The Underhall Clan
Clan Name: The Underhall Clan
Represented Color: Deep sky blue.
Race: Dwarves
Breed: Brownbeards
Capital: Dvergadypi
Ruler: Thorfinn Underhall
Type of Government: Clan rule. The ruling family, the Underhalls, oversee a number of lesser families that together make up the population of the clan lands and halls. Their rule is absolute and enforced through both soft and hard power. The hierarchy grants the most power to the ruling family and disperses the further away from them one is related, meaning that the highest ranking are from neighbouring families, like the Deepstone-Underhalls or the Macgregor-Underhalls, and the lowest are partially or completely unrelated, like the Ragnarsons and Sinclairs.
Religion: The Underhalls venerate the clan’s ancient ancestry, supposedly going back all the way to the legendary stoneshaper, Gereg Brownbeard. Each family’s patriarch or matriarch carries the sacred duty to perform weekly sacrifices of food or commodities to their family altar. The oldest child of the previous patriarch or matriarch will take over this duty once they pass on to join the ancestors in the afterlife. In the event of marriage, the bride or groom from the smaller or less powerful family will give up their ancestral ties and adopt their new family’s. This has lead to a culture of bridal/groomal payments where families purchase brides and grooms for their children so they can pass on their line.
At the more powerful a family becomes, the stronger and holier their line, and the harder it is for them to acquire new blood, as everyone else knows they can demand outrageous sums in return. While kidnapping is a solution that is occasionally practiced by the desperate, it is so socially hated that any family to be found guilty of it will be brought to ruin by the rest of the clandom.
The strength and size of one’s ancestral tree is the key to wealth and power, and wealth and power are keys to founding a great dynasty. This positive feedback loop ensures that the clans forever compete to hoard the most power and to secure their children partners early on.
Geographical Location: The Underhall Clan are mountain dwellers at heart and shun open lands like the plague. Dvergadypi is therefore built deep inside the mountains of Everwinter, far away from everything and everywhere. To feed themselves, though, a brave few of the lowest families keep small farms and ranches in the woodlands below.
History:
The ancient family chroniclers cannot say for certain, but a time after the period of the legendary stoneshaper, the Everwinter mountains, pristinely beautiful peaks of ice and death, began to be populated by dwarves, supposedly relatives of Brownbeard himself. Little remains of that time, likely due to the fact that these dwarves suffered immensely at the hands of the elements, scraping by on little but the fruits of the forest below and whatever roots or critters they could find in the peaks. There appeared to be something keeping them from moving down from the mountain, though; whether this was a predatory threat or rival tribes is unknown. Either way, what is known is that, eventually, these dwarves, led by the matriarch of an ancient family known as the Founders, began to dig into the mountain using the magnificent skills of Brownbeard passed down through the stoneshaper’s kin.
They turned the icy caves they had used for shelter into tunnels that led deep into the stone where the cold couldn’t reach them. Within the tunnels, they began to gather materials and resources harvested from the outside world, no longer stolen from them by whatever threat they had been fighting before. They began to document their stories on the tunnel walls with stone murals telling epic tales of mountain travels, battles with demonic foes and the intricate craftsmanship of their tunnels.
And their tunnels grew beautiful. What had started as caves even dwarves had to crawl through, eventually grew into colossal rooms, held up by intricately carven stone pillars and kept warm and alit with massive braziers and bonfires. Tunnel systems to keep the caves ventilated where constructed, and what had once been a people on the brink of extinction grew into an empire underneath the mountain.
It was around this time, however, that the Founder clan in power grew despotic. Drunk on the wealth and power they accumulated as their people expanded, they turned away from ruling and busied themselves with entertainment and selfish hedonism. Funds and knowledge which had been granted to the further development of the mountain halls went to tomb complexes larger than some of the great halls; farmers and herders were raided and killed in the outside world as the warriors who were supposed to protect them lost their source of payment and instead took up work as bandits in the deeper, lesser known tunnels; neglectful maintenance work resulted in a multitude of cave-ins and crumblings. All these issues culminated in a cave-in in the Hall of Gereg, the centre of the entire tunnel complex. This seventy metre tall, hollowed out space, which had stood for centuries at that point, suffered a catastrophic collapse in the northwestern quarter, causing in total one half of the hall to crumble under the stone from above, its pillars unable to carry all the weight on their own. This resulted in thousands of deaths, including a majority of the Founders. The survivors quickly made certain the Founders were wiped out, however, led by Asgeir Underhall. Asgeir rounded up what remained of their people and began cleaning up the mess left behind by the neglectful Founders, gaining support for his clan in the process. During the Recovery, as the period is named, Asgeir and his clan seized control of the power vacuum left behind by the Founders and set themselves on top of society. They surrounded themselves with allies, and while they made certain to keep the work to restore their home going, they made certain to hoard as many resources as they could to ensure that they would have the advantage in case of any uprisings.
Fifty years passed, and Asgeir’s son Thorfinn has taken over as clan patriarch. While the Hall of Gereg is not longer a massive pile of rubble, the people of Dvergadypi aren’t even close to recovering the strength they once boasted. While the main hall stands, none have heard from the lesser holds deeper in the mountain for half a century, and the strained farmland outside can barely provide enough food to sustain its workers, let alone the people inside the mountain.
Will the Underhalls be able to restore the glorious mountain empire of the Founders? Only time will tell.
