It was two and a half thousand years after the Harrowing of Reticuli when the armies of Sidereal Christianity first raised their swords against the Great Cyclops of Clyss and broke his ice-bound tyranny over Barbamenge. The miserable dwarven slaves whose ancestors, perhaps, like the Thongorim, once hailed from Earth, received the Gospel with great joy and perceived a breaking of more than physical chains. Ever since, the Cloud Dwarves have been stalwarts of Faith and Civilization. Though they only seldom crusaded, they followed close behind the front, pacifying, ministering, and teaching their great wisdom and craftsmanship to the liberated.

Barbamenge has had cordial relations with Xiandao for at least three hundred years when the ruling Xia first appealed to the dwarves to mine the abundant mineral riches of the polar mountain ranges. Sixty years ago, Barbamenge established a permanent embassy high in the Hyperborean Mountains where many native engineers, miners, and artisans have been trained.

This same embassy has been the center of strife with the Blessed Concordance insurrection, as the rebels view the dwarves a baleful foreign influence. For their own part, the unflinching orthodoxy of the Barbamenge dwarves allows them no tolerance for the Concordance’s barbarous and idolatrous deviations. Three days before the Night of Comets, the embassy vault was besieged by a vast rabble army, cut off from all communications to the wider world. Despite being vastly outnumbered, the doughty dwarves fought their way out of encirclement and all the way down to the coast, where their sudden arrival helped thwart the Many Handed Master’s attack on Fort St. Gleb.

This dwarven battalion, in truth little more than a company with a few pieces of converted industrial equipment, is commanded by the implacable Dagonard zar Gargengreif, a heretofore little known veteran who has, since the beginning of the war, attained mythic status. Originally trained as an attorney in the (literally) labyrinthine law of subterranean property claims and mineral easements, he fled the courts of Barbamenge and joined the army under a fictitious name, desperate to “bloody my hands, somewhere, anywhere.” Wounded forty seven times in this thirty years of service, including having his left hand hacked off, his right eye shot through, and his lower lip burned off with a laser, he still leads his men from the front. When asked by an astonished chronicler if, after his great suffering, he regretted his choice of career, zar Gargengrief scoffed: “Frankly, I’ve enjoyed every war.”

Entirely unrelated to the Xiandao campaign but relevant to the topic of space dwarves, I must recommend a recent post from one of my favorite wargaming websites. Khaiell at WargamingHobby has posted a really terrific custom Squat force, including a scratchbuilt Landtrain and several vehicles, for Necromunda. Prepare to be amazed! And if you send him any compliments, let him know that I sent you.