The roads of the North were never empty for long. Across the borderlands of Elder Midgard, between the high mountain halls of the dwarves and the broad, frostbitten plains of men, the great caravans rolled on. These were not the wandering families of human traders, nor the light-footed bands of elven peddlers—no, the road tribes of the dwarves moved in force, with rigs of iron and oak, pulled by the might of steam, beast, and cunning craft.

The dwarves of the north were a people of deep tradition and deeper vaults. They held the mountains, vast halls that had changed hands across the ages but stood unbroken by time itself. For generations, their road tribes had mapped the ways between stone and sea, bartering, hauling, and setting the price of goods where men alone could not. In the South, where wars burned like the changing of seasons, these traders paid little mind. War was for kings. Business was for dwarves.

Men and dwarves held good terms in these lands, an understanding built on trade, toil, and an unspoken agreement that elves were better left unseen. The fey folk had once walked these lands in numbers, but now they lingered only in the margins, the rare flicker of a sharp-eyed watcher in the woods. Few men alive had seen an elf. Fewer still had reason to trust one.

For the men of the borderlands, life remained as it always had—harsh, cold, and full of mead. Their longhouses stood against the bitter winds, their boats cut through blackened seas, and their warriors spoke of distant wars as if they were the concern of ghosts. The North was a place of hard living, and if one wanted for comfort, they had best earn it.

Yet where men endured, dwarves thrived. Beneath the ground, their forges burned hot, shaping steel and stone into wonders that only their own kind were meant to wield. Though their true marvels remained hidden in the deeps, the road tribes carried with them the machines of ages past—great rigs and rolling fortresses that no man could match, ancient by dwarven standards but still a thing of marvel among their trade partners.

It was among one such caravan that a young man, known only as Tarris, had made his home. Though born to humans, he had been raised among the road tribes, a foundling given to the care of those who valued more than just blood. Tarris was no dwarf, but he worked as one, toiling among the iron-clad merchants of the road, his place secured not by kinship, but by labor, wit, and a willingness to stand when the moment called for it.

At the heart of his world stood The Big Evil Beast, the great rig that served as the moving heart of the caravan, a machine older than kings, carrying fortunes across the frozen roads. Here, among traders, guards, and road-hardened souls, Tarris and his dwarven kin made their way through the North, where the road never truly ended—only twisted toward the next deal, the next port, the next unknown stretch of land.