Connects to: 29.24, 33.00, 38.26, 38.28, 39.00, 51.29 and the City of Shuttered Windows
Following the Gnawbone Wars in which the gnolls drove the men of the City of Shuttered Windows from the Burning Lands, those dwarves who had come south to prospect for minerals and loot the ruins of Bergolast (38.28) found themselves cut off from their brethren in the Titan’s Skull (33.00).
As the gnollish hordes gathered, the dwarves gathered together for a bloody last stand. Far in front of the rest of the dwarves stood a small group of their stoutest fighters who chanted insults as the gnolls engulfed them. One by one the dwarves fell until only Khannah remained, an island of steel in a gnollish sea. Before the gnolls could bring him-her down, he-she lit the great cache of mining powder that the dwarves had buried beneath the battlefield the night before, blowing a bloody hole in the heart of the gnollish host. As for Khannah his-herself, the dwarves swear that they saw him-her launched high into the air by the blast before falling upon the gnollish commander, crushing him instantly.
As the gnollish army reeled, the dwarves charged and dealt the gnolls a brutal defeat. On that fall day the southern dwarven nation was forged and each year they remember Khannah’s leap in a great festival on the site of the battlefield in which they roast great skewers of meat (“khorasko”), drink gourds of spirits mixed with the blood and milk of their cattle, engage in the only known dwarven high jumping competition and judge prospective lawspeakers who attempt to chant the entire corpus of dwarven law without a single pause.
Following the festivities, the dwarves return to the sod halls of their scattered septs which are adorned with little of the wealth that their northern brethren hoard. That is not the only way in which the dwarves of the Burning Lands differ. They are not as insular as their northern cousins and treat those they view as sufficiently tough as near-equals. Centuries that have passed in this hot country have burned their skin dark and they have found few minerals worth mining aside from a bit of copper. With so few materials to work with, the dwarves of the Burning Lands have lost much of their ancestors’ metalcraft, but they have not lost the bravery of Khannah and his-her fellows who died to save their fellows from the gnolls.
Even today their phalanxes are famous throughout the Shrouded Lands and only once have they thrown down their cowhide spears and ran. As the gnolls have learned, it is not easy to break them and even magic is of little help, for the great chants that the lawspeakers lead protect them from all but the most potent magic.
However, the gnolls say that the only reason that the southern dwarves have not been exterminated is that, as the gnollish Great Mother (51.29) says, they are so poor that it would not be worth the bother of killing them. This has some truth for the dwarves have little of value besides their small herds of cattle. Perhaps this is why the dwarves of the Titan’s Skull (33.00) seem to pay them little heed, forgetting that if the prophesies are true and if any dwarf child exists whose parents have never touched iron (39.00) he-she must surely have been born in the iron-poor Burning Lands, perhaps the reincarnation of the Speaker to Bronze is taking his-her first breath in a southern sod hall even now, especially as bronze is relatively plentiful (38.26) in the Burning Lands.
Connection:
- The Burning Lands dwarves trade with the dwarves of Nororak (29.24) for metalwork.
Hooks:
- Has the Speaker to Bronze really been reborn in the Burning Lands?
- What dwarven holdings are there in the western Burning Lands? Who rules these dwarves?
- What do the dwarves do with outsiders who seem to be soft?
- What was the one time that these dwarves threw down their shields and ran?
- Tell me more about the lawspeakers!
