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Ancient Races: Dwarves of the Deep

This mod adds the Dwarves of the Deep, an ancient, powerful, and optionally playable civilization that can send caravans, sieges, and visitors to your fortress.

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Immensely powerful melee combatants with most runic dwarves having attributes on the high end for strength and stamina.

Runic magic that provides every dwarf with protection equivalent to a full set of iron armor, in addition to being able to wear layers of armor on top of that.

Buffed melee attacks like runic punches that have a large velocity and penetration bonus added to further boost the melee capabilities of the dwarves, turning them into living weapons.

Even unarmed dwarves are fearsome fighters due to the years of fighting in The Underworld, and when entering martial trances, they can become even stronger -- holding off hordes of enemies as if they were fighting demons.

Access to Steam Tanks, which are powerful mechanical behemoths that can be taken at embark or found in runic dwarf caravans. Requires the Dwarven Steam Tanks mod.

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Long ago in our world, there existed three mighty realms: the High Elven Empire with their mastery over magic, the Dwarves of the Deep with their great physical prowess, and The Midnight Aristocracy with their ruling class of vampires, human chaff, and potent summoning spells.

For as long as anyone can remember, these three races have always been at war with each other in what is now known as the War in Heaven.

With their advanced technology and powerful magic, they fought in countless bloody battles against each other in what would seem to be an endless conflict. Eventually, they grew desperate to break the stalemate and forged costly pacts with the gods that unleashed angelic divine beings with terrifying power upon the world, which would later become their biggest mistake.

While loyal at first, for some mysterious reason, the divine beings eventually turned against their masters, directly leading to their downfall. Forced to fight on multiple fronts, with angelic beasts rampaging through their cities, and besieged by enemy armies on all sides, the three empires grew more and more desperate.

By unleashing group attack magic capable of mass destruction, massive mechanical war machines, and berserk divine beings, the War in Heaven turned vast swathes of land into uninhabitable wastelands for centuries, forcing the last of the ancients to abandon their realms and retreat into hiding.

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Ultimately, with their society completely ravaged, their economy destroyed, and the majority of their population dead, the surviving runic dwarves retreated deep into the earth. They gathered as much of their equipment and riches as they could, and dug deeper and deeper until their enemies could find them no longer. They swore to never repeat the same mistakes that caused the cataclysm and to enact vengeance on the enemies that had destroyed their civilization.

But by digging so deep, there was a great price to pay, perhaps even worse than the horrors above. Deep below the earth, the dwarves found horrific monstrosities. Massive black demons of all shapes and forms, literal hell merging with the plane of reality. "Thank you for freeing us..." whispered one of them in an eerily tone.

The demons poured out endlessly, and it took tremendous sacrifice for the dwarves to survive. To conquer the realm deep beneath the Earth was a feat that not many were capable of. But here the dwarves built massive hell forges, creating endless streams of steel weapons and mechanical war engines (Steam Tanks) to fight the demonic beings.

Eventually, the runic dwarves, armed with powerful defensive runic magic that provides all dwarves with the protection of innate metal armor, and physical strength so strong that their bodies are like living weapons, found themselves at peace at last.

But driven by declining resources in their homes deep beneath the ground, the runic dwarves awaken from their fortresses once more, only to find that much time has passed and the world is now filled with younger races who have long forgotten about magic and the ancient empires.

As the Dwarves of the Deep emerge from hiding, myth and legend become reality. With their great hell forges deep beneath the earth starting to churn once more, their awakening has not gone unnoticed by ancient enemies.

A new era is about to begin.

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