“Many often joked that dwarves liked everything to be hard and tough. Beds as hard as a rock, bread that could break teeth, and drinks that kicked harder than a mule, were the common examples cited. While the bed and drink part was definitely true, when it came to food, it was not that dwarves prefer tougher and harder foods and more that they had a greater tolerance for it.

Dwarven jaws and teeth were stronger than most other races, with only the Orcs coming close, which meant that meat that was tough for others would just be normal for them. They habitually chewed smaller bones without being bothered in the least by their presence, and some of their dishes even focused on such bones.

These habits were what gave rise to the myth that dwarves preferred hard foods.” - Selgrim Bronzsonne, dwarven scholar from the Kingdom Down Under.

“We should get some of those pillows to take home. They’re so nice to sleep on!” said Eilonwy the next morning while the group was having their breakfast. What she said about the pillow was not strange, since people in the southern continent had no habit of using soft pillows. Most pillows were either solid blocks of stone or wood, or at most, rolls of cloth and the like.

In contrast, soft pillows like what they used in the inn were becoming popular in the north, especially amongst the richer merchants and nobility of the surrounding nations. It was a luxury and an indulgence, but also something they couldn’t deny was comfortable to use, a temptation that was difficult to fight against, so to speak.

“This village is close to the capital, so I bet we can find shops that sell such pillows in the capital itself,” said Aideen in turn. “Since they’re popular with the rich, we’ll probably need to frequent the richer districts of the capital, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem either way. I do agree that your mothers would likely find these to be nice, especially since they’re getting older.”

The group departed from the village and headed for the royal capital soon after they finished their breakfast. It was a short trip, only a few hours away, even by foot, and they reached the gates of the royal capital around noon that day. There was already a line of people waiting their turn to enter the capital, so the group just patiently waited until their turn arrived.

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Unlike the previous time, this time Aideen and her group were let through normally as apparently someone had made it easier for the gate guards to deal with foreign guests since the last time she had been in town. Given that Knallzog had been prospering through trade, it was not surprising that they would make it easier on foreigners.

The city gates also seemed to be further out than the last time she had been in Knallgant. Given that the Earth affinity was one of the most common affinities amongst dwarves and they had plenty of earth mages, they probably moved the walls when they expanded the city, then built new sections to cover the area that the old wall couldn’t cover.

It was a similar process to how Tohrmutgent did its expansions, just using different methods.

Once they were inside, they noticed how Knallgant was a lot like Meergant, in that the architecture of the city’s buildings were very much done in a way that emphasized function over form. Unlike the colorful port city, however, the royal capital’s buildings were left plain, yet the stones had been polished almost to a sheen, which gave the whole city a rather elegant and solemn atmosphere to it.

Another thing the group noticed right away was how the streets and alleys were wide, at least twice as wide as what they were used to back in the south. Part of the reason was because the dwarves themselves tended to be a good bit broader at the shoulder, so the roads between the buildings were similarly built to fit their stature.

Most of the buildings in the city are low, two to three stories high at the most. Aideen know that it was a deceptive look, however, as dwarves preferred to expand below, and many of the shorter buildings likely possessed more floors beneath the ground. The buildings themselves were arranged neatly next to one another in blocks that made for an orderly city.

Traffic was heavy, as might be expected from a nation’s royal capital, though compared to most cities, carriages drawn by beasts were rarer. Instead of beast-drawn carriages, the local dwarves had smaller, open-topped carriages that would only fit around six people each at most, each of which would be drawn by a burly dwarf who’d run along the road in the center lanes of the streets.

Those central lanes seemed to be specifically used for those dwarf-drawn carriages, as the pedestrians stayed on the outer lanes instead, which allowed people to navigate the city more easily. Aideen’s group also hired one such carriage drawn by a solidly built young dwarf to take them to the other end of the city, near the foot of the mountain where the wealthier merchants ran their businesses and had their residences.

As was typical, the dwarves also built into the mountain itself, with part of the city situated inside or under the mountain range as well. That said, the city in the mountain was a project that was clearly still in development. It had been that way when Aideen arrived in Knallgant the first time a century ago, and remained the same way now.

It was not that the dwarves were lazy, but to build a city inside a mountain was a difficult undertaking that required great care. It was a project that even for long-lived dwarves would take generations to complete, and had been ongoing ever since the dwarves first founded Knallzog many centuries ago. Perhaps given another millennia or two they would complete the project.