Many thousands of years ago, during the time of the elven dominion over what is now called Known Alair, a mighty empire dominated a vast range of the cold, barren and little-known lands to the north of the Engereor Mountains. Fal Torth was inhabited by several different species of similar creatures, collectively known to other races as giants. These species were different (in some cases, very different) to their modern descendants, and far more numerous and organized.
Their society was structured and hierarchical, with the Karrend or storm giants forming the nobility, the Denvrend (frost giants) and Nazrend (fire giants) the officer cadre and middle-class, and the Thralrend (the ancestors of what are now called hill giants), by far the most common, forming the bulk of the population. Thankfully rare, the brutal and uncontrollable Slyrrend (now occasionally seen as mountain giants) were used as enforcers and strike troops. While these species were far more civilized and sophisticated than their modern remnants, they were by no means less aggressive or evil, and the empire of Fal Torth was constantly at war with its’ northern and eastern neighbours.
Beneath all giants in the social structure were the slave race, to the giants the Borren but in their own forbidden tongue the Khâzad – dwarves. Exploited, oppressed, controlled by measures of extreme cruelty, the dwarves laboured endlessly for their gigantic masters, constantly reminded of their insignificance, small stature and unworth. Buildings, armour, weapons, utensils; anything made of metal or stone in Fal Torth was made by dwarves, although if the work was good the credit went to the giant whose dwarves had created it. Culture, language, religion were all forbidden to the slaves, and being worked to death was the normal end to a dwarvish life.
Nonetheless, as many other would-be oppressors have since discovered, dwarves are ultimately indomitable. Deep in the darkness beneath the cities of Fal Torth, the dwarves kept alive their traditions, teaching their religions and lore, and especially the khuzdul language. Slowly, slowly, the hidden resistance gathered strength. Resistance had been attempted before, but the giants had been very skilled in weeding out dwarves with leadership qualities – useless to slaves. All this had changed with one special dwarf; Niotanv. A born leader, a true priest of Kord, and (later) mighty warrior, he was also a skilled dissembler, able to hide his talents under a façade of dull stupidity. Rising to the head of the resistance, he planned and organized and hid and trained his people for the struggle towards freedom.
Finally, the moment was right, and around -2110 Imperial the dwarves went to war with their masters. Many of the traditional dwarvish fighting skills were evolved in that war, as the downtrodden and deprived dwarves sought every possible advantage in combat with creatures two, three or four times their size. Stubborn, valiant, and determined, the dwarves fought on even in the face of insuperable odds, but courage was not enough, and after nearly two years of fighting, the resistance faced utter defeat. Faced with the renewed subjugation of his people and the inevitable savage reprisals they would suffer, Niotanv reluctantly used his last resort; a mighty magic known afterwards as the Red Curse.
Details of the spell are long lost, not by accident, and no-one since has ever dared learn or cast it. The effects were devastating; ninety percent of the giants of Fal Torth were killed outright, and those that survived were altered – drastically in some cases – by the power of the Curse. Unfortunately, the effects were not limited to the giants. Over half the original dwarf population had already died in the war; the Curse killed half the survivors. The effects were not limited to living beings; the cities of the giants were laid in ruins, and the entire land rendered uninhabitable.
Speaking the Red Curse earned Niotanv his name, but it was the salvaging of the dwarf people from the aftermath that earned him his place as the First Disciple of Kord. If it had not been for his leadership and skills and determination, the wounded, battered, shocked survivors of the dwarf race would have perished in the ruins of Fal Torth. Niotanv encouraged, healed, guided and led his people southwards, and by great good fortune managed to stumble on the Versate Pass leading through the mountains to the plains of Known Alair. It is doubtful whether any of the refugees would have survived had they attempted to cross the Engereor anywhere else.
Aid was waiting for them.
The elves had not been unaware of the existence of Fal Torth. It loomed in the north as a constant threat, although the giants had tended to war northwards rather than southwards, partly because the warmer lands were not so much to their taste. Even in those days, however, the elves were not strong enough to take on the might of the Giant Empire, and had restricted themselves to watching Fal Torth until the day when they were strong enough to tackle it. Now the giants were unexpectedly overthrown, and the elves greeted the dwarves with joy and honour.
In the following months, as the elves learned about the newcomers and their ways, they came to realize that the dwarves were not entirely happy living in the plains of what was one day to be Tarlanor. Although mountains were not much to the taste of elves, they had explored the ranges around Sildor fairly extensively, and guided the new arrivals, who they named Naugrim in their own language, to the Erean mountains to the east of Known Alair, and to the Ndrall in the south. These were perfect for the dwarves, and the whole people migrated there over a period of around six months.
Finally, the dwarves were able to use their skills for their own benefit. Under the loving craftsmanship of their stoneworkers, the first dwarf took shape at Gloiran, expanding and incorporating a system of caves already present. As the dwarvish race grew in numbers, two more cities were founded in the southern Erean mountains; Kobur and Nisur. The elven city of Curulindale, at the foothills of the Erean, became a major trade centre for traffic of goods between the two peoples, to the benefit of both. The dwarves seemed well-settled and more than capable of looking after themselves. The elves turned their attention to other matters
A few hundred years after that, two more adventurous expeditions were sent to scout out locations for new cities in the north of the Erean range. These expeditions ran headlong into the orcs, firmly entrenched in their great citadels. Orcs and dwarves do not get along. War was inevitable, and the Orc Wars was to rage up and down the Erean mountains for nearly a thousand years. The dwarves hoped for aid from the elves in this war, but the elves had their own problems at this point; the great schism of the Fae Mhor had begun and elves were warring with elves across most of northern Alair. Many dwarves felt great anger at this abandonment, though in truth the elves had little choice, and the two races have never been quite as close ever since. One of the casualties of the Orc Wars was the knowledge of the settlements in the Ndrall; some contemporary accounts show it was believed they had been sacked by orcs or abandoned.
Amidst all this, an exploring party of dwarves, led by Niotanv’s eldest son Noroth, returned from the far north long after everyone had abandoned hope of their survival. Greatly daring, these bold souls had travelled back into the ruins of Fal Torth, and there had discovered a wretched, gangrel folk, twisted from their dwarvish ancestry by the terrible energies of the Red Curse. Pale and warped, possessed of odd and uncanny powers of the mind, savage and hostile to all they encountered, and every one of them mad, the creatures named themselves duergar.
Noroth was horrified at the state of them and was determined to rescue and redeem them. His father, however, knew in his heart that they could never be reclaimed, and Kord confirmed this view, forbidding Noroth to approach them again. Noroth’s faith in his God, strained already by the ignored suffering of these dwarves, snapped at this. Repudiating his faith and striking his unresisting father, he gathered as many dwarves loyal to him as he could and travelled north again without leave, returning to the land of the duergar.
A year went past, with no word, and finally Niotanv sent a strong force to investigate. These discovered the corpses of all the dwarves Noroth had taken with him, impaled on spikes and with their skulls rent from the inside. Of Noroth there was no sign, then or ever, and the duergar had fled; it was many, many years before any dwarf saw one again. However, in the darkness of the night, Kord came to Niotanv and told him what had become of Noroth. In his rage and despair, seizing power from the duergar and from the Darkness Beyond, he had nailed himself athwart the line that separates Life and Death, forever opposed to his former deity, naming himself in rage and mockery as Drok.
Horrified and wracked with guilt at the seemingly never-ending consequences of the Red Curse, Niotanv, although now very old, set out from Gloiran to try and find a way to rescue his son. He was never seen in the north again.
Later accounts show that he reached the southern city of Arelin where he discovered the emergence of the Cult of Drok and the beginning of the corruption of other dwarves to the worship of his fallen son. He died in Arelin, revered as a hero, and was entombed there.