Editing Dwarves in Polesia (section)

===Before Their Empire===

When a splinter group of the Dawn People first descended into the earth to find their own territory, they faced a variety of challenges. Archaeological sites that are believed to be their first settlements reveal that the average lifespan for these mountain dwelling ape-men was usually no longer than thirty years at most. Disease, starvation and various accidents were common for thousands of years as the proto-dwarves vision was little better than the elves at the time and their bodies had not yet adjusted to their somewhat limited nutritional options. However, they continued to breed and bear young and managed to hold on tenuously.

Then somewhere back in the earliest eras of dwarven oral history,a remarkable change began. The proto-dwarves began to develop extra sensitive eyes, and their other senses began to develop as well so that they could navigate the dark almost better than humans could navigate a shaded forest. Because of their cramped and often cold environment, they also started favoring shorter compact builds. 

There were several hypotheses on why this might be but one seems to have come to the forefront in recent years. Up to this point it has been noticed that dwarves were not very widespread, mostly still living in the Bar-Narmûl mountain range, a place where archaeologists have discovered unusually large veins of rose colored mana crystals. The dwarves were bathed in the energies of these crystals for thousands of years and while much of it was still underground (and therefore the effects were minimalized) it still had a profound effect on their developing physiology. It is today believed that the dwarves close proximity in those early years is what gave them such excellent resistance to magic and their incredible longevity. Numerous digs in settlements have unearthed crystals amongst their possessions (often in places that could possibly indicate a certain reverence) around the time that certain clues in the fossil record indicated that dwarves who had previously only lived lifespans average to early humans in that time period suddenly were living hundreds of years longer, thriving well past their second century. 

When the world began to cool and entered what scholars have come to call the Frozen Epoch, and the races had finally driven the Serpent-folk from their remaining territories, the dwarves spread throughout several mountain ranges and had little to no contact with each other or elves and humans for thousands of years, save in the occasional feud over resources. After their devastating losses during the conflict there were few enough that multiple family groups ranged far underground and evolved into the modern dwarven races.