Second Try
Despite the best efforts of Grand Regent Habidas Aaden, his influence was hardly felt in the state that had descended into insanity.
Priests, not statesmen, were in charge these days. Devotion and purity were much more important qualifiers to commanding over people than intelligence and expertise.
Even though many people recognized that the whole premise and motivation of the Statue War was stupid and self-destructive from the onset, the two sides who claim to fight for the correct version of Vulcan did not see it that way.
To them, they were fighting for the true god! If they won, the Vulcan Empire would be saved! If they lost or did nothing, then their enemies would drown their great dwarven state in perpetual darkness as Vulcan's light left the forsaken dwarves.
Against this kind of logic, the dwindling number of non-religious and moderate dwarves failed to persuade their militant brothers and sisters from seeking compromise.