Also known as: Durin I
Durin the Deathless was the eldest of the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves, whom Aule the Smith fashioned in secret beneath the mountains and whom Iluvatar accepted and gave true life. He awoke alone at Mount Gundabad in the north, in the deeps of the Elder Days before the other fathers stirred, and wandered south along the Misty Mountains until he came to the cold lake Kheled-zaram. Looking into its still water he saw, above the reflection of his own head, a crown of stars; and taking it for a sign, he founded there Khazad-dum, the greatest and most enduring of all Dwarf-mansions, which Men in later days named Moria.
He is called the Deathless both for his great span of life in the Elder Days and because the Dwarves held that he returned again and again among his descendants: down the ages a Dwarf would be born into his line so like him in form and bearing that he was given Durin's name and held to be the Father come back, and so it was to Durin VI. In that sixth Durin's day the delvers of Moria, mining ever deeper for mithril, woke the Balrog -- Durin's Bane -- which slew the king and drove his folk at last into exile. The Dwarves believed a seventh and final Durin would yet arise before the world's ending. Durin's Folk, the Longbeards, are the chief and most renowned of all the Dwarf-kindreds in the histories of Middle-earth.