Halls of Nowl

The Mammoth Scrolls speak of a nameless forge master who dwelt in the city of Norgorad-Kam, who learned to create magical gates in rings of brass. Skilled beyond his peers this forge master had learned snippets of the Language of Creation, what in after years men called the Winter Runes. He used these to open gaps in the Wall of Worlds, to tear the fabric of the All Father’s creation and see into strange realms, long tunnels with cryptic writings on them. But the gaps would not remain open and they were very small. He returned to his forge. He found after great tribulation that brass held the incantations and with this metal he could keep the portals open and make them as wide as the ring itself. So he cast several of these rings and lay incantations upon them. Each ring appeared as a simple finger ring, small, but thick. The lettering of his sorcery he made visible but decorative. He cast the rings with more incantations so that upon uttering certain command words they ring expanded and grew into a large portal. Once they assumed their full size they revealed an opening in the Wall of Worlds.

He soon discovered more. Upon opening the first of his rings he saw that they did indeed open into deep tunnels and staircases upon whose walls were written an ancient dwarven text. The lettering was incomprehensible in its order and only summoning dwarven scholars was the content revealed as that of the Language of Creation. But its order was not unraveled and though many dwarves studied it for many years it never came to pass that any dwarf could learn more than a little of that fabled tongue.

What in fact the smiths had discovered were vast staircases constructed by the Greater Dwarves of Inzae, the Trottigen Giants, those same Dwarves who the Dragon God had enticed from Aihrde when the world was young.

The tunnels the Dwarves named the Halls of Nowl, that is the Halls of Knowledge. All these Halls led to the Nexus where the fortress turned city of the Insalla lay. They followed these tunnels to that place and discovered a city on the edge of time inhabited by all manner of strange beast and creature. They called it a City of Gods for indeed here many of the greater creatures of the orders of the world came to dwell. From there the dwarves learned their were many portals to many planes and they could travel to any plane if the proper portal was used and with the Rings of Brass open gateways into those planes.

It so happened that the dwarves discovered these tunnels during the long years of the Goblin Rule between the 2nd and 3rd Great Goblin Dwarf wars. The dwarves soon learned that the tunnels stretched throughout the maelstrom and beyond, but more importantly that they intersected with the world of Aihrde in many places. And as is written, by using the Rings of Brass, the Dwarves were able to gather the greater part of their folk in the Halls of Gothurag under King Isenharg IV, and in the year 5812df, the Dwarves at last felt strong enough to challenge the hated Goblin.

~The Codex of Aihrde