Duri the hoarder
Dúri the Hoarder, son of Bulsi. Born 2210 T.A. died 2462 T.A.
Dúri was a red bearded dwarrow who spent much of his life in the Blue Mountains. A Firebeard in heart and mind, he was particularly fierce when it came to hoarded gold, and perhaps none have desired it more than he. For the treasure hoard of his great grandfather Nurvi Stouthammer he loved beyond all things, and much of the gold and gems and shiny trinkets that were added to it in the many years after the exile from Moria were counted to it because of him.
In his early years, Dúri was a miner. He loved nothing more than to uncover treasure in the form of raw gems and veins of gold. Like his great grandfather before him, he had a good sense of judgment when it came to digging in the right places. When other dwarves delved deeper into the iron mines, Dúri went digging elsewhere, in some abandoned mine to which none had laid claim. The mine was said to have been depleted of all riches - however few there had been there in the first place. But Dúri was convinced that their ancestors had delved this mine long ago because in it lay the promise of gold and thus with his king's leave he took it for his own.
Sure enough, after no less than fifty years of ceaseless digging, he found at last what he had been looking for. The unmistakable glint of gold. In the long years since the destruction of Tumunzahar, none had delved gold out of those mountains, but Dúri had done so. Where before others had mocked him for pursuing the impossible, they now lamented their words, for Dúri soon became a very rich dwarf. His family rejoiced, as the worthless mine now proved to be their greatest asset, and Dúri was hailed as an honourable dwarf, befitting the title of Elder (for indeed at the time he was the family's elder by age but not by deeds). Naturally, a good deal of it was sent to the king as tribute, but all the rest was stored inside the treasuries of Stouthammer Hall.
Now Dúri became known as the Hoarder, not simply because he added so much gold to the treasuries, but also because he, as the 6th Elder of the Line of Nurvi Stouthammer, keeper of the ring and key, became custodian of the family's hoard. He was offered a title by the King and would have been master of mines if he had but accepted. But Dúri was not interested in titles or renown. He cared only for the hoard and spent all his waking hours, and later too his slumbering ones, in the treasuries of Stouthammer Hall. Here he assigned dwarven masons to build him a great seat out of carven stone so that he could sit and look upon the hoard forever more. Upon that very throne he sat the remainder of his life, by day and by night, from summer to winter, for nearly 60 years, until at last he perished.
He was the first dwarf of our line not to be buried in a tomb alongside his fathers. Instead they carved him a tomb behind a secret door in the treasuries of Stouthammer Hall. Upon the wall they wrote runes of power, so that all who entered the treasury from then onwards, would see those runes glimmer in the dark and be reminded of the true custodian of the Stouthammer treasure: Dúri the Hoarder.
