Lore · Cities & Peoples
The Coldain of Thurgadin
If you ever did the Coldain ring quests or stood in the Hall of Ancestors, you were standing at the end of a story that began with a shipwreck.
Lost at sea
When the first dwarven city was being built, ships went out across land and sea for stone, crystal and ore. One fleet of a dozen ships and about two hundred dwarves, led by the miner and explorer Colin Dain, was bound for a quartz mine on what would become Odus. It sailed into one of the worst storms Prexus ever sent. After eight days six ships were gone, and no one recognised a single star.
A white land
Colin picked a direction and kept going. It grew colder, and some dwarves froze to death on deck. He went from ship to ship promising land “soon, if’n not tomorrow then the day after,” and in the end he was right. Icebergs tore the fleet apart on the way in. Ninety-four dwarves reached the glacier, and not one ship could sail again. They sheltered in caves at the northern tip of the Great Divide.
Froststone and the first exile
They learned that hard-packed Velious ice worked like stone, hunted walrus for food and fur, and built a coastal keep, Froststone, which told them they were staying for good. Then they met the frost giants, who woke them one day with a siege. Colin led his people deeper into the mountains, and when the giants followed, he led a small suicide ambush himself to buy their escape. From then on they called themselves the Coldain, and every leader would carry the title Dain.
Glight’s avalanche
Hiding in the caves, a miner named Glight Snowchipper had a vision from Brell of an ice labyrinth full of deathtraps. Dain Frostreaver the First, Colin’s son, built it; the Crystal Caverns took a little under fifty years. Thirty years later Slagd Frozentoe led 250 Kromrif in to finish the Coldain. Glight led them deep into the maze with his pickaxe Snowchipper, then down a false passage, and brought thirty thousand tons of ice and stone down on them, and on himself and his miners. Thurgadin’s Remembrance Park still has statues of Colin’s stand and Glight’s sacrifice.
Thurgadin
Over the centuries deadly camouflaged creatures, translucent crystal widows and stalactite-shaped stalagterrors, crept into the caverns, and the Coldain left in a second exodus. Their new home, Thurgadin, is built for war: murder-hole tunnels, collapsible escape hatches, and Breakstone Bridge, which they can drop with a switch. Beneath Icewell Keep lies the Hall of Ancestors, where the great Dains are set into a wall of ice. Rumour says a few dwarves refused to leave the caverns, and no one knows what became of them.
Grudges, orcs and traitors
The Coldain keep their grudges in writing: one worn tome records “grudge: 2398b sub-table 7a,” sworn to by witnesses from Clans Flying Axe, Onyx Hammer and Ironside. Some claim Ry’Gorr Keep in the Eastern Wastes was once a dwarven hold, and that losing it to the snow orcs began an endless war between them. The giants still boast of their kills; a Kromrif letter praises a Commander Yellowfang for slaughtering the Coldain elite guard. And the threat was not only outside. At the end of the ring quests Dain Frostreaver IV admits that “the dissension and treason ran deeper than I had anticipated.”
Where the sources disagree
The in-game books spell the first keep both “Froststone” and “Frostone,” and call its besiegers frost giants in one volume and ice giants in the next. The attackers of the Crystal Caverns are named as Kromrif.
Volume VI says the Coldain left to build a fortress “more akin to FrostKeep,” which may be another spelling of Froststone.
Sources
[1] Library of Erudin: Coldain Heritage and History, Vol. I–VI (in-game books) · [2] Library of Erudin: The Coldain (Discovery of the Coldain, Verant) · [3] Library of Erudin: Thurgadin (Maps of Myrist)
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Retold in our own words from the sources listed on this page; short quotes are marked and sourced. The illustration is an original AI-generated painting made for this page alone, not from the game.