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The Dwarves of Durabar and the Irontooth Mountains
The jagged peaks of the Irontooth Mountains are home to one of the largest concentrations of dwarves in Meditra. Close to fifteen major citadels and cities are known of, and more probably exist, either buried deep underground or sealed within the mountain stone. The always-suspicious dwarves have reason to be zealous about their security; the high valleys are also home to teeming hordes of goblins and orcs who can seldom resist the temptation of the dwarves' accumulated riches. While these attacks are usually fruitless, there are also more dangerous enemies waiting for their chance to crack open the doors of the dwarven cities. Chief among these are the dark giants, the dwarves' cruel duergr cousins, and above all dragons, the most feared and hated foes for all of dwarvenkind.
There are somewhere around thirty dwarven clans in the Irontooths. Clan wars are rarer than some humans believe--the outside dangers are too great for infighting--but when they do occur they are devastating and tragic, always prominent in the dwarven histories. Most of the time, clans coexist relatively peacefully; they are usually too small to hold off the external dangers alone and so form alliances with other clans to defend a particular citadel.
The largest dwarven city in the Irontooths is Durabar. Like almost all of the dwarven cities, it is carved from the inside of a mountain chosen for its rich veins of ores and gems. Home to more than 30,000 dwarves, Durabar is one of the world centers of dwarven culture. Its deep caves, banned to non-dwarves, are said to be home to powerful secrets and mysteries of dwarven faith and magic, as well as breathtaking beauty.
Durabar also has a small percentage of non-dwarven residents, courtesy of its long-standing alliance with the Duchy of Coeur d'Ennui. One of the few areas the various clans and citadels cooperate on, other than warfare, is to maintain and guard the Iron Road, a dwarven-built highway running through (and under) the mountains from Durabar to the Coeur. Despite the best dwarven efforts, though, this trade route can be as dangerous as it is lucrative, and merchants usually only travel in large, well-protected caravans.
While dwarves produce enough food to get by on their own--harvested mushrooms, herds of goats, and tiny farms hidden away on mountain terraces--human foodstuffs fetch high prices in the Irontooths, as do lumber, fabrics, and crafted items (of the sort that the dwarves do not make on their own; no dwarf would be caught using human metalwork, but the dwarves admire fine craftsmanship no matter where it is from and pay high prices for human furniture, for example). Dwarven-forged weapons and armor flow south in return, as well as alcohol, ores and gems, and various other exquisitely-crafted products.
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