Update 23 for The Lord of the Rings Online is in the works, and it’s going to be a big hit with fans of dwarves. The Grey Mountains, the area in the northeast of Middle-earth, is the focus, and with it comes the halls of the dwarves, their people, and their enemies.

At last week’s Gen Con Indy, Jean “Druidsfire” Prior of MMO Central scored an interview with Executive Producer Rob “Severlin” Ciccolini that included a wealth of information about the upcoming update. Dragons will be coming, but they won’t require a raid. And naturally, there’s lots and lots of dwarven lore.

After the update, there’s work to be done on balancing Beornings and burglars, as well as another potential revamp to legendary items. The 64-bit client is also coming along, thanks to Standing Stone Games’ “deep-down engineer,” which totally sounds like a dwarf programmer.

On one final dwarf-related note: Female dwarves, which are all but absent from Tolkien’s writings, are on the table as potential additions to the game, though they would have to be added “in a manner that is respectful to the story.”

The interview can be found here, in both audio form and as a transcription. Or, if you’d rather just look at pretty images, LOTRO Players has a trio of videos showing off the new landscapes in all their majestic glory. For being so short, the dwarves really build big.