Anvil Vale History

This is the history of the Hammer Peak, and of the Anvil Vale. It is also the known record of the dwarrowfolk, insofar as it is known and remembered by historians and archivists.

The Rising Days

The Rising Days are more a thing of legend than true recorded history.

• Unlike many peoples, the dwarrowfolk (a people that includes both lineages of dwarves, as well as the rock gnomes and the genasi who rise spontaneously from the elemetal power in dwarrow lineages; later, this includes the stout halflings) do not attribute the creation of their kind to distant gods or extraplanar powers.
  • Instead, they claim that during the Dawning of the World, when much life rose from the lands themselves, the dwarrowfolk rose from the purest veins of materiél beneath the earth.
  • Born from flint and granite and obsidian, the mountain dwarves rose from Stone.
  • Born from iron and tin and gold, the hill dwarves rose from Ore.
  • Born from quartz and garnet and diamond, the rock gnomes rose from Gem.
  • To this day, the term "Of Stone and Ore" describes all things dwarven, while dwarrowfolk are somestimes call "the People of Stone and Ore and Gem" in older texts.
• It is said that the First Dwarrows – each the first of their own kind – roamed the lands of the Vale.
  • Some legends claim that each was alone, and that it was out of their loneliness that the Great Making occurred.
  • Other tales suggest that the First knew or at least encountered one another, and that they each shared their own trove of crafts-lore.
• However it happened, the First Dwarrows undertook the Great Making, taking up the materials from which each of them were made, and made the Elder Dwarrowfolk, the first generation of each type of dwarrowfolk.
  • Mountain dwarves were carved from stone, hill dwarves were alloyed from ores, and rock gnomes were cut and polished from gemstones.
  • It is said that the detritus from the Great Making – the chips of cast-off stone, the ash and slag of the smelter, the crumbled dust of cut-away gems – were cast in the World Fires to be rid of them. Instead, they mixed and changed, and gave rise to the goblinoids of the world: greedy, vicious, full of hate and anger, forever resentful of what the dwarrowfolk were given by the First Dwarrows.
• It is also said that during these days were the First Dragons born in the cataclysmic hearts of the worst elemental chaos of the world: the hearts of blizzards and thunderstorms, the churning morass of stagnant waters and poisonous stinking woodland vales.
  • In the deeps of the earth, the great firestorms of the World Fires gave rise to red dragons, and the early dwarrowfolk were the nearest folk on whom these terrors might turn their rage and fury.
  • In time, the dwarrowfolk drove the dragons from beneath the earth and into the skies above the mountains, though they still remembered their origins and preferred to lair in caverns yet.

The Crownrule

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The Clansrule

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The Guldrule

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