Farizhald

The tales of this noble clan venture back to the beginnings of our recorded history, to ancient kin who resided among the marbled halls of Gabilgathol, or Belegost. With the grievous loss of that ancestral home at a time marking the end of the First Age, one clanhead named Threor of Farizhald led his surviving people east to join their kin of the First House who dwelled in Khazad-dum. There, clan Farizhald's folk, who were not of Durin's line, mingled with their cousins and laboured beside them in the Golden Age that marked our people's history within that realm. With the abandonment of Khazad-dum in the year 1981 of the Third Age, clan Farizhald largely accompanied many of Durin's folk to the north and east where settlements in the Ered Mithrin for a time proved a stable and profitable home. It was during this period that some disagreements between this clan's leader, a renowned smith named Bralli, and the King of House of Durin Dain I arose. So bitter and intense was the discord between these two leaders that in 2587, less than ten years after they had arrived, Bralli led his clan folk out of Dain's Halls. The clan proceeded south first, residing in Erebor briefly before making their way east to help settle the new realm in the Iron Hills. Gror, the youngest of Dain's sons, was well in need of skilled smiths and artificers to aid his House in the founding of his Halls. He overlooked the dispute between his father and Bralli's folk in order to ensure their aid, for which that clan was grateful. They in turn swore steadfast oaths to the young Dwarven lord to provide him and his people with their smithy skills and arms in time of war.

And so it has continued very much in this manner unto this day. A fiercely proud clan, even among other Khazad, they have little patience for the wary buyer, often feeling their goods are beyond reproach. In this sense, usually they are right. More than a few have been heard to comment and remind any skeptical customer of their wares that they are descended of the stock who first fashioned chain mail - the great gift of Belegost to Endor and beyond. Some of their number will serve outside the Hills as merchants, trading their goods in the markets of Dale. Fewer still, usually those unable to gain apprenticeship to a resident master artificer, may take up arms and serve the Lord High Warder. Of note, along with the skills brought from the days of their ancestors in the Ered Luin, comes a deeper distrust of the Sindar elves. Despite improved relations since Erebor's refounding under King Dain II, no Farizhald has been recorded as having had open and willful dealings with that branch of the eldar.