Shardokan, dwarf ethnicity

Some dwarfs descend from an old foreign lineage mixed with mountain tribes, exchanging the underground regions for the high and cold mountains. An ethnicity only three hundred years old, the shardokan are dwarfs yearning to overcome difficulties and always willing to face a good challenge.

The falling snow warms my heart, and glorifies the desolation in these rugged mountains, Sharp cold and mindless beasts. It galls me to hear that dwarfs can’t enjoy beauty. Everybody else runs after the elves, forgetting about all the other ways the world can be beautiful. The white brightness of snow, drops of hot fat from roasted ribs, the hidden tenderness in a dwarfwoman’s hips, all unbeatable beauties.

-Nartazov Yaroslav “Kochul” Streltzy, the great kurskian pioneer which delved into the Hamask Barbagia Range. First of the shardokan, meaning “folk of the keen shards”, leader of the Nartazov clan. Missing.

Brave and Passionate

Shardokan are seen by the thorakitai dwarfs as rustic and even primitives. The shardokan themselves are proud of what they see as a greater "inclination to independence" that their cousins don't have. This is also reflected in the clan's loyalty. While the thorakitai are very communal, shardokan might have individual iniciatives in which sucess has more worth than honour, specially when it comes to protecting family, friends and one's home. At war, shardokan are more aggressive, wielding bardiches instead of spears, defending themselves with grenades instead of shields. Outside combat, they're more reserved regarding strangers. Dry and taciturn in public, Hearty and laughing in private. The shardokan themselves say: "as the heart only beats inside one's chest, the noises of friendship and love beat inside one's home."

Faraway and Icy Origin

Shardokans know how to work with materials uncommon among the most renowned crafters of Ghara: ice and pykrete. As they live in high, cold lands where the ice doesn't melts, they use it for building, creating semi underground halls, cities inside glaciers and even pykrete towers that can resist cannon balls. The shardokan themselves say this born talent comes from their old ancestor lineage: all shardokan descend from the union of old mountain dwarf barbarians and the nomad kurskian clan lead by Nartazov Yaroslav.

Practicality Allied to Difficulties

Above all, the shardokan value the challenges brought by the day-to-day in their habitat. For these dwarfs, difficulties are blessings brought by the gods, specially Corallin, as an opportunity to evolve their own competences, a way of thinking which is correct, up to a point. Shardokan believe that the most apt will be the ones that will carry on one's legacy. Therefore, despite their appreciation in going through difficulties as a way to be tested, it doesn't means that they will purposefully try to solve troubles in the hardest way. A shardokan will not hesitate to use several ways to pass over an obstacle, a healthy mix of stubbornness and resolve. The best way to "kill" a shardokan, as they say themselves, is to give them a comfortable life, calm and far from troubles and precious obstacles that could be used as a way to improve all the aspects of one's life. Due to these traits, these dwarfs like something brought by Yaroslav in the form of an arquebus: gunpowder. More than their cousins, the shardokan like the smell of the "noisy solution" that they say the substance has, and firearm users are common in their clan's garrisons.
 
Unique Beliefs
 

Shardokan believe in a second soul that exists apart from the "primary soul" that other cultures believe in, the "name-soul". This is the basis for the importance of the clan: they're all those which share the same surname, and, therefore, the same soul that said surname defines. The name-soul never reincarnates, but stays in the world as long as at least one person is thus named. The name-soul has a power of its own, making that its hosts (and their primary souls) acquire traits of it. That would be the reason that the members of the Kalinin clan insist on haggling under any and all circumstances, or why all the Garka are allergic to pine trees. The "half-dwarfs" in the shardokan epic, The Three Journeys of the Clan, were said to be members of other races that, upon becoming part of the Vainala clan, gained the latter's traits and thus, survived the cold as the non-dwarfs died. Humans in body, but half-dwarfs in soul. And it seems to be a mutual process, for the Vainala are slightly taller than the dwarfs of other clans.

Important Places

• The Sclaveni Cryopolis is the greatest city in the mountain range, as well as the largest concentration of shardokan in the empire. It is in the Spotted Mountains, thus named due to the contrast between the snow and the plantations of dark cactuses and black lichens. The alpine climate along the year makes ice and pykrete building materials as common as stone, while wood is a luxury for few. The locals think of 0 ºC as mild, and the record of 20 ºC thirty years ago still feeds conversations. The most noteworthy thing in the landscape is a huge glacier, almost broken in two, on the slope of the mountain which shadows the city. Here the locals mine granite, sulfur, coal, ice and the unique material found here, eternal ice, which never melts. This fantastic substance allows the creation of freezers for foodstuffs, production of ice and even ice cream throughout the empire, cooling for the places of nobles and soldiers inside heavy armor. 
• Buttress of Thorns. A small town with  a few hundred shardokan and a minority of other people, it is located at the south most extreme of the Hamask mountain range. Inside its great walls, almost a kilometer long, live the families of several dozen warriors. These man and women have lived here for years, protecting southern Kavaja from the threats of the Unquiet Lands, a place infested by nefilims. The attacks are rare, but when they happen, the shardokan lead their battle-ready forces towards the fight.
• Kurskgrad City-States. Few things are more amazing than the tunnel networks and the cities of Kurskgrad, the gigantic dwarf underground civilization in the Drakhazin continent. Each community is built inside a giant geode, grown as if it was a plant by the kurskian geomancers. They also shape the buildings of fluorescent crystal inside, out of stalactites and stalagmites. It is said that Kurskgrad housed the first dwarfs to step in the surface. The truth of it is unknown, but most dwarfs agree and are devoted to spread the fame of the cities throughout the world when they become a topic.
 

Shardokan Traits

• Mountain Born: you're acclimated to high altitude and cold climates.
• Frozen Crafts: the benefits of "stonecunning" also apply to objects and buildings made out of ice, pykrete and eternal ice.
• Mountaineer Build: your Strength score increases by one.
• Weapons Training: you are considered proficient in the use of the bardiche.
• Comrade: as an bonus action, you may move up to your speed toward an allied creature that you can see and has an enemy creature adjacent to it.