First Draft

The dwarves are a proud and ancient people. The average common dwarf can recite his or her family lineage back through half a dozen generations, highlighting notable events and family members with surprising detail. The noble dwarves can recite lineages back through two dozen generations, as if by rote. All dwarves were proud of their military heritage, and they could point to the Citadel Altspire as the only castle that had never fallen to enemies. Countless sieges -- originally dwarven warlords, later, orcs -- had been unable to bring the redoubtable citadel to its knees. No one had tried to storm the gates, for it was pure suicide to do so. Beyond the enormous portals that marked the main entrance to the mountain-fortress was a long tunnel that would become a killing field for any army foolish enough to rush forward. The citadel was the symbol of the enduring dwarven nation, then and now.

So widespread were the dwarves' reputation for military engineering and defenses that even the orc armies knew they could not assault the citadel. When the Claw Fang Tribe marched forth from the wilds south of the Heaven's Comb Mountains, they laid waste to every city, town, village, and outpost they encountered. They enslaved half of the population of Spire's Mouth, and they butchered the other half to use as provisions during their upcoming siege. The Claw Fang Tribe surrounded the entrances to Citadel Altspire, intending to make sure no one entered or left the mountain. It turned out that their intent originally was simply to deny anyone the opportunity to claim Caladbolg, the ancient Caledonian great sword that had been magickally held in the citadel's throne room for millennia. They never intended to occupy the Citadel for themselves.

In an odd coincidence, the same day that Kellts arrived to take Caladbolg, the orcs became emboldened and assaulted the impenetrable gates of the Citadel Altspire. By nightfall, the citadel had fallen. The vaunted dwarven defenses had failed, for they had trained so long as a passive defensive army that they had been unable to fight the onrushing enemy in close quarters when the time had come for it. Caladbolg was gone, and the citadel had fallen. It was an event that had been foretold centuries earlier, and it was repeated as a litany in dwarven celebrations: "The Citadel shall never fall as long as Caladbolg stands within the King's throne room."

Orcs butchered their way through the Lower Section of Altspire. The Upper Section, with its entrance to the above ground farms, remained unscathed for over a day. The numerous pulley-and-rope lifts that connected the two sections through vertical shafts had been sabotaged when the orcs had broken through the dwarven defenses at the main gates. The Upper Section was destroyed after another orc force assaulted the upper gates. No dwarf survived the two days of fighting that followed the breaching of the citadel's gates.

With the physical and spiritual capitol of their kingdom destroyed, and over two-thirds of the population destroyed or enslaved, the surviving dwarves hunkered down in their northernmost districts. The orcs showed little interest in crossing over the mountain passes northeast of the Spire Valley at first. The refugees who had survived the vicious invasion of Clemendeev holed up in the region around Fool's Mine.

The conditions around Fool's Mine were poor to begin with. The land in the region was rocky, and the growing season was impossibly short. Fishing was the only way the dwarves could bring enough food to the refugees, and there was a shortage of good boats and able-bodied dwarves (far too many had gone to Altspire to fight before the citadel fell). The port at Fool's Mine was iced over for nearly half of the year, so work crews had to haul selds of fish across the ice in order to feed the refugees. With too little land for both shelter and farming, and not enough food from the sea, it was a matter of time until the dwarves would suffer from starvation.

The dwarves dispatched ambassadors to the other Vasmar nations to seek help retaking their nation. The Javik were suffering from internal strife, and their king did not have a strong enough hold on his subordinates to organize anything. The Kelltic nations were unwilling to help, for they had their own problems with rampaging orcs. The Church of Kells was the only major organization to respond.

The Church sent a handful of priests to Fool's Mine, accompanied by several Knights of the Church and a minor noble ambassador, in 2046.

When they arrived in the Fall of 2046, they were appalled at the environment that they encountered. Fool's Mine was originally a fishing town of 1,000 near where a vein of Fool's Gold had been found. It had long been the northern extent of the dwarven kingdom, but had been little more than a subsistence town.

Now there were close to 50,000 dwarves in the immediate region of the town, with countless thousands more farther up the valley. The food supplies the Church entourage brought were quickly distributed, and the priests and priestesses helped the dwarven priests in creating meals, but there was no way for them to keep up with the demand.

The Church entourage was dispatched to Clemendeev to assess the conditions of the dwarven refugee camps, and, if the conditions were as poor as believed, to offer refuge in the Kelltic nations. While the kings were likely to balk at the offer, the Church had enough land and enough power to make the evacuation a possibility.

For over a year, Church officials and dwarven leaders discussed the situation, and the Church repeatedly offered sanctuary to the remaining dwarves. Dwarven stubborness dragged the negotiations through 2047, as they continued to insist on help fighting the orcs. With the Church's Knights of Kells nearly destroyed during the battle of as-Tikat, and the human nations unwilling to support such a war effort, the dwarves received no offers for help.

The Winter of 2048 was difficult, for the scarce game in the northern regions of Clemendeev had been hunted to extinction, and the hard freezes made it impossible for the fishing boats to sail full-time. Thousands of dwarves starved over the course of that winter, depleting an already small population.

The dwarven leadership, little more than a few middle-level military commanders, had been violently opposed to abandoning their homelands. After seeing the misery of their charges over the winter, they acquiesced in the Spring of 2048. Those dwarves who could not fight in a guerilla war against the orcs would evacuate by sea aboard Church ships for Londoun. Those dwarves who had been expatriates before would return to the human cities in which they had lived, while the new emigrants would settle where there was room in the various Dwarven Quarters of the Kelltic cities. The rest of the thousands of refugees would build new towns in the Kingdom of the Five Crowns and Eiresud, where the Church had huge tracts of land in prime farming regions.

The Church marshaled every ship they had in the Vasmar, and hired additional ships to help with the largest exodus in Avillonian history. Even the initial orc invasion the marked the end of the Golden Era of the Five Crowns Alliance involved fewer people being moved overseas.

In Londoun, the Church transformed the large square in front of Cathedral Treasa into a temporary refugee camp. As shiploads of dwarves arrived in the city, they were ushered into the camp until they could be directed to their new homes. Tensions rose as more and more ships arrived with dwarven refugees. Londounites viewed these destitute arrivals as little more than refuse, and several times Church Knights had to fend off hostile mobs.

The evacuation took eight years, with ships full of food and other supplies arriving at Fool's Mine, then leaving full of dwarves. Thousands of dwarves stayed in Londoun, despite the open bias against them, because they had once lived in that city. Others traveled far south, moving into the empty Dwarven Quarter of Brallian. A new town outside of Kells sprung up as dwarves settled on Church lands. Another, larger city grew on the Brythomar coast nearly a hundred miles east of Brallian, again on Church lands.

The dwarves thrived in their new lands. Many of them took their natural talents as miners and metalworkers and put them to use in their adopted nations. Dwarven stonesmiths repaired and improved roadways throughout the lands, and dwarven metalsmiths proved their worth with unsurpassed workmanship. The smiths even adapted human senses of aesthetics, creating works that were not typically spartan dwarven products.

The popularity and quality of dwarven goods ensured that they commanded high prices, and many people were willing to pay the premium that was associated with dwarven goods. This popularity had a downside, naturally. Human smiths who had been displaced harbored deep prejudices against the dwarves, and the dwarves earned a reputation as money hoarders.

Some minor nobles began to exclude dwarves from official functions, while others passed laws requiring dwarves to stay within designated regions of the city. Dwarves were not permitted out of "their" part of the city without papers authorizing them to leave.

With such bias, it is no wonder that many dwarves chose to leave their newly adopted cities, traveling south to New Clemendeev, the city they had founded on the Brythomar coast. By the time the last of the dwarven refugees had left their homelands, the only substantial populations of dwarves were in a handful of locations: in Londoun, which historically had integrated with dwarves; in Armagh, where a few families had settled; in Arabel Cinlu; in New Hinterton, outside Kells; in Brallian, which had large populations of several non-human races anyway; and in New Clemendeev, which boasted a population of over 40,000 by 2061.

The dwarven city of New Clemendeev was the center of dwarven expatriate society. When a local noble granted the dwarves a large island offshore from the city, the dwarves quickly built a town out there as well, giving them territory where they could live without unwanted human interference.

The 2050's were a time of radical change in society. The first of the wondrous mechanical devices from Kligzeetun had a great impact on the Kelltic people. These machines that could do things by boiling water were highly prized. Ships that could cross the ocean quickly, no matter which way the winds blew, soon carried goods and people across the Brythomar. The dwarves were particularly interested in another of the Kligzeetunese machines, the steam-powered wagons that rode upon iron rails. By 2054, the dwarves had completed one of these rail routes to connect New Clemendeev with Brallian. By the end of the following year, the route also reached Kells. Passengers and goods could be carried from Kells to Brallian in a matter of hours, instead of about three days, as overland merchants required.

While river traffic was able to compete with goods heading south, nothing was as fast as the iron rail wagons at carrying goods upstream to Kells. The dwarves were able to carry an entire merchant caravan, with oxen and horses, practically overnight.

As the dwarves' natural talents meshed with these machines, improvements began to appear. The dwarves found ways to make the steam powered machines to work more efficiently, and they soon announced plans to build an improved rail route that could complete the Brallian-Kells route in less than three hours. The dwarves were going to extend the road through Ithell's Town to Llwelyn, then along the River Llwelyn to Londoun, connecting the two great Kelltic port cities with a trip that would take only a day.

Other machines were used to improve manufacturing capabilities. These machines could perform tasks tirelessly. The earliest use of this aspect of the machines was used in manufacturing the rails used on the rail routes. Large buildings in New Clemendeev used machines to shape hot metal into the rail shapes in a fraction of the time an army of smiths would need. Other machines were used to automate textile work, and grain processing, so the dwarves were able to produce more goods, at lower prices, than the humans.

Humans were not oblivious to the advantages of the machines. Although they were slower to adopt them, and did not improve upon them as did the dwarves, men did build powered manufacturing sites. The natural advantage of the dwarves remained, but it did not grow too much despite the improved machines. While many humans still viewed the dwarves distrustfully, they wholeheartedly embraced the advantages dwarven machines provided.

By this time, the early 2060's, the dwarves had completed their great iron rail route between Brallian, Ithell's Town, and Londoun. Merchants and travelers could board one of these rail trains in Brallian, then set foot in Ithell's Town in less than ten hours. From there to Londoun took another sixteen hours. While expensive, the speed was unparalleled by even the fastest of the steam-propelled flying ships.

The dwarves sent frequent rail trains of cargo north. Soon enough, men learned the reason. The dwarves had built the rail route to allow them to support industry on the Vasmar coast, which had seen little of the wonders of steam machines. And the reason the dwarves wanted to build up the industry in the north was eminently clear: the dwarves planned on retaking their homelands from the orc civilization that had settled there after the Fall of Citadel Altspire.

Such a battle would be difficult for two reasons. First, and most obvious, was that Clemendeev was far from the industry, and supporting a massive invasion over such distances would be difficult, at best. Second, the Claw Fang Tribe had quickly established diplomatic contacts with the nations of the Vasmar after the dwarves had chosen to flee from Fool's Mine.

The orcs had surprised the humans by showing a great deal of civility. The orcs dispatched ambassadors to all the courts of the region, and they had invited the humans to do likewise to their own court. They had rebuilt and repaired the interior of Citadel Altspire. Thanks to the dwarves' grandiose style of architecture, there was no need to make drastic alterations to the interior of the citadel.

The human diplomats who visited the Claw Fang's newly-claimed lands found an established, settled civilization populated exclusively by orcs. The orcs explained that the dwarves who had remained behind in the occupied lands had been permitted to leave, and most did.

After fifteen years of normal relations with the orcs, the human nations had chosen to accept the orcs' claims to the Heaven's Comb Mountains. Dwarven protests to the contrary were dismissed, since the dwarves had willingly left their historical lands behind.

It was in this context that the dwarves started hiring mercenaries to fill out their armies, and they moved tons of war materiel to the Vasmar coast as they built a fleet of steam-powered transports to move their armies across the sea to their former lands.

The dwarves had lost their historical homelands to the intruding orcs, and those orcs had managed to convince the human nations that they had a right to inhabit the Heavens' Comb Mountains, but the dwarves were determined to take back Citadel Altspire no matter the cost.

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Original Draft 30 July 2002

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