Things we know about dwarves from literally everyfuckingthing ever. Dwarves never change. TV Tropes said so.
Google image dwarf.
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| First hit. |
Go a little further you get: lives underground. Miner. Into gold and crafting shit, which goes back to Norse myth. Honour bound, family, duty. Proud. Grudge bearing. Hardy yet gruff. We've done this. Move on.
But I LIKE dwarves. As a short hairy man myself I find a degree of kinship with the trite little bastards.
So this is my take on them. There's a little bit of the Dragon Age in the brain stew creating these dwarves and a little of the Warhammer Dwarfs as well as some crap from Invader Zim, Steampunk miscellanea, perhaps a dash of the trolls from Homestuck. All this filtered through the lens of the man who taught me what the fuck a dwarf was - Mr Terry Pratchett. Discworld rules.
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| Fuck yeah dwarf bread... |
MY DWARVES. Let's get cooking.
I imagine the typical dwarf to be coming in at around 4 foot 5, with only a few certain exceptions the tallest dwarves coming to like, 5'2", but people will be like "by 'eck yer a biggun!" Talking in a Northern accent is a semi-official rule for playing a dwarf in one of my games. Other then that yeah they tend to be pretty wide set. I think a lot of my dwarves are more likely to be scrawnier looking though. Less bulging muscles and massive beer-bellies, more thin, sinews bodies with a deceptive resilience.
Young dwarves typically have course, dark grey skin which becomes smoother and paler as they age. Very old dwarves are described as being deathly pale and being almost corpselike in appearance.
All dwarves are born with either jet black or snow white hair, although some particularly in the North use a complex process steeped in old Dwarf-Talk (a form of spoken word sorcery blending magic and metalwork) to weave wires of bright metals like copper and gold into their hair and beards, which in time overtake the natural hair and grow as normal hair would.
There are female dwarves. They do not have beards.
Dwarves have pointy ears but not like an elf's pointy ears. Dwarven ears are kinda squarish and tend to stick out a little.
All dwarves speak two languages, some a third. The first language is a kind of trade tongue, if a human thinks they speak dwarvish this is what they are actually speaking. It's like a simplified version of the True Tongue, real dwarvish. Basically it's dwarf-words bastardized until they fit human social concepts. The True Tongue is the actual dwarf language. No one but dwarves speak it. It's a big deal. It's also pretty alien to us. It doesn't have concepts of things like "gender" for example (hur hur hur no female dwarves). Then there's Dwarf-Talk. Dwarf-Talk is the special kind of magic language they use in their crafting, a spoken form of Runecraft. I'm probably going to have to stat this up properly. It's like an artificer/engineer type magic with stuff from the Wizard of Earthsea, dwarf says something in Dwarf-Talk, it's probably going to become a Thing That Happens. Often it is used by grunt workers singing spells into the gear they fashion (Hi Ho...) but also like, for minor curses and wishes which are pretty hit and miss. You might manage to kill a rat with a curse in Dwarf-Talk, but it might take a few months and probably not the rat you wanted to kill. Dwarf-Talk forms the backbone of the social stratification of the dwarven people. The highest caste, the Nobles, all have total mastery over Dwarf-Talk and it's power, and about 10% of the lower-caste dwarves are born with an instinctive understanding of it but not really enough to do any real power, the few that are tend to be persecuted by the Nobles looking to maintain their position.
I think dwarves are pretty much euosocial assuming that word means what I think it means. What I think it means is "like ants, bees and naked mole rats and shit". But that's how their society is organised. There's a social stratification based along a caste system BUT NOT LIKE IN DRAGON AGE because my caste system is more to do with genetics then anything else. It's not a product of sociology but one of dwarven nature. There are physical differences between the castes.
Let's see what Jezirat has to say on the matter:
...
Me referring to Jezirat for things is kinda horribly obnoxious... it's just me writing things down but in a vaguely medievally way SHUT UP BILLY WE'VE DONE IT NOW.
"The dwarven peoples are
not born as men are, for men though they made be thought of low or high or
otherwise born apart from other men save in exceptional circumstances these
places are determined and set only by the law of other men. Instead the dwarf
is like the bee or ant, each is born into a position and place according to the
will of the King or Queen, who rules the Hold, as best will serve them and the
populace.
The lowliest kind, or
such as they are considered, is what men call the Kobold or Gnome. They are
small in stature, smaller even then other dwarves and often standing no taller
than a young child. Likewise they are more diminutive then other dwarves, in
general being of narrower frame and limb. Of all dwarves the men are
most
likely to go unbearded which earns them the disdain of their larger kinsmen.
Their fingers are long and nimble and skilled at such intricate crafts as trapping,
tailory and other such things. Some amongst them possess strange features, such
as a tail like that of the rat, or hard growths like pebbles growing on the
flesh. Some have short stub-horns such as that of the kid-goat. Their role in
the hold is that of the hunters and the gatherers, in general they are
responsible for the supply of food. Within the tunnels of the Hold they often
hunt bats and similar vermin but more often they live apart from the main
Dwarf-home, but instead live in venturing bands hunting larger game and
gathering fruits and plants. Often they raid the settlements of men, stealing
livestock and crops using much cunning and guile, which earns them the enmity
of the surface dwelling peoples. It is said that if they are away from the Hold
for too long in time they will go feral as a dog might, and may form savage
barbarian raiding bands. The Gnome is the shortest lived of the dwarven castes, perhaps living out no longer then a human might, no longer then a three-score of years.
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| One end of the scale |
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| Okay... less fey and more Steampunk via Incans and you have some Gnomes/Kobolds... Distressingly good-looking gnomes. If I was like two-feet shorter... |
The next casteband of
dwarf is the most numerous, the Miner or Worker caste. They are the commoners
of the Hold and responsible for the building and expansion of the Hold and the
acquisition of the precious metals the dwarves crave, yet most also labour as
craftsmen and artisans, gaining much prestige and standing as metalworkers and
armourers. They live longer then the Gnomes, perhaps expecting a hundred and then fifty years of life, though some may bear out to see the passage of two centuries.
Above them is the Warrior casteband. They stand a full head higher than any of the
Miner Caste, some
The Greatest and least
populous caste is the caste of Kings and Queens elsewise called the Nobles. The
Noble Dwarves are the tallest of the Dwarves, standing always as tall as a man
or elf. In many ways they are more similar to the race of elves then to their underling dwarves, as they are often tall and slender-limbed and possessed of lives that may span into the millennia and also know the ancient languages that is the source of the strange Dwarven
magics. A Dwarf-King may be able to shift his shape or command the raw
elements of stone and fire, but his chief power is his ability to give a new
"born" dwarf it's name.
Though the Noble
Dwarves reproduce in a manner like that of men and other animals Dwarves of
other castes, when they generate, produce not a babe but a stone, no larger than
a fist, like that which is called the geode for it is hollow. Such stones are
presented before the Dwarf-King or other such Noble of his house who may act on
his behalf, whereupon he speaks such words of power over it that the stone
cracks as might an egg and from within issues the dwarf-child. Yet the words
the Dwarf-King speaks are of great import, for they determine of which caste
the child shall be. Most often should all things in the Hold be in balance the
King will bring forth a child of the same caste as those who first birthed it,
but in times of war may call forth instead many soldiers to serve the Hold, or
many of the lowly Kobolds in times of famine." /endselfindulgentwank
Thus thanks to the Dwarf-Kings seemingly essential role as the literal giver of life members of that caste enjoy reverence as god-kings and Pharaohs, and many dwarves are happy with that. They work for their King and follow his will exactly, in return he gives them life.
Course it doesn't always play out like that. With the decline in the old dwarven Empire many lower-caste Speakers of Dwarf-Talk have been able to escape persecution and around them form more egalitarian settlements such as the Republican mining town of Ardun and Mad Moira's Moving Mountain (more on that later) with the handful of dwarves who know the words to bring life serving a role in the community part way between priest and midwife.
In terms of aesthetics I think there's a lot of Steampunk in the dwarves but not like in the typical Victorian way. I imagine more of a cog and clockwork Incan vibe, and they dress in robes and tunics borrowed from Klimt paintings, bold geometric patterns wrought in golden cloth. Perhaps they're somewhere between the classical vikingy dwarf and the crazy Ancient Astronaut's stuff.
Hey, now there's a bunch of different types of dwarf you can be... time for AN ELABORATE FUCKING actually this one is pretty straight forward.
3d6 - Castes
NOTE: No dwarf can become a mage, all dwarves can see in the Dark.
3 - Kobold
You are the size of a halfling and have all the associated size-based rules (no big weapons etc.)
+1 to DEX +1 to CON -1 to STR
+2 to save against Magic
+4 to save against Poison
+1 to Stealth checks
+1 to attempts to Spot and Disarm Traps
20% chance to know Dwarf-Talk (not yet made up)
4-14 - Miner
The standard Dwarf
+1 to CON -1 to CHA
+1 to hit with axes and picks
+1 to damage against goblins and orcs
+1 to Perception checks underground
-2 to hit & -1 to skill checks if in DIRECT sunlight
15% chance to know Dwarf-Talk
15-17 - Soldier
+1 to STR +2 to CON -1 to CHA
+2 to save against Magic and Poison
+1 to hit with axes, hammers and shortswords
+1 to damage against goblins and orcs
+1 to Perception checks underground
10% chance to know Dwarf-Talk
18 - King
IF SOME TIME FROM DATE OF PUBLISHING YOU ARE STILL READING THIS YOU ARE TO TRACK BILLY DOWN AND SLAP HIM IN THE FACE AS PUNISHMENT FOR NOT GETTING OFF HIS ARSE AND STATTING UP THE DWARF-KING WHICH WILL PROBABLY BE A RACE AS CLASS DEAL THAT WOULD ALSO COVER THE USAGE OF THE DWARF-TALK MAGIC. INSTEAD BE SATED WITH THIS RAD PICTURE AND A LITTLE BIT OF CRYPTIC HORSESHIT
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| "And the High-Kings, the Father's of our Race who slew the giant of many arms that is called Au'Garmir and so clinging to his corpse as maggots, traversed in his corpse from the Peak of Stars and the Underearth That Is Above to the place that is Aldthumbla and there was the People fashioned." |
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