Dwarves

The short and wiry people humans call dwarves have a history shrouded in mystery. Looking at the dwarves settled in Yndaros, they display no interest in the history of their kind; they are a people on the move, aimed towards the future, fleeing a dark past that has given them a sense of community, but without peace or meaning.
The dwarven perspective is rooted in the sanctity of the family, the secrets of the spoken word and the conviction that the world is their common enemy. Gamalga of Kadizar, a sage interested in dwarves, is said to have stated that: “The family is their shield, the language their weapon and the world their battlefield.”
Gamalga also spoke of the origin of the dwarves. After many fruitless conversations with the dwarves in Yndaros and at the fortress Küam Zamok, Gamalga realized that she would get better answers from elves and trolls, and that they claimed to have never met dwarves before the fall of Symbaroum. They were most likely created in the old empire and Gamalga summarizes her meager findings as follows: “They emerged as worms in the rotting carcass of the World Serpent and were given wit by Symbaroum’s sorcerers, to make them better slaves. However, the birth of the people forever bound them to the world and its fate, and because of this bond they early on developed a forceful counterculture which still marks them. The ancestral mothers and fathers of the dwarves created a language with hidden codes and secret double-meanings, so intricate that not even the masters could understand. The dwarves never wrote anything down, since texts could be read, interpreted and even decoded by the lords of Symbaroum.
The dwarves kept their dreams to themselves and their voices echoed with the fate of the world. Both elves and trolls confirm that there is power inherent in some dwarven speech, and imply that those who made the dwarves, Symbaroum’s princes, in time learned to hate their creations and fear the power contained in their language.
After the fall of Symbaroum, the chronicle of the dwarven people describes an arduous journey in the shadow of death, continuously attacked and hunted by others. Nowadays, the descendants of the few who survived Symbaroum’s ruin have spread to many places and their fates are seemingly very different.
Apparently, the families in Yndaros are members of a once ruling elite in Küam Zamok, cast out after a bloody revolution – hence, the organized villains encountered in Ambria’s capital are in fact dwarven nobles, used to ruling and giving orders, but incapable of creating even the most essential items themselves. More dubious scraps of information say that their inability to get along has to do with the order of succession in the realm they left behind, and the right to a throne which none of them will ever conquer.”
The people of Ambria have formed their opinions based on the dwarves in Yndaros, and they are not a very welcoming sort. They demand nothing of others, other than being allowed to mind their own business. To dwarves, the will of the family – as interpreted by the elders – is superior to the will of the individual, meaning that they often appear to have two sets of moral standards: one strictly coded and aimed at the family; another aimed at outsiders and often described as “a lack of morality” by their neighbors – since actions which only affect outsiders have no bearing on the internal family relations.
The speech of the Yndarian dwarves is still today so intricate and filled with codes, double-meanings and obscure idioms that their everyday conversations are close to unintelligible to bystanders, no matter how learned. It is also true that their voices have a particular power that some individuals know to make use of. Furthermore, their memory-techniques are highly developed, making it possible for them to run complex “businesses” in Yndaros without writing down a single number or word.
Dwarf Backgrounds
Dwarves who choose or are forced to leave their families in Yndaros are lonely and often dangerous individuals. However, for some dwarves, the seclusion becomes the start of the search for a new family, defined by other characteristics than blood. The following reasons may explain why you have left Yndaros to head out into the world.
Dreams of Doom
You are haunted by nightmares of doom and death, for your family or the world as a whole. You have left the community to become a seeker, hoping to determine the meaning of your dreams and, ideally, learn how to avert the disaster and protect all your loved-ones.
• Skill Proficiencies: Insight
• Tool Proficiencies (choose one): Any set of tools
• Equipment: A kit to match your tool proficiency, simple clothes and 4d6 + 1 shillings.
Feature: Haunted
Your nightmares are sometimes prophetic. When you complete a long rest you gain a prophecy die, a d6. Before making a skill check, you can declare that something about the situation reminds you of your dreams and add the d6 to the roll.
You must do this before the GM declares the check a success or failure. You recover the die with a long or extended rest. Suggested Characteristics
Constantly harried by terrible visions, these dwarves have cut almost all family ties. But their despondent freedom sometimes allows them to see the world in a new light.
Suggested Characteristics Constantly harried by terrible visions, these dwarves have cut almost all family ties. But their despondent freedom sometimes allows them to see the world in a new light.
Life-debt
An outsider has saved your life without asking for anything in return. You want to get free from this debt by serving the outsider and doing whatever he or she says. For a dwarf, this is an acceptable reason for being away from the family.
• Skill Proficiencies (choose one): History, Insight, Medicine or Nature
• Tool Proficiencies (choose one): Any set of tools
• Equipment: A kit to match your tool proficiency, simple clothes and 2d6 + 3 shillings.
Feature: Driven
Your obligation to repay the outsider gives untold resilience – to fail to repay a life-debt is the worst disgrace a dwarf could face. When you fail a saving throw you can choose to have a second chance at it, by rolling again (using any bonuses, penalties or extra dice as before). Once you use this feature you must take an extended rest before using it again.
Suggested Characteristics
Somehow you have acquired a life-debt and now owe someone else your life, a nearly untenable position for you.
Outcast
You have behaved disloyally, maybe challenged the head of the family or questioned the family’s position in the order of succession. For this, you are banished, temporarily or permanently. To most dwarves, exile is a punishment worse than death.
• Skill Proficiencies (choose one): Deception or Persuasion
• Tool Proficiencies (choose one): Any artisan’s tools
• Equipment: A kit to match your tool proficiency, thick working clothes and 1d6 + 4 shillings.
Feature: Quick Learner
If you are asked to use a set of tools that you are not proficient in, you can easily determine the most efficient way to use them. You add a bonus equal to half your proficiency bonus (rounded down) to any ability checks made with the new tools.
Suggested Characteristics
Many outcasts struggle with their dependence on a world that does not make much sense to Dwarves. Some adapt better than others.

• Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2. Increase two other ability scores by 1.
• Age. The dwarven life-cycle is not well known, but it seems that dwarves are allowed their independence by their second or third decade of life and remain active for at least a century.
• Size. Dwarves range from four to five feet in height and are solidly built but not stocky. Your size is Medium and you have a d8 Hit Die. At first level you have 8 hit points plus your Constitution modifier. When you gain a level in any class, you gain an additional Hit Die and 5 (1d8) plus your Constitution modifier hit points.
• Speed. Dwarven legs do not permit the long strides of other folk. You have a base speed of 25 feet.
• Absolute Memory. Dwarven memory is robust and comprehensive. They can remember anything they choose to commit to memory at any time and can remember even incidental events up to a month after they occur.
• Earth Bound. Dwarves are bound to the bones of the world. They have no soul – instead your current Corruption total reduces your current and maximum hit points on a 1:1 basis. You do not roll for marks of Corruption and if your total Corruption equals or exceeds your current hit points you become unconscious until your Corruption is reduced or your hit points increase (an unconscious dwarf counts as taking a short or longer rest if they are undisturbed).
If you acquire more permanent Corruption than your Corruption Threshold then your character is no longer playable. If slain, they cannot become undead or be resurrected. Even speak with dead fails.
• Pariahs. Dwarves are poorly understood or tolerated among other peoples. They have disadvantage on social checks with everyone other than fellow dwarves, elves and trolls.
• Languages. Dwarves usually speak the local human language, either Ambrian or Barbarian, but with much more sophistication, adding in a series of code words that enable two dwarves to have a secret conversation in public. Some near Davokar speak the language of trolls or elves as well.