Umbar

Y-see, y-see... this place used to be something special. I mean, Umbar was this fuck huge metal city that just plonked up out of nowhere and onna our laps. But the thing is... the thing with dwarves is they live by this idea of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, don't fix it. Just suffer in silence for about ten generations then write a poem about how it wasn't never broke in the first place." Umbra is one'a those broke things. Fuck those people who say Umbra is haven for the small races, and fuck twice over the people what say Umbra is the premier place for hextech science to expand. Umbra ain't the place it used to be...

History
Fuckin' Hades, man. I think the saddest thing was how Umbar fell slow, y'know? Originally, Koran used that hammer of his to make minor changes. Just enough to make the place amenable to him and his people. But catastrophe struck, and so they changed it a bit more to fit a few more dwarves that lost their homes. And then another, and then another... to be honest, dwarves and catastrophe are pretty well friendly.

So you had whole clans livin' in spaces not suited for a single clutch, and entire buildings of ancient and uncertain power torn down just to be rebuilt for more of those tiny spaces. No matter how much they'd change to squeeze out some more space, folks kept comin'. And we kept takin' 'em in. Wasn't even just dwarves- no, just about any runty thing sick of being kicked around by tall folks- kicked around bein' as metaphorical or as literal as you'd figure- would eventually come to Umbar.

No one's quite certain when Umbar ceased to be the ancient metal city and turned into the claustrophobic clusterfuck that is Umbra... all there is is this vague psuedoreligious saying about how "our crafts put us in contempt of the sun, and to stay forevermore within the deepest shadows."

What a bunch of drake shit.

Population
Sure, it's true that folks who live in Umbra long enough get paler, thinner, and maybe a bit more nimble. Why wouldn't they? It's a dark, crowded, and messy place. Hel, there's probably even something in the air. What ain't true is all those rumors of a "grey people" who live in the deepest, darkest corners of the city, with fingers slightly too big for their hands, hands just kinda too big for their arms, and arms oddly long for their bodies. That's straight up superstition, which spreads like crazy around Umbra. Same with rumors, secrets, all sorts off paranoid crap. With your neighbors near always shoulder to shoulder with you, information... misinformation, whatever, both of those and more spread damn quick.

Plus, since the old dwarven clan structures that this place began with having become so twisty and complicated, a message rarely stays pure as it snakes it's way from one person to another. Some Umbran clans'll accept non-dwarves, some just adopt the social structure for their own. Some are lead by blood, and others by business. Some clans are even built around ideology- but I'd call those cults sooner than clans.

Either way, just about anyone small can live in Umbra, but you'd better join a clan if you plan survivin' in here.

Government
Supposedly, the Assembly of Patriarchs (a bit of a misnomer, really. The Assembly's had women in it since the second meeting, but damn the dwarf that doesn't hold on to pointless tradition) runs things around Umbra, and it ain't entirely dishonest to say they do. But in practice, bits of political power in Umbra passes hands quicker than coin. Just about any filthy person on the corner could be a minor clan leader or a major share owner of one of Umbra's many hextech business interests.

Point is, each street might have it's own rules and laws. Each one might have it's own philosophy on how Umbra should be run. Some places are nicer and more hospitable than others. Make damn well sure you know which is which before you go anywhere.

Capital
Umbra's capital is The City of Umbra, obviously. There's land beyond it that is theoretically part of the nation, but basically anything or anyone that matters here is within the city.



Economics
Hextech from Umbra is fiddly, overdesigned, and not really suited for anyone big. That said, hextech one of Umbra's greatest exports. Umbran hextech is compact, cheap, effective, and will work for years if you can suss out all of the little quirks in it. Umbra's a shithole, but folks around there have learned how to get a whole lot out of very little. But with no big boss lookin' over each design, there's rarely anything approachin' coherent right from concept. There's plenty of times when you'll see Umbran hextech so messy and tinkered with that the only way to make sense of it is to be the damn person who built it.

Hextech is likely Umbra's greatest source of wealth and security. That is, if you don't believe their secret traders- spies for hire- are anything more than rumor.

Beliefs and Culture
Everyone lies. Everyone has secrets. Better that everyone watch everyone, and make sure your neighbors are just as paranoid as you- no more or less. Umbra is fucking twisty, basically, in a literal and metaphorical sense. People are welcoming, but the scant living space and cheap hextech means you need to stay ahead of the rumors, start your own, and always know what's polite to a hobgoblin and what's bawdy to a post-dwarven clan-commune. Eccentric geniuses and madmen belong in Umbra, along with everyone else who has failed to fit in anywhere else.

Umbra will always take you in - which is as good or as bad as you think that sounds.