Wartorn Cluster

[Rock of the Fraternity]

A demi-domain I came up with over the weekend is Mt. Dennari (named after the Dwarven goddess in the 3.5 Deities and demigods).

Mt. Dennari is, indeed, a mountain. It is not the highest in the domain, but it is of respectable size. What is more important, however, is the Dwarven metropolis buried underneath. Or rather, the ruins of a Dwarven metropolis.

Morgrym the Heavy-Handed was once the heir apparent of a thriving Dwarven kingdom. He was a skilled warrior and a fine craftsman, but with one glaring flaw; he had no eye for the value of his materials. Rather, he had a magpy's eye for all that glittered and gleamed, and would as happily hoard pyrite as proper gold.
This drove his royal father up the wall whenever he could tear himself away from his duties and diversions to spend any time with the boy. This, and the fact that Morgrym eschewed heavy armour and adopted a more flexible style of combat. The king frequently denounced his son as 'flighty and flinchy' in public -- frequently. He also publically mentioned his considering someone else to step in as heir apparent -- frequently.
If anyone had dared to confront the king about the way he kept trampling on his son's feelings and dignity, he would have said that he wanted to galvanize Morgrym to become a proper Dwarf and fix his flaws. No one dared to confront the King, and it never occurred to him to have a heartfelt talk with Morgrym about the fact that he was actually concerned for his son's future and the future of the realm he truly wanted to leave to him.

In time, war came to the Kingdom. The Elves of the forest, the Goblins and Orcs of the plains, Giantkin from the mountains, even the Drow and Duergar of the Underdark thought to carve pieces out of the Kingdom for their own use. Such was the peril of great wealth and prosperity.
As the King still considered Morgrym to be incapable of acting in accordance with his rank and position, he personally took to the front. He was decked out in the finest of heavy armour and bore a majestic Dwarven waraxe. He was so heavy that, when the front line broke, his weeping Knight Protectors could not retrieve his body and bring it home.
'Flighty' and 'flinchy' Morgrym took command, in spite of the doubts in the eyes of his father's generals and counsellors. As it turned out, his notions of fighting flexibly and pragmatically were perfectly on target. The enemy was confused by the sudden shift in combat tactics, and under Morgrym's command the Dwarves pushed their foes back and eventually defeated them. There was much rejoicing.
And then everything went to hell.

Morgrym demanded reparations from his people's defeated enemies; goods, wealth... slave labour. His father's chancellors and generals complimented him on his wisdom.
Morgrym squeezed his people's defeated enemies dry to the point that their own lands became impoverished, and they were unable to provide for their own people or protect them from predators. The priests of Dennari suggested it might be time to show mercy, but his father's counsellors and generals shouted them down and applauded his wisdom.
Wealth flowed into the coffers of the Kingdom, and into a special Vault Morgrym ordered the priests of Dennari to build for him. A fortress within the fortress city that was his, the Vault could hold enough supplies and air to see a Dwarf through for a month, and enough wealth to spark envy in even a Great Wyrm's heart.
Morgrym stored the wealth of his people's defeated enemies in the Vault, 'against future need'. His father's counsellors praised him, even though the generals voiced careful objections that some of the wealth needed to flow back to them. After all, the army needed to be equipped against enemy uprisings. But the counsellors shouted them down, lauding the wisdom of the king.
Next, Morgrym raised taxes 'to aid in the recovery' and 'to outfit the army against future aggression'. His generals and counsellors warned him that this would cause unrest. All the slave labour had seen to most of the repairs already, and the army was not being resupplied. Wages were not being paid, goods were being taken from the city by Morgrym's own Knight Protectors without compensation... The King needed to open his Vault and let some of the wealth flow back into the city!

All those generals and counsellors who were brave enough to say the King must give away some of his money were put to death by his Knight Protectors. And Morgrym raised the taxes some more, targeting the noble and military classes of his people.
More wealth rolled into the Vault, and none came back out. The taxes kept rising in lockstep with Morgrym's greed. When his subjects could not pay, he sent his Knight Protectors to take valuables from their homes; weapons, heirlooms, holy relics, anything that glittered and gleamed. Some citizens managed to trick him by sending him gewgaws made of copper and glass, but Morgrym always wanted more, more, more.
The Kingdom suffered. There was no wealth doing the rounds. The army was bereft of weapons and armour. Farmers and tradesmen were forced to sell their goods in bulk for a pittance, for Morgrym taxed all, and tax evaders were summarily executed.

Even as the Kingdom suffered, so too did the defeated enemies. They suffered and suffered to the point that the unthinkable happened: they joined forces. Elf and Drow, Duergar and Orc, Giant and Goblin, joined hands and attacked the Kingdom -- not in search of wealth and plunder, but out of desperation and hunger. Standing in their way were Dwarven soldiers who lacked proper equipment and were themselves going hungry so as to keep their families alive.
Morgrym's counsellors came for him and begged him to send emissaries to the enemy, to open his Vault and the royal palace's supply rooms, to make peace before death took everyone. Morgrym accused them of spinning lies in an attempt to steal from him, and had them executed by his Knight Protectors.
Morgrym's generals came to him and begged him to open the Vault, to give back the armour and weapons his loyal soldiers needed to defend the Kingdom from the starving horde bearing down on Mt. Dennari. Their King dismissed the threat and ordered his Knight Protectors to kill them. When the generals proved more difficult to kill than his counsellors, Morgrym fled the throne room and hid himself in the Vault.
While Morgrym wallowed in comfort and rolled about in his wealth, he heard much noise outside his Vault, but he dismissed it as more lies and deceit. Eventually, all fell silent, and the King peeked out of his Vault.
What he looked out upon would be his own personal hell.

The city under Mt. Dennari lies mostly in ruins, and Morgrym is its only Dwarven inhabitant. He lacks the knowledge and skill to restore the Dwarven architecture to its former glory, and the meager workforce he has managed to gather lacks the artistry.
Morgrym is the only Dwarven inhabitant of the city. There are Dwarves in Masogan, but they are nomadic hunter-gatherers who cross the slopes of Mt. Dennari only with long interludes. Morgrym has tried to trap them by closing the border and through bullying, but that only lead to the Dwarves invading the city and attempting to kill him. In the current day, Morgrym has given up on trying to keep the Dwarves.
Certainly, the nomads have no interest in welcoming him into their own community. To them, Morgrym is a freak; a Dwarf who eschews the open sky and sunlight and lurks in darkness and ruins. His insistence on fine clothes and armour strikes them as foppish and effete, and they unabashedly insult him to his face and talk down to him when they meet to barter. For one thing the wild Dwarves do like about Morgrym is his ability to provide them with fine weapons and magic items -- either taken from the Vault or forged by his own hand out of the wealth he amassed at the cost of his whole Kingdom.
As said before, Morgrym is a masterful smith, well capable of reforging his wealth. If only he had an eye for distinguishing metal suitable for weaponry from showy baubles, which explode in the forge. The great treasures in the Vault are decreasing -- in their owner's eye -- at a terrifying pace because he is unable to properly determine their qualities before he starts to smelt them and puts the ingots on the anvil. His heart bleeds at every copper he must give away and every toy that is destroyed by his own hands, but he has little choice to keep going; he has no skill in the acquisition or preparation of food, so he has to trade with anyone willing to give him anything. He finds the cured meats, stale bread and animal skins of brackish beer the wild Dwarves give him distasteful, but he hungers all the same.
Without Dwarves willing to live with him, Morgrym has been forced to turn to the other creatures dwelling underneath Mt. Dennari: Goblins and Hobgoblins and the odd Minotaur. Most of them pay him a modest food tax for the valued service of him leaving them the hell alone. Morgrym detests the foods and libations of the goblinoids even more than what he gets in trade from the wild Dwarves, but he needs to eat...
The more cooperative tribes of goblinoids have proven willing to clear the rubble out of Morgrym's city, and have even made repairs -- but they do so in the Goblin style. Morgrym even has a squad of Bugbears to serve him as his new Knight Protectors, but neither Dwarf nor Bugbear trusts the other even an inch.
In recent years, desperation has driven Morgrym to trade with the human savages of Masogan. He finds humans to be slightly less despicable than goblinoids, and he is getting a better price in food for his wares from them than he does from Dwarves; to the human barbarians, even the least items Morgrym offers to them are miraculous treasures. To Morgrym's nigh-insane delight, some of the humans have actually started bringing him ore. The mines under Mt. Dennari are all exhausted, but for the first time in longer than he cares to remember, Morgrym can forge weapons and armour from metal he has not needed to smelt from his own treasure.

As his contacts with humans are proving to be more satisfactory than what he has suffered in dealing with the wild Dwarves and goblinoids, Morgrym is considering allowing humans to move into his city. Properly controlled and educated, they might be halfway acceptable servants.
If the true Darklord of Masogan finds out that the 'Dwarven freak' is planning to poach his subjects, though, it is anyone's guess what will happen...