The Fossegrim

Where the Singing Sea reaches into the mountains and the fog never lifts, the Fossegrim keep the fjord-head halls. They are generally held to be the comeliest of the Dwarven tribes, a judgement they neither dispute nor dwell on, and their only serious craft is the making of musical instruments.

The Craft

They build instruments and very little else. Where the Wichtel make watches and the Leprechauns make armour, a Fossegrim workshop turns out strings, pipes and drums, and a Fossegrim who takes up any other trade is asked, gently and repeatedly, whether they are quite happy.

The instruments are extraordinary and priced almost arbitrarily, since the maker's interest in the transaction ends the moment they are satisfied the buyer can play.

The Teaching

They do not merely want an audience. They want students. A visitor who stands still in a Fossegrim hall will be handed something with strings on it inside the hour, and the Fossegrim regard a person who cannot play as an unfinished piece of work — their hospitality has a curriculum attached and no opt-out.

This has made them the most-visited and least-understood people in the Rimeward. Travellers arrive for the fjords and leave able to hold a tune, having intended neither.

Ways

The mildest Dwarves by a distance, and the only ones with no industry to defend, which the other two tribes regard with a mixture of affection and impatience. When the Crowns need a treaty read out or a grievance sung at an assize, they send a Fossegrim, because nobody has ever managed to stay angry at one.

They deal constantly with the Selkie of the ice beyond the fjord mouth, trading timber and instruments for ice-craft, and the two peoples share a border nobody has ever bothered to draw.