(A few cultural facts)
3,000 years ago or so, there were no humans in the area. Well, not no humans, but really, not so much that you'd notice. No desert men in the Char, no Riders on the JadePlains, no Wyvernin, and no men up in the BlastedLands. What you had instead was the dwarven kingdom.
The dwarven kingdom was primarily underground, and at its peak it honeycombed the entirety of the WestKingsTeeth, as well as a great deal of underground territory out from the mountains. The dwarves did some trading with the halflings and gnomes in the EastKingsTeeth, and communicated politely with dwarves from other parts of the world, but by and large they kept to themselves. They were a strong nation, powerful, united. The only real threats they had were the savage humanoids, who were disorganized and scattered, the dragons, who were mostly a threat to each other, and the Arachithiel.
The Arachithiel were, essentially, spiders. Big spiders. Spiders the size of dwarves, actually. And unlike normal spiders, they had developed opposable digits, evolved to intelligence, and come up with powerful spellcasting capabilities. It is probable that the reason dwarves in this area are so intolerant of arcane magic is that the Arachithiel were so much better at it.
The Spiders, as they were commonly known, claimed some of the recently-acquired territory of the dwarven kingdoms. Hostilities developed. Spells were cast, axes swung. The dwarves and the Arachithiel were enemies for a long, long time, and while the slow reproduction cycle of the spiders meant that their numbers never truly threatened the dwarven kingdom, they were certainly more than a nuisance.
With the Great War, everything changed. The attacks by the giants devastated the dwarven nation, and in just a few years -- a blink of an eye, as dwarves see tiem -- the rules of combat had changed. Years of learning how to fight spells and magic were useless against giants throwing stones and swinging clubs. The dwarves did their best to adapt, and in the process developed rigorous training exercises that all dwarves to this day still practice for combat against giants and their kin. But it was not enough, not nearly enough, to stop the destruction of the dwarven kingdom.
It is not known why the Arachithiel intervened. Most likely, they had suffered similar losses, and saw their own destruction as inevitable unless they allied with the dwarves. Or perhaps they were simply intelligent enough to see past their differences with the dwarves and realized how well their spellcasting and trickery could complement an army of stouthearted dwarven warriors. In any event, it does not matter. What matters is that the Arachithiel formed an alliance with the dwarves to fend off the giants.
The giants were defeated, though not without horrible cost, and to this day giants are attacked on sight in the dwarven kingdom. The humans who fought the savages saved their own skin, as the dwarves saw it. Their actions showed little concern for dwarven safety, and actually drove some of the savages back from the plains into the mountains, where they attacked dwarven settlements. The humans, new to the area and unfamiliar with the geography, likely did not know what was occuring. The mountains were known to be the havens of dragons at the time, and the humans gave the mountains a wide berth because of it, venturing in only in heroic parties to attempt to slay particularly evil dragons before they struck again. Most likely, they assumed that the savage humanoids would flee into Blacktooth Forest or the Jade Plains rather than risk the wrath of the dragons. As it turned out, the dragons were fighting amongst themselves this late in the war, and the savage humanoids were often recruited as slaves or fodder by one wyrm or the other. This made them more organized, and more dangerous to the dwarves, who with their new Arachithiel allies had to fight a long and bloody battle to clear the savages out of their territory.
Recent history has seen the Dwarven Kingdom forge trading alliances with TwinGate, the only human organization that the dwarves consider even remotely civilized. They ignore the desert men unless they come into the mountains, in which case the dwarves attack. The Riders and the Wyvernin are rarely seen in the dwarven areas. The dwarves still trade with the gnomes and halflings, but have little other interest in cultural exchange. They consider the WestKingsTeeth to be their territory, and while some small human settlements are tolerated, large amounts of activity will not go unnoticed or unopposed.
The only close friends the dwarves have these days are the Spiders...
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