The Great North

"Against leviathan, one dwarf cannot asail. Lest Leiknir's luck prevail, Ofeig's steel will fail"

-A verse from the dwarven epic Woodbottom.

The Great North (dwarvish: Barenord) is a confederation of seafaring dwarves located in the eponymous Great North who, from the 1060sAN until 407AN, was an independent polity in Radix. Voyaging down both the Great North Coast in the west and the Imperial Coast in the east, they were the first to navigate through the Tempest Straits and completely around the continent.

Not only raiders, dwarves of the Great North created permanent settlements in many disparate locations, which are now key ports along the trans-continental trade route. These colonizing ventures largely occurred in the 880sAN in what was called the Dwarven Golden Age, permeating dwarven culture and religion along the coast to the would-be Paxians, Serapinians and Royal Rivarians, and the Blue Kingdomers, the last of whom they were involved intimately through the Dwarven Kings. Dwarves in the Kloran Mountains would venture inland, trading and raiding both Blue Kingdomers and wood elves as far as the Copper Plains.

In 407AN, they were invaded by Pax Imperium in the Autumn War and made a semi-autonomous vassal state directed by an Imperial adjudicator. The permanent presence of the Imperials also meant the spreading of the Sovereign Five religion, causing immense conflict between the clans. The Great Northern leadership is "in-thralldom", purposefully kept vacant by the now-divided dwarves. Since then, there has been numerous attempts at an independent Great North, most notable of which was Hallkatla's Vikkende Rad, but with many dwarves only knowing life within the empire, such attempts have only simmered beneath the surface.