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<GM's Note:
Droideka's character "Horin" is a Dwarf. Whether or not he's of the same clan as "West" is something Droideka and Weststarrunner will have to decide between themselves.
Regardless, West and Horin both share a common, runic, language. It's proper name is "Khuzdul", but it is commonly known as "Dwarvish." There also exists a Dwarven gesture-language that both West and Horin know, called "Iglishmêk", that is used when silence is required or when speech is not possible. They also likely share many elements of the general Dwaren culture; The various myths, legends, heroes, famous battles, ethnic foods, mannerisms, fashions, politics, etc.
From his days as a border guard, Captain Sealem knows some simple phrases in Dwarvish but he is far from fluent in it. Maxwell & Farnham know how to read many Dwarven runes due to their training as a gem merchants (nearly all gem-bearing ore in this part of the world comes from Dwarven mines, so it's important for a gem merchant to know how to read what the miners have written). However, neither brother is conversant with the spoken from of Dwarvish as they have always only spoken in Common with their Dwarven trading partners.
Dwarven society is polytheistic (that is, they have their own pantheon of deities and demigods), so West may or may not believe in (or even know of) the deity that the cleric Horin serves.
Because Dwarven society as a whole is very practical when it comes to religion, when no cleric of a given Dwarf's particular faith is available to perform a needed religious service (wedding, funeral, etc.) many Dwarves will consider it perfectly acceptable to to substitute a cleric of some other (properly aligned) deity. Thus, if the deity that a Dwarven cleric serves is on good terms with the Dwarven deity that another Dwarf worships, the one may perform religious rituals with the other without violating anyone's religious sensibilities. That is, Lawful Dwarven Good clerics can usually work freely with other Lawful Good Dwarven clerics, regardless of their affiliation with a particular deity or deities. There are some extreme cases where the above is not so, but that is the exception and not the rule.
The Dwarven kingdoms are all loosely tied together via personal and political agreements, but there is not any over-arching "Emperor" that they all swear fealty to. While not truly one nation in the formal sense of the word, no Dwarven Kingdom has even made war upon another Dwarven Kingdom: In fact, the Dwarven Kings consider themselves to be duty bound (by both national tradition and personal honour) to come to the aid of any neighbouring Dwarven state or principality that is in need. While some of the Dwarven Kingdoms are larger than some of the others, no single Kingdom dominates all the others. The trade relationships between them are so vigourous and complex that there's no way one can say for certain where one economy ends and the other begins. All one can say for certain is that they all need each other to continue to maintain their current standard of living.
To prevent misunderstanding among their own kind, the various Dwarven Kingdoms long ago set up what is now known as the "Council Of The Three": An extra-national Dwarven judicial tribunal that exists to provide a forum for member states to air their greivences, consult their peers, resolve disputes, come to common agreements, and generally keep the peace. While the decisions of the Council Of The Three are technically not binding upon the member states, it has long served to avoid hostility between the Dwarven Kingdoms and and to provide a framework for strong alliances in times of war. Rarely has a Dwarven King gone against the formal advice of the Council Of The Three, and never when an threat from outside was at hand.>
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