You'd expected the Eldest of Clan Angrund to have been given one of the positions, and that the other wasn't Ulthar showed that he'd decided that Eight Peaks was secure enough for him to return home.
I suspect this is around when the incident with his brothers happened, because I don't think he would've left if he wasn't recalled.
For now, Karak Eight Peaks did not have that luxury, and though some sort of oversized powered minecart through the Underway from Ulrikadrin to Death Pass was discussed as a possible solution, the cost would apparently be ruinous.
My first thought was "If Mathilde was the Steward, this would've totally happened". Immediately followed by "Maybe we can get that now that we have triple infinite money."
It might actually be a decent idea. It would certainly allow faster reinforcements (especially heavy artillery) and better supply lines, and some experimentation with railway technology could be helpful.
I guess the important question is whether the initial construction or the running costs would be "ruinous". Because Belegar can certainly afford the coin, just perhaps not the manpower, expertise or advisor attention.
A short walk then takes the council to the southwestern portion of the Eastern Valley, where a stone wall twice your height has been erected along the base of Kvinn-Wyr, with towers thrice that a ways back. "Unmortared," Dreng comments. "The idea isn't to stop the trolls, but to slow them down and have them make a lot of noise getting through. Each tower has bolt throwers and a bell. The bolt throwers kill the troll, the bell calls for reinforcements if they can't."
A bit ago there was some discussion on whether dwarfs would make something intended to break, like a canister shell. Here we have them building a wall that is intentionally easy to get through, and no one really seems to bat an eye (though granted, the ones around aren't hardcore traditionalists).
It also shows that dwarfs are perfectly capable of trickery and cunning, they just don't frame it as such.
Gromril's gromril, of course, but Expeditionary. Property of the Crown, distributed as needed for specific mine-and-dash jobs.
I first noted this because mine-and-dash is just kind of funny. It's rather rogueish.
But that's rather interesting, right? Because the dwarfs don't seem to look down on it. So combined with the point above, it's clear that dwarfs have their own deeply buried cunning streak. Ulthar's brothers and the Chaos dwarfs are further examples (in my headcanon, Chaos Dwarfs are dark mirrors, the potential for all they do is in all dwarfs, and Chaos Dwarfs can be plenty tricky and backstabby).
And "buried" is probably a good word, because I think there was an active (if not conscious) effort to move into that direction, spurred on by the Chaos Dwarfs. And since the dwarfs didn't have any patron figures in their pantheon to stand for it, they went too far with it, so now this sort of thing has to be justified as something else to be ok.
(Gromdrindal is sort of the trickster figure of the dwarfs, but if my time line isn't wrong, he appears after the war of the beard, which in turn is after the incursion which is when the chaos dwarfs appeared. And by that point the culture change would've well and truly set in)
An interesting expression. First, this is just an English expression, so it's basically a translation of whatever Kragg would've thought. But I'm not about to let stuff like that stop my speculation.
So, steeling himself. My first thought is "Why not gromril? Gromril is better". But then, that's quite the point. The dwarfish word for dwarf basically translates to "seems ok, but hasn't proven itself", if my recollection isn't very wrong. Comparing yourself to gromril (which I believe tends to be associated with divinity and timelessness) would be exceedingly arrogant. So steel is better on that account.
There's also the point that steel is produced from a lesser material (iron) through a refinement process, which is very appropriate for the expression. After all, it's about making yourself a better version so you can do/endure something. And dwarfs would be aware of that sort of detail.
(Somebody want to offer an interpretation of how the need for carbon impurities comes into it? Because I don't think dwarfs like that. I'm not sure they are actually aware of why coal is needed for steel. Though I suspect they knew in the golden age, and forgot. [Come to think of it, that would be an interesting reason why they can't figure out how the gromril purification process worked: Just like steel, it's also about
adding stuff, which they just don't consider.])
