The tome found in the temple to Odin was in poor shape, most of it was unusable, but the last few pages were still legible and covered the final three entries of the dwarven settlement.
In my milieu, I have the world created by the various god with the races being created as well and each one doing their own specialized niche. Then the gods leave the prime material plane to those followers and the dragons take over, demanding horrific sacrifices from everyone. A coalition (eventually!!) of dwarves, elves, giants, and ogres eventually band together and using god born magics and divine power weaken enough of the great dragons to allow all races to rise up and become free.
As usual, elves take it upon themselves to take over from the dragons after a few centuries and when the dwarves try to curtail the elven ascendancy, they are declared anathema and the elves wage and almost 1100 year genocidal campaign to destroy the dwarven people; a time I refer to as the Kinslayer wars. Eventually peace is made but only because the great elven and dwarven kingdoms are shattered and with their slow birth rates and millenia of lost magics, there is no reason to continue warring. And in this void, the barbaric races of goblin, orc, halfling, and man begin to flourish.
This is a glimpse of the dwarven point of view from about 1200 years before the current time of my campaign:
Watermonth 11th, 225th year of the 26th Age.
Reinforcements from Hammerheld have not arrived as expected or promised. We are running dangerously low of our food stores.
Seven month, 4 days, and as of this penning 11 hours now, Prince Malifys Goldenborn and his army has made their attempts against us and they have been rebuffed constantly. The walls of Glittercap have held not the least in thanks to the weave blocking effect of the Asgardian crystals. No elven sorceries can hit the walls or come past, their dweomers die at the perimeter, their magics fail. And as the great Wyrms from ages ago taught us when we rose up against them, when spells and magic fail the tyrants are nothing more than mortal.
We are of the earth and to the earth we will return, but not until Prince Goldenborn pays for his desire of dwarven genocide.
Thane Kysoth Beldenstone, Glittercap.
Watermonth 18th, 225th year of the 26th Age.
Prince Malifys Goldenborn made a tactical error today. Calling upon the unseen magics of his race, he sought to awaken the entirety of the Eastern Woods against us, trusting in the might of oak and ash to batter our walls. Twice thirteen of his people drew blood and chanted and the sun did dim and the air tremble. They cut the throats of hundred of orc and human slaves to empower their spell, the earth drinking deep of blood and gore as the barely conscious primitives ended their mortal moments beneath elven blades.
The power filled the woods, the leaves burned bright as silver and as one the trees bent as giants and lifted their trunks and roots free of the earth to walk towards Glittercap. The Prince cackled like Loki, lightning forming a halo about him as he guided the arboreal army forward to bury our walls.
He had forgotten about Filcher’s Tower above, suspended in the heavens below the gabled arches of the Bifrost Bridge. As the trees marched overland and came our way, we sent forth a dozen of our terrible rockets to burst in the sky in the pattern agreed upon with Subthane Filcher Skystone before he and his clansmen lifted the tower heavensward at the start of the siege.
It roared and burned and howled as it broke free of the Rainbow Bridge and the Filcher’s Tower struck down like Mjolnir at the heart of the marching trees. The blossoming explosion charred the earth like black glass and destroyed the entirety of the treant threat and a material portion of Prince Malifys’ thralls. Our prayers go with the fallen 134 clansmates who go now with Reorx to sit with the All Father in Valhalla.
Thane Kysoth Beldenstone, Glittercap.
Watermonth 22nd, 225th year of the 26th Age.
The treachery of elves is beyond mortal ken. Spells, arms, spears, arrows, slings, stones, and strength did fail to breach Glittercap. The unholy desire of elvenkind to eradicate dwarves knows only irresolute horror and mystery to me and mine. But it is something they have not relented in and now I know that we here will also fall.
Poison. A horrible contagion concocted by the foulest of the elven spellmeisters was brewed and set at the borders of our wall, delivered by thousands of arrows each bearing a single drop of the diseased taint, plunged into the soft earth to fester into the stones, earth, and soil of our home. I can hear our dying on the walls, I can hear our dying in the keep, I can hear our dying under the ground. Their dirge fills the space between the rocks like mortar.
Prince Malifys does not want our treasure, our belongings, or even our servitude – he only wants our deaths. And our deaths he is getting. I can see beyond the walls that his troops are already leaving, moving on to other places and other strongholds to take out our people. He spares not a single glance back at us, ignoring the fever and pestilence that consumes our forms, the black diseases that take root in our flesh. We are nothing to him.
And if to him we are nothing than I shall return the favor. As the last of my people die I leave this journal in our most holy shrine to the All Father as testament of we who were here. I shall leave afterwards and drag myself to the spire of Tallkeep and let fly the final weapon. The burning fires will consume our bones, the plague within the soil, and reach out to engulf the elven horde. The light will be seen in Asgard and Heimdall himself with sound the clarion call on his silver trumpet to mark our revenge.
Thane Kysoth Beldenstone, Glittercap.
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