The Horrifying Diary
of Hornikatta The Dwarf

Many things are said about us, dwarves, that are not quite true. Who is to blame for that? Mostly humans, this young and immature race. They have their ideas about the world, their mages write a lot of books with their theories and then send these all around the place. And everyone believes everything that those old farts write. Just because they are old. And because they fa... um, nevermind.

You know, Mages, especially human mages, like to drink wine. They say it's only for the health purposes... but we know better, don't we?
So they sit in their towers or wherever they like to sit, drink wine, bottle after bottle, and write some stupid things about us, dwarves. I guess they think that they have a right to do it since they are so tall and bearded. Hmmpf!

We allow them to write those things as it makes the world misinformed about us, dwarves. And when everyone is misinformed, they tend to make mistakes. It's very useful when you deal with the enemy - or a trading partner, I assure you. Several hundred years ago, an old Mage by name of Marcus Polonius traveled from the land of Peremonien to our lands and when he returned back home, he wrote some kind of a travel diary. My ancestors got one copy from seafaring traders and kept reading it every night - and laughing their heads off. For example, the mage wrote that we dwarves live underground, like moles, and are afraid of the sunlight. Several years later, some traders from Peremonien came by. And guess what - they brought us some old-fashioned lanterns to use underground. Of course, we respectfully declined (as the old saying says, you don't bring wood to the forest, do you?) and asked what else they had. It turned out that their wagons had been filled with their fine peremonian colored glass - they planned to travel to Bern, but couldn't do that because the winter was coming sooner that year and the wanted to get back home. So my great-great-great-great-grandfather Zorander Brightblade told them, keeping a poker face,  that of course dwarves lived underground, so the clan didn't need any glass since there were no windows in our clan houses. And because of that fact, the glass is totally useless for us, but since they look like nice humans, we'd buy the merchandise from them, so they can return home safely. And guess what - we didn't even have to haggle! They lowered the price substantially, we closed the deal and everyone went their way.

And what happened next? We sold most of the peremonian fancy glass to the High Elves of Bern, charging them triple the nominal price of the Peremonian traders wanted (since we bought it for 10x less, we earned 30x more money! That's what I call a profitable trade deal!).
Some of the glass we kept to ourselves -we needed it for the windows in the village. Oh yes, did I mention then at those times we were already building the best buildings in the whole Aelos?
Remember, kids - the modern dwarves do not live underground anymore, we just mine shiny things there.