Gold dwarves are the aloof, confident and sometimes proud subrace of dwarves that predominantly reside in Khanstone Delve. They are known to be particularly stalwart warriors and shrewd traders. Gold dwarves are often trained specifically to battle the fell creatures that are known to come from the Underdark.

Physical characteristics
Gold dwarves are stout, tough individuals like their shield dwarven brethren but are less off-putting and gruff in nature. Conversely, gold dwarves are often less agile then other dwarves. The average gold dwarf is about four feet tall and as heavy as a full-grown human, making them somewhat squatter than the more common shield dwarves. Gold dwarves are also distinguishable by their light brown or tanned skin, significantly darker than that of most dwarves, and their brown or hazel eyes. Gold dwarves have black, gray, or brown hair, which fade to light gray over time. Gold dwarf males and some females can grow beard, which are carefully groomed and grown to great lengths.

Culture
Humans who interact with gold dwarves in the Delve may be surprised to find a people far more confident and secure in their future than most dwarves. Whereas the shield dwarves are on constant guard, ever wary of threats, the gold dwarves remain confident due to their survival during the Great Riftening.  They believe they can emerge victorious against any challenge thrown against them and so have few doubts about their place in the world. As a result, gold dwarves can come off as haughty and prideful, believing themselves culturally superior to all other races and lacking the fatalistic pessimism of their shield dwarven cousins.

Art and leisure
Gold dwarves are a deeply materialistic race who believe that the resources of the natural world exist only to serve the purpose of conscious beings. To a gold dwarf, there is no greater purpose than to fashion the minerals of the earth into things of beauty. Gold dwarf guilds take great care in their craftsmanship, often spending centuries to perfect their work and mark it distinctively as their own, a practice which is carried down to even the most simple tools, marking such items with detailed runes and carefully shaped flairs.

Gold dwarf warriors employ a large number of finely crafted weapons and armor, often enchanted with runes or prayers. Most commonly, dwarves employ weapons that can also be used as tools, such as axes, picks, or hammers.

Magic and religion
Unlike most dwarven peoples, the gold dwarves are not particularly superstitious about magic and while still cautious in its use, are no more so than any wise human mage. In part, gold dwarves are open to magic because of their heavy used of enchanted arms and weaponry, but primarily this tolerance comes from the age of gold dwarven civilization, which through sheer longevity has given rise to several magical traditions.

Divine spellcasters remain more common among the gold dwarves, however, though gold dwarves are less fervent in their beliefs than the openly devout shield dwarves. Gold dwarves favor the worship of Moradin.  While the gold dwarves are not particularly devout, clerics of Moradin hold great prestige within gold dwarf society.

Relations with other races
The gold dwarves are a proud race confident in their race's future after their survival of the Riftening and because of this they have earned a somewhat deserved reputation for xenophobia and supremacism. Gold dwarves believe dwarves to be the greatest of all races and themselves to be the greatest of all dwarves, placing themselves at the top of the cultural pyramid, even among the fey. Gold dwarves in particular look down upon the fey, whom they loathe in part due to their ancient enmity with the drow.

Of the monstrous races, the gold dwarves' opinion is even lower. Among many key differences between gold dwarves and their more common kin is that the traditional enemies of the gold dwarf are not goblinoids, but aberrations and other creatures of the Underdark. But this does not mean gold dwarves enjoy the company of goblins or orcs, whom they lump half-orcs in with.

However, gold dwarves do not see all races besides themselves with enmity. For instance, gold dwarves have an atypically high value of humans and their planetouched kin for non-human races, valuing the often profitable trading arrangements they've had with human realms going back throughout history. Similarly, gold dwarves are, as a rule, rather fond of strongheart halflings, seeing them as kindred of spirit due to the subrace's propensity for industriousness and honor.

Psychology
Gold dwarves are both materialistic and ritualistic, valuing themselves and others by what they possess and by the reputation of their family. Gold dwarves are deeply conservative, rooting their values and beliefs in traditions that have survived for millennia even as the world changed around them. From infancy, gold dwarves are taught that their life is determined by tradition, from what their profession shall be to who they shall marry. Gold dwarves who lack faith in the old ways or who go so far as to challenge cultural taboos are seen as dangerous deviants unworthy of friendship or trust by the majority of gold dwarves, creating an enormous social pressure to conform.

In part because of their conservatism and staunch belief in their own cultural superiority, gold dwarves rarely venture outside of their homelands. Usually, the only motive for adventuring deemed rational to the average gold dwarf is the desire to seek out their fortune in unclaimed lands.

Shield dwarves are among the most common of the dwarven peoples.  Since the Riftening, shield dwarves have been less commonly seen throughout Arenthyor, choosing instead to remain within their homes and mines of the Khanstone Delve,

Physical characteristics
The shield dwarves are on average half a foot taller than other dwarves.  They are the most common dwarf in Arenthyor and have light skin that is fair or lightly tanned and green or silvery blue eyes with long light brown or red hair, growing white or gray with age. Most males and even some females have large beards and mustaches. The females are slightly shorter and less heavy than the males.

Psychology
Shield dwarves are a cynical and gruff people, but they are, despite a reputation to the contrary, fatalistic, still possessing some hope for the future. Typically, shield dwarves take time to trust and even longer to forgive but the dwindling of their race, after the devastating Riftening, has led many to be more open to other ways of thinking. Shield dwarven attitudes have in the past been typically divided between the Hidden and the Wanderers, two separate schools of thought amongst the race.  The Hidden, like the gold dwarves believed it best to take an isolationist policy towards other races, fortifying their mountain homes and continuing their ancient ways, while the Wanderers have been more adventurous, seeking their fortunes on the surface world.

However, while shield dwarves have not always been as open-minded as they are today, there is a long tradition of adventurism in the race and many young dwarves have hoped to find glory in doing great deeds in distant lands. Less self-interested shield dwarves have also taken to the adventuring life to reclaim ancient strongholds or treasures long lost. Whatever the case, most shield dwarves who venture beyond their homes lean on the strong martial traditions of their people against the orcs, goblins, trolls, and worse that wander the Highlands surrounding the Delve.

Culture
Although bloodline is still a mark of pride for a dwarf from a particularly strong clan, personal accomplishments have come to mean more practically than the old ways, which seem increasingly irrelevant. Among the Hidden, traditions remain strong, but there is an increasing number of shield dwarves willing to leave the mountains for a life as adventurers or craftsmen among humans along the Tradesway routes.

Family life remains a prime concern for dwarves, however, and while elders play a diminishing role in childrearing, the relationships between parent and child or siblings remain as strong as ever. Most dwarves are literate and are taught to read at an early age, before being handed off to an apprenticeship appropriate to their caste. In the workplace, shield dwarves are taught to work both for not only themselves and their family but for the greater whole of their clan and most shield dwarves are, while proud of their work, fairly humble and avoid ostentatious displays of decadence. After a shield dwarf has expired his or her ability to work physically, they remain a valued part of the community for their experience and wisdom and when they die they are honored with funeral rites appropriate to their legacy.

Art and leisure
Shield dwarves are fine craftsmen but more than among other dwarven races, their craft tends to be war. Shield dwarves accumulate a wide variety of weaponry in the fight to defend their homelands and unlike many dwarves do not limit themselves simply to hammers or picks, drawing upon axes, spears, swords, and mauls as well. Shield dwarves typically equip themselves in heavy armor. 

Magic and religion
While shield dwarves are openly dismissive of magic, they nonetheless rely on it to a significant degree in the defense of their homelands. Shield dwarves also make extensive used of magic items, though the Hidden and Wanderers differ over which type of items are best employed (armor and weaponry respectively).   In general, shield dwarves are more open to divine magic and clerics and paladins are all fairly common. 

Relations with other races
Shield dwarves, while gruff, are not acidic in personality and generally enjoy the company of others, even if they are not of their own kind. Most of all, shield dwarves get along with other dwarves, even for gold dwarves, who they believe naive and overconfident. About they fey races, though, they have a deep-seeded distrust because of the feeling that they fey abandoned the world in its time of need.  For gnomes, shield dwarves have nothing but fondness, particularly the rock gnomes and deep gnomes, and dwarves have a long tradition of friendship with most of their human neighbors.

There are exceptions to the shield dwarves' tolerance, however, and the race is openly hostile with their kin the duergar, who blame the shield dwarves for their enslavement by the mind flayers. Shield dwarves also have little tolerance for either half-orcs or planetouched, who are either too alien to their experiences to understand or too much like previous enemies.