It is said that the Dwarves are greedy, that they desire nothing more then material wealth, be it in gold, jewels, steel or gromril. That they can sniff it out where it lies, that they will kill or murder just for a few precious nuggets of gold. Though yes it is true that they love gold and will hoard it away from all others, no Dwarf will kill for it, unless the stuff is taken from him by some lesser creature. It is this desire for wealth that drives the Dwarves and what makes them who they are.

Dwarves are stubborn beyond common sense, preferring to cling to an incorrect argument, no matter how clearly it is wrong, rather then concede the point to their opponent. This passes over into their common lives, making each Dwarf driven by honour, desiring to fulfill their word as if they have no other choice. If a Dwarf says that he will do something, then nothing short of an army standing in his way will stop him. And only then once, they have hacked the Dwarf to death. Dwarves are tenacious in defence and nigh unstoppable on the attack, their sheer willpower allowing them to face against foes that outstrip them, or numbers far greater then anyone should sensibly face.

Yet hand in hand with honour and bullheadedness comes pride and pride may, other then greed, be the Dwarf races primary downfall. Though they will keep their word if they can, they are bound to redeem themselves if, for some reason, they are forced to break their oath. They hold words, promises, and oaths above even gold, holding honour in almost as high a regard, believing that one without honour is one without a point to their life. Unfortunately, there are many cases of a Dwarf being simply unable to fulfill an oath, protect his family or pay a debt. This results in the Dwarf shaving his head, giving his possessions to his family, or the Dwarf High King if his family are dead, and then seeking out the largest monster he can find, to seek out redemption in death.

Short and broad, Dwarves seem built for their mountain homes. With arms as thick as a man’s thighs, their strength and endurance are both excellent. This coupled with the Dwarfs natural stubbornness can make the short warriors surprisingly hard to bring down in combat. Their flesh is normally a dark tone, the colour of earth or soil, though some Dwarves have almost human tones to their skin. They grow facial hair almost religiously, keeping and maintaining their beards as a sign of their rank and status. Indeed, the longer a Dwarfs beard the more respect he is granted. Yet only once it touches the floor is a Dwarf given the highly prestigious title of Hazzthrek, meaning literally Long Beard. Their beards start dark and pale as they age; through they continue to grow until the day the Dwarf dies.



Female Dwarves do not tend to grow beards, although some have been known. They do, however, perform the same duties as the male Dwarves, mining, stone working, weapon crafting, selling wares and looking after the mine animals. The Dwarves do not permit their women to go to war however, drawing the line at sending their daughters and wives deliberately into harms way. Normally shorter and not quite so broad as the male Dwarves, the female Dwarves, having no beards, take great pride in their hair instead, some spending hours plaiting and weaving it into intricate shapes.

Dwarves are superb miners, unequalled in the entire world, their tunnels both deep and straight. Yet these are no simple holes in ground. Paved with stone and lined with pillars covered in intricate carvings, no Race can equal the Dwarves for their skill in manipulating stone. They have a sixth sense for finding the best lines of ore in any rock, and are the only race to ever successfully mine, refine and construct steel weapons.

Dwarves are also partially responsible for creating the Jump Gates. Working with an Ether Walker, an Engineer team experimented with various different ores until they found one that held the correct charge. This was then built into a gate and a second was taken, by the Ether Walkers, to the planetoid, Dragons Eye. When activated the two gates linked together and the Dwarves where able to walk on the iron rich surface of Dragons Eye. Since that moment, the First Gates have never closed, with constant traffic back and forth from the surface of Dragons Eye to Tal’Vorn and back again. Indeed Dragons Eye is now little more then a sprawling mining complex, with hundreds of tons of raw ore being wheeled through the Gate every day. Once back on Tal’Vorn, the Dwarves buy it from the High King and then construct it to sell on to others. Naturally the Dwarfs who work in the Ore Mines are actually paid in the precious stuff, making becoming a Miner something of an honour.

When they are forced to declare war, most commonly against the highly aggressive Anvar, the Dwarves are a defensive race, preferring to stand upon high ridges or in the mouths of valleys where the enemies’ numbers cannot aid him. From the defended position, behind a line of armoured troops, Dwarves armed with crossbows, simple gunpowder rifles and long nosed cannon bombarded the enemy lines. Finally, the Dwarves take up their hand weapons and shields and stand shoulder to shoulder with the Dwarf beside him, stoutly holding the line before pushing back, axes swinging and hammers breaking bones as they fight back.

The Dwarves fight like this for many reasons, the not least being their superior armour and ranged weaponry in comparison to some of the other races. Though individually a Dwarf is no match for an Anvar, DragonLord or Angel, working together as a concerted force they are more then capable of holding off foes many times their number and strength. In this martial prowess, they are rightly proud with many songs and tales of great battles being sung out in the halls of Drazzahezz.

Drazzahezz itself is a place of wonder, a mountain stronghold that is both nigh impenetrable and nigh the most beautiful example of carved stone in the known world. Its doors are over a metre thick, carved of granite, set with many Runes of Protection and Defence, and beyond the doors are many meters of narrow corridor, only wide enough for two carts to progress down with heavy iron portcullis every ten meters. Lining this corridor are concealed arrow slits and roof hatches. During an attack over four hundred Dwarves can defend the passage without ever having to step foot inside the actual corridor.

Of course, none of these defences are actually active in times of peace, the doors simply standing closed. After all, no one needs to enter the Dwarf City through the doors when the Jump Gate works perfectly well. The Jump Gate Chamber is a true work of art. The Gate is calibrated in such a manner that the Dwarves arriving from Dragons Eye face one direction and move instantly into one section of the city, whilst Dwarves and visitors from the other Jump Gates on Tal’Vorn face the other direction, straight into the full force of the Dwarf stone craft. Towering pillars carved into statues hold up the high arched roof, the ceiling high beyond the sight of a normal human. Everywhere are runes telling the tales of the Dwarf Race, their triumphs, their battles and their defeats. For Dwarves hold defeat as dearly as victory, harbouring grudges for many years. Every grudge is marked into one of the pillars in Drazzahezz and with over ninety million individual pillars in the city, evidently there a good many grudges.

The walls are great works of art, carved from the natural stone itself, as delicate as any filigreed work of jewelry produced by the Angels. They depict the finding of Drazzahezz, how the first shaft was plunged and how dozens of seams of gold ore was discovered. It is told by the oldest of the Hazzthrek that the Dwarves where once a nomadic race like the Anvar, coming into conflict with the Armoured Ones on many occasions as they fought for land and food. It was a desperate time, with the Dwarves divided, separated and leaderless. Natural miners, the Dwarves had dug shallow pits before, finding short seams of metal ore, digging it out of the ground. They lived like this for generations until they found Drazzahezz. By no means Tal’Vorn’s largest mountain, the Dwarves felt drawn to it nonetheless, doubtless for some subconscious reason.

It took a long time to hollow out the mountain, to dig the long passageways and corridors and to shore up the defences in case of an attack. The Dwarves who has wandered for all of their existence had now found a home and with typical bloody-mindedness where determined to protect it against all comers. Word got out to the other Dwarves and over many decades, almost all the Dwarf tribes came to Drazzahezz to help craft the Dwarf City.

Its name, Drazzahezz, was coined by Gotrek OreBreaker, the first Dwarf to lay pike to stone on the mountain. In the tongue of the Dwarves, Drazzahezz literally means Unending. Drazzahezz is the spiritual home of all Dwarves, even those who have never laid eyes upon the City Under the Mountain. It is there that the Dwarf High King holds his throne; there that the High Temple of Terra the Earth God can be found and it is there that the main source of Dwarf wealth comes from. Thus, all Dwarves view Drazzahezz with a respect and wonder that it truly deserves.

Not even the Angel Cities, Lathar or Haltimeran can match Drazzahezz for sheer beauty and magnificence. Mere words cannot do it justice, cannot capture how it feels to be belittled by stone and yet to look upon the stone and see intricate carvings, each flowing into each other like water. To see diamonds suspended in a roof so far above your head that their twinkling looks all the world like stars in the night sky, their positions so accurate that you could almost stargaze inside the city. A place where, despite it being made of cold stone, the temperature remains at a constant due to Dwarf engineering and the construction methods used in the building. A place where the walls echo to chants of Dwarves, their voices either raised in song or raised in praise of the God of the Earth.

However, some of the Races find the place abhorrent. The Elves hate the touch of the cold stone, the feel of missing life all around them, out of touch with the plants and animals that make up their own forest realm. The Angels almost fear the crushing weight of the mountain above them, the pressing darkness all around that to them, used to the shining light high above the clouds, seems like an abomination in the eyes of Aeros the Sky Lord. Thus it is unlikely that these Races will step foot within the City Under the Mountain.

The Dwarf Wars with the Anvar are legendary, having been fought long before Drazzahezz was founded. The Anvar devour metal and the Dwarves hoard and use metal. Thus, a conflict between the two races was almost guaranteed. Unfortunately, the Anvar’s multiple physical advantages over the Dwarves led to the Dwarves generally avoiding conflict as much as possible. This changed once Drazzahezz was made. Now that the Dwarf Race had a home to protect, a place to call their own, they where ferocious in its defence. They where fortunate, however, that the Anvar did not discover the location of the City Under the Mountain for many decades, allowing the Dwarves to bolster their forces, fortify their defences and create the Jump Gates. With a Jump Gate in every major city on Tal’Vorn, the Dwarves where able to found many alliances with the other Races.

Because of all this, when the Anvar eventually found Drazzahezz and attacked it, most of the other Races declared war upon the Anvar and came to the aid of the Dwarves. It took many years to break the fanatical Anvar, with much loss of life on both sides but eventually the Eaters of Metal were broken and scattered away from Drazzahezz. This sparked an era of peace and expansion for the Dwarves, increasing the size of their city and spreading its influence into the other cities on Tal’Vorn.

Where you find a weapon of any decency, you know that it has been forged either by a Dwarf or by someone once taught by a Dwarf. They are unparalleled weapon smiths, best known for their axes, armour, mauls, maces and hammers, brutal crushing and hacking weapons that suit the strength and power in defence of the Dwarves.

Dwarves are renowned for another thing as well. High on the slopes of the Drazzahezz Mountain are passages known only to the Dwarves that lead out onto a hidden plateau. This rare area of fertile land in a barren mountain range is home to the Dwarf oat and barley fields. This is then harvested and used to produce the nigh legendary Dwarf Ale. The Ale itself is in much demand with the Dwarves, drunk by the galleon everyday in the depths of the city. It is said that a Dwarf needs neither food nor water so long as he has Ale to drink. Naturally other Races desire the alcohol as well, buying barrels of the stuff from the Dwarves in almost as great a quantity as they buy weapons and armour.

The Dwarves are a proud race, without question, a race of honour and truth where a Dwarfs duty means more to him then his very life. They love both metal and ale with a deep fervour, yet this is in its turn exceeded by their devotion to Terra. Everyday Drazzahezz rings with the deep voices of the Dwarves, their songs sung in praise of the Earth Master, in devotion to the God of Metal and Stone. They loathe war and yet love it, hating that Dwarves must die because of it and yet glorifying the honour and courage displayed by their people in the defence of Drazzahezz. They are a race of miners and artisans to whom honour is everything they need, more precious then even gold.

Place your faith in our Lord Terra, in the stone and in the steel. They will guide and protect you.
Dwarf saying


Open fire!
Only command given during the last battle of the Dwarf Wars


Death of Snorri AxeBiter
Death of Gotrek Gotreksson
Failure to pay five gold by James WindCaller
Death of Thor HammerHelden
Failure to pay five copper by Albert RockHurler
Extract from one of the pillars in Drazzahezz (the pillar in question is forty foot high and the script is the height of a man’s thumbnail. The pillar is covered in it)