Dwarf

Bold and hardy, dwarves are known as skilled warriors, miners, and workers of stone and metal. Though they stand well under 5 feet tall, dwarves are so broad and compact that they can weigh as much as a human standing nearly two feet taller. Their courage and endurance are also easily a match for any of the larger folk. Dwarven skin ranges from deep brown to a paler hue tinged with red, but the most common shades are light brown or deep tan, like certain tones of earth. Their hair, worn long but in simple styles, is usually black, gray, or brown, though paler dwarves often have red hair. Male dwarves value their beards highly and groom them carefully. Dwarves can live to be over 400 years old, so the oldest living dwarves often remember a very different world. This longevity grants them a perspective on the world that shorter-lived races such as humans and halflings lack.

Dwarves are solid and enduring like the mountains they love, weathering the passage of centuries with stoic endurance and little change. They respect the traditions of their clans, tracing their ancestry back to the founding of their most ancient strongholds in the youth of the world, and don’t abandon those traditions lightly. Part of those traditions is devotion to the gods of the dwarves, who uphold the dwarven ideals of industrious labor, skill in battle, and devotion to the forge. Individual dwarves are determined and loyal, true to their word and decisive in action, sometimes to the point of stubbornness. Many dwarves have a strong sense of justice, and they are slow to forget wrongs they have suffered. A wrong done to one dwarf is a wrong done to the dwarf’s entire clan, so what begins as one dwarf’s hunt for vengeance can become a full-blown clan feud.

Dwarven kingdoms, called Thaigs, stretch deep beneath the mountains where the dwarves mine gems and precious metals and forge items of wonder. Most dwarven clans focused on one or two kinds of crafting, such as blacksmithing, jewelry, engineering, or masonry. Dwarves strove to avoid overspecialization by sending some of their youths to other clans to serve as apprentices, which also helped to foster racial unity. Because of their longevity, these apprenticeships might last decades. They love the beauty and artistry of precious metals and fine jewelry, and in some dwarves this love festers into avarice. Whatever wealth they can’t find in their mountains, they gain through trade. They dislike boats, so enterprising humans and halflings frequently handle trade in dwarven goods along water routes. Trustworthy members of other races are welcome in dwarf settlements, though some areas are off limits even to them.

Dwarves highly valued the ties between family members and friends, weaving tightly knit clans. Dwarves particularly respected elders, from whom they expected sound leadership and the wisdom of experience, as well as ancestral heroes or clan founders. This idea carried on to relations with other races and dwarves were deferential even to the elders of another, non-dwarven race. Likewise, dwarves, perhaps moreso than most other races, turned to their gods for guidance and protection. Non-evil dwarves looked to the divine for comfort and inspiration, while the wicked looked to their divine overlords for methods through which to obtain power over others. Individual dwarves might be faithless, but the race as a whole had a strong inclination for religion and almost every community maintained at least one temple or ancestral shrine. The overwhelming majority of Dwarves worshipped Ord, God of Craft & the Forge.

The chief unit of dwarven society is the clan, and dwarves highly value social standing. Even dwarves who live far from their own kingdoms cherish their clan identities and affiliations, recognize related dwarves, and invoke their ancestors’ names in oaths and curses. To be clanless, or otherwise called casteless, is the worst fate that can befall a dwarf. Being casteless is the lowest social class in dwarven society, considered as outcasts and restricted from certain aspects of dwarven society. Casteless that would stay in their Thaigs would typically live in a lower class quarter and be restricted to low paying, labor jobs. Therefore, most casteless leave their home for the surface to ply their trade amongst the other races. Dwarves in other lands are typically artisans, especially weaponsmiths, armorers, and jewelers. Some become mercenaries or bodyguards, highly sought after for their courage and loyalty.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Dwarves were a short race, as their name implied, standing from 4'3"–4'9" (1.3–1.45 meters) on average. What dwarves lacked in height they made up for in bulk; they were, on average, about as heavy as humans. A dwarf could weigh anywhere from about 160–220 lbs (73–100 kg). Dwarven males were a bit taller and heavier than their female counterparts. Like humans, dwarves had a wide variety of skin, eye, and hair colors, typically pale, deeply tanned or brown pigmentations. Hazel and brown eyes were common throughout the race, with blue and green eyes being uncommon.
Male dwarves often eventually went bald but maintained thick facial hair, which was sometimes used to display social status. Unusually, both sexes naturally grew ample facial hair, though the majority of dwarf females shaved their beards off by choice. This hair was often dark in hue, though among dwarves blond or red hair was just as common. Some dwarves took the care of facial hair to an extreme, carefully oiling and grooming it, with some adding perfume and ornamentations.

Biological Traits

Physically durable, insightful, primarily dwell underground, some females capable of growing beards

Growth Rate & Stages

Dwarves were a long-lived race, though not so much as elves, and reached physical maturity somewhat later than humans. A dwarf was traditionally considered an adult once he or she reached age fifty. Dwarves aged much like humans but over a longer period of time, remaining vigorous well past 150 years. Most dwarves lived to see their bicentennial and a few lived to be over 400. A dwarf was considered to be young until they reached the age of 50.

Ecology and Habitats

The dwarven clans live underground, usually near or within mountains, where they live inside a vast underground network called a Thaig. Most dwarven societies were divided into clans built along family ties and political allegiances. These clans were usually led by hereditary rulers, often monarchs of a sort and descended from the founder of the clan. Dwarves strongly valued loyalty to these rulers and to the clan as a whole and even objective dwarves tended to side primarily with their kin over other races or communities. These clan structures promoted a tradition of inbreeding. This was so excessive that it was considered one of the reasons for the dwarves' low birth rate.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Dwarves have an omnivorous diet and mostly feasted on hill and mountainside cattle, fish in underground reservoirs, grow grain wheat rye and barley, supplementing this with trade between other races. Those who cannot access the surface use various carefully bred mushroom farms as well.

Behaviour

Whether or not the dwarven claim that they'd been carved from the world's stone was true, dwarves shared many qualities considered similar to the stone they lived with. Strong, hardy, and dependable, dwarves were polite, particularly to elders, and possessed a wisdom beyond that of many other races. Dwarves valued their traditions and looked for inspiration from ancestral heroes. 
Dwarves were also known for their stubborn nature and cynicism, traits widespread amongst the dwarves but which contributed to and were commonly offset by their bravery and tenacity. Dwarves were careful and deliberate, with a more serious disposition than other races, who they sometimes viewed as flighty or reckless. A dwarf did all things with care and a stubborn resolve, with brash or cowardly behavior unusual for them. However, dwarves did succumb easily to wrath or greed, which were their most common vices.
Dwarven friendship was hard to earn, but was strong once won. Naturally dour and suspicious, the stout folk were slow to trust others, specifically those outside their family, suspecting the worst of an individual until the outsider had proved their good will many times. Once this trust was gained, dwarves held their friends to it and viewed betrayals, even minor ones, with a vicious propensity for vengeance. A common gnomish oath, remarking on this dwarven sense of justice, was "If I'm lying, may I cross a dwarf."
For dwarves, loyalty was more than a word and they felt that it should be both valued and rewarded. Dwarves believed it a gift and mark of respect to stand beside a friend in combat, and an even deeper one to protect that ally from harm. Many dwarven tales subsequently revolved around the sacrifice of dwarves for their friends and family. Just as dwarves were known for their dependability as friends and allies, dwarves also harbored grudges far longer than many other races. This might be on an individual basis between a dwarf and one who had wronged them, or against entire races, even if warfare with the enemy had long since ceased.
Dwarves who left their homeland to become adventurers did so for a number of reasons. In part, a dwarf might be motivated by simple avarice, given the dwarven love of beautiful things. As often, however, a dwarf might be motivated by a drive to do what was right for others (particularly their clan) or a love of excitement because, as settled as dwarves were, they rarely tired of thrills. But even these wayward dwarves retained the spirit of their brethren, hoping that their accomplishments abroad could bring honor to themselves, their clan, or both. Given that successful dwarven adventurers were likely to recover rare items or defeat enemies of the dwarven people during such challenges, this was a hope not entirely without merit.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Dwarves live in caste based society where each of the dwarven clans is a collection of several smaller families all either tenuously tracing their lineage back the the clanfather who founded the clan in the long days past or those who have pledged their fealty to the clan leader / were defeated in battle and pledged allegiance. As such, dwarves are very proud of that lineage and very proud of the long and storied histories of their clans.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Dwarves could see in the dark, out to about 60 feet (18 meters). Many dwarves had an affinity for the caverns in which they lived, possessing a knack for recognizing unusual patterns in stonework that could seem almost supernatural at times.

Civilization and Culture

History

The Dwarves of Astara

The Heliocide - "The Great Calamity" had a profound affect on all races inhabiting Astara, fundamentally changing the way many cultures survived. The majority populous of many races were wiped out entirely, and those that survived were left in utter desolation. The years following the Calamity consisted of mass migrations of displaced cultures, forced to move somewhere safe or intact to start anew. During this time, alliances were forged and broken, ancient treaties abandoned, and a lawless chaos ensued. Most were desperate, and resorted to whatever measures necessary to survive. This greatly impacted the behavior of not only individuals, but cultures as a whole, as seen with the re-emergence of unsavory practices like cults, slavery and cannibalism. As such many races had evolved throughout the calamity, some only vaguely resembling their former selves. See below for some important distinctions of this race:

Before the Calamity there were a multitude of interrelated Dwarven clans, however, there were only seven Great Dwarven Clans upon which the Thaigs were built. Between these Thaigs were massive underground highways used for trade between clans, called The Deep Roads. The Seven Great Dwarven Houses were:

1. House Brosca
2. House Taldor
3. House Lunhark
4. House Karost
5. House IronBeard
6. House RimeHammer
7. House Dumic

The great dwarven houses in their time of need had called out and prayed to their deity Ord during the calamity, all great houses except one - House Dumic. Just a few short years before the Calamity, there had been a change in house Dumic, a political and social movement away from the worship of the gods and toward some autonomous, self engineered future. Needless to say, nobody ever got to find out what that future was supposed to be, as the Calamity all but wiped out house Dumic. The majority of the Thaigs in other houses had survived, presumably because they did not abandon their gods, and therefore house Dumic has been dubbed the "cursed house" or "lost house". Even objects, trinkets or artifacts from house Dumic are considered to be cursed, and Dwarves who are superstitious believe any contact whatsoever may impart the curse.

Lifespan

350 years

Average Height

4 – 5 ft (1.2 – 1.5 m)

Average Weight

150 lb (68 kg)[

Body Tint, Colouring and Marking

Deep brown to a paler hue tinged with red, but the most common shades are light brown, tan and earthy tones.

Related Myths

• The Deep Roads