Dwarves
Native to the western deeps of Grimsward. Centuries before the Fall they came east along the Iron Road as quarrymen and builders - Luna's first walls, cisterns and under-roads - bound by oath to the knights; Old Speak was their tongue too.
- At the Fall most stayed under the Sufferance (the Dwarven Hearth); some
- Guild houses (Jadebane) rose by building the vaults, the bank and the Spire's footings, capped by the old decrees.
- The current Radiant Bank vaults were drawn by Ferrin Stonecleaver (born 100 BL) and built by Jadebane crews; the oldest vaults predate him.
- Dwarves are not expected to have good memories ("their exceptional strength"): Usso heard the oath tongue as a boy and could not recall it until the hole.
- The Grimsward dwarves cremate their dead in the forge furnaces, a cultural rite of the deeps (Grimsward history).
- Luna's city walls are human and dwarven work from before the Fall, and the Great Drain trunk is oath-era dwarven work (Luna's civic works). The district sewers are not theirs: they are brick designed by Ferrin Stonecleaver.
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From the books
In Luna today, dwarves live mostly among the poor. The Dwarven Hearth, the slum tavern where Seraphina Thorn and Ussotum Jadebane drink at the opening of The Outcast Knight, bears their name, and its hearth sits cold for want of coin. The trade district is as close as a slum-born human or dwarf ever comes to the residential spires; one street further uphill, the guards enforce the old decrees. When elven nobles protest against the human queen, one of them complains that the city lets "dwarves and half-breeds" wander its streets.
Usso stands about four and a half feet tall, and Ferrin Stonecleaver is shorter than him by a head. Both men wear their history in their beards. Usso once braided his with polished gems and hammered gold, though by the time of the story the braids are loose and greying. Ferrin weaves copper wire and tiny gears through his, and wears luminarite rings on every finger. Ferrin keeps a workshop of steam, blueprints and half-built machines, where a mechanical bird screeches curses in Dwarvish, the only mention of a dwarven tongue in the books. Usso speaks in a broad dialect, calling women "lass" and saying "dinnae" for do not.
Usso was once a knight in full ceremonial plate beside Seraphina and Oakren, until all three were thrown into the crypt for speaking out at a trial and then forced into the tournament. Old Speak comes easily to him. He leads the outcast knights' oath over Oakren's grave, and at the close of the book he roars it from the castle's highest parapet. He once joked that he would outlive every human he ever met.
Dwarven craft holds a quiet place in the city's infrastructure. Usso says Ferrin built half the vaults in Luna, and Ferrin calls the Radiant Bank vaults his "ugly children". He also left a service-aqueduct door into the bank open without ever telling the elves who own it.
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During the catastrophe at the end of the Festival, Eira Ironvale glimpses dwarves among the crowds in Luna's streets: one dragging a wounded guard by the collar and swearing that Luna owes him a cart, and another, with a ruined arm, shouting orders.
See also
Last updated 2026-10-19