Dwarves
The Dwarves are a mean, loud, proud people, and most unsavory even at the best of times. They're also the most fiercely loyal, deeply kind, and have an uncommon love those those they care for once you get to know them. ~ Assad Sekba, Counselor of Imam, circa 203 BS
Additional Information
Social Structure
Almost all Dwarves live in a Monarchy, usually patriarchal in nature, with those who are closest in bloodline to the ruling family being held in a high place of honor depending on their closeness to the throne. However, great craftsmen are also held in extreme regard and given a position of authority within Dwarven society as well.
Facial characteristics
All Dwarven males grow beards, which begin at age 15 and do not stop growing until death.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Average Intelligence
Dwarves as a whole tend to be very shrewd and clever.
Civilization and Culture
Naming Traditions
Dwarven names are often carried over from generation to generation, with some changes to preserve individuality within the clan. However, should a member of said clan marry into a ne clan, their child will often then be given the name of the original venerated ancestor.
Male Names
Dain, Dalak, Dalgal, Gimen, Durgol, Thoradin, Thromond, Vondel, Whurbin
Female Names
Anbera, Delre, Dagnal, Ilde, Helin, Kristryd, Nora, Torgga
Dwarves keep to clan names rather than surnames, some clans going back even to the original forging by Moradin himself.
Clan Names
Balderk, Bloodkith, Dankil, Fallack, Fireforge, Kilman, Hammerstone, Rakavak, Ungard
Beauty Ideals
Beauty to a female Dwarf lies entirely in the beard. Beards are seen as a sign of virility among Dwarves, with the bigger the beard, the more masculine the male behind it.
Dwarven males tend to find beauty in females who show clear signs of craft skill. Callused hands, a steady eye that can pick out the details in an item and a shrewd judgement of value are considered very attractive.
Both sexes also find the displace of wealth to be appealing as well, and as such Dwarves can often be found with rings in their hair of precious metals, sometimes with inset with jewels as well.
Gender Ideals
While both genders are in no way held back or prevented from attaining any place within Dwarven society, it is a common held belief by most Dwarves that the female should be the one to mind the children and home hearth.
Average Technological Level
Dwarven crafting is considered by many to be the peak level a craftsman can achieve, some master artisans of other races going so far as to dedicate their lives to the making of an object that receives a nob of approval from a Master Craftsman of the Dwarves. Still, there is a higher level to Dwarven crafts that most are not even aware of, and that few can even hope to attain.
Dwarven Runecrafting
Runecrafting is an ancient and powerful skill found only within Dwarven society. Master Crafters among the Dwarves hold firm to the belief that all things are alive, from the air that fills their lungs to the stones beneath their feet, and Runecrafting allows them to bring that life energy into being within the item they craft. Any master when asked why they chose to make a sculpture or weapon the way they did will often reply with the simple, yet cryptic response,It told me so.
Major Language Groups and Dialects
Dwarvish
Common
Undercommon
Common Etiquette Rules
A common distinction among all Dwarves is the fact that they as a whole, do not kneel to any but their ruler. This is a callback to their time spent as slaves and serves to represent their refusal to be bent to the will of any other ever again. A Dwarf seen by other Dwarves to kneel to anyone other than a Dwarven king or queen is considered Bruthtir, or Broken in Spirit, and not to be well trusted. Often instead, bowing or nodding of the head is a more common custom to greeting to outsiders.
When greeting a friend not blood related, etiquette demands a small bow, from the waste or at the head, arms held slightly away from the body to show you are not armed.
When greeting kin, etiquette dictates the two firmly clasp one another's forearms, and pull each other into a fierce headbutt.
History
The Dwarves have a deep and one history, by many accounts they are the second race to inhabit Vel'Kora after the Giants.
During the time Annam All-Father was molding the world with his Titans, Moradin came to the world. He too saw the potential that lied within this sphere, and set up his mighty forge and began to draw precious metals from deep within the earth. He took them and heated them within his forge, then shaped them upon his mighty anvil and set them to cool on the surface of the world. These forms he had created were the first of the Dwarves, strange hollow creatures, still glowing red from the heart of his forge, and barely sentient. They clustered together into groups, huddled to keep the warmth of the forge from escaping their bodies. Those within the center kept hot, while those on the fringes slowly began to cool. Primal fear crept into their beings, and a deep darkness began to fill their hollow shells, instilling hatred for those who still burned bright with Moradin's touch. Those who the darkness took began to act cruelly to the others around the, forcing some to wander out, alone into the cold of the world, and inflicting pain on those who refused to leave. Moradin however, took no notice of this, and instead blew a gust of breath over all, infusing into it a fraction of his divine essence. The breath filled the hollow space within each Dwarf it found and infused the power of the divine into them, sparking sentience into each it touch. Instantly, those who had ben infected by the darkness quailed and cowered before Moradin's might, knowing now what they had done. Moradin heard their plees for mercy, their claims that they had not the mind to know what they did, but found all claims wanting. He gathered all those who had felt the touch of the dark, and had quailed before his divine light, and banished them to the Underdark, there to dwell forever in the darkness they had allowed into their beings. These who were banished became the Duergar, and the Derro. Those who had remained pure, he blessed and gave dominion over all the hills and mountains of the world. With this gift, Moradin then departed the world, and would remain gone for the next several thousand years.
Enslavement
One hundred and thirty six years after Moradin's leaving, the Dwarves had started building a rudimentary kingdom called Halaurtarjteir, or Gift of the Joyful Gathered in Common, when they were discovered by the Giants, who immediately took them as slaves. The Dwarves skill with in the forges and innate ability to carve stone made them valuable to the Giants above many of the other lesser races they had enslaved at the time, and the Giants spent a considerable amount of time hunting them down. For two thousand years, the Dwarves lived beneath the tyranny of the Giants, working tirelessly to build their massive stone keeps, hollow out entire mountains, and forge weapons and armor that would later be used on their own kind. Some of the Giants took to experimentation on the hardy folk to make them more accustomed to specific lines of work, such as the Azer who were made to better serve the Fire Giants. But even as they suffered in their enslavement, the Dwarves persisted, and learned. They adopted the written language of the Giants and adapted it to their own, a language they still use to this day. (see Dwarvish) They learned to love the crafting arts of stone and steel, often making beautiful seamless structures from a single chunk of stone, or wondrous sculptures of metal that seemed almost to be a living thing frozen in time. Some of their Giant masters even taught them their sacred arts of Rune and Ring Magic, and the Dwarves took this to heart as well, passing the Arts along to one another in deep secret places within Gaveheim the Giants were unaware of. In these secret places, they planned, and plotted, and waited for their chance to strike back. For even thousands of years of enslavement could not break the spirits of the Dwarven people, and they simply waited for their time to come.The War of the Dragons and Giants
Come hither, creation of the forge. We have heard your cries for freedom. Let us free, and in so doing we shall do the same...to you.In the year 11946 ST, a powerful Frost Giant had taken his entire house, along with all their slaves to the frozen wasteland that topped the world, known as the Cold Expanse. While he worked to build a fortress of enchanted ice and snow, he sent out his Dwarven slaves to the nearby ice fields to scout and see if they could find a way down into the earth to mine for stone. What they found instead was a prison the likes that has never been seen on the surface of the world since. Trapped beneath the ice lay a thousand thousand Dragons, old, young, weak, powerful, each chained to the earth with enchanted chains, the links of which were said to be two Dwarves in height. As they stood in wonder, slowly they began to hear faint voices touch each of their minds. To their horror and fascination, the Dragons were alive, capture by Annam All-Father and the Titans during the creation of the world, chained and imprisoned in the roof of the world to prevent their checking the advance of his children. They told of how Annam had forged each link of the chains, enchanting each with a simple, but powerful magic, that prevented it from being damaged by any magic the Dragons or their kin wielded. the Dwarves in turn told them of how the Giants had spread, and taken dominion of the the world, enslaving all those who resisted them. How Annam himself had fled the Plane centuries prior, his Titans either broken and locked away, and the Dragons offered a deal:
Free us, and in turn we shall tear down the children of Annam All-Father and crush their kingdom into the sea, never to rise again.The Dwarves gathered, talked among themselves for a time, before agreeing to their request. The next six years, the Dwarves worked in secret to free the Dragons, one by one, digging massive tunnels within the ice to reach each and every beast that lay trapped, until in 11940, the last link of the last chain was broken. As one massive group, the Dragons rose into the air, carrying the Dwarves wthin their claws, and laid waste to the icekeep their Frost Giant master had built. They then commanded the Dwarves to flee back south, and to warn the rest of their kind of the coming war, and to tell them to be ready. For the next six hundred and twenty years, the Dragons and Giants waged a vicious and bloody war with one another. Thousands of Giants and Dragons fell, and slowly but surely, the Dragons pushed ever inward toward Gaveheim. Their advance was aided greatly by the fact that at the same time, the Dwarves, as well as several other of the Giants slave species, rose up in rebellion against their masters, and began waging war from within their kingdoms as well. The war culminated in 11322 ST when the unified armies of the Dragons and the revolting Slave Armies, lead by the Dwarves, launched their final attack on Gaveheim. For two years, they fought both from without against the Giants until the day that Kysuss betrayed his own kin, sabotaging the northern shields of Gaveheim from within with his grab for ascension, leadnig to the fall of the continent sized city itself. The Dragons then in their last moments of rage at Annam All-Father for their imprisonment, sunk the entire landmass into the sea, destroying the greatest of his achievements, sinking millennia's worth of his children's history into the deep dark depths of the sea, where they remain lost to this day.
Allies, Foes.
For a great many years following the downfall of the Gaints kingdom, the Dwarves continued the fight, pushing the remaining Giants that had holed up within their individual keeps and strongholds throughout the world out, killing those they could. Overtime, they had purged a majority of the Giants from their largest keeps, which they then adopted as their own. It was a simple task to rework the giant buildings and keeps into multi leveled strongholds, and much of the architecture had already been crafted by Dwarven hands. Many of the most ancient of the Dragons aided the Dwarves in their conquest and claiming of their new homes, even remaining within the strongholds as guards to keep the roving bands of Giants at bay, or so they claimed. In truth, the Dragons had been waiting for the Dwarves to begin mining again, knowing that both races held a deep love for precious metals and gems. Eventually, the Dragons seized control of many of the new Dwarven cities, forcing those within to work within the mines below, hauling the treasures from beneath the earth to be piled up into each Dragons mighty hoard. This was the way of the world for many Dwarves for the next seven hundred years, until in secret, King Oloric Rumeheim of the kingdom of Runedar in Koria sent an exploratory team north to the Cold Expanse, where they gathered the shards of the mighty chain links that had held the Dragons there and brought them back, where he forged a mighty suit of armor, called Fordedhurnden, Freedoms Payment. He challenged the Dragons that dwelt within his city to single combat, slaying each in turn and remaining completely unharmed, until one remained. To the last, he bid it to go forth and tell the most esteemed and powerful of its race to come and meet him within his kingdom, that they may discuss a treaty to free his people. Later that year, within the walls of Runedar, the most respected of each of the dragons met with the Dwarven kings, and an agreement was made between the two races: The Dragons would not seek to enslave the Dwarves, and leave their cities, and in return, the Dwarves would keep the knowledge of what lies within the Cold Expanse to themselves, and tell no one. With the agreement made, the Dragons left, most leaving Vel'Kora as a whole, to the Elemental Plane of Air, where they had begun to wage war with the Avariel for control of their ever growing kingdom.The Years of Peace
Finally, after thousands of years, the Dwarven people had freedom, homelands of their own, and a well earned peace settled on their kind. It was during this time that they turned to their crafting, making wondrous works of which rivaled even those that had been made within Gaveheim, and brought even the attention of the Elven Kings and Fey Lords, who made pilgrimages to see their mighty towers and mines, even requesting the service of a Master Craftsman themselves. True freedom and joy was felt by a number of Dwarves for the first time in generations, and they set about carving their own kingdoms in the lands of Koria, Ssashan, and Eltar.Historical Figures
King Oloric Rumeheim
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Dwarves as a whole tend to keep to themselves. While not often hostile towards other races, they are often indifferent to them as a whole, preferring to remain isolated and alone within their mountain kingdoms. This is not, however, to say they don't allow guests, and relish the chance to trade goods with outsiders. Instead, Dwarves follow a simple path when it comes to other races:
If it looks like it wants ta fight, then fight! If not, then see about gettin' a drink and maybe things'll work out for the best fer ye.As a whole though, most Dwarves have a deep bias towards Orcs, Dragons and their kin, and their subterranean kin, the Duergar and Derro.
Genetic Descendants
Lifespan
350 yrs
Average Height
4-5 ft
Average Weight
150-180 lbs
Average Physique
Dwarves tend to be stocky and burly compared to humans, but also stronger.
Body Tint, Colouring and Marking
Dwarven skin color varies depending on sub-species and region.
As a whole , Dwarves tend to have excess body hair, though it is mostly seen in the arms and legs of the females, and can be found all over in males. Dwarves also have a fondness for tattoos, often wearing the clan crest on their skin, as well as runic protections or identifiers of certain cities or guilds.
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