The Dwarves of Ghaltri have an imfamous reputation for rebelliousness against the Alamastran Empire. They are the only Crown to successfully rebel and gain their independence from the Alamastran Empire during the Great War which saw the fall of House Starcrest and the ascent of House Mair.
The Dwarves of Galtri are one of the most ancient societies in the land Galiastra, older than the Celdsi, perhaps second only to the Batua peoples of the Ravenspires to the north of the Ghaltri Range. This society grew up in relative isolation from the surface-dwelling demihumans which populated the lands of Galiastra in later ages. However, they developed a vibrant underearth trade network, joining the Golden Way to trade with the Golden Dwarves of the Jadess Coast, the Stone Dwarves of Aryas, the Mountain Dwarves of Eladas, and the Petty Dwarves of Wilds of Twilight. This connection to the Golden Way and their proximity to Rivenwar, permanentally scarred them as a people and society during the fracticious tumult of the Rivenwar Upheavals. It was during this time they Golden Way was flooded with the Hellspawn of Rivenwar and their mountain strongholds were breached by hoards of Drowe from the Underdark. This turned a rich trading society ruled by Guildmasters into a highly disciplined, intolerant, militarized, and ruthless people. It is said that their struggle for survival against the Hellspawn permanently tainted their souls. The Dwarves of Ghaltri are unique in that their eyes are jet black, with no iris or pupil visible. They also share the palid skintone of the Drowe along with the frosty white manes of the Dark Folk. Some believe they are even commingled aggressively with Drowe poplautions while struggling to exist after retreating into the Underdark. A remanent survived the Rivenwar Upheavals and emerged from the Underdark to reinhabit their abandoned ancestral mountain strongholds. They embarked on a genocidal clensing of their homes,wholesale massacering the Drowe ruling class and the Dwarven refugee populations over which they ruled. These militant dwarves organized themselves by a strict guild structure, but these strange hybrid societies functioned as warrior societies ran along guild lines. These warrior societies bred and reared their young for warriorhood, their collective effort as a society going into turning young braves into initiated warriors as a right of passage.These braves were trained for intiation in warrior youth clubs, they drilled and practiced as a unit until the day of their initiation rites. Then once in the society, the progress through ranks of apprenticehood by passing various martial tests and accomplishing various feets under the careful instruction of a Guild Warrior. At the end of this appreticeship, around the time of early adulthood, they were pledged to a Guild Chieftain by their Guild Warrior, into a similar service to a knight to his or her lord. The Guild Chieftains acted as masters of the guild and judged the initiation rites of the Braves and the Pledge Rites of the Guild Apprentices, and commanded the axes of the Guild Warriors. The Guild Chieftains ruled as the elites of this society forming a governing council, which operated along the lines of an ancient Guild Council. These Warrior society guilds were refered to as Ghaltri in the Dwarven Tongue of Galiastra, from wince these people derrived their names. The Warrior Ghaltri subjegated the refugees which hid within the crevasses of the Underdark and heldout within the far reaches of the Golden Way, concentrating them into permanently indentured caste over which they might rule in their ancestral homes. Over time this Ghaltri, always a minority developed an elaborate caste-based system among their dwarven subordinates, consisting of hundreds of different castes, based along ridgid racial and family craft lines. Ghaltri society slowly rigidified and stagnated, with certain castes mucking the stables of the Guild Chiefs for 14 generations. The Ghaltri slowly closed themselves off in their grand pleasure palaces and over time lost their disicpline to gluttony, greed, and sloth. Finally the teeming rabble which lived under the crush of their avarice turned on them in popular revolution. The Ghaltri took the field of combat one last time and successfully evicted the incindiaries from the midst...but at great cost. Now their numbers greatly diminished, the Ghaltri retreated back to their palaces and holded up for the last time, ruling their inferiors as absentee grandees, making the corrupt oppression of their governing lietenant left in their stead all the more unbarable.
The revolutionaries that they had evicted were pushed out onto the mountain slopes of the Ghaltri Ranges and the gates of the Ghaltri were forever barred against them. These shattered and hapless refugees began to settle in the harsh glacial valleys of the Ghaltri Range and set about ecking out a living. These isolated communities were unique in Galiastra, being the only significant population of surface-dwelling Dwarves. These communities reorganized themselves along popular principles, bucking the rigid caste lines of their masters which had for so long divided them. They formed highly militarized communal societies, which regularly drilled highly effective citizen militias for defense. They also farmed, hearded, and hunted communally. They elected their leaders along popular principals and drew up their own social compacts according to what best suited the liberties of each locality. In the centuries that followed these communes began to export their surplus populations as highly-effective Free Companies and the High King was only too happy to buy their service. This influx of money to their homeland allowed these communes to begin pooling their resources to charter communal banks and to project themselves into transalpine trade between the empire and Ides. Eventually, these banks became major lendors to the High Crown, in direct competition with Ides and eventually became the repository of Imperial funds due to their remote and inaccessible location high in the mountains. The High Crown recognized these Communes by granting them imperial charters, officially incorporating them into the Empire in exchange for guarantees of protection of the their independence agianst their Ghaltri masters, who had never given up their claim over the servitude of these fiercely independent Communes.
Eventually a war errupted between these two Dwarven populations and the High Crown was eager to interviene and project further power over the subterranian Ghaltri. With the backing of dwarven mercenaries hired by the High King, the Communal Dwarves stormed their ancestral strongholds, massacring the Ghaltri into extinction. The nameless multitude rose in popular revolution in support of these new masters. A revolutionary council was assembled and mass elections for a popular parliment of the Ghaltri Nation was called. The High King was furious at the election of this assembly, considering it a revolutionary council orchastrating mob violence and anarchic rule. The High King highered more Dwarven Mercenaries and sent them into dissolve the Dwarven Parliment. The assembly, simply used the High King's own funds to buy them off and retreated into their ancestral strongholds below the mountains and sealed their gates against Imperial imposition.
It was at this time that the Great War broke out and the House of Starcrest fell. In the intercene warfare the Dwarven Parliment backed the House of Mair in its bid for the thrown, largely bankrolling its purchase of mercenaries from the far eastern frontier. The Dwarven Parliment had by this time become a prominent player in the banking of the Alamastran Empire and of the Golden Way.
The House of Mair granted the Dwarven Parliment recongition as the legitimate governing body of the Crown as thanks for their generous support of its bid for the Throne. the Parliment lobby hard, threatening to call in the massive debt owed, unless they were granted a charter of independence. The House of Mair balked, instead granting them status as a semi-autonomus Crown, effectively to be a client state, but still fully plugged into the Imperial trade and banking systems and still subject to a nominal annual tribute to the capital. This effectively secured the independence of Parlimentary Ghaltri. Dwarven mercenaries, mainly of Mountain Dwarf Eladas extraction, were hired by the High King to occupy the abandoned communes which commanded the trade routes over the Ghaltri range shortly after in order to protect imperial trade routes and collect the annual tribute due.
The Parlimentary Ghaltri decried this as a flagrant violation of a treaty with ink not yet dry. They orchestrated a pointed campaign to recolonize many of the Communes in the valleys and on the slopes of the Ghaltri Range. They also besieged the High King's mercenaries in a handhold of holdfasts along the major Imperial trade routes. Negotiators were urged quickly back to the table and hammered out an armistace, recognizing the right of the Ghaltri to resettle the communes, and also recognizing five holdfasts as Imperial trade enclaves. These holdfasts would be garrisoned by the Imperial mercenaries and be protected settlements for guilds an other trade interests to conduct business among the Ghaltri. The annual tribute the High Throne was reaffirmed, along with a road tax to be collected along two major imperial routes through the Ghaltri Mountains.