Beyond the Sea of Rhun, and beyond the vast plains that lay outside the imaginations of the men of the West, was Guthelabad. From the northern wastes where only the hardest of Clans survived to the borders of the ancient kingdom of Hildórien at the edge of Khand, the Orocarni (as it was called in elvish tongue) rose into spiralling nests of cloud that ripped at the steep mountain faces on every side. Red, immense, and as old as the Earth itself.
On each side, the kingdoms of the Easterlings thrived in the shadow of the mountain's roots. The principal settlements of the Eastern men who stayed to live off the trade coming from the mountain gradually grew through the ages, from encampments that their plains neighbours still preferred, into wooden fenced dwellings and then to vast stone cities. These straddled the many rivers springing away from the vast inland Sea of Rhun to the west, and each settlement there huddled close to the gates of a dwarven city, with some smaller towns meandering downwards as far as the mouth of the Nurad. Out in the middle of nowhere, this waterway split from its mother, the mighty Dânu, and after a few deserted miles it took a dive through a small gathering of grey hills at its foot and into the Azuladun Canal, signifying the passing from harsh rocks and scrubland into the soft sand and the way westwards to Umbari territory.
More than a hundred miles away from the Orocarni, on a river twice the size of the Anduin, sailboats and ships of all sizes fought for passage in the heaving central waterway that lead down to the Sea of Rhun. Barges of gold, salt, fruits and steeds passed each other with a blare of horn or clatter and cries, while in the chiefest port of Oszrahank, the freezing sea wind stung and whipped at any exposed skin offered to it, bending the fields of crops stretched out on all sides. Ship after ship passed through on their way to Dale and the North, harbouring in Dorwinion before stocking up and making the long journey to the west and back again, perhaps to the Greenwood, perhaps to the Iron Hills. Winding down through the houses, lodges and shops that nestled into the alcove of the bay, the dirt tracked street became paved nearer the harbour, where a bustling auction square stood in its midst, the first great goods auction that lay before reaching Dale. Despite the trade filtering through it daily, Oszrahank had never grown very much, remaining a small and close-knit community of local traders and merchants that catered to the ships passing in and out. Above the port and far up into the country, several small towns lay in the surrounding hills of mostly tomato farmers and wine pressers; from the highest point, on a clear day, the Orocarni could be seen, a giant red haze in the distance.
If you took a horse over the plainlands from Oszrahank, galloping as fast as the best stallion the Banyuk Clan possessed or flying straight as one of their hunting birds, it would be many days before you reached the nearest road, if you reached it at all. That might be the last you saw of the East before you were taken into the human city of Abulkhan, which lay in the crook between the gates of Nazbukhrin itself, the mighty Ironfist Halls, and the ancient forest of the East. The settlement, being the furthest East you got without passing over (or under) the mountain itself, arched its stony legs in a man-made plateau wide over the Dânu river, which began flowing from a gaping mouth in the cliff face, spray roiling up in a thunderous drone that never ceased, and churned by the incessant roll of ships out of the underground waterways of the dwarves.
Though Abulkhan's gates were heavy and thick, iron and timber reinforced, it was mainly a display of power and prosperity than any real defence. Shadowed by the mightiest of the dwarven houses and a deep river underneath, the Easterlings of Abulkhan had no real fear of attack by neighbours, and there were few orcs in this part of the world. The pirates, dwarf and Khandisgi, that roamed the Eastern coast, never dared to enter the mountain, and piracy for plunder was only constrained to the unfortunate cities that lay on the other side of Guthelabad, near the shoreline and the deserted stretch of islands at the edge of the eastern world.
Joined to a wall that reached barely up to the first towering rampart of the dwarven settlement above it, the gates of Abulkhan rested open until night fell, as for the past thousands of years the city had been a thoroughfare for wood and lumber – woods of all types and carpentry of all kinds – and the animal heads that crowned the Abulkhan's gate were statements of it: one, a white cedar-wood boar two men high, and the other a gigantic carven ram, looking out across the rest of Middle-Earth with stony eyes of jade and twisting horns of wood and black metal.
On a stone road above the city was one of the entrances to Guthelabad, and to Nazbukhrin. Open to the elements, the door lay rune-edged and proud, decorated with onyx and deepset silver, with a hardwood portcullis that raised and lowered more frequently than its stone covering was opened and closed. Wagons, merchants, and caravans of all kinds entered Nazbukhrin this way by foot and cart, winding upwards and upwards precariously, following the deep troughs worn into the road with the passing of years. Like a school of salmon fighting against the current and breaking free, the busy entrance of Nazbukhrin led into a vast concourse – not dark as might be expected from less educated men about a dwarven dwelling, but bathed in natural, bright sunlight from huge windows that faced onto the rest of Rhun, and the hundreds of gas-lamps suspended and burning ceaselessly.
The cluster of visitors and ambassadors thinned after the first checkpoint – a smaller hallway for formal greetings to the left after an intricate, pointed archway; a guard hall to the right – and each went their way inside the mountain paths, leading their oxen on leashes with surety that spoke of doing it ever since they were young. The relationship between the dwarves of Guthelabad and the men of the East and South was as old as their creation itself: who else taught the men their language, how to craft in stone and forge weapons of iron and steel?
The long central road weaved through the pillars, each one as thick as a mighty tree around, which disappeared far above into darkness. From the terraces and roofs on each level that rose high in rings into the mountain came the sounds of industry and business; dark jade and marble arches marked the way to smithies, workshops and streets, while carven stone hands pointed the way into the centre of Nazbukhrin and the tradehalls.
Every so often, the path would twist downwards, and the way would be shut off by a garrison of dwarves: the deepest smithies of the Ironfists were off-limits to those without appointment (which was scarcely given out with the leave of the Queen). It was said that these were the mithril-houses, where only the richest of jewellery and armour was created; but there were also whispers of an older metal that only the dwarves of Guthelabad still had access to since the elder days of elven trade: galvorn. The number of dwarves who believed this was debatable, but when questioned, the old smiths coming out of the area would keep silent, hoods thrown over their faces and talking in fallakhuzdul amongst themselves.
The workshops were guarded fiercely, and rumours of dragons and prisons chased after any who had a mind to bypass the guards and take a look for themselves, though no man ever dared. The same rules were in effect for residential areas, which lay criss-crossed in between workshops and gathering halls. Smaller and cosier than the cavernous streets below, these were light and airy, protected by the more jovial of wardens with pointed caps balanced on their heads, often waving down to traders and merchants who passed or who needed directions. The edges of the streets were rigged with lanterns and lamps, wire meshed and glowing in many soft colours, and each home or dwelling hall was partitioned by a set of heavy blue curtains. Personal smithies and workshops stood with only a spell or two bound inside their door frames, where Ironfist and Stonefoot blacksmiths and jewellers worked all hours of the night, windows lit with candles and surrounded in silence.
In the centre of Nazbukhrin, as the central road became a steady flow of dwarves and carts, was the main tradehall, fronted by a metal billboard that stood towering next to the entrance. Above it was fixed the international sigil of trade in the Orocarni: a gold and deep blue hand, a coin of the realm set in the middle, with ancient greetings carved in all the tongues of men encircling it. Here, anybody could post notices of traders in town, goods that were sought and offered, or entertainment that was going on around the city that evening; if you slipped a coin or two to some of the dwarves in charge of the hall, who were designated by their rich purple robes, a notice that was placed surreptitiously at the bottom might move a notice up a few places, with a brightly coloured peg hammered into the top of it. On the hour heralded by the great clang of a bell, a crier would exit to much fanfare and call out any notices for the swarm of people at the door, haggled throughout to read adverts that were pushed towards them before vanishing angrily back through the doors and into the throng of shops and bodies.
The main hall was for meeting and exchange; here were the bankers and scribes, who weighed gold and traded in it. This acted as the largest tradehall for the citizens of the Orocarni – dwarf -made goods for dwarven hands, with local dishes and crafts spanning the whole of the mountain. Stonefoot powder dyes that lined up piled high in brass plates stood next to a cramped wall full of Blacklock medicines and books bound in leather hides, which were kept away from outsider eyes inside a large, heavily guarded tent. More mundane wares such as pots and pans were wheeled down from the smithies above to sit alongside cases of wine and rum that were rolled out of cellars by the barrel in yak-drawn carts. Amongst them, some human tradesman walked, wares slung about their shoulders, or before them on trestle tables as they sat and bartered back and forth – it was the place for goods that didn't fit anywhere else, but also to hear gossip and tales, to share a drink with friends (and sample some of the ones from distant lands). Through the hall at intervals, rows of tents pitched up where not only sellers sat and kept shop, but also writers, astronomers, magicians and physicists conversed deeply, trading ideas over complicated stone-games, with pots of tea kept warm nearby on small fires.
There were a handful of other rooms branching off of the main hall, which dwarfed even the throne room of the Queen (which wasn't so much a throne room as a private audience chamber, settled in the highest part of the mountain's peak). The white walls of the Smith's Hall were kept immaculate, standing sharply out from the red of the floor, with trader's wagons set up aligning the pillars. Some of the dwarven smiths had set up shop inside the hall itself, basic equipment for fixing repairs, and small bellows and forges half the size of their counterparts were built into the sides of the room at the far ends: these permanent shops were reserved for the most established of dwarves, family companies who had traded in the Orocarni's halls since they were created. At benches and in cloth tents, Stonefoot jewellers carved in turquoise, Tiger's Eye and lapis lazuli, setting gems and adorning men and women alike in requested styles; others peered in to catch sight of what the latest fashions spreading across the Orocarni were. At the far end of the hall, across the circle of space used for auctioning and stall trade, were the set of stairs that led down almost a mile away to the armoury proper. Easterling, Haradi and dwarven armour and weaponry churned out constantly, with the hydraulic steel pistons of the armoury forges operated by a diverted flow from the river and overseen by hundreds of workers at a time. Here was undoubtedly the loudest part of the mountain, and the great throb of machines hammered out a pounding rhythm – the heartbeat of the mountain.
Built high over the rushing water below, the central road continued in its way through the mountain, passing by and through each tradehall and forking off like branches of a tree before coming back together again. The Spice Hall held an intoxicating fug of aroma and colours; hidden around a quiet corner away from the road was The Library, barricaded by a set of giant gold doors where only dwarves passed; The Treasury was the province of those who traded in raw gemstone, and cartloads arrived from armoured ships in the port.
Below the road, barges and boats passed underneath towering arches that glistened with moss and spray, and every so often, the stone road would change to a heavy wooden drawbridge. The flow of traders and pack-animals would halt momentarily as guards cranked leavers to hoist up the road, a mighty greatship passing underneath and downwards to the port of Nazbukhrin. The further down you went, the closer to the underground river you were, and if you followed it along the banks past the dwarven shops and houses in the less wealthy (but none the less busy) parts of Nazbukhrin, you would come to the vast harbour, which was illuminated not by lamps but by the light that streamed in from the gaping exit onto the world and the river heading down to the Eastern Sea.
The river that ran through Guthelabad was the largest underground water system in the Middle-Earth. Carved by the early dwarves before even the meeting of men, it began from the iced peaks of the Stiffbeard fortress in Kikuama, rushing down in an endless torrent through each territory and homeland. Underneath the roads of Guthelabad, it passed through the mountain wide enough for four ships abreast to sail and straight on until the other side. Port Nazbukhrin itself provided a more welcoming experience for sailors looking for the taste of familiar harbour life: shops and houses of brick crammed the sides of the port in a labyrinthine pattern that concentrated the rest of the dwarven populace into an area which had built up gradually over time – pushed together and overflowing with open-air blacksmithies, and dens of cheap food and cheaper drink. Buildings had been almost stacked up on top of one another, some toppling, some used as scrap for other nearby complexes, and the whole township stood apart from the residential streets above, the province of those dwarves who joined Corsair ships far from home, or who operated as smugglers within their own cities. The taverns this far under the mountain held many songs and news that didn't make it to the ears of those in other parts of Nazbukhrin.