Askenon

The dwarven continent across the sea. It was called Tulon until Askenar invented the runes and was crowned king of kings. During his reign, the dwarves renamed both their land and their language for him. He was the first king of all Askenon and, for sixteen centuries, the last. A monastery is dedicated to him and kings still swear by him.

For most of their history the dwarves cast no spells at all. They use runes instead, drawing energy from nature — metal and earth above all — to make magical objects. Those objects are extraordinarily stable and almost impossible to dispel, but making them is slow and reserved to an elite.

So Askenon took the other road: metallurgy, engineering, gunpowder, and buying other peoples' magic. That is the whole basis of its relationship with Cerberus. Askenon pays dearly for healing potions, enchantments and transmutations — House Morin rose to a great family on that trade alone — and Cerberus pays for Valerium and dwarven engineering in return.

For twelve centuries, the six castes held the country while the crowns of its kingdoms became largely honorific. Their restrictions divided the right to practise a craft as much as the knowledge itself. Merchants could travel freely; engineers, smiths and other specialists left Askenon only for an authorised mission or contract, without gaining the right to practise another caste's work. Merenin took real power back around M1661.

When the dwarves were shown a vision of Archon killing Askenar, a hundred thousand of them crossed the sea for it — over the same water they had refused to sail for sixteen centuries.