the upward social mobility experienced by the gangue—clanless, disgraced, or otherwise outcast dwarves, so named for the commercially worthless parts of ore— with the opening of markets and borders. By public reckoning, gangue are the descendants of dwarves who shamed themselves with dishonorable conduct, particularly during the Quest for Sky and the retreat from the surface. Just as many of Dongun Hold’s moneyed nobles predicate the moral right of their wealth and privilege upon great deeds of imagined ancestors, so does the poverty and destitution of Dongun Hold’s lowborn rest upon the supposed cowardice and wretchedness of their forerunners. Central to Donguni social philosophy is the concept of the skystain, a feeling of shame that envelops the whole society for being descendants of the dwarves who abandoned Taargick’s first outpost to the surface world. The momentous trauma of this event, which affected all these dwarves equally, led to the idea of the skystain as a means to distinguish and explain valor from timidity, glory from obloquy, and the righteous from the villainous. The gangue are scapegoated as most responsible for the skystain, for their ancestors’ failure to act in pro-social ways led to the necessity of withdrawal from Dongun Hold; while everyone retreated, this failure is the fault of only the gangue, whose inadequacies necessitated the retreat.
The much-vaunted stability of Dongun Hold, in many ways, rests upon the traditional ill treatment of the gangue by the wealthy and powerful. For countless years, this division of ‘normal’ society and gangue buttressed Donguni ways. Until recently, gangue were press-ganged into corvee labor to build palaces and public works or sent to serve on missions with little to no chance of survival. Their children inherited their gangue status, perpetuating a systemic continuation of this stigma and its affordances for Donguni society. In fact, until recently, gangue weren’t even recorded within the city’s population census or register of citizens. Gangue are almost non-persons, treated as barely better than the hated duergar. Many of the brightest and most capable gangue find employment within the more egalitarian Goldhand Lodge’s trade caravans or Sparkforge Collective’s gunsmith colleges; even so, they often face discrimination unless they hide, denounce, or reject their gangue origins and identities, thus maintaining the status quo that denies opportunities to the gangue.
With Dongun Hold’s absorption into Alkenstar, new prospects arose for many gangue, who eagerly embrace lives where they don’t have to hold their heads down in shame or obeisance. Gangue make up the dwarven sharpshooters and demolitionists who support Alkenstar patrols, and they’re toasted as dwarves of honor by the grateful surface dwellers. They make up the dwarven alchemists and inventors who enrich the Brass Guild and Lithos Clan with their cutting-edge research. Some even become adventurers seeking lost legacies in the Mana Wastes, hoping to make peace with their names. While attitudes in the practicality-minded Goldhand Lodge and Sparkforge Collective have shifted to grudgingly acknowledge gangue identities (though these two groups still pay gangue less and work them harder than other members), the Keepers of the Skyflame often engage in creating trumped-up charges to justify their seizure of gangue property and wealth. More conniving Keepers play a longer game, targeting dispossessed and frustrated gangue for indoctrination and offering them chances to “reclaim” their honor.
