Twilight of Empires

The eastern of the two largeEastwall Mountain Halls adjacent to the Asterian Empire. The Dwarves of Thrall's Gate have an ancient debt to the Empire that they don't discuss with outsiders, merely refer to. The iron of Thrall's Gate contains certain impurities we would attribute to Damascus Steel.

Thrall's Gate Hall is located on the eastern bounds of North-Eastern Asteria, at the base of the Eastwall Mountains. To the south lies Lake Helminglas, fed by the output of the underground waterways passing through the mountain. To the east lies Gloamingdale Wraith, an accursed land that few enter, and fewer escape.

Thrall's Gate is one of the older holds, dating back to the Slumbering Era. Established, blessed with bountiful resources, strong commitment to the Tunnel God, a defensible position, and the admiration of the local surface peoples. In the early first century of the Imperial Era, when Douje was piecing together the Asterian Empire, the dwarves grudgingly accepted favorable trade agreements, and bluntly told his generals where the could put their offers of annexation.

Then in the third century, some nightmare horror from the Divine Era awakened in what was called the Everdells, erased the people who lived there, and was set to expand the devastation outwards. Imperial history simply states that the Empire and the Dwarves united against the threat and in the end, were victorious, though at the cost of both the Sword of Gondor the Magnificent, and the fifth wielder of the blade. The Dwarves clearly know more, but refuse to speak of it to outsiders. Since that day, they have felt an irredeemable debt to the Empire.

Thrall's Gate supports a population between eighty and one hundred twenty thousand dwarves, depending on exactly where you draw the line between the Hall and affiliated Underdark communities. The Sunlit Splendour cavern, near the Gate, is home to the roughly one thousand more or less permanent non-dwarf residents. Despite proximity, there is no long-term population of House Corundum elves, but multiple families of silk-farmer goblins.

If it is made from rock or metal, Thrall's Gate produces and sells it. In particular, their iron is famed for the special impurities that produced classical Damascus steel. At present, roughly two-thirds of the iron veins are in a fallow state, walled off and blessed but the priests of the Tunnel God, leading to downward mine expansion for the next century or two.
Agriculturally, Thrall's Gate produces the usual range of Underdake produce and animal products. In addition, the shores of Lake Helminglas have been meticulously terraced and irrigated for most of a millennium, and the waters well stocked with fish (For reasons only known to the goddess of Flowing Waters, the salmon do keep trying to get into the mountain every year). Not much wheat is raised there, and since Dwarves love their beers, the Empire cheerfully imports it.