'durin' concept sketches

Some more concepts for 'Durin,' a Tolkien-inspired webcomic series I'm planning, which will cover the life of Durin the Deathless, and the gathering of his people in Khazad-Dum in the early days of Middle-Earth's history.

The journey of dwarves to Khazad-dum in the early days of their race I tend to picture in very old-testament terms; this religious pilgrimage across the vast, unknown expanses of the world, to find the Deathless King in his hall. I liked the idea that they, having no system of writing at the time, would leave these carvings of the seven stars - presented in the same pyramidal layout seen on the doors made by Narvi millennia later - on rocks and the walls of caves as way-markers for later pilgrims to follow. The oldest parts of Durin's kingdom, as we are told in FOTR,  are on the eastern side of the mountains, above the valley of Azanulbizar. I imagine the dwarves, having delved out the first of their dwellings (the gate and "first hall" mentioned in FOTR, and likely many smaller caves and tunnels about the valley) would eventually break through to this huge underground rift in the earth, fifty feet across and immeasurably deep, with the natural wealth of the mountain - veins of metals and precious stones - arrayed tantalizingly before them on the far side. It would have been an early engineering challenge for Durin's folk, and represents for them a kind of manifest destiny.