Category:The Abyssal Folk

The Roleplaying setting The Abyssal Folk follows the exploits of a group of adventuring Restorationists, who have found a career in the reclaiming of the ancient ruins of the old dwarven kingdoms. Plagued with marauding goblinoids, vicious bandits, and zealous cultists, the old roads of dwarven antiquity are filled with opportunity for exploit, riches, and most of all glory.

Summary
"The Abyssal Folk" takes place two hundred years after the fall of an ancient and mysterious being known as the San-sar, which all but brought the Dwarves into ruin. This colossal creature was awoken by a mad dwarven High King, who had released from an ancient prison by commanding the excavation of old ruins. The being was said to have been on of the dwarf god Morodin's nine brothers, who had been corrupted by a powerful evil, and turned into a hideous monstrosity. These brothers were the core of a formerly benign cult, which regarded them as saviors.

After the rise of a renowned dwarf paladin, known as Kytoroghos who slayed this creature, the once rich and prosperous dwarf kingdoms fell into ruin. Now only a few dwarven kingdoms remain, the rest of the old cities degenerating into city states and gnome republics, and the great roads are now home to goblinoid warclans and the now substantial cult of the Old Ones.

But with the fall of the old kingdoms, new opportunity has arisen for those intrepid settlers and scavengers who brave the forgotten halls in search of the treasures of the old world and a home amidst the dust and rubble. These new opportunists are often regarded with scorn by the other races of the stone as 'scabbers' and 'nestlings', but the old ways are an old and tired affair, and a new era must begin for the dwarves to move forward as a people.

Dwarves
The Dwarves of the Material Plane were once a proud and powerful race, ruling by the greatness of their extensive wealth in material resources and trade. Their smiths crafted the world’s finest weapons, and their royalty held precedent over global affairs. Ruling from their great mountain cities, they would come to dominate certain surface kingdoms as well. The Dwarves hardy nature made them excellent warriors and their attention to detail made for skilled artisans. In the time of Dwarves, the kingdoms of man had quarreled amongst themselves and the Insolitus Races, while they profited off the backs of their fighting. The dwarven hill clans would swell in numbers to the north, and surface dwelling dwarves were common everywhere. But the Dwarves were not concerned with the surface, spare for their conflicts with their age old enemies, the elves, their battles would take place within the great caverns and sprawling mines of the underworld.

At the height of their power, the Dwarves fought endlessly with each other and the menace of the Orogs. Ever since they began writing their history, the Dwarves belonged to their clans. A dwarf’s clan was his honor, or his shame if he were of a stained house. This belief in family and caste is what made feudal government so prominent in dwarven society. Power struggles for the control of mines and undercities, made for continuous conflict, not often did one house rise to power for long periods time.

The Dwarves held complete dominance over the other races, enslaving the Orogs and all but burying the Drow. These savage races would not live long enough to see the rise of their war clans and camps before a dwarven regiment would march over them. The underworld was filled with great temples and cities, shrines to the excellence of a dwarven reign. Its great architecture knew no bounds. Some surface dwellers would even remark at how similar the Dwarves had lived in comparison to themselves, just without the expanse of the sky above their head. The Dwarves had also been similar to these surface dwellers, in their separation.

The division of the dwarven race was not unlike the elves or humans, they had their own subraces and religious differences. In the western Kundra Marches, the Allyndar Dwarves made their home. Commonly called the Shield Dwarves, they are a proud race bound to their love of war and its glory, in constant struggle with the goblinoid hordes at the borders of their outermost reaches, this did not however stop them from becoming the most populous and dominant dwarven race within the under realms. The Dok’zaraz were the contrast of their shield dwarf brothers, now condemned for their creation of the nefarious cults of the Old Ones, these grey skinned mystics are powerful magic wielders, who once lived by their beliefs in ancient and mysterious gods. They ruled from small city states and were otherwise considered outsiders in most dwarven societies. The third dwarf subrace are the Gronti’drengi or the mountain dwarves, who make up for both the dwarfs of northern under lands and the surface dwarves. Today, the mountain dwarves are the most common of them, as they have the most remaining kingdoms after the great tragedy of the San-sar.

Gnomes
Before the Dwarves' fall from grace, their gnomish cousins had been generally treated as inferiors to the old kingdoms. This is not to say that the Rock Gnomes were in anyway disliked by the Dwarves, they were just as welcome as any dwarf, but they had little say in most political and social affairs, the feudal lords believing their ruling to be a "dwarven matter of buisness". Gnomes were not allowed to act as representatives for any dwarf noble, let alone act as heir to a fief, but the Rock Gnomes' were a contempt people and a small minority in the underworld, so their had typically been no disturbance. Most of the Gnome race had migrated to surface during the Great Collapse which originally drove the first Gnomes to the surface, the Rock Gnomes being those who had found their way back to the underworld.

The Rock Gnome's brilliant sense for ingenuity and problem solving led them to become skilled economists and inventors, managing trade companies and the Dwarves' scientific endeavors. Rock Gnomes would commonly be found in dwarven palaces or private areas where they were at work for the dwarven nobility. The typical Rock Gnome was apart of a growing elite forming in many dwarven cities around the underworld, an elite which would one day prove to become a powerful administrative force, one which would hold precedence over all the underworld's global affairs.

When the San-sar had awoken, and the dwarven kingdoms had been shaken, the gnomes began to take action when the feudal states of their dwarven cousins were falling down around them. Either from wealth accrued over the years or seized at the end of a archibus, the gnomish elite would come to save certain cities, taking complete control of government affairs and using mercenaries that the Dwarves had been too proud to exploit to hold their own. These saved cities would become the first gnomish Merchant Republics.

Today, the Republics' wealth is the envy of the Underworld, but the frail state of the underworld's disposition has made them a center from crime and vice.