Stone-Mother

The dwarves believe that they are the Children of the **Stone-Mother**, born of the earth itself. The veneration of the Stone-Mother has been practiced for two thousand years by the dwarves. Being practical, the dwarves venerate her, but do not worship her as a god. The Stone-Mother is believed to be a living and a shifting entity with a will that surrounds and guides the dwarves. She supports them, shelters them, and offers them the most priceless gifts of the earth, such as ore, gems, and lucenium.

## Influence of the Stone-Mother

Dwarves experience a unique and all-encompassing relationship to their progenitor, the Stone-Mother. They are born of it, they serve it in their deeds, and they feel its impact upon their lives in many ways. In Ondrathum, the Makers who maintain written records in lucenium are said to document the Stone-Mother. Dwarves from the mining caste are able to find lucenium veins by ear, and some of them claim that they hear the Stone-Mother sing. Before the Fiends, the Stone-Mother once held an empire, made up of dozens of hewnholds, and according to the dwarves, the Archfiends are sleeping deep within the Stone-Mother. The dwarves who fight the fiendish horde, including the Legion of the Dead, are believed to fight for her.

Dwarves who live underground possess an ability called "Stone sense". This ability provides subterranean navigation, and dwarves believe that it is derived from their connection to the Stone-Mother. Amongst dwarves, Makers reportedly possess remarkable Stone sense.

The dwarves who leave the Stone-Mother's embrace to live on the surface are so reviled by their brethren that their caste and status is lost, and their deeds forever removed from the Memories. The only exception to this rule are dwarves who join the Grey Order, though this is reserved for dwarves who had still lived underground and retain their standings by the time they join. The subterranean dwarves' wariness of losing their connection to the Stone-Mother is so great that their embassies in the Adamantium are underground, and the dwarves within never step out of them. Similarly the underground port of Muradin's Mouth in the Storm Coast is built beneath the coastal cliffs.

## Return to the Stone-Mother

*See also: Funerary rites*
Dwarves entomb their dead to return them to the Stone-Mother. Nobles and Exemplars are entombed in vast and elaborate crypts while commoners are encased within stone cairns. Dwarves of lesser caste are buried in mausoleums in which the dead from many houses are interred together. Failing that, they are buried in the dirt, though this is never ideal.

The soul of the worthy who were not blind to the Stone-Mother's influence and lived by her are believed to return to and to rest in the Stone-Mother after the words of a ritual are said. In death their spirits become part of the Progenitors who guide and care for their descendants for eternity as well as make the Stone-Mother stronger. Dwarves also believe that the victors of the Provings are favored by the Progenitors who "speak" by showing their favor. The most worthy, the Exemplars who are the greatest examples of lives spent in service to fellow dwarves, are believed to join with the Stone-Mother in life and to become the living Progenitors.

The unworthy such as the casteless or surface dwarves are said to be outright rejected by the Stone-Mother so that their failings may not weaken her. Even during their lifetime, the surface dwarves lose their connection to the Stone-Mother. The spirits that are rejected by the Stone-Mother are believed to be unable to rest, and after their death they become rock wraiths or other restless, and often malevolent, spirits wandering remote caverns.

## The Gangue

Dwarves believe that the Stone-Mother isn't pure, for she bears a corruption as old as balance. For the dwarves to prosper, the gangue, the waste and unstable rock, must be cut away from the raw Stone-Mother. Each dwarf must carve the worst of themselves away, but the Legion of the Dead bears a unique responsibility to protect the Stone-Mother herself from the darkness that afflicts her. The gangue can also be translated from Old Dwarven as "impure spirit-of-the-stone", and manifests as demons bound into the rock.