Just hanging this here for now...
According to the Five Shires gazetteer, dwarves were all over the Altan Tepes digging mines and strongholds in ancient days (ca. 900s BC).
So the dwarves who settled the region in the 900s (and the exiles from the Shires after the fall of Loktal's Realm) were exterminated by humanoids, the same hordes pushed back at Sardal Pass in 491 BC (check out the migrations map in Orcs of Thar).
The monster- and humanoid-haunted delves are still filled with the treasures of the old dwarves, their lands inaccessible due to intervening tribes until the arrival of Duke Stefan, whose army pushed through the Duke's Road 20 years ago (and sent the surviving forest and hill humanoids into the Altan Tepes to settle among their mountain cousins... with a burning hatred for humans and a desire to reclaim their lost lands).
Perhaps some remnant petty dwarven stronghold still exists in that region, south of the Frost Giants, and they are the reason for all the trade in gems and jewelry... them and the adventurers now looting the lairs of the humanoids in the old dwarven delves.
Not to mention, of course, frost-giant haunted mountains are a great reason to have a castle, humanoid tribes or no...
And just like that you have an adventure setting to take the PCs to level 9 and build a castle or mountainside stronghold of their own.
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