived, and no one knows with any certainty what even occurred. The underdark is a dangerous place, and many expeditions have tried and failed to breach the dwarven city. Perhaps some of the earlier adventurers had managed to find an access point, but none have ever been seen again. The fate of Dammerhall remains a mystery.
Losing Dammerhall was a terrible blow to the dwarven people, from which they have never recovered. The rest of the dwarven city-states began immediately squabbling over who the true heir was, with more than a dozen dwarves coming forward, proclaiming themselves the rightful king. With their civilization fractured, the dwarves became easy prey for enemies, and more than half of those city-states were destroyed within the next hundred years. Some were overrun by orcs, one was even destroyed by a dragon. Perhaps most disgracefully, a few were even destroyed by other dwarves in a brutal civil war.
The remaining dwarves split from there into two camps.
The remaining city-states above ground turned in desperation to the kingdoms of men. What began as mutual defense treaties spread into open trade (as dwarven craftsmanship is highly desirable), and eventually into allies, and even something of brothers. They were annexed entirely by the humans. These days, their ways are forgotten, their tongue is barely spoken, and they’re mostly seen as another kind of man. Their culture is slowly dying.
While this has been good for the human’s economy, they’re stagnating in ways, too. Now that the dwarves are essentially a part of the human civilization, fewer humans do as much with stone working, or hunting. It would be unjust to say that the dwarves are second-class citizens, they are treated as equals and are allowed to excel in their chosen professions - meaning that less humans bother going those routes. Each race is leaning on the other instead of standing on their own feet, a relationship that is not truly good for either of them.
To the elven people, this union is unnatural and even somewhat disgusting. Many of them see the humans as making things worse. They aren’t helping the dwarves stnad on their own, or rebuild their civilization, but are merely adopting them, stripping away their culture, and making them into shorter humans. While a lot of the elves feel that the dwarves time has come, there are many others who miss the old dwarven songs, and their grim determination, and would rather see their people restored. Since the dwarven people as we know them are expected to have completely faded away within another century or so, this has been a subject of many recent discussions.
The feelings of the elven people, however passionate, pale entirely in comparison to the duergar. While many of the dwarven people went top-side to join with the humans, there were a few city-states beneath the ground that stayed put, closing themselves off from other civilizations. Many of them have grown to despise their fellow dwarves, ashamed that they would so readily forget the ways of their people. Perhaps a remnant of the blood civil war, but many of the duergar have no hesitation about killing dwarves, feeling that if the dwarves want to be humans, they can be treated as humans.
Unfortunately, the duergar have not been doing very well either. There exist now only three of their city-states. As they are quite spread apart, the duergar are always on their own. Little is known what the status is of Janderhoff in Varisia or Kravenkus in Taldor. The third city-state, known as Kraggodan, lies below Nirmathas, and within the last few years has reopened trade routes with Fasturvalt, one of the few remaining svirfneblin towns. The drow threat is spreading in the Azathyr, and has destroyed several svirfneblin burrows in the last few decades. Both the duergar and svirfneblin are desperate, doing anything they can to survive.
Fasturvalt lies near one of the only known entrances to the Azathyr for thousands of miles. By forming a ‘highway’ under the surface, they were able to capitalise on all caravans going between the surface world and the underground. With the decline of the dwarven culture, and the xenophobia of the duergar, their wealth has diminished to almost nothing. They have managed to keep afloat by trading with a human city above ground.
MAP OF NIRMATHAS
Nirmathas is a struggling country, rather constantly at war with Cheliax and Molthune, who keep trying to claim it as their own. Rather than a country, it’s more akin to a simply a series of cities. There is little formal government beyond local, centered entirely on military, as an effort to keep themselves free.
Going by this map, the entrance to the Azathyr is just to the west of the Shining River. The human city of Skelt is where Fasturvalt sends caravans. The people of Skelt are independent and self-reliant, and as they judge someone based on actions rather than race, they tend to be rather accepting. When Dammerhall fell, they gladly welcomed as many dwarves as their city could support, and then some.
The town is integral to Nirmathas’s independence, having been one of its major trade towns, and being the most fortified city in the country. While the losses of the duergar cities under the mountains have hurt many of their trade routes, there is talk of some more opening up. Trade with the svirfneblin town of Fasturvalt has been one of the only things keeping the city afloat for the last few decades.
