History
Little is known about early Dwarf history but Dawi as they were known were probably assisted in their development by the mysterious and enigmatic Old Ones. It is said that the Dwarfs were foretold of the great catastrophe that befell the Warhammer world by their patron god, Grungni.
After the catastrophe of the Coming of Chaos, the Dwarfs emerged to find their world changed and warped. Mutated Beastmen roamed freely throughout the land, slaying everyone in their path. Warriors of the Chaos Gods murdered and pillaged at will, and Daemons created nightmare realms, enslaving entire tribes and peoples.
It was Grungni himself that forged the first weapons and armour, while teaching the Dwarfs to do the same. Then after he forged the first magical runes, capturing the wild winds of magic and harnessing their power into them, creating even more potent weapons, axes and hammers, as well as runes that gave runic protection into armour and talismans. He armed the Ancestor God Grimnir with two axes and armour harder than the bones of mountains, and he and his first Runesmiths armed the rest of the Dwarfs to do battle.
Soon after their re-emergence the Dwarfs first encountered the High Elves from Ulthuan, both chasing a maurauder warband. The two races had a period of prosperous development but a disastrous war known to the Elves as the 'War of the Beard' and to the Dwarfs as the 'War of Vengeance' almost completely destroyed the two races. The Dwarfs now live in isolated strongholds, their once proud empire lies in tatters.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)