Ironmaster

Ironmaster was an isolated, stone-towered city of mountain dwarves built into the rock walls of a frozen valley. Many of its storage chambers and passageways were tunneled out of never-melting ice, so that the buildings merge directly into the valley-side. Ironmaster's arms were a red anvil on a grey, diamond-shaped field, the long points of the diamond vertical.

Geography
Ironmaster Vale was the first break in the towering cliffs known as the Cold Run. These cliffs ran northeast from Icefang Point, west of Fireshear. Ironmaster filled this valley; its stone towers rose like spikes from the valley floor, and the rooms and passages of the city weaved in and out of the permanent ice and stone of the valley walls. The Shaengarne River flowed down from Icewind Dale to meet the Sea of Moving Ice here, plunging through Ironmaster Vale.

The dwarves siphoned off its waters with over 60 scoop-tunnels and viaducts. They built an elaborate series of spill basins and diversions to avoid flooding during the spring runoff.

Ironmaster's food came from several sources. Subterranean caverns provided mushrooms, and hunting and spearfishing were common along the Shaengarne River and the Cold Run. Anything not available by these methods was acquired by trade.

Inhabitants
Around 1370 DR, Ironmaster was home to around 9,000 hard-working dwarves; no non-dwarven races were welcome in this city. More than 3,000 were trained and equipped warriors. The clanmaster kept his standing army of 300 dwarves busy patrolling the land and underground passages.

Trade
From the deepest tunnel passages of the city, mine-shafts led down to extensive iron deposits - not rich or rare, but far greater in extent than were found elsewhere. The dwarves refined this, and fashioned it into pots, pans, and "forge-bars" (flat bars that a smith elsewhere could readily forge into something). Dwarven ships went back and forth from Fireshear with goods, and other items were traded through underground routes using secret surface caves near Hundelstone.

Relationships
Stone, menhir-like markers, with the arms of Ironmaster on them were found around the valley. Non-dwarves within the boundaries outlined by these markers were attacked on sight. Humans who were truly ignorant of the dwarven ban on intruders may have been spared, but the dwarves still confiscated all weapons and valuables. They sometimes put the humans on a ship or forcibly guided them, blindfolded, through passages to Hundelstone, releasing them at night in unfamiliar, broken terrain.