Dwarf
🔵 Class: Mammal
🔵 Height: 1.5m/5ft
🔵 Weight: 200kg
🔵 Life expectancy: 300 years
🔵 Diet: Omnivorous with a preference for including dirt in their food
🔵 Native planet: Zalielith
Dwarves are a species from [i]The Chronicles of Loth[/i]. They keep to themselves most of the time and live in small communities within mountains where they have developed a rough-hewn but rich culture. They spend their time crafting, including crafting armour and weaponry.
🧬 Physiology 🧬
Dwarves are humanoid creatures with a shorter, stockier, more muscular build. Unlike humans, who have a broader range of eye and hair colours, dwarf hair and eyes are the colour of stone or dirt.
That, of course, doesn’t narrow down the potential for a wide range of colours as stones can come in many colours. Red-haired dwarves are unusual but not unknown, while common eye colours include turquoise and similar shades of blue. Their eyes are generally sharp and bright.
Dwarves are capable of reproducing in two ways: firstly by sexual reproduction, and secondly by creating a dwarven statue to create a Rock Dwarf.
World Population
While there are no exact figures, dwarves are moderately common on Zaliethiel.
Half Breeds
Dark Dwarf
When a dwarf and a dark elf have a child, the dwarves call the offspring a dark dwarf. They are taller than a full dwarf and tend to be lighter of limb and without the famous dwarven constitution.
Dwarc
A half-dwarf, half-orc. These are extremely rare, as no dwarven woman would willingly have sex with an orc, so any such union would be rape. It is a rare dwarven woman who would allow her baby, or herself, to survive afterwards.
In the opposite direction, male dwarves are not known for committing rape on the battlefield but it occasionally happens.
Any dwarcs who survive their early life may decide that living among the orcs is a better option than living among dwarfs, as orcs tend not to discriminate in their treatment of half-breeds. On their own merits, dwarcs are known for their strength and fearlessness, and they’re only slightly smaller than full orcs.
Dwarmn
A half-human, half-dwarf. They are taller than dwarves, notably hardy and muscular, and look like human-height dwarves. They are known for their endurance, much like that of an orc or troll. They can pass for full human so tend to live in human settlements.
While they are accepted in dwarven society, half-breeds are almost invariably unable to live with their dwarven community due to their size and the difficulty of living in a cave system designed for dwarfs.
Gnome
A half-dwarf, half-halfling. Most dwarfs consider these to be full dwarfs, especially as, unlike halflings, gnomes can grow facial hair.
There aren’t many of them around but they have much in common with dwarves, except for a desire to explore and invent.
Light Dwarf
A cross between a dwarf and a light elf. Most are taller and fairer than their dwarf parent but stouter and shorter than their elf parent. They are slightly smaller in height and build than humans and are often mistaken for short humans.
Rock Dwarf
Rock dwarves are born of statues and created as ready-made warriors.
The statues are made as follows: a statue is carved from a piece of stone, usually granite or slate, and then is divided into two pieces so that the dwarf’s front and back are separate. A tag is cut out of the two halves in the approximate area of the statue’s heart and a large rune is then slotted into the tags. When the two halves are pushed back together, the rune acts as a lock and holds them together.
Once this is done, the dwarves use a magic known only to themselves to bring the statue to life.
Rock dwarves are capable of sexual reproduction, and this works in the same way as for normal dwarves.
Intelligence
Dwarves have certainly shown themselves to be intelligent, but can be stubborn or single-minded. This may be attributed to their longer life-spans.
Fear of the Dark
While some species such as humans have a fear of the dark, dwarves do not.
Wanderlust
Dwarves have a powerful sense of spatial awareness. Sometimes this can misfire as something known among many Zaliethians as “wanderlust”. See Sport for further details.
Medical Conditions
As robust as dwarves appear to be, they are subject to some of the same issues as humans in that they are built very much like humans and don’t entirely suit the environments they feel the most comfortable in. The dwarves’ preferred environments lead to the following, fairly frequent, conditions.
Fatigue
Dwarves are prone to over-working so fatigue or physical burnout are not uncommon. Lack of vitamin C can contribute to this.
Lead Poisoning
Given dwarves’ preference for eating clays and soils, they can be prone to poisoning themselves with lead through over-consumption of soil. Symptoms only tend to occur once the individual has accumulated a large amount of the metal in their system, and include:
🌟 abdominal pain
🌟 constipation
🌟 fatigue
🌟 headaches
🌟 high blood pressure
🌟 joint and muscle pain
🌟 memory loss
🌟 miscarriage or premature birth among pregnant women
🌟 pain, numbness or tingling in their limbs
Sprains/Torn Muscles/Slipped Discs
This kind of physical wear and tear is quite common among dwarves.
Vitamin D Deficiency
While dwarves prefer living underground, spending too long out of reach of sunlight can be harmful to them. Those who do not venture out often enough are more likely to experience several symptoms including:
🌟 broken bones
🌟 depression and anxiety
🌟 diabetes
🌟 frequent illness and infections
🌟 hair loss
🌟 heart disease
🌟 multiple sclerosis
🌟 muscular pain
🌟 osteoporosis
🌟 poor sleep quality
🌟 poor wound healing
🌟 respiratory tract infections
While a diet that includes fish can help with this, it’s not generally enough to stave off the symptoms of deficiency. As a result this is one of the most common deficiencies in dwarfs - around 75% are affected.
Zinc Poisoning
Another type of poisoning that can come from over-consumption of soils. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, pain, cramps and diarrhoea.
🌎 Geographical Distribution 🌎
The dwarves’ most important settlement is Mountain, known as being the home of the dwarves. As such, the community there is no bigger than that of other communities, but it is considered to be the birthplace of the dwarven race.
Climate Preference
The muscular build of most dwarves means that they tolerate most climates at least reasonably well, although they prefer cooler climates. They dislike humidity and design the layouts of their mountain homes accordingly. See Shelter further down this profile for further information.
Most dwarves love living in the mountains, so this is where most can be found. More specifically they create mountainside cities to live in. They also build around the sides of their mountains and hills, but this is far rarer. This provides a suitable living space for dwarves who prefer to spend more time outdoors. These outdoor-living dwarves also tend to provide something of a public service for the more traditional, indoor-living dwarfs by being the ones any visitors will approach.
Settlements
Dwarves almost invariably live under mountains, in cavernous spaces dug out by the founder of the new community and any helpers they had.
Coastal Communities
A few dwarves live on the coasts but they tend to suffer there with the higher humidity. Some dwarves simply enjoy the sight and sound of the sea so much that they will overlook these issues and engineer their caves to combat them as well as they can. One other aspect of the coastal life that tends to draw dwarves in is that by the time they reach the sea, the average traveller has normally spent many weeks or months above ground. This does not come naturally to them, so coastal caves can look like the home the traveller has been pining for.
Munipedia
Another exception to the mountain rule, this was a city gifted to a dwarf, and the only above-ground dwarven city. Even then, the residents are beginning to dig their way underground to feel more at home here.
🐳 Position in Ecosystem 🐳
Dwarves have no significant threats to their survival. However, Zalielith can still be rather a dangerous place due to the existence of magic, a number of aggressive species and a lack of particularly effective medicine.
Plants
Dwarves have a largely similar approach to plants to humans. See the Zalielith profile’s Ecosystem section for further information about plants.
Predators
While dwarves don’t have any significant threats to survival, a few other species can be dangerous enough to them to be worth avoiding or protecting themselves. See the Zalielith profile’s Ecosystem section for more information.
Herbivores
Dwarves have a largely similar approach to herbivores to humans. See the Zalielith profile’s Ecosystem section for further information about herbivores.
Bacteria, Viruses, and Other Pathogens
Dwarves are at risk of the same infections as humans.
Artificial Life
Golems
Dwarves have a special affection for these. They tend to view them as if the golems were children, and anthropomorphize them, imagining them to have personalities and quirks they don’t truly have. See Golem section of Zalielith Lore Bible for further details.
🚀 Technology 🚀
The dwarves are highly capable at what they do, but are not particularly innovative.
“Dwarf tech” - a recognised term specifically relating to the technology made by dwarves - is advanced enough that they are capable of producing electricity, Winchester-type rifles, trains, air ships, and other technology of a similar level.
Technological Age
As a race, the dwarves are in their industrial age.
Agriculture
Dwarves have a varied diet, and the lack of sunshine in their homes creates some interesting challenges when it comes to sourcing food.
Game
While some creatures that constitute game live partly or completely underground, most of the game that dwarves hunt lives above ground.
Grain and Potatoes
Given the underground nature of most dwarven homes, growing crops is something of a challenge. Many dwarf communities solve this (along with other problems such as security and the desire not to leave their cave system if they can avoid doing so) by growing them indoors and bringing the sunshine inside. To do that, they use systems known affectionately as “mirror farms”. See Shelter for full details.
However, of the plants they grow, they tend to favour barley for making beer, and potatoes for making vodka. Of course, both can, and are, both also eaten.
Milk
Dwarves keep goats and yaks, which they use for milk. A dwarven farmhand milking their herd in the city’s indoor pen is a common sight.
During the day, farmed animals are kept in outdoor pens on the mountain’s slopes to allow them to graze and to feel relaxed in an environment that is more natural to them. They are protected from predators and thieves by golems, and are brought in at night to be kept in enclosures.
Minerals
The insides of the mountains in which dwarfs live are full of minerals. As these are used as spices, relatively little is taken. This creates the obvious problem that the longer a community lives in a particular mountain, the more digging they do. In practice they tend to use this mineral-excavation process to slowly open up new chambers, and they have a bias towards digging downwards and outwards from the town itself.
Mushrooms
Dwarves eat mushrooms, and their habit of living underground offers them opportunities to grow them efficiently. This is routinely done by developing, and tending, mushroom log farms.
Some walls are damp, meaning that they create a humid area close by. Many dwarven communities include an individual or small team of mushroom farmers who source mushroom-infected logs and bring them into a damp, dark chamber where the mushrooms can grow. Once they’ve grown, they are harvested.
Language
Dwarves primarily speak Dwarven; Dwarven is the “high dwarf” language, while a second dialect, Dwarvish, is spoken by non-dwarves and is less accurate to the intended sound of Dwarven. Dwarven has many different dialects depending on location.
To non-dwarves the language sounds harsh. Its written form is presented in runes.
Multilingualism
Their long lifespans and the likelihood that if a dwarf expects to do trade with other species in foreign lands means that dwarves have a strong tendency to learn second, third, and more languages.
Orcish
One of the languages many dwarves will make sure to include among their second languages is Orcish, so that they can understand their enemies and remain clued-in to what they are planning. Usually their first clue that orcs are about are a sighting of an orcish scout or goblin. If a dwarf community becomes aware of one or the other of these they send out a golem to do reconnaissance in the area until they locate the orcs. The golem returns to report on what it has heard, and the dwarves require an understanding of Orcish to translate the whole report.
Trade
Dwarves are routinely fluent in Zalielith’s trade language. However, trade spoken in a dwarvish accent usually sounds broken in unexpected parts of the speech, and is often rumbled for ease of speech. At first, it may not appear to make much sense for the notoriously insular dwarves to learn Trade when they could simply trade between themselves, but after their historic war with the orcs, the dwarves made a cultural shift to learn Trade in order to
Energy Usage
Dwarves dig for coal, which they use to power their furnaces. Their furnaces generate heat, and a small amount of electricity is generated from it. In addition, they light fires for warmth.
The Sciences
Dwarves don’t tend to be particularly scholarly so have made little progress over and above other races in the sciences. At best they may be said to have made progress in physics.
Sanitation
One of the benefits of living underneath hills and mountains is that the dwarves often find themselves close to the water table. This gives them easy access to fresh water.
Basins
Many dwarf communities create basins in strategic locations in their cave systems where water naturally collects, and which can be used by anybody in the community.
Chimneys
Given their often-underground location, it is important for dwarf cave systems to have chimneys through which dirty air can escape, allowing for clean air to be drawn in elsewhere. Almost all dwarf cities are fastidious about creating effective ventilation systems.
Sewage
No race on Zalielith is as competent in managing their sewage to keep their living spaces clean, fresh, and disease-free as the dwarves. See Sewage under Shelter for details.
Industry
Dwarves are best known for their craftsmanship and use of steam in transport.
⚔️ History ⚔️
Much like humans and elves, dwarves were created by magic and have not been subject to evolution via natural selection - or indeed, any other form of selection - since. Their history since then has been rather uneventful.
Evolution / Genesis
The dwarves were created by the gods. See Religion and Spirituality for further details.
Timeline
Given the lack of drama in dwarvish history there is little to note here.
Changes in Standard of Living
This race has always had a preference for living underground, and their lifestyle has changed little since their creation. There is little to say about changes in their standards of living.
Disasters
There are no significant disasters in dwarvish history.
Discoveries
Dwarves are thoughtful and inventive, but not generally intrepid, so most of their achievements in terms of bringing something new to Zalielith lie in the field of invention, not discovery. Dwarves can and do get stricken with wanderlust, but this isn’t a big part of their culture and is more notable for being the exception to the rule than for being common. Usually, wandering dwarves are more interested in seeing the world than reporting back what they’ve discovered.
Inventions
Dwarves are innovative enough to have developed a range of different armours and weapons, although many of these are rather technical to describe here and represent small improvements on the equipment that existed before.
Clocks
Living inside a mountain can make keeping track of morning, afternoon, evening, and night a difficult task. Light is often brought into the mountain using mirrors as far as possible, but it doesn’t reach everywhere inside. To make up for the shortfall dwarves use water-clocks.
Steam Locomotive
The dwarves harnessed steam long ago as a means of powering machinery, and installed a locomotive in Munipedia.
Nations Founded
While the dwarfs don’t have multiple nations they have appeared on more than one landmass. This is because a small number have either dug under the oceans, or have discovered and made use of undersea caverns and come out the other side.
Social Movements
There is little to say about social movements within the dwarven community. Their low populations and the family-base clan system has led to them almost invariably seeing one another as people, not contrarian inconveniences, so differences in individual circumstances or preferences have remained a non-issue.
In addition to this, almost all dwarves live in very similar lodgings: cities dug out from the mountains, meaning there is little to no class system. The class system of the High King and Nobles, such as it is, is also based on family rather than differing approaches to politics.
Trade Routes
The dwarven race doesn’t trade enough with other races enough to have an established, regular trade route.
Wars and Alliances
Dwarves may be introverted but this is not the only reason why they rarely engage in war, for they have resources that some races would value if only they could reach them. The mountains in which dwarves live are far away from most other areas of civilisation so are not considered worth the journey. In addition to this, dwarvish cities are small by comparison, well-defended by dwarves who habitually make their own weaponry, and their food is largely considered unpleasant by other races.
Alliances
While the dwarves don’t tend to create alliances per se on account of them preferring the company of other dwarves, they do like to use the establishment of treaties as a formalised method to build relationships with other species to allow them to trade, either with said other species or on the other species’ land.
The dwarves of Crobee have multiple treaties in place to regulate their share of trade in the north.
Protection of Crobee
The dwarves of Krobi Khill essentially offer protection to the city of Crobee (See the Zalielith Lore Bible for further details about the history of Crobee) to prevent it from being raided. As the dwarves tend to keep to themselves, and a pledge to lend military assistance would potentially be retracted in the decades or centuries following, the protection the dwarves offer is a pledge to boycott any faction, be it individual or country, should it attack Crobee. This has deterred enough attacks from Crobee to be widely considered effective.
Munipedia
The city of Munipedia has an interesting history. It was gifted to them by the human Emperor Fext (more specifically, he gifted it to one specific dwarven ally, who subsequently moved his clan there) where they could build to their hearts’ content. In return, Fext and his people would have access to the dwarf tech provided plus any other dwarf tech he requested, such as muskets and revolvers. Since then, the dwarves have begun to build underground, as they find living above-ground somewhat unnatural.
Scorpnik
The scorpnik live underground so have a territory preference in common with the dwarfs. For this reason they occasionally meet. The two races will either form an alliance or fight with each other depending on the circumstances, and there is no set trend for them to react to each other either way: it truly happens on a case by case basis.
Scorpnik don’t tend to like other races entering their hive, and if a dwarf is allowed in at all, it’s usually because they’ve been scented by a scorpnik to mark them as acceptable.
Wars
The dwarvish tendency towards insularity means that they rarely come into contact, let alone conflict, with other races.
Elves
The biggest wars the dwarves have been involved in has been with the elves and dark elves. These wars are ongoing but are in stalemate.
The dwarves’ antipathy towards the elves stems from their involvement in the Draconic War of Annihilation, although the dwarves’ involvement was relatively minor. Dragons tended not to seek out dwarves to kill on account of the disparity between the two species’ sizes.
The dark elves attacked the dwarves in their mines to try to gain access to the surface via the dwarves’ cities. For this reason there are ongoing skirmishes between the two races with the elves almost invariably initiating fights.
The dwarves are still on relatively good terms with the light elves; they were barely impacted when the elves went to war with the treori beyond a few shipments being slowed by the conflict.
Scorpnik
The scorpnik deserve a mention on both the alliance and the war lists of this section. As their name suggests they are rather insect-like and have a drone caste. These drones attack anybody who is not annointed with the scorpnik scent, and who ventures close to or within their hive. Once such a battle has started, it’s entirely possible for the drones to follow a dwarf all the way back to their dwarven community. Scorpnik do not know fear and their numbers can be fairly quick to replace meaning if a war starts between dwarves and Scorpnik it is usually a war to the death for that particular hive. Dwarves try to avoid prolonged battles with Scorpnik when possible.
🏺 Culture 🏺
Dwarvish culture is largely pensive - though arguably not quiet. They are keen crafters meaning that dwarves are usually busy, although often that busyness is characterised with intense concentration.
Despite the strong presence of alcohol in dwarvish cuisine, they’re not a highly sociable people, instead preferring the company of their loved ones. This introverted culture has inevitably led to a richness of craftsmanship and an appreciation of their foods.
Food
Despite the fact that dwarves create rocky, and largely lightless, homes for themselves, their diets are complex, varied, and unique. Most dwarven cities have something not dissimilar to a supermarket: a place where they store all the foods they make, find, or grow, and where the whole community can go to take what they need. See Food Store under Shelter for more details.
Alcohol
It has been said that dwarves cannot get drunk. This is not quite true but they do have a huge tolerance for alcohol, owing to the fact that they start drinking it early, and on account of the average dwarf’s build.
There is a medical reason behind their frequent consumption of alcohol. Almost all dwarves have easy access to fresh, clean drinking water, so combating pathogens by drinking beer as the humans of Earth did isn’t necessary; rather, the dwarvish diet of minerals leads them to get kidney stones and other afflictions involving over-consumption of minerals and salts. Drinking alcohol, especially strong alcohol, dissolves these minerals and reduces the problem.
The drinks Ogre’s Bane and Giant Swill can get them drunk, mainly on account of the standard portions being large. Both of these drinks are spirits on a par with whiskey or vodka.
Breakfast
The dwarvish tendency to drink large quantities of alcohol means, of course, that they can get drunk. For this reason, a greasy breakfast consisting of lard-made bread, bacon, or steak are fairly popular.
Fungi
Living indoors means that dwarves tend to get through a lot of fungi. See Agriculture for more information.
Game
Dwarves mostly eat the most predominant game in their particular area, farmed animals, mushrooms, and plenty of seasoning, all washed down with alcohol.
Milk
Dwarves keep goats and yaks, which they use for milk.
Minerals
The dwarvish lifestyle of working and living underground or in soil, gravel, and mineral-rich environments means that they have developed a taste for soil in their foods. Several minerals qualify for them as spices, particularly calcium (which has its own unique flavour), copper (a metallic ‘spice’), magnesium (bitter or sour and fruity), iron (another metallic flavour), and salt.
Spices
Among other minerals, dwarves love salt in their food and like to have more of it than a human would. Indeed, they spice their food so strongly that they almost universally consider other races’ cuisine to be bland. As their seasoning is essentially soil, they don’t tend to have many guests for dinner anyway so do not tend to extend their hospitality to non-dwarves.
Art
Dwarves are focused when it comes to the creation of art. Hands-on craftsmanship to one degree or another is so common that any dwarf that lacks skill in this area is seen as very odd.
Many dwarves have a project in progress at any given time, and they are likely to spend years on it, lovingly working on it until they are satisfied. When it comes to decorative weaponry, some of this is kept, unused, purely as works of art, while others are indeed used. Some of these weapons are used for ceremonial purposes rather than for war.
A fair number of dwarves enjoy dabbling in woodwork, and a few even admire the elves for their superior woodwork skills.
They do not take much interest in paintings, or performance arts such as theatre or music, although there will always be the occasional outlier. The few musicians who do exist tend to favour percussion, possibly because dwarves listen to the tink of hammers and stomping of feet as they work, and find beauty in this sound as the accompaniment to their beloved crafts.
However much dwarvish folk eschew social contact with non-dwarves, they are generally very likely to succumb to the temptation to talk about craftsmanship. If a non-dwarf wishes to strike up a conversation with a dwarf then it is a good bet to request pointers on how to improve a piece of craftwork in progress. In fact, this is such an effective strategy that it’s commonly used by travellers, so bringing a piece of network or a pot on a journey is worth doing.
Religion and Spirituality
The dwarves’ creation story is closely linked with their clan system. Their clans are based on families that were recognised at the very beginning of the dwarvish race, when multiple families were created by the gods.
The story of their creation tells that the gods wanted fellowship, so they created the dwarves as like-minded creatures (although this story is common to all the races of Zalielith). The first dwarf was made, followed by six others, and the clans were founded based on this seven.
The gods made one dwarf for each day of the week, with the first representing the restful day. Of the seven, three were male and three were female. It is unknown what sex the seventh dwarf was, or what role they played.
Most acts of worship occur in each dwarf’s house, although a few deities demand worship in a temple.
Forge Masters
Keepers of the forge. This role has a literal spiritual element, and is particularly important as fire elementals often live in dwarven forges, and it is the role of the Forge Masters to keep them warm to ensure that the deal made between the dwarves and the fire elementals is not broken. See Business for more details.
Earth Elementals
The dwarves have been known to make deals with earth elementals. See Business for more details.
Slavery
The dwarves have no history of keeping, nor being, slaves.
Clothing
Dwarves prefer to wear leathers, which are hardwearing and suitable for the crafts that almost all dwarves excel in. They wear finer clothing during social events.
Wedding Bracelets
When a couple get married, both bride and groom wear an ornate bracelet each. These are designed to link together.
Magic
Dwarves use magic, but generally avoid doing so in the presence of non-dwarves.
Culturally, dwarfs value the concept of creation, and this means that the enchanter school of magic is the most prized. If a dwarf esper can use their magic in their craftwork, they will. It is likely for a dwarf to use their magic destructively.
Dwarven mages exist but are rare. Any communities that have one are pleased to have the resources available that a mage can provide. Generally mages are employed to keep track of any non-dwarves in the area.
Special Events
Personal celebrations or observances are generally handled alone or in small groups; as ever, dwarves generally keep their emotions to themselves or share them with only a trusted few. Weddings are an exception to this, in which the whole community gets involved so they tend to be very memorable events for dwarvish communities.
First Masterpiece
Many dwarves will celebrate the completion of their first, crafted masterpiece. This is another ‘friends and family only’ celebration; the completed object is put on display and the gathered dwarves toast it and discuss it. Given the length of a dwarf’s apprenticeship their first masterpiece tends to be of very high quality, so while flaws may be seen in the displayed piece, they’re unlikely to be glaring.
Funerals
Dwarves handle funerals in much the same way as humans do: they are family affairs and they mourn for as long as they feel appropriate rather than having a ‘set’ number of mourning days.
The deceased’s possessions go to family and friends, and for any non-dwarf friends of the deceased, being gifted with one of their possessions is considered a great honour. If this does happen then it can lead to that non-dwarf being ‘adopted’ by the deceased dwarf’s family as an honorary member.
Usually the body is cremated, and their ashes may be used in a craft project such as being used to create a dye or to give a textured effect to an object, be mixed into soil for growing crops.
Mourning can take longer in a dwarf than in a human, but if they seem to be mourning for longer than their friends and family expected, then their loved ones may counsel one another to “leave them be” for a little longer. Dwarves are relatively slow to engage with a mourner and will instead err on the side of believing that the mourner just needs more time. There is a limit to this, and if the mourner hasn’t found their equilibrium after a few decades, their friends and family may indeed gently intervene.
Weddings
The scale of weddings is in sharp contrast to that of funerals. They tend to occur in clusters with two or three couples sharing the same wedding day, and the celebrations are a community affair. The entire town or city closes for a week while they party, and food and drink is plentiful at such events.
Festivals
Dwarves are so understated and ‘business as usual’ that non-dwarves don’t usually associate celebration with them. However, this is untrue: dwarves generally celebrate their festivals in private, among family members only.
Massacre of the Mountain
An official holiday, sanctioned by the High King. This festival is an annual opportunity to remember the destruction of the orcs in the settlement of Mountain.
The king originally meant the event to be one of doing the dwarf equivalent of toasting those who had died. The people responded to this with enthusiasm fuelled by a combination of grief, generational trauma, and a love of drink: they take a sip for every dwarf who fell in the massacre. This is accompanied by storytelling and extra drinking on top of the ‘toasts’.
In the current day the king has a somewhat uneasy attitude towards the Massacre of the Mountain festival, as it would only take a few, hot-headed dwarves and recent news regarding the orcs to decide to seek vengeance. So far this has not happened but he considers it only a matter of time.
Midsummer, Midwinter, and the Equinoxes
These celebrations, which acknowledge the seasons and the time of the year, are less relevant to the dwarves as they live underground. However, if a community of a different race nearby to a given dwarf community is celebrating it, they may join in.
As such, many dwarves have these celebrations in their calendar but may not feel particularly well connected with it, much like Australians celebrating Christmas: to eat a roast dinner in an Australian summer feels far stranger than it does during a European midwinter. Many dwarves can recount a particularly good celebration with an above-ground-living species where they suddenly “got it”.
From the perspective of the other races, willing dwarves can be a great addition to a party as they tend to partake of fatty foods and drink with enthusiasm and are fairly likely to bring their own drink to supplement the table.
Sports
Dwarves like to be active, although they tend not to be particularly aggressively competitive.
Throwing
Dwarves specialise in throwing: darts, hammer-throwing, axe-tossing, and anything similar. They prefer these types of activities as a way to stretch their arms and backs after working on crafts or manufacturing products.
Their liking for these sports is more than simply functional: many dwarves consider these sports to have recreational value or even as a show of skill much like the artistic craftsmanship they take such pride in. Indeed, it is not uncommon for the item being thrown to have been crafted with expert care, perhaps even by the same dwarf.
Wanderlust
Dwarves have a very strong sense of spatial awareness which serves them well when developing their cave systems, and it is this spatial awareness that prompts wanderlust. Those dwarves who experience the urge to wander are ones who wish to see the world - not interact with it, but see it so they can map it out in their heads and know what is where. Admittedly this is not sport in the usual sense of the word, but an activity that the occasional dwarf likes to engage in.
Wrestling
Aside from throwing-related sports, some dwarves, such as Minotaur, enjoy wrestling.
Social Dynamics
Because most dwarves are reluctant to interact with outsiders (sometimes even other dwarves outside of their family and friends network), it can be helpful to enter a discussion with a dwarf pre-armed with knowledge of what will help or hinder the development of a productive relationship.
Overall, the dwarves like to keep to themselves. They tend to find other races too erratic and unpredictable in their behaviour, so prefer the company of other dwarves - and of the golems, who they know they can rely on to behave in a predictable fashion. As a result of this, dwarves can seem irritable, and tend to give non-dwarves the cold shoulder.
Clans
Dwarves live in clans that can be large but will not grow to move than 100 or so individuals. Each clan has 4 elders, their children, the childrens’ partners, and so on down the chain until the number reaches around 100.
🌟 The pair who founded the community.
🌟 Their children
🌟 The children's partners
🌟 Their children
🌟 Their children's partners \
🌟 Their children
Despite the existence of these clans, there are no obvious inter-clan hostilities. Two dwarves from different clans will treat one another like brothers, just like they do clan members. This depends on the level of introversion of any given dwarf.
Family Dynamics
Families are almost always mutually supportive and peaceful. Dysfunctional families are exceedingly rare among dwarves. Dislike between members of a family is similarly rare, and whenever it happens it is usually handled with dignity.
Offering Advice
Unless one is a very good friend of a dwarf it is unwise to offer them advice. The enquirer is likely to have interrupted the dwarf’s line of thinking, and these reveries can last for very long periods of time.
Worker Camaraderie
Industrial workers in dwarven communities tend to have a particularly strong relationship as they work and rest with one another on a floor of the city that is mostly their own.
Golems
The dwarves outsource several of the tasks necessary for their society’s upkeep to golems.
Farming
Such is the dwarves’ focus on the development of exquisitely crafted items and the invention and construction of large-scale machinery that they outsource their farming to the golems, who work in the fields in the dwarves’ stead.
Street-Sweeping
The dwarfs also use the golems to keep their cities clean, tidy, and orderly. As they do not sleep they are able to do this on an ongoing basis, including at night.
Sexuality and Romance
Dwarves are among the most sexually liberated of all of Zalielith’s species. It is unwise to tell a dwarf who they can and cannot love. Dwarves usually marry for life and it is not unusual for two families to merge.
This is partly thanks to the ability for all couples, including same-sex couples, to have children - if they cannot give birth to their own child then they can make their own by creating a rock dwarf. This means that same-sex couples don’t get to have offspring who begin life as babies, and it also means that their offspring will probably be sent to fight, but they are loved nonetheless.
Courtship
Courtship happens slowly and can often last many years. Courtship activities often involve gifting fine pieces of work to one another and spending time together.
Pregnancy
Pregnancy is risky in dwarvish society due to the overall culture: the majority of dwarvish work is physically demanding, and it is considered normal to drink large quantities of alcohol.
Many pregnant women continue to work until they physically cannot any more, and for most of those women, that time is the onset of labour. Dwarvish medicine does not dictate that drinking while pregnant is harmful, so women who abstain from drinking throughout pregnancy are rare to non-existent.
Aside from this, some of the toxins present in the soils that dwarves eat are passed onto the developing foetus. This creates a sink-or-swim scenario in which the foetus either dies from the toxicity or develops a tolerance that will endure for its entire life.
For all of these reasons, midwifery services are popular, and miscarriages and stillbirths are common.
Rock Dwarves
See Physiology to learn how rock dwarves are made.
Child-Rearing
Born Dwarves
Baby dwarves are raised by their families and by a third party. Training and apprenticeship is considered so core to dwarf life that as soon as there is a trainer or master in the picture, they are considered a third parent.
Dwarves age much more slowly than humans. It is not unusual for young dwarves of 70 or so years of age to go exploring to learn more about the world and themselves.
Rock Dwarves
Rock dwarves are fully-grown from the moment they come to life, and are created purely for the purpose or battle, and their minds are both as mature and as ‘pre-programmed’ as they can be. Essentially, they do not need raising and come into the world as fully-fledged adults.
However, as they lack life experience at first, some feel a desire to add to their lived experience. They are discouraged from indulging in wanderlust, which their natural-born counterparts are allowed to do. Despite this, it still happens from time to time.
Having no family can make it difficult for rock dwarves to feel a sense of belonging, although the fact that they are brought into the world as adults and not newborns helps them to manage this lack of belonging with more grace than that of, say, an orphaned child. Most do not mull on the idea of family for long if at all, as they are made for fighting and their mentality is designed with this in mind.
♟ Politics ♟
There is relatively little to say about the politics between dwarves and other species. As a civilization they tend to prefer their own company, and are generally unwilling to interact with non-dwarves if they can avoid it.
The nearest there is to an exception to this is Munipedia, where the dwarves developed a transport system which can be used by all, so long as they can afford a ticket. Even here they trade reluctantly, and only for what they need.
Dwarves are not prone to fighting, although if they find themselves in dispute with one another over mineral rights or other similar rights, they are likely to resort to legal routes. Aside from this, some families have hundreds-of-years long disputes that have run cold but not been forgiven, and the families involved generally watch their opponents for their next move.
Government / Leadership Style(s)
The dwarves are run by a monarchy. The High King leads, with a number of Nobles who each lead their own town or city.
High/Great King
The dwarves have a Great King who is a descendant of the first dwarf. The terms “High” and “Great” King are interchangeable and either may be used depending on the region. Only male High Kings are accepted into the role; this does not, however, mean that the High King must have been born male. The existence of magic on Zalielith means that a dwarf who is female by birth may turn male using magic and qualify for the role.
The High King moves from city to city to keep himself familiar with the various communities of his kingdom and the lives of the people he rules. Most dwarves recognise their king so they are aware when he is in their midst. He keeps his travel plans secret however, so he cannot be captured en route.
The King is considered more a figurehead than a hands-on leader. Indeed, the King of the day tends to pass the responsibility of practical management of the kingdom on to the Nobles.
Utopian / Dystopian Qualities
J.E.Flint doesn’t write with the intention of creating either a utopia or a dystopia.
Moral Tone
Overall, dwarves are cooperative with one another, and take care of one another. They are unlikely to do harm to others. This isn’t born of xenophobia but of introversion.
Military and Law
The dwarves’ laws are made by the High King, passed down to the Nobles, and enforced by their own police system.
The Nobles are capable of refusing to pass particular laws passed down to them, or of passing laws devised by themselves. This happens quite often, as many Nobles consider their High King to have impractical ideas. They are however encouraged to lodge objections and complaints with the High King to open further discussion about their ideas about optimal law in their particular town or city, but these objections are currently backed up and many have been awaiting review for around 200 years.
Fighting Over Property Rights
Dwarves are not prone to fighting, although if they find themselves in dispute with one another over mineral rights or other similar rights, they are likely to resort to legal routes.
💲 Economy 💲
The dwarvish economy is founded on skill and of creating items that are worth more for the expertise used in its creation. However, they also prefer to trade between themselves and remain as self-sufficient as possible. Their lack of willingness to trade with non-dwarfs, combined with their beautiful craftsmanship, means that when a dwarf does trade with non-dwarfs they can usually demand a high price.
Finance
Dwarves routinely use gems of various types as their currency with value being based on weight. They call these ‘sell-gems’. Sell-gems are generally lower quality. Higher quality gems are referred to as ‘craft-gems’ and are used in craft work instead.
Sell-gems don’t have to be precious - they can be semi-precious, such as clear quartz. It depends on what is common in that area. Sell-gems are round with a flat side, and polished.
Dwarves specifically train one another to develop a good eye for the potential quality of a rough gem. Indeed, this skill is partly based on talent: the strong affinity dwarves have with their rocky environments gives them a natural edge in understanding the rocks and minerals they encounter.
It is not unknown for a dwarf to use a sell-gem in a piece of fine craft work if they believe it will add to the character of the finished work.
Dwarves are often characterised by the other species as misers, and it is true that dwarves will generally be eager to take whatever gold is rightfully theirs and relinquish it only with reluctance. However, this is not down to a miserly nature. Instead it is reflective of the dwarvish desire to take a resource (a gem in this case) and make it into something better rather than to use it for buying and selling. The natural scarcity of gems also factors in: sell-gems are finite in nature, and the dwarves only relinquish them with reluctance so prefer to circulate them among other dwarves.
Business
The dwarves strongly identify as craftspeople and take great pride in their ability to make useful, functional products. Due to this, much of their contribution to industry is centred around craftwork.
Earth and Fire Affinity
Dwarves have an affinity with Earth and Fire elementals. They will often make deals with them, which involves appeasing the elemental into working with them.
For the elemental, the offering is almost always a safe place to reside in their element. Fire elementals do very well in dwarven forges. In return the elemental takes responsibility for a number of key members of the dwarven society called Forge Masters. See Forge Masters for more details.
Fire elementals like to eat flammable objects and dance to the sounds of the forge hammer.
Sometimes the dwarves also make a deal with earth elementals, who come to live in the walls and hallways of the dwarven caverns. They ask of the dwarves that they tend the land with competence and wisdom and that they respect the earth.
Jewellery and Metalwork
Most jewellery and weaponry, along with cookware, ploughs, and other useful items, is made by dwarves, for dwarves. Sometimes a skilled individual will make an ornate item to give to a friend or family member as a gift. While it is possible to get a piece of dwarf-made metalwork if you ask nicely, they’re less likely to trade with non-dwarves than with each other.
Steam Equipment Deal
The Dwarves of Munipedoa famously have an ongoing deal with the emperor where they design and build steam equipment.
Textiles
Despite textiles being a craft, dwarves rarely work in this area. Of the few who do, the quality of their work is generally not as high as that of humans. The uncharacteristically low quality of dwarvish fabric is due to a combination of factors: their underground living leads to mouldy fabric, and there is poor availability of natural dyes underground where the sun cannot aid their growth.
However, dwarves like linen much like other humanoids do, so one of the luxuries they will buy from non-dwarves is bed linen. Their eye for quality means that they like to buy on the plusher end of the scale.
Education
Dwarvish education is known to be well-rounded and includes a solid foundation in math, writing, geography, and more.
Further Education
Dwarves are known for their craftsmanship, and training in various crafts is not hard for a school-graduate dwarf to find. The long dwarvish lifespan means that a single dwarf will likely train and develop expertise in a number of different crafts, and provision of their basic needs is good enough that dwarves have the luxury of being able to train in areas that they find interesting.
The length of a dwarf’s career combined with this multiple-skilled approach has led to the dwarves pioneering a great deal of new discoveries and knowledge in their chosen fields, to the point that they may be called more than artists: many become scholars in their chosen fields. These fields include:
🌟 Carpentry (this is a relatively rare craft due to the logistical difficulties of bringing wood indoors)
🌟 Cartography
🌟 Ceramics
🌟 Electricity
🌟 Glassmaking
🌟 Magic
🌟 Metalwork (which is something of a dwarf speciality)
🌟 Murals and frescoes, often strategically painted to give a sense of the outdoors or to teach concepts and lessons
🌟 Mosaics
🌟 Stonemasonry
🌟 Woodcraft/bushcraft (much like with carpentry, this is a relatively rare skill-set)
Training Their Youth
A healthy dwarf will need 50 years of training before they can begin an apprenticeship, which itself can last 100 years.
Healthcare and Medicine
In general, dwarves are not sickly people. However, they are prone to physical wear and tear in the form of sprains, pulled ligaments, slipped discs and the like, so these are their most common complaints. As a rule, dwarves take pride in their vigour and hardiness, so they look after their health surprisingly well.
See Medical Conditions under Physiology for further details.
Their medical knowledge is somewhat stuck in the dark ages, partly due to a lack of need for medical support for their community, but also due to a lack of resources.
If medicine doesn’t work they may attempt to use magic to heal or cure, and if that doesn’t work, most dwarves will usually attempt to find a way to work around the problem instead of fixing it. Seeking a healer of another race is not a workable solution, as effective healers (or indeed, ineffective ones) are hard to find on Zalielith. Even evocationists - magic users who can take pain away - are rare.
Shelter
Dwarves prefer to live underground and excavate extensive underground living spaces called towns or cities, usually into the interiors of mountains or substantial hills. Most dwarven cities start as a tunnel wide enough for military units to move in, which leads deep underground - ideally horizontally into a mountainside, but some slope downwards.
A series of maps exist which detail the interior and immediate surroundings of a typical dwarf mountain. See the following maps by Mike's Maps:
Top
Residential District
Mid
The mid-tier of a dwarven city is mostly community-orientated and is better designed for comfort than the low/industrial level. It includes a heating system, temples and schools, administrative offices, hospices for the sick or dying, and other service buildings or community areas that require easy access. More effort is taken to keep the mid level dry, which helps to preserve foods such as dried meat and grain (indeed, it is dry enough to actively dry such things so long as the process is managed with care), and to keep paper and other written records mould-free.
Low
The low section of a dwarven city contains its industrial areas. Anything smelly, smoky, or otherwise unhealthy, goes here, along with bulky items for storage such as food. That isn’t to say that this area or its workers are derided: the industrial section of any dwarven community is protected and kept in excellent working order.
Features
Dwarven cities have many features worth exploring.
Agriculture
Dwarves grow as much of their own vegetables and grains as possible, and raise their own animals for meat. They take their animals out to graze during the day and bring them in at night, where they keep them in a pen. Usually this is in an area with other smelly or industrial features.
Similarly, mushroom log farms need careful management. See Agriculture under Culture for more details.
Areas of Worship
While most worship happens in each family’s house, some deities require their worship to be done in a temple. For this reason, the average dwarven city includes a temple.
Bathing Pool
Bathing pools are usually created on the mid level. These are designed to hold the water that drains down from the mountaintop, as mountaintops tend to attract rain, and are fed by multiple runnels of water. They create extra humidity as the water slowly evaporates, which could be detrimental to some of the other features of the mid level such as the grain store, which must remain dry, but the city’s overall ventilation is effective enough to take care of this.
Crop Fields
Crops are grown inside the mountain at the mid level. As the mid level is designed to be dry enough to be healthy and pleasant, the irrigation and transpiration associated with these plants contribute to the humidity of the level. This is one of the main reasons that dwarves prioritise the development of a highly effective ventilation system for their cities above all else.
The water required to irrigate these crops tends to come from the overflow of the bathing pool or pools, and is one of the reasons that both occur on the same level.
Drinking Areas
A place to get an alcoholic drink is available wherever larger numbers of dwarves congregate - whether they be workers on the industrial floor or worshippers, teachers, or students on their way back up to the residential level.
Fire Safety
Almost all dwarven cities have piles of sand with buckets strewn around, to douse fires. Sand is easier to reuse after dousing a fire than water, hence their preference for the material.
Food Stores
Any food produced by a community, and which is either sealed or otherwise doesn’t need protecting from the damp, is kept on the industrial level. Stored vegetables, which need a cooler, darker environment, may be kept here too. This is where the sheer bulk of food and drink required for 100+ dwarves can be kept out of the way. As so much of the food is stored in one area like this, and as dwarven communities are so small with everybody familiar with everybody else, the taking of food from these areas is self-managed: any dwarf (usually one family member) will retrieve several days’ worth of food from there.
With dwarves being the inventive and industrious people they are, they have their own equivalent of shopping carts which are not dissimilar to coal carts.
Smaller quantities of food and other supplies are available on the mid-level floor of most dwarf cities for the sake of convenience. The dwarves like to do these things in style!
Similarly, dry grain and meat, which must be kept dry to avoid spoilage, are also kept on the mid level, where the air is kept warmer for the comfort of the community, and where humid air can more easily be piped away.
Forges and Furnaces
Dwarf cities have impressive forges which they use to make equally impressive objects. With these forges they have created air-ships, trains, steam-boats, and much more.
Most dwarven communities build their forges and furnaces within the hill or mountain in which they live. As these structures are quite dirty given their industrial nature, they are built in a “work district” within the subterranean town, along with all other industrial machinery such as tanneries. Dwarves value their clean air just as much as any other race, and while they also value warmth, the pollutants that come with the hot air generated by these machines renders it useless to them, so they pipe that away. Wherever they can, they make use of the heat and light without having to tolerate the dirty air, so some dwarven cities use heat-exchange systems. Almost all of them have chimneys.
Guard Stations
The dwarves value their peace and guard the entrances to their mountains with care, including the industrial area, which they recognise as the living, beating heart that keeps the rest of their community alive.
Heat
Despite their hardiness, dwarves appreciate heat. They use the heat generated by their furnaces and mirror farms to pipe hot air and water to most inhabited areas of the city.
Housing
Each family has its own building or small area of buildings and ‘outdoor’ spaces - with ‘outdoor’ still being inside the mountain. d}[/COLOR]
These abodes are built on the top level of the dwarven city. Here, they take advantage of being far away from the dirty, smelly industrial area, and the principle of warmth rising: the top level of the city is often the warmest.
Lighting
Dwarves have excellent vision in low light so they manage very well in the tunnels of their mountain homes. They create fissures to allow a small amount of sunlight from above, but not enough to create a security risk. As such, columns of sunlight shine down into the top level of most dwarven cities.
The practicalities of living in a mountain mean that traditional dwarf houses rarely receive any sunlight, so they rely entirely on other forms of light. Bioluminescent mushrooms are a popular choice, as are lanterns. The occasional town has a series of mirrors installed in the entrance tunnels which bring in sunlight, although this can be hard to direct into actual homes and is usually only provided to interior crop fields. These are called mirror farms - see below.
Mirror Farms
These capture light from outside and direct it into the mountain to the indoor spaces where the dwarves grow their crops.
The tunnels in which these mirror farms are built are dangerous places for most living beings which would be burned alive in the intense heat and light, so the tunnels are considered to be protected from invaders during the day.
The danger of being fried dissipates at night, so the exhaust from the furnaces and forges are redirected down the mirror farm tunnels during the night-time hours. This, again, makes the tunnels difficult or impossible to traverse. A set of heavy doors at each end serve as an extra level of protection, although they are not always closed for obvious reasons.
As the exhaust is dirty, the mirrors require frequent cleaning, especially during the months of the year when crops are grown. This is a task primarily for golems.
Noble Houses
Each dwarf town has at least one noble who takes charge of the city, and their house is known as the Noble House. The family who lives there (or a representative of the family) runs the city much like a mayor. This noble is the founder of the city. This noble initially came from an existing town or city and asked their town elders for permission to leave and found their own.
Usually a number of other nobles will have helped with the foundation of the city, and they play a role in the city’s leadership under the leader.
School
In a culture where innovation and technical knowledge are so valued, so is education. Every established dwarven city includes a well-cared for schooling area.
Security
Most of the tunnels that lead to the outdoors are wide enough for 10 dwarves to stand abreast and are gated. This is enough to let the resident community’s military unit move around but also to block it in case of attack.
The caverns in a dwarf mountain are much wider, and these areas are well furnished and decorated with fountains, seating areas, gardens, ponds, and other attractive features.
Sewage
This is taken care of via a system that directs sewage downwards through the levels of the town until it ends up in a soakaway beneath the hill or mountain.
This raises the risk that the sewage will back up if it sits on solid rock. Even the dwarves lack the technology to investigate a mountain’s foundations without physically digging into it, so instead they rely on geological knowledge built up by the community. A dwarf seeking to establish a new community will select a mountain that juts up into the sky, meaning that the rock beneath it is also not lying horizontal and is far more likely to allow sewage to run away; that is made of, or is likely to rest upon, porous rock which will allow sewage to drain through it; or that rests upon a type of stone that dissolves in water and therefore is very likely to include an underwater river which can carry effluent away.
Theatre
Many dwarven cities include an area dedicated to the performing arts. Dwarven communities are big enough that it’s easy for one individual to fall behind on the artistic endeavours of another, so updating one another on a given individual’s progress in any given art, tangible or intangible, or creating galleries around a particular theme (such as daggers, timepieces, or polishing practices) can be a way of showing the community what its crafters have been doing. These tend to be popular, and spread the information highly effectively.
Ventilation
Living under a mountain comes with a risk of damp, and of choking if fires are used underground (see Forges and Furnaces, above). The dwarves design their cities to be self-drying, including digging small tunnels where the air will be cool, with the entrances opening to the outside and the exit opening within the city; this is coupled with fissures being painted black, or black chimneys being fashioned within openings to the mountainside as high up as possible to capture the fresh, cool air of the mountain.
Rocks and dry rags are also used in strategic areas to capture humidity and funnel it into a drain.
The dwarves who excavate homes out of the rock almost invariably prioritise good ventilation over other factors. This keeps the humidity manageable and removes most of the smoke from cooking and the community’s forges.
Water
Much like most communities, water is vital for dwarves to live together, especially if they want to keep their living space sanitary. Water is collected as it seeps through the rock at the top of the mountain, and because it travels through so much rock, the rate at which it seeps through is fairly constant. It is collected in the top level - one of very few compromises the dwarves make to keeping the top level of their cities purely residential - and is piped via water mains to everywhere that it is needed. Gravity keeps it moving downwards, so waste water is channelled away and washes solid waste with it, creating a self-cleaning system.
The roughly cone-shaped nature of mountains means that the top level isn’t the only level at which fresh water comes through. It does so at the mid level too, and the dwarves use this to create humid environments for their mushroom log farms, serve water via basins to the public service buildings, keep their bathing pool filled, and to water their crops.
As gravity moves water downwards, any good dwarven city will include water storage tanks beneath the lowest level of the city, with pumps to bring some up if needed.
Worker Areas
Dwarves are hard workers, and those who work in the industrial area of their city need time to rest and bond. For this reason, industrial areas of dwarven cities include a sheltered area, bar, and a cafe. The camaraderie of the bars and kitchens of these areas are legendary, given that they are both staffed and patronised by extended families - or would be if anybody but said extended family went there.
In addition, most dwarven industrial areas include a cobbler and tinker for clothing repairs.
Travel / Transport
There is little to say about dwarven distribution of food, except to say that it is generally quite small-scale and can involve bartering rather than solely being bought and sold with sell-gems.
Train Routes
Only some of their cities are big enough for it to be practical for them to build train routes. Some cities link with one another by building train lines between them underground, but this tends to be done with older, better established cities.
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Credits
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