The Golden Age

Once the Dome of Althmeg was sealed, the Dwarves could stop hiding. They quickly expanded to occupy lands for many miles around their city, forming towns and villages.

Karm Lema became a symbol of Dwarven endurance and strength. It was during this time that they began to see the caverns below the hills as the heart of Dwarf civilization, one that could never be broken. They were filled with monuments, statues, and grand staircases. There were elaborate constructions of polished mirrors that carried sunlight deep below the earth to allow gardens to grow. The richest and most powerful dwarves lived the deepest underground, with the surface towns occupied by those too poor to afford such luxury.

The mines kept going, creeping deeper into the skin of the earth. Even more exotic materials were found, and those were used in even more elaborate decorations, weapons, or tools. Now when an army or bandit gang approached Karm Lema, they found it defended by dwarves clad head-to-foot in lightweight but impenetrable plate mail, carrying pointed hammers whose heads were one solid piece of smoky quartz wound with wires of steel and platinum.

During this time, in the vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Halflings from imperial ambition, the Dwarves could have taken Myrnia. Would they have ventured so far from their beloved home? We will never know because presently they went to war with another empire below the earth.