[center][h1]The Dwarves of India[/h1]
[i][sub]Written with Oraculum![/sub][/i][/center]


When Urist Gusilreg and his expedition struck the earth, their objective was simple. There had been a shifting in the stone. As Galbar had shrugged, a new bend had opened somewhere in the cavernous depths where before there had been only a wall of bleak diorite. The first miners to stumble across the void had peered down it and explored a short ways before returning to report that it seemed to go on for a long ways, if not endlessly. And its walls, they were lined with glorious seams of limonite and malachite and pyrite and banded iron! For the glory of clan Gusilreg, the depths had to be thoroughly explored and a new mining outpost established.

So Urist had led a sizable band there at once, to claim that reach for the Gusilreg before any of their rival clans could stake a claim first. More than a hundred they were in his expedition: prospectors, architects, masons, and miners of course, for such were needed in the establishment of any new colony, but there also came some warriors, fungi-planters, brewers, smiths, craftsdwarves, an engraver or two, and even a renowned soap-maker. Many were those who gleamed at the prospect of joining a colony in its founding, when the most glory and land and [i]wealth[/i] were to be claimed. And Urist certainly intended to establish a lasting settlement, so he brought along all who had some mettle and a mind to follow him. He would find work for them all, for any colony worth its granite gates would have its own fungi farms, its own still and craft brews, a few dozen smithies, and walls upon walls of engravings to remember its legacy and celebrate its culture…

The expedition leader mulled over all that during the journey; this turned out to be a long and arduous trek, for the ground was uneven and unexplored, their destination not even entirely set in mind, let alone in stone. The going was slow through these unknown tunnels–especially when the rock was newly wrought apart and might still be unstable! But this perseverance rewarded them, for eventually they came upon a mighty seam of iron ores in a defensible corridor, and Urist knew that this was the place where his band would make their fortune. So there the miners struck the earth, and the masons began walling off the passageways and fortifying the tunnels at their backs, the farmers began sowing spores in the dampest cavities, the architects mapped the springs and engineered well-cisterns.

All was well, phenomenally well. After some time and success in these endeavors, Urist sent a party to retrace their steps and return to the Gusilreg capital and report the colony’s great success to the king, to bring maps of the new territory and then request additional waves of settlers and supplies.  Urist was in high spirits; he expected that in due time, this colony would be formally incorporated, and he would naturally be declared its baron.

But by then they had dug exploratory tunnels deep into the heart of the iron-vein, trying to explore its twists and gauge the size of their mineral wealth. And where the iron had ended, there was a yellow gleam! [color=gold][b]GOLD![/b][/color]

Madness followed.

There were no farmers to tend to the mushroom fields, for all of them had set down their tools to clamber into the mine-tunnels and dig for gold. What use were the warriors’ swords when a blade could not dig? They discarded such trinkets and took up battleaxes, anything with enough heft and weight to dig. There was more gold than anybody had ever seen before! The purest of ores, so soft that even a tiny hammer could pry the seams from the stones and cold-beat the unpurified metal into shape! That was good, because of course all the forges were cold as the former smiths became gold miners like everyone else. They were all absurdly rich beyond their wildest imaginations. Urist, more than anybody, was consumed with ideas of grandeur. He wouldn’t have a mere barony. He’d be satisfied with no less than a duchy at the very least… or more seemly, a throne. Yes, which of the clans had a king with more gold than he? They had delved deep, deeper perhaps than any dwarves had gone before, and still this vein of gold seemed endless. This [i]river[/i] of wealth would carry him to glory and legend, would win him a kingdom or three–!

Yet then, in that moment he remembered something troubling. He remembered the delegation he’d sent back to the clan. He’d been panting, laboriously toiling to chip at the gold alongside some of his miners, but the heat of the moment instantly turned clammy. In that moment of cold sweat, he wondered what would happen if the other clans heard of this–or even if the Gusilreg would try to take it…[i]the Gusilreg?![/i] He caught himself thinking that way and felt self-disgust and guilt and loathing for a moment–that was his own clan, his own kith and kin and people–how did he already think of them as an [i]other[/i]? But then, would they remember him as such when they learned of his great wealth? Had they toiled down in their shafts as he had, breaking their backs for every nugget?

Would these fresh new arrivals expect a share of the gold deposit beneath their feet? Of the wealth they hadn’t helped to find? Had they come to take from his share? King Urist clenched his jaw and ground his teeth at the thought. The power of avarice overcame all other emotions.


He turned to the miner beside him, and shouted loud enough to be heard over the frenzied pickaxe swings, the echoing sound of metal scraping and chipping stone, “Stop! Stop!”

The man grunted, but even in the near total darkness, that gleam of the gold in the wall before him spoke louder than any words. The miner swung his pickaxe again. “STOP!” Urist roared, seizing the dwarf by the shoulder. That shook the gold-sick miner from his craziness. If only his people could pay attention! 

“Gather the others,” King Urist told the miner, “We have to go back up and man the mine’s entrance, fortify it further. That’s a defensible position. All the gold in the world will do us no good if others can trap us down here, or come in to steal it!” And at once the miner realized that Urist was right, and made to do as he was ordered.

None of them now lived up above in their first settlement; all had moved deeper into crude, crowded forward camps carved deep into the mines. For sustenance they had only stale and dwindling food rations, and they drank the dirty and metallic water that had flooded a few of the more carelessly dug shafts… it was high time they’d returned upward to resupply anyway, before digging to the next level.

But they had already delved far too deeply. When some glanced back, briefly, from their work to see whether any word had come from the sentinels dispatched to the mine’s entrance, they could no longer recognise the tunnels they had just themselves dug out and trodden. And why would they have? As long as the beckoning shine remained ahead of them, any rock shorn and chopped aside was in the past, and so was the space it had once filled. The vein remained inexhaustible, the earth’s own generosity bared to them; but it wound and twisted in its bed, and the web the dwarves had carved in its pursuit was now as wild and tangled as their beards.

It was then with some surprise that King Urist found the corner of his eye lingering on a particular passageway. Only after some repeated glances did the reason for this become clear: the mouth of that tunnel, gaping in a patch of dusty brown soil rather than rock, was too small to admit the compact frame of a dwarf. This opening had not been dug by one of his party, but it must have predated their delving! What could have been skulking here, deeper than dwarf had ever ventured - and was it a threat to his riches?

All these things were to be answered in the space of a moment. Something poked out from the earthen hole, a long, ugly leering snout crowned with tufts of dirty fur and a pair of maliciously squinting eyes. The creature, some sort of forgotten beast whose name the dwarves didn’t know and whose likeness they’d never before seen, grinned at him with a mouth of huge yellow fangs. Then it snatched a great handful of the chipped golden nuggets that had been piled behind the king, before vanishing back into the tunnel from whence it’d emerged, Urist catching no more than a flash of its burning-red backside as he stared slackjawed in disbelief.

In the next moment, he surged forward toward the narrow crevice, trying to force his body to contort through the gap to give chase, but he could not. With an ear-splitting wail of agony and rage that echoed through the whole of the mines, if not the whole of Galbar’s underbelly, he cried out. Immediately the miners down a half-dozen other passages (for this was a twisting and expansive vein!) hurried to the sound, fearing a cave-in or something minor like that. This was far worse.

Words tumbled from the king’s mouth like a rockslide. “A thief! An intruder! Enemy! Some [i]beast[/i] came and it stole from my gold! The kingdom’s gold! From your share! It stole it!”

He needn’t have spoken even half as much; already there was a raucous outroar and his people were ready to take up arms. A pickaxe to the skull was as deadly as any blade! Woe to the thief!

“And it came from there, and went back that way,” King Urist finished, pointing to the narrow passageway. Right away, some of the more eager diggers began to widen the gap with their pickaxes. One dwarf had the lucidity to ask, “What manner of foul beast was this thief?”

King Urist was then suddenly at almost a loss of words–how could he describe the thing? He remembered only its great fanged teeth, mangy fur, and bright-red rear. The very attempt to imagine a whole built of the misshapen flashes he had seen perplexed him, until it found itself resolved as suddenly as it had shown itself. 

The dry earth the beast had disappeared into was yielding under the dwarves’ shovels and pickaxes, tempered as they were by the sterner stone, and before they knew it they had gouged a long trail in their pursuit. A wall crumbled ahead of them, and they stumbled into a small circular cavern in the soil. There on the ground, rocking in a shallow pool of murky water, sat the thief: a thing shaped roughly like a dwarf, but hairy, with long grasping limbs and a curling tail, crouching like a gnarly elder. In one of its feet - which were, Urist saw with astonishment, indistinguishable from hands - it clutched the ill-gotten gold, as it chewed on something resembling a fleshy heart, blood-like juice dripping from its maw.

Hearing at last the commotion at its back, the creature spun around, and dropped its meal with a shriek as it saw pursuers it clearly had not expected closing in. It made to bolt for a tunnel, but found the way grimly barred by the crowding miners as they stormed into the chamber.

King Urist squinted at the beast now; it was not quite so monstrous or horrifying as it had seemed when he’d first spotted it, but there was certainly still an unsettling air about the thief, and then it was hard to be afraid of anything when you had it surrounded and trapped. Still, not wanting to be mocked or made a fool of for having been so afraid of a beast his own size, King Urist hefted his pickaxe and advanced, roaring, “I’ll take back that gold myself!”

A murmur came from the back of the chamber, “Think we could eat it?” And then that turned into a chorus of ayes and whispers; day after day of only dried mushrooms and stale jerky had been easy enough to ignore at first–there was gold to be dug, after all–but such pangs could only be set aside for so long before they started to gnaw at even the hardiest dwarf’s mind. “We’re all hungry, the fresh meat would do us good,” another voice behind King Urist agreed.

“Wait, wait!” the beast screeched in a creaky voice, throwing up its hands and dropping both the gold and its grisly meal, “Don’t kill me! I heard you stomping and circling and digging yourselves so far you’ve lost the way. You’ll never know how to get out of these holes, and you’ll starve to death!”

“But we could eat you, thief,” King Urist retorted, echoing the voice of his dwarves.

“I’m all dry and mangy and bony, I don’t taste very good,” the beast babbled, and then grinned as it eyed the thing it had been eating. With a foot it caught it up and tossed it to a hand, then dusted it before tossing it to the king, who caught it with one hand, the other still clutching his pickaxe, and then warily sniffed at the sticky fruit. It smelled ripe and sweet, stronger than any mushroom he had ever seen. “But this! Wouldn’t you like to eat of this?”

King Urist indulged just a nibble, and his eyes widened. Nothing in all of the caverns held such flavor. He took a second, far more greedy bite, then remembered himself and passed it to the dwarves behind him. They each took their modest share, which amounted to little more than a lick apiece, but they were all just as enchanted as him. While it was passed around, Urist found his voice again and boomed, “You mean to say that you have more of these treasures? Where?!”

If he could monopolize control of this wondrous and exotic food, coupled with his already vast mineral wealth, he would truly be the wealthiest dwarven king to have ever lived.

“As many as you can carry after eating till you burst!” the thief cackled, “This way! After me!”

It swept up the gold, scampered with frightful agility between the dumbfounded dwarves and dove into the burrow it had reached for earlier, beckoning them with its tail and the bright crimson beacon beneath it. “Dig here! I’ll mark the way!”, and he dropped a golden nugget at the mouth of the hole.

King Urist was aghast at how the thief had [i]kept[/i] the gold, had seemingly thought this some sort of trade, but then what were a few nuggets when he controlled the greatest gold mine in all of Galbar? When this sweet treasure was even rarer in the dwarven realms than gold?

“Very well,” he started, but then caught himself. “Not so fast! What are you, creature? And you must stay close at hand until the bargain is done.”

Occasionally, they used a sort of rope down in the mines to lash tunnel supports together, or to explore down any natural faults and crevices that they came across in their excavations. So the King had only to glance around the room for a short time before he caught the sight of one miner with a length of the stuff coiled about his own waist for safekeeping, like a sort of belt, and he pointed at that one, “Bind this creature lest he escape from us before delivering upon his promises.”

“All right, all right,” the hairy thief loped up and stood still for once as a length of rope was run around its body and fastened, but its eyes watched the hands tying the knot intently. “Now hurry! We’re nearly there!”

King Urist did not ask many questions, for his mind was already racing with wild ideas of what sort of cavern this strange creature and its sweet treasure could have come from, so deep in the bowels of Galbar. With renewed vigor, even without the gleam of that previously omnipresent gold vein, the digging team started to make headway tunneling in the direction that the creature had marked. The king stood close to the thing, so as to keep an eye on it, but its stench was enough to make even the filthy and sweat-stained miner of a king want to keep a small berth.

Soon, however, his mind was taken away from it, for the rhythmic beat of pickaxes, which had been steadily turning upwards, lost its dullness and began to ring louder and more hollow. Then one blow parted the earth, now dark and dense, in a cascade of soil, struck something hard, broke through it and there was light. Urist and the other dwarves stumbled back, squinting and shielding their eyes. The rays streaming through the opening overhead were the brightest thing they had seen in a long time, since those days, now fabulously distant, when they had first set out from the Gusilreg clanhold. In some of them, perhaps, beneath the ever-consuming thirst for riches that had come to cover their minds, there stirred a remembrance of home.

Yet as soon as they stumblingly emerged from the hole, begrimed and unsteady, all was dispelled in the face of overwhelming awe and fright. They had not struck the open surface, nor any vault of familiar dwarven make; instead they found themselves in the middle of an incomparably vast hall, one that could have easily swallowed a score of houses into itself. The light they had seen blazed forth from many gigantic braziers, and only a little dripped in from tall and narrow windows set vertiginously high above.

The chamber was the widest at the bottom and tapered to a vaulted ceiling, its polished stone walls inset with huge white bands whose true nature birthed a sudden chill from its understanding. For they were nothing else than [i]bones[/i] of colossal size; the entire hall, imposing as it was, sat in the hollowed-out ribcage of some inconceivably large monster, and the masonry that formed it was nothing more than an extension of this tremendous carcass. The four bright pillars they saw towering at even intervals around them were themselves carved from singular arm-bones, reared to prop up the interior of the titanic body they had once grown from.

So faint and dizzy were the dwarves with the dread of this revelation that they had not immediately seen they were not alone in the macabre hall. Indeed, the marble floor around them was crowded with dark shapes adorned with bright cloth and gleaming jewelry. These were beings not unlike the thieving beast that had shown the way, but upright on their legs, tailless and massive, more than twice as tall as any dwarf. They were covered in black fur like moles, and had huge staring eyes and snarling tusked mouths, but their attire and bearing was that of courtiers of some outlandish kingdom, clad in cloaks of bright red and vibrant yellow, with clasps and diadems of gold and gemstone.

At the closest end of the hall, atop a dais, rested a cushioned throne whose seat was a gargantuan jawbone tipped with menacing teeth. Two of the hairy creatures, larger even and more wizened than the rest, sat side by side upon it, one dressed in white, the other in black. A wide bowl lay before them, and in it a sphere of what seemed to be clay flecked with gold. Both enthroned fiends had a hand within the bowl: the white-clad one worked the clay, stretching it into spikes and tracing intricate spiral designs on its surface, while the black-clad one followed it closely, smoothing all it had wrought and returning the sphere to a pristine state. The motions of their fingers were dazzlingly complex, yet neither of them looked down: both had their severe gazes fixed on the intruders.

The mangy thief gave a shrill cackle, and, working nimbly with its fingers, slipped open the knot it had been tied with. “There’s as many sweet fruits as you can eat in the palace’s larders!” it called as it bounded away and slipped out through a door, “Baboon always keeps his word!”

The maddened eyes of King Urist darted back and forth, from the trickster that had fled, to the great cavity in the marble hall’s floor from whence they’d emerged, to the many great hairy creatures that now surrounded and outnumbered his expedition. He found himself clenching his pickaxe so tightly that his knuckles whitened as the blood left, even as his heart raced. “Steady,” he murmured to the dwarves all around him. Then, louder, he called out to the two upon the chair, who he took to be the sovereigns of this strange place, “I am King Urist!”

Some of the dwarves around him looked a bit taken aback for having not heard of his new title, but they did not question him in that moment of tension. The king continued, “That scoundrel, that trickster, that [i]thief[/i], he stole from us but then led us here while we were hungry and lost, promising the succor and nourishment of some strange food in return for our mercy. We had no intention to trespass upon your hall, or to breach its fine floor–but if I may be so bold as to ask, who are you? And what is this cavern that we have entered?”

One of the red-cloaked brutes stepped towards him, and leered at the small and travel-worn thing that so boldly proclaimed its kingship.

“Ha! A fine jibe he has played, that flea-blighted old trickster,” he snarled in a voice like cracking stone, “Know that you stand in the presence of [abbr=Preserver][i]Guptaka[/i][/abbr] and [abbr=Perfection][i]Siddhi[/i][/abbr], Raja and Rani of [abbr=Great King’s Country]Sri Rajarata[/abbr], and of us all their progeny. This palace whose floor you have profaned was wrought from the bones of the unmatched Rakshasaraja, who wrought the entire world that we tread upon and fell in battle in its defense. I am [abbr=Herald, Proclaimer]Ghosayitnu[/abbr] the firstborn who speak in their name, and by their rule I proclaim that you all will be in our bond forevermore. A throne like ours has great need of subjects!”

“Is that so?” the dwarf-king shot back, trying to mull some way out of the predicament. “Well, I have more of the gold that enticed the thief so. I might give some to you willingly, that its glow would lure subjects from across the world to your cavern, if only for the secret and source of that sweet food that the thief promised us.”

“What need we for your will?” Ghosayitnu laughed, “You are in our domain now, and we might compel you. Bow before our throne and you will be fed, else…”

Upon these words the ground seemed to shudder, and a huge shape stepped out from behind the jawbone-seat. It was another of the black beasts, but taller still than any, and more massive. Most striking were the four arms, rather than two, which radiated from its shoulders, and its eyes which flared with bright sparks of fury. Unlike the rest of the court, the giant wore a brazen cuirass, and carried a long, broad-bladed sword with a flat point in two hands. Its impressive jutting tusks dripped with savage froth as it stalked forward across the hall.

“It is clear that you are mighty beings, so even as a king I might bow before you as my overlords, if you will bring that might to bear in the protection of my kin and my gold,” King Urist tried.

“You will be under our ward as our subjects,” Ghosayitnu nodded satisfiedly, “But your gold will be ours.”

Urist did not have to say anything to that, for all the dwarves around him grew enraged. Spittle flew from their mouths and they menaced their pickaxes with a fury that would have intimidated many, even starving and outmatched as they were in that hall. One voice that Urist recognized as that of Tekkud, one of his expedition’s original miners, proclaimed, “No one parts a dwarf from his share of the gold-hoard, not even a king!” And hefting his pickaxe mightily, Tekkud leaped forward to swing at the kneecap of the armored hulk that stood before them. Not to be outdone, the king and the rest of them followed that courageous display and joined the charge.

His blow never landed, however, for in the moment while he was in fight, the colossus who had seemed so firm on his feet suddenly snapped into motion and threw himself into a manic dance. First he swatted aside Tekkud the miner, and then his foot caught King Urist and sent him sailing through the air with a deft kick, until he struck one of the great bone pillars.

Dazed and aching, the king watched through darkening vision as the fiendish courtiers hurriedly cleared the center of the hall, where the giant fell upon the dwarves that came pouring from the fissure. He swept through them like a storm made flesh, the steps of his martial dance scattering their bodies like so many pebbles and outright trampling some unfortunates underfoot. The tremendous sword lashed like bursts of lightning, severing heads and cleaving foes in two with brutal ease. For all his bulk, the monster stepped around the hole faster than the eye could blink, and the warriors who emerged from below gaped in disorientation, scarcely able even to land a blow on his thick hide. And the great blade that he wielded so deftly in but one hand was not the only danger; he had three more palms and two heels with which to strike, and seemed to be merely toying with them, or else preserving the lives of his new playthings, for he would deliver battering blows more often than not and only cut down the most ardent of attackers. Soon, the dwarves realized this, and lost heart.

Then the two looming regnants seated atop the throne ceased their belabouring of the clay sphere, leaving half of it wrought and half smooth, and raised their hands in a gesture of halting. The giant’s dance steadily spun to a stop, until he stood still like a great glinting spire among his battered adversaries.

“See now that you are vanquished,” said Ghosayitnu with a smirk, and at his beckoning his fellows crowded around the hole, barring the dwarves from fleeing down it, “Give yourselves and your riches to us, and we may yet be merciful.”

So it was King Urist I was called Urist the Kneeler, when he might have instead been remembered forevermore as Urist the Goldfinder. As to Clan Gusilreg, in their distant caverns deep in the bowels of Galbar, they did arrive to meet with those first few sentinels sent back up to the initial colony; a second wave of migrants had arrived to reinforce and resupply the new settlement. And when they heard the tales of that mighty gold vein, they delved deep into the mines, but lo! The tunnels had collapsed in many places, and they could find nothing more than seams of blighted iron in the rock, and here and there some traces of gold dust, much to the chagrin and despair of those sentinels that had been sent back up who now lacked for their share of their gold-hoard, for it was a miserable existence as a dwarf, to lose one’s gold and yet still live to suffer at its memory. 

In any case, none who had returned knew of the thieving Baboon or the discovery of the Indias, and none who had made it to the other end were ever able to return. Instead they became the dwarves of India, yoked to the great Rakshasas of the great Bone Palace, they who lorded over the hottest of the three Indias, that southern region called [abbr=Great King’s Country]Sri Rajarata[/abbr].

[hider=The Magnificent Indias]
Urist of Gusilreg, one of the twelve great dwarven clans, leads an expedition to found a new colony within some rift that was opened up in the caverns by some tremor or earthquake. They get to digging and building and all goes well, typical Dwarf Fortress gameplay, until they strike GOLD.

Madness and chaos follow, and King Urist (yes he’s now a king, because he’s richer than you are!) and all of his people go down into the tunnels following a massive, twisting, endless gold vein into the bowels of Galbar. But they dig too deep! Food supplies run low and eventually they get horribly lost in the tunnels, until a forgotten beast encounters King Urist and steals some of his gold.

They corner the wretched thief and it tosses them some sort of sweet fruit to bargain for its life, offering to show them how to find more. Entranced by this new culinary treasure, for the dwarves had not had fruit before, King Urist agrees, but it turns out that this forgotten beast was none other than the wily Baboon, and he leads them into a trap. They tunnel upward and emerge right into the middle of the Indias, breaching the marble floor of a palace full of rakshasas!

That great ape-demon progenitor called the Rakshasaraja is long dead by now, his massive bones being the supports of this palace. Preserver and Perfection rule as the eldest now (with their younger sibling Rage as their bodyguard and champion), and King Urist the Kneeler’s folk find themselves forever yoked to these new rakshasa overlords as the dwarves of India.

By the power and virtue of Cyclone, some dwarves are conveyed to India, and since the immediately preceding post by Oraculum, the rakshasa have advanced with a timeskip and built a big fancy palace.[/hider]