House Demirkapı

House Demirkapı is a dwarven noble house of the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign. Its members are not engineers or stoneworkers but soldier nobles who own mines and defend fortresses; they mine black amethyst and sell it without working it themselves. The house is distantly related to the Demirsakal.^{1 2}

Black amethyst

The mines of the dwarven kingdom of Dağaltı are the chief source of black amethyst, which leaves the kingdom through the fortress of Gazad; small finds elsewhere and resale are also possible. Searching for the source of a black amethyst ring he had seen in a dream, the drow Ephorus traced the trade through guild craftsmen and middlemen who supply untaxed goods, and so came to the name Demirkapı. The head of the house later said that about nine-tenths of all black amethyst came from its own mines.^{3 4 5}

Age and ancestry

Dwarven family names that end in "beard" mark the oldest families. The Demirkapı are held to be as old as the fortress of Gazad, reaching back perhaps to the Second Age, while the present is the Fourth Age.⁶

One ancestor, Bardin Demirkapı, was among the first dwarves to come up to the surface, and for that some of his own people scorned him and set his tomb outside, in a sealed chamber carved into the great rock of Yaşlıtaş. He is famed for slaying a great red dragon alone; his axe is said to hold that dragon's blood, and his shield bears workings forged of almost pure mithril. The champion Karak Dağdöven secretly charged Kemp Corvus with bringing an object from that tomb, and inside the sarcophagus the company found no body but a great sealed metal urn, a double-bitted axe and a large shield. Karak said that dwarves believe their ancestors watch them, and that whoever wields Bardin's axe and shield will feel his might behind him.^{7 8 9 10}

Balgur broke the urn's lid, took out a handful of ash and scattered it in the square of Gromkar, and the dwarves mixed it into the soil. Karak proclaimed that Gromkar was now dwarven ground of the Kingdom of Dağaltı, and that since Bardin Demirkapı lay there, to retreat would be to abandon his grave to the enemy.¹¹

In Gromkar

Balgur Demirkapı has stood beside the human baron of Gromkar since the baron's childhood, as his adviser and teacher. Dwarves count mining an honourable calling, and farming and goat-herding less so. The baron believed the house had lost power and that things were going badly in Dağaltı, but that Balgur was too proud to admit it. He offered Kemp's company entry to Dağaltı if they helped the Demirkapı in his name, and proposed that they begin by finding the house's champion, Karak, who had gone into the tunnels three days before and not come back.^{12 13 14 15}

The house had long been at blood feud with a drow house, and the drow had gained the upper hand and now outnumbered it. A house's champion stands for its best warrior and its values. The company found Karak gravely wounded among the bodies of six or seven creatures; once healed, he said he felt his life drawing to a close and wished to end the drow threat before he died, though only Balgur could accept outside help.^{16 17 18 19}

Balgur came to thank them gladly for Karak's rescue, saying that every man of the house had learned the axe from him, and announced that the name of the fallen dwarf Brundar would be written in the book of grudges. Trusting Karak's word, he accepted the company's help, admitting that his men were few and behind in the war, and said that the defence of the city belonged to his house by its rank of thane.^{20 21 22}

During those days the foreign mercenary Esbert Axar asked Kemp whether the Demirkapı hired swords, for he wanted glorious war rather than routine guard duty; Kemp advised him to stay in the city a few days, as danger was coming.²³

Earlier, a young village priest of Amarath at Bozkaya, about a day from Gromkar, had promised Ephorus to send word to the Demirkapı of an outpost the drow had recently attacked. He taught that some sins may be atoned for, but only by penance in life, that not every drow soul belongs to the Spider Queen, and that Ephorus should turn to the god who rules the passing of souls, Rakash. He would take no money, asking that it be given to the poor of the city.^{24 25 26 27 28 29}

Spoiler: The last of the lineRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #37; Sürgün Günlükleri #38; Sürgün Günlükleri #42 · Say what you have read

After a drow priestess was killed, the company brought out an object taken from her and asked to whom it should go, since none of the Demirkapı remained; the baron advised giving it to the authorities at the fortress of Gazad. There an officer said they would treat the house's document as the will of departed friends and carry it out. Balgur's son had also died recently, so Balgur had been the last of the Demirkapı.^{30 31}

The house's goods and mines that hold no mithril pass to its nearest kin and bannermen, the Demirsakal, who had in fact run the workings for seventy or eighty years while the income went to the Demirkapı; the mithril mine passes to the Altınsakal and the High King. Ephorus had taken the snake whip of the priestess who ordered Balgur's killing as a keepsake of vengeance and of the war, and the officer thought it fitting that he hand it to the Demirsakal in person in Dağaltı. In the High King's hall, beneath dark banners bearing the marks of the Altınsakal, sat an old, great dwarf on a stone throne, his orange beard braided, chain mail under his clothes, a ring with a large stone on his hand and a staff of metallic look beside him.^{32 33 34}