On the island of Jelling, lives Kenbeth Stealsword the greatest hero of the dwarves and Thane of the Black Diamond Isle, for the dwarves named the island after its greatest resource, Iron ore. For the last forty winters, on the first day of spring Kenbeth has stood knee deep in the water of Lake Surma and called out for the dragon to fight him in a dual. To this day the dragon has never responded to the dwarf’s taunts. Sages point out that the dragon most likely does not hear the Thane, because even at the closest point, it is nearly thirty miles between the shore and the dragon’s island. The people of the Nation of Jelling have named this event “The Calling” and on that day, a great festival takes place at the site where the Thane stood lasting three days and three nights. During this time treaties and other legal matters are discussed between the merchants and lords of Jelling and the dwarves.
The four Dwarven clans of Jelling, are found throughout the mountains of the island mining their iron. The Hathor Clan was the first to arrive in Jelling, they were great engineers from the west hired to build a tunnel from the southern most tip of the island inland to Lake Surma. It was not long after the tunnel project started, that great veins of iron ore were found under the southern Diamond Mountains. News of plentiful iron ore for the taking traveled fast through the dwarf kingdoms and the Great Black Diamond rush of 412 soon followed. Iron fever took over and the Hathor dwarves stopped building their tunnel for the men of Jelling and started staking claims to this mountain and that. The rush lasted Four hundred years and when it was over the four clans, Clan Hurarum, Clan Mokosha, Clan Iseghey and Clan Hathor held all the mountainous territory in Jelling.
Clan Hurarum is now the most famous and powerful of the dwarf clans because their leader is king. In fact infamy goes way back to King Kenbeth’s great great grandfather King Stowbeck Stealsword, who found his way to the Island of the Dragon in the middle of Lake Surma and stole from Surma’s horde an ornate woman’s comb carved out of ivory and topped with a handle shaped like a gold dragon back around the year 840 and returned with the great dragon in hot pursuit. That incident and the great battle with the beast that ensued left in its wake a huge scare on the west slope of the Mt. Revenge where the beast dug its way into the mountain to get its treasure from the dwarf while thousands of dwarves crawled all over the gargantuan wyrm desperately trying to hack through its thick armored hide. The dwarves routed Surma off their mountain but not without losses. Close to 5000 dwarves died that day many whom fell off Surma to their deaths as she flew back over griffenmoor towards the lake and her island beyond. Stowbeck Stealsword survived the ordeal and the comb stayed with the family for another 500years before being lost. Stowbeck’s ghost is said to haunt the abandoned dwarf fortress in Mt. Revenge.
Clan Iseghey developed steel hulled ships and armor plating for wooden ships. They run great foundries and shipyards along the South Eastern Coast of Jelling. By 1239, the elders of the clan where fed up with the bickering among the human outposts on the island chose to help Harold of Yatton gain control of the District of Brunarn by blockading the East coast of Jelling from the Brunarni raiders. They then helped him become King of all Jelling and later, with the fortifications the Castle of Bryce, making it virtually impenetrable to attack from Brunarni forces.
The Mokosha clan was not as lucky finding iron on the island as the other clans but several large deposites of coal kept them in power. They do trade in iron but it is rumored that they found access to a plane where Iron can be scooped out of the air and otherwise have no known iron mines. This clan had strong ties with the Yates merchant family in Four Wells until recently when vampirism befell on them.
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