The Mistpeak Vales was a dwarven society in the southern Cloud Peaks, Central Balebu. It was a poor, loose alliance of small villages and freeholds living in the rough valleys around the Mistpeak Range.

Culture and Religion

Though life was tough in the mountain Vales, the mountains were a core part of Valer spiritualism. They loved the rugged mountains they inhabited and had a deep respect for nature. Farmers had to obey careful rituals when they worked the earth, built terraces for crops following the meticulous ways of their ancestors, and villages carefully rotated their pastures available for grazing according to the year's cloud auguries, made in the winter. Many of these rituals were directly tied to surviving on the mountains: the Vales were not very rich or productive, and the Valers had to carefully tend the resources they had in order not to overexploit them or cause permanent damage.

Cloud Auguries. The clouds were of special significance to the Valers, especially the clouds around the Mistpeak Range. At any time of the year, priests could read messages from the gods in the way the clouds behaved. The most extensive cloud-seeing was done in winter, where over the duration of several days, villagers would keep a constant watch on the clouds, and at the end a priest would make a general report based on these observations. This became the augury for the year, and it dictated many important things such as whether one should marry this year, how the grass may grow, and which pastures the village should use. Smaller cloud auguries could be made throughout the year, determining things such as whether it was a good time to milk the mooders or whether one should attempt an ascent of a Mistpeak.

The Copses of Dunatis. It was tradition for lumbermen to pay respects to the forest by cutting down trees sparsely. They also designated certain areas called Copses of Dunatis, usually around a fifth of a forest, in which they did not cut trees; the copses were holy spots dedicated to the God of Wisdom, where the trees had to be left intact. In years with especially high wood demand, the copses would become quite visible as green or brown patches scattered across the valley.

Marriage. The ritual of marriage, and founding a household, was sacred and very carefully ritualized. If two single dwarves wanted to marry, they would have to propose to one another, to their respective parents, and to the village priest; all three had to give their accord. Once everyone was in agreement, usually the man would come live in his future wife's household, for a duration of several years. During this time, he helped out his god-family, working the fields or the woods and teaching whatever skills he knew to the young of the family. Then, once the clouds announced a good year for marriage, the couple would go on their marriage climb, ascending to and meditating at the mountain of their preferred god. After, over the duration of a year, they were supposed to live as guests somewhere outside their Vale, usually helping a village priest, living as monks in Cairn-Spirit, or staying at friends or relatives of the family. At the end of this period, the couple returned to their Vale freshly married, and either built up a new household or took one over from aging relatives.

Priests

Each community had a part-time priest, who lived in a household and participated in its tasks, but also spent considerable time performing religious rites and priestly obligations in the village chapel. These were small houses, sometimes adorned with a bell tower, typically a large cairn-like stone pile with a bell on top.

Priests performed many important duties for the community, first among which was their religious role: they made cloud auguries, determined the will of the gods, officialized certain rituals, and organised prayers. They also gathered the village when necessary and prepared the meeting place, and helped appease disputes if any emerged, serving as an impartial arbiter.

The Mistpeak Range

The Mistpeak Vales were named after the prominent mountain range of the same name which was visible marching across the sky from all five vales. Each of the seven peaks stood for one of the seven dwarf-gods, and the Valers saw these vast, stoic rocks as embodiments of the gods themselves; all mountains were imbued with the essence of the Moradfilki, and the Mistpeaks were the gods' pure essence. When people were sad or angry, or they needed comforting, they could always look up and see the Mistpeaks calmly watching over them. The Mistpeaks were also a proud symbol of unity, unmoving against the hardships of nature, always there to rally the Valers in times of need.

The highest form of spiritual communion for a Valer was the climb of a Mistpeak. Whenever an individual felt they needed to speak with the gods and seek greater council, they would travel to and then climb one of the Mistpeaks. At the top stood a large cairn, which pilgrims typically enlarged by adding a stone of their own, and a small shelter. Pilgrims would spend up to a few days on the peak, meditating and communing with their god.

Cairn-Spirit

The only large religious site in all the Mistpeak Vales was the monastery of Cairn-Spirit. The place was built on rugged, difficult-to-navigate ground in a large expanse of boulders and small cliffs. It was surrounded by a forest of cairns of all shapes and sizes. The monastery itself was a large compound of cobblestone and wood halls lined with smooth stone pillars; in the center stood a huge tower of boulders. The monastery was inhabited by two dozen dwarves who lived here the year round, cultivating small gardens and herds of sheep but also relying on food brought to them from the surrounding Vales.

The monks of Cairn-Spirit dedicated their entire lives to the Moradiet, forfeiting hopes of raising children or building homes in exchange for a pious life. They made, gathered, and kept records of events in all the Vales, carefully tracked the weather and the clouds in thick ledgers, and communed with the gods; they were also expert healers, soldiers, and mountaineers. Dwarves from all around visited them to find information, advice, or to train a certain skill; if a visitor brought good food and ale, or more precious items such as tools or weapons, they were allowed to stay even for several years in order to learn a certain skill. Couples here to work for their year of marriage, or individuals come to take up the robes of the monk themselves, were also warmly welcomed.

Aside from its spiritual and knowledge role, Cairn-Spirit was important as the one meeting place of the five Vales. Communication between the Vales went through the monastery and was to a large part done by monk runners, and Cairn-Spirit was a safe resting place where everyone was welcome to find a safe haven. Chiefs from different Vales would come here to meet, and in case of major conflict, the monks would order the parties to them and solve the dispute on their holy ground, under the eyes of the gods.

Society

Though dwarves were known for their powerful fortresses beneath the ground, and their great smithing, the Mistpeak Valers lived far more simple lives. They knew how to collect iron from the mountain-slopes and forge it into simple tools and weapons, but they were not great smiths, and in fact most people had only linen clothes, a few tools, and livestock to their name.

The Valers were not very advanced people. They typically lived in small households, in families no larger than an adult couple, a handful of children, and a few elders. Valer houses usually had a cobblestone fundament, wooden board floor, and wood tile ceilings; they were one-story affairs, with external dug-in cellars and toilets, and occasionally some space under the roof for storage or a child's room.

A Valer had a few activities they could perform to survive, and most Valers did a little bit of everything. Though field agriculture was only possible in the lowest reaches of the Meyte and Gabern Vales, terrace gardening was relatively widespread, and farmers planted tubers or other crops. Much of the Vales was covered in rolling green hills, and pasture animals like sheep, goats, and even mountain rothé (a type of mooder) produced many valuable things including meat, milk which was in turn processed into a variety of dairy products including a very liquid yogurt, soft cheese, and alcohol, leather used for straps and tools, and furs and wool used for clothing. Lumbermen also exploited the thin pine forests, and some folk even gathered roots and berries from the Vales' frugal wildlife. Still, the Vales were not very fertile, and farmers usually got by on quite slim margins. A few long winters in a row were enough to cause serious problems.

Villages

Though there were autonomous homesteads, many houses clustered to form villages, and even isolated homes still belonged to a village for things such as priests or social networks. The typical Valer village counted around 60 citizens and thus a dozen houses; the Vales were quite sparsely populated.

Despite their small size, villages had a powerful communal spirit. The townsfolk regularly met either to talk and barter, or to pray in or in front of the village chapel. Whenever a homestead faced troubles, be it from weather or other natural damage, food issues, or outsider raiders, the village unquestioningly supported them. The social net was quite strong, allowing villages to withstand times of low food supplies when otherwise half the homesteads would have died of hunger.

Nevertheless, there was no village chief. The priest was respected, but he was not a figure of authority, more of an adjudicator. If it came to representing the village, such as when leading the village's fighters to track down raiders or when sending an emissary to talk in Cairn-Spirit or at the valetache, the village would choose the candidate by common agreement - usually, this was not the most authoritative person, but the one who was best adapted to the task and also less needed at home.

A map of the 5 Vales.

Valetaches and the Aukter

Though villages worked fine most of the time, sometimes the Vales faced much bigger problems: a larger outsider force come to attack the Vale, or a natural cataclysm such as an avalanche which caused trouble for several villages simultaneously, or even a neighboring Vale causing trouble. In such cases, representatives of the villages came together and talked things out among each other in a meeting called valetache. These could count anywhere between a dozen and over a hundred speakers, depending on the Vale and the severity of the issue. The valetache's role was to unite the Vale and bring its common strength to bear in times of need, and it accordingly had considerable powers. It could coordinate villages' raising forces, for example when a few villages needed to bring their militias at the same time to the same place to attack a group of raiding orcs, it could make cross-Vale agreements such as border drawing (though this was typically done between village representatives in Cairn-Spirit, not in the form of valetaches), and it could appoint a margrave.

Margrave were officials vested with the power of aukter, lasting until they could resolve whatever problem they had been appointed to fix. Theoretically, the monks of Cairn-Spirit could appoint a "Leader of the Sons of Moradin" and vest him with aukter, and the monastery's own decisions were also made with aukter, but it never made use of it, instead forcing reticent Vales to hold valetaches and appoint margraves for themselves, or to join another margrave's army. Typically, margraves used their aukter to order all villages in the Vale to raise an armed force, and then command this force in war. Occasionally, Vales went to war against each other, but most of the time - in the frequency of once or twice per generation - the margraves instead led their army to war against some invading foe. It was common for margraves to be cross-Vale commanders, commanding two or more Vale armies. But, once the threat was defeated, these dwarves lost their aukter and the armies returned home, meaning that no attempt at a central government ever emerged from the valetaches or the margraves.