The Duardin are the mountain-folk of the Mortal Realms, a stout and enduring race forged in the fires of the Age of Myth. Under the god Grungni they raised karaks and skyholds of unrivalled craft, mining the roots of the realms for ores no other people could work. Theirs is a culture of oaths, ledgers and remembered wrongs, where a debt unpaid outlasts the debtor's death.
The Age of Chaos broke their empires. Fleeing skyward, one great kindred became the Kharadron Overlords, aether-gold traders who ply the clouds in ironclad sky-vessels and reckon all things by profit and contract. Others clung to burning oaths of vengeance, becoming the Fyreslayers, fire-souled mercenaries who tear ur-gold from the corpses of gods to reforge their lost deity Grimnir.
Many duardin never took to sky or magma, instead grinding out survival in the free cities, their forges lighting the dark. They are a diminished people, yet undimmed. Grudges endure, hammers ring, and every duardin knows that stone and steadfastness outlast even the ruin of the world. Where they settle, walls rise straight and true, and their oaths hold long after softer folk have fled.
The bestiary continues
