Battle of the Dwarves

I never really paid attention to the game lore until later in the game. I got really interested in the civil war between the summit and deldrimor dwarves. My question is what started the war?

Mostly strained relationships between Family members, some who were racist and xenophobic (SS), and those who traded with humans and were friendly.
You can see this on the Copperhammer Mines description.

Here, a quote from the lore manual:

'There are those, however, who wish to see the good king taken out of power. Namely, the Stone Summit, a group of xenophobic dwarves who have broken their ties with Deldrimor and are trying to take control of the dwarven nation. Over the past several years, the Summit have been growing in power and a civil war is brewing.'

This would indicate that the development of civil war is fairly recent, and probably did not have anything to do with other things going on such as the guild wars in the human kingdoms. Put simply, a group of dwarves conspired to overthrow the king and formed a clan, and a lot of others joined. They grew in power, and so...a civil war began. Not much more to it.

The coming of the humans over the mountains obviously strained relationships even more, as Deldrimor allied with them and was already trading with them anyway, while the Stone Summit were being heavily beaten and losing the passes in the northern Shiverpeaks that they controlled. This would probably have encouraged them to move their concentration to the south and give up on trying to stand in the way of the humans, instead putting all their efforts into attacking Deldrimor.

it makes me happy when they fight in spearhead peak outside citadel, its a rare spawn but a mob of deldrimor spawn and SLOWLY, make there way into the stone summit and get pwned.

It should be said that Deldrimor appears very weak. The only fighters we see of theirs are those level 10 armies mentioned, a few higher level bodyguards of King Jalis who die quickly enough in Thunderhead Keep, and a bunch of dwarves standing around by the ice ship at the end of Ice Caves of Sorrow. They are very much on the defence and losing, and without the aid of us mighty Ascalons the Deldrimor nation would likely have fallen and been taken over by the Summit (evidenced by the taking of Thunderhead Keep, the small unlikely defence at Granite Citadel, and Camp Rankor supposedly owned by the Summit being very close to Droknar's Forge). The Summit were beaten in the north by the humans, but while we were away they nearly beat Deldrimor in the south. We only got back just in time to save the good dwarves of Deldrimor.

i thought durring the missions in north shiverpeaks the dwarves were rappidly heading toward civil war but they dont declare it till one of the southren shiverpeaks missions.

The civil war is very "recent", as said by a few Borlis and Yak's Bend npcs, I believe. We know the Summit are pretty powerful, for numerous towns/outposts are under their control, plus the death of Dagnar did not seem to cripple their order whatsoever.

The assassination of Dagnar is the last place where you fight Stone Summit dwarves in the storyline, so I have to disagree and say that the death of Dagnar was the final daggar to be thrust into the SS heirarchy.

I believe in the early missions it is just a large standoff, the two are obviously enemies but have no real reason to go to war as off yet, perhaps the odd skirmish every now and again, for the Stone Summit actually only ever attacked us, not the dwarves.

However after Thunderhead Keep the Lich says that as with the prophecy, when the mountains are covered in blood will they be fufilled and talks of how the civil war will buy us time. This would leave me to believe that THK was in fact the opening battle and the only time the Summit dared to attack the dwarves. Whilst civil war was brewing our arrival acted as a catalyst and war broke out.

The civil war has been going on for quite some time before us Ascalonians set foot in yaks bend.

The Thunderhead Keep description makes it sound like the war started in the last generation. Whereas Copperhammer implies a longer lasting war. Neither states as much, just implications from the wording. Droknars Forge more strongly implies it is relatively old event (the split, not necessarily the civil war).

Dagnar is the cousin of the King, which indicates not too long ago on the one side, but then again, how long do Dwarves live? Could a Dwarven generation span 200 years and thus Long Ago is still a Generation? Dagnar could also not be the founder of the Stone Summit. The Stone Summit is listed as a "guild" in the lore manual. Perhaps it was once not as powerful?

Finally, the lore manual states "over the past several years, the Summit have been growing their power, and a civil war is brewing." The (present) Civil War seems to be more recent. Perhaps the Stone Summit were beaten back once before? Maybe this isn't the first civil war started by the summit?

If Dwarven Lore from previous sources like AD&D etc, hold true here then "recently" in Dwarven time is three generations or more in Human time. And for those who know and understand Dwarves, they never give up, evil or good. Which raises another question, from human viewpoint the SS is evil but from Dwarven viewpoint they are standing true to heritage and not evil, just resisting human interferance and contact. So who's to say the Stone Summit aren't really the Dwarven heroes and Deldrimor are the "traitors"? With that logic line, the SS may persavere against the influence of humans upon the Deldrimor and even possibly find a way to bring them back into the fold, so to speak. Xenophobic is a good description of almost all Dwarves. The official lore book was written by a human, remember......

The official lore also gives the King's age - I can't remember exactly what it was, but I think it was around 150 or so, indicating that dwarven generations are indeed longer than human.