Zudnuzbad Khazdur is the subterranean homeland of the Dwarves beneath the Grey Mountains, extending for many miles through enormous caverns, deep chasms, volcanic reaches, underground waterways, and tunnels carved through the roots of the mountains. Surface peoples commonly call the realm the Dwarven Kingdoms, but the Dwarves themselves know it as Zudnuzbad Khazdur. The realm is divided between the Five Great Clans, whose strongholds, mines, roads, agricultural holdings, and ancestral territories form the principal centers of Dwarven civilization. Zudnuzbad Khazdur is politically independent from the kingdoms of Eldris and is not considered part of any surface nation.
Zudnuzbad Khazdur is not a single continuous cavern. It is a vast network of interconnected underground regions varying enormously in size and character. Some caverns are large enough to contain entire cities, forests, lakes, and distant rock formations beneath ceilings lost in darkness. Others narrow into natural passages, ravines, lava tubes, artificial roads, abandoned mines, and ancient tunnels. Deep chasms divide portions of the realm, while underground rivers and reservoirs provide water throughout inhabited regions. Dwarven roads, bridges, stairways, tunnels, and lifts connect the major strongholds across this subterranean landscape.
Zudnuzbad Khazdur possesses a complete subterranean ecosystem capable of sustaining civilization without dependence upon the surface. Its most distinctive forests are formed by Kivarkzar, immense woody mushrooms whose thick trunks rise like pillars through the great caverns. Kivarkzar forests support smaller fungi, mosses, subterranean plants, insects, grazing animals, and predators, creating complex food chains throughout the deep realm. Fungal growth is cultivated extensively for food, medicine, brewing, animal feed, timber-like material, and other practical uses.
The caverns contain many species found nowhere on the surface. Dwarves raise native subterranean livestock for meat, milk, hides, labor, and other resources, while wild herbivores occupy the fungal forests and open caverns. Predatory creatures hunt these animals and sometimes threaten Dwarven settlements, roads, mines, and travelers. Some creatures are tolerated or domesticated, while others are hunted whenever they approach inhabited territory. Dangerous wildlife becomes increasingly common beyond the well-maintained roads and territories of the Five Great Clans.
The major settlements of Zudnuzbad Khazdur are strongholds belonging to the Five Great Clans. Unlike surface cities built primarily upon open ground, Dwarven strongholds are usually carved directly into cavern walls, mountainsides, and immense masses of bedrock. Great gates open into halls cut through solid stone, while residences, workshops, temples, vaults, mines, armories, and public chambers extend inward through multiple levels. A traveler crossing a cavern may see only monumental gates, windows, balconies, bridges, and carved façades while the majority of the settlement stretches unseen for miles within the surrounding rock.
This method of construction allows the Dwarves to preserve cavern floors for roads, livestock, agriculture, industry, reservoirs, and natural ecosystems. Strongholds frequently extend both vertically and horizontally, with shafts, stairs, ramps, elevators, and bridges linking districts separated by hundreds of feet of stone. Older strongholds contain layers of construction from many generations, with abandoned halls and forgotten passages sometimes lying behind or beneath inhabited districts.
The Five Great Clans are the dominant political and territorial powers of Zudnuzbad Khazdur. Each controls its own principal stronghold and surrounding lands while maintaining mines, workshops, agricultural caverns, roads, military forces, and dependent settlements. Clan identity is deeply connected to ancestry, profession, territory, and historical obligation. No single Great Clan rules all Dwarves outright; the realm functions through longstanding agreements, rivalries, traditions, trade, and negotiation between the Five Great Clans.
Smaller clans, families, guilds, settlements, and professional communities generally exist within the territories or political influence of one of the Five Great Clans. Rivalries between clans can be intense, particularly concerning mines, ancestral claims, craftsmanship, trade routes, and old grievances, but threats against Zudnuzbad Khazdur from outsiders are normally treated as matters affecting the Dwarven realm as a whole.
Zudnuzbad Khazdur does not require imports from Eldris to survive. The deep realm possesses its own food production, livestock, water, timber substitutes, mineral resources, fuel, metalworking industries, textiles, medicines, and manufactured goods. Mines provide extensive deposits of iron, copper, gold, silver, coal, gemstones, and other subterranean resources, while cultivated caverns and native livestock sustain the population. Surface trade therefore exists primarily for profit, luxury, rare materials, political influence, and access to goods unavailable underground rather than as a necessity for Dwarven survival.
Dwarven exports are highly valued throughout Eldris, particularly weapons, armor, tools, metalwork, mechanical devices, jewelry, stonework, and refined ores. The limited dependence of Zudnuzbad Khazdur upon surface trade gives the Five Great Clans considerable freedom when dealing with surface kingdoms. Closing the gates would deprive surface merchants of Dwarven goods far sooner than it would threaten the survival of the Dwarves.
Most inhabitants of Eldris know little about the true scale of Zudnuzbad Khazdur. Surface merchants generally encounter Dwarven goods through regulated trade rather than traveling into the deep realm themselves, and outsiders are rarely permitted unrestricted passage through major strongholds. The principal recognized surface approach lies through Eisenmark in the Silver March of Karsthal, Kingdom of Alveron, where the great descent connects the surface with the territories below.
To the Dwarves, the surface is another world with which they trade rather than a world upon which they depend. Generations can live their entire lives within Zudnuzbad Khazdur without seeing the sun. Its cavern forests, livestock, strongholds, mines, roads, waters, and industries form a complete homeland beneath the Grey Mountains rather than merely a collection of mines or underground settlements.