dwarves

All Scarterrans are subject to elemental forces shaping their genetic makeup dictated by their environment, or more accurately, the environment of their parents around the time they are conceived. Dwarves are no exception.   Most dwarves live on, near or beneath the mountains, so it's no surprise that most dwarves have strong earthy traits with only small secondary traits from the other three elements.  

Dwarf women are technically fertile between 28 and 180 and dwarf men are technically fertile between 32 and 220. Most dwarf societies consider it ideal for women have their children between ages 50 and 110 and for dwarf men to not have children after their 180th birthday.   Dwarf pregnancies typically take roughly a year, so a dwarf's birthday is going to be roughly close to the anniversary of when they were conceived, give or take a few weeks.   It's possible for dwarf siblings of the same mother to be as little three years apart but roughly ten years apart between children is considered normal.   Twin births are pretty rare among dwarves, roughly one-in-a-thousand births. About four times rarer than they are among humans.

Dwarves have a typical natural life span of 275 years. A few lucky dwarves make it to 350 years. Dwarves tend to live in rugged and dangerous places, so dying of old age is something of a luxury.   Dwarf children are typically weaned by age 5. Age 20 is generally considered the start of adolescence. Dwarves are expected to master the basics of their chosen profession by their late thirties. Dwarves are legally adults at age 40.   120 is when dwarves are generally considered middle age and 200 is when dwarves generally considered to be venerable elders.

Dwarves can and do live almost anywhere in Scarterra. Their natural instincts often keep them close to mountains but this is a not a biological requirement.

Dwarves are born with an innate understanding of metal and stone and a propensity for crafting. If a dwarf is taken away from his/her parents as a baby and raised by another species, he or she will see retain an innate understanding of stone and metal and a propensity for crafting, not necessarily metal or stonework. Dwarves like to work with their hands and tend to be perfectionist about it.   A by-product of their affinity with stone is that dwarves almost always feel comfortable underground and very seldom get claustrophobic. This doesn't mean they dislike being above ground or dislike sunlight, a lot of dwarves prefer to live and work aboveground.   All other stereotypical dwarven traits are cultural, not genetic.

Extended family units or clans are the basic building blocks of dwarf society. Scarterra's four dwarf cultures all have some form of formalized family unit with some form of patrilineal succession. Women normally leave their father's clans to join their husband's clan.

  Dwarves are concentrated primarily in the red circles.  

by me with Midjourney

-Drannor the Half-Elf bard

"If you meet a dwarf and you are not sure what culture he is a part of, there is a simple way to tell. Chat him up for five minutes and he will tell you.   All the other dwarf ethncities are offshoots from the original Meckelorners, and even dwarves who don't like Meckelorners have the same basic origin story. Hallisan pulled the first dwarves out of the The Great Stone of Meckelorn and the dwarves spread out from there.   The Dwarf Kingdom of Meckelorn and the Kingdom of Stahlheim are pretty closen only separated only by the Border Baronies Region.

  Meckelorner dwarves are the dwarves that decided to stay near the stone. Stahlheimer dwarves are the dwarves that moved, but didn't move very far.   Meckelorners and Stahlheimers are almost identical as far as outsiders can tell. They look the same, they talk the same, the like the same food, and because they are so similar to each other, they really hate each other or at least they act like they hate each other.   Mondarian dwarves are so far removed they are pretty obvious to spot. For one thing, they tend to have pronounced watery traits which makes sense because they live on the water and love to fish. They also dress colorfully and have distinctive accents. When Stahlheimers or Meckelorners meet up with Mondarians, everyone is all smiles. Stahlheimers and Meckelorners are like feuding brothers. But Mondarians are like distant cousins, beloved distant cousins.   Penarchian dwarves are not distant cousins, they are strangers that look alike. I don't know much about them, and the Meckelorners amd Stahlheimers don't know much about them either. There is very little contact between West Colassian humans and Penarchian humans, so it's no surprise that West Colassian dwarves and Penarchian dwarves don't have much contact. In fact, contact between them is so rare that until a few centuries ago, most West Colassian dwarves didn't believe the Penarchian dwarves existed at all and reputedly Penarchian dwarves are even more insular than other dwarves.   Mondarian dwarves are a lot more prone to traveling than other dwarves, so eventually they made contact with the Penarchian dwarves and told West Colassian and Penarchian dwarves about each other but I don't think either group is eager to meet the other. They have been apart from so long, that they can't talk to each other without a magical translation spell. Surely more things than language must have changed."

Dwarves have roughly the same sensory capabilities as humans. Despite spending so much time underground, dwarves have no innate ability to see in the dark. They are just less uncomfortable around darkness than most humans.

Meckelorner and Stahlheimer personal names are loosely based on Old Norse.   Clan Names are loosely based on Old English inspired descriptive names, often an adjective and a noun, Redshaft Clan , Greystone Clan, Snowview Clan, Blessed Mace Clan, etc.   Mondarian personal names are loosely based on Polynesian, espeically Hawaiian names with a dash of Old Norse thrown in. I haven't fleshed out any clans yet.   Penarchian dwarves remain a work in progress, but I will probably pick a South Asian culture as the baseline.   I'm certainly found of using hard consonant sounds in dwarf names.

Dwarf men take the protection of women and children to be of paramount importance. That said, dwarf culture does not treat their women like helpless flowers or domestic servants. Female dwarves work in any and all trades in their respective nations and they are fully eligible to hold guild positions just as men are.  

All four major dwarf cultures value family honor highly. As an extension of this, all four major dwarf cultures value monogamy and frown on casual hookups.   Dwarf bastard children are often social outcasts who face social derision, but the parents of bastard children face even greater social derision. Dwarves will sometimes look the other way on extra-marital sex if no bastard children are produced to save face for the parties involved.   Monogamy is the goal, but there are more roads to get there. Mondarian dwarves believe in letting love find a way and Stahlheimer dwarves believe in carefully arranged marriages with a strong economic component.   Meckelorner dwarves and Penarchian dwarves tend to fall in between the two extremes. They frequently use arranged marriages, but they try to heavily factor in the feelings of the people involved.   Mondarian dwarves are generally optimistic about their future, but the other three dwarf cultures believe they are fighting a quiet battle against their own extinction, so dwarves face a lot of social pressure to have children. Even without the pessimism, most Mondarian dwarves are staunch Mera worshipers and Mera is the goddess of families and the protector of children, so they still face pressure to have children, just in a different way.   Because bastard children are frowned upon, this means dwarves face a lot of social pressure to marry. There is a lot of population pressure to get married fairly young. Dwarves reach the age of majority at age 40. Dwarf women are generally expected to be married by age 60. Meckelorn dwarves really apply a lot of pressure, but the other dwarf cultures haven't fallen that far from the tree on that regard.   Dwarf men are generally expected to be married whenever they "find their fortunes" which is fairly vaguely defined, but results in many dwarf grooms being a fair bit older than their brides. Per usual, Mondarian dwarves break a lot of dwarf cultural norms. Large age gaps in Mondarian couples are a lot less common.  

  In many fantasy settings, dwarves dislike arcane magic. This is not the case in Scarterra. Dwarf mages of many stripes are not hard to be found though the majority are rune casting wizards. Many claim that dwarves invented this type of spellcraft.

Dwarves speak Dwarven, a language taught to them by Hallisan himself shortly after they were created.   Dwarves are conservative and long-lived, so linguistic drift on the Dwarven language is low, but the dwarves are not immune to this.   Meckelorners and Stahlheimers have very small accent differences that non-dwarves cannot usually spot unless they are trained linguists. One major difference between Meckelorners and Stahlheimers is that Meckelorners view kalazotz as close friends and Stahlheimers view kalazotz as useful allies. Thus Meckelorners are picking up a few words and idioms from Zocatec and the Stahlheimers are not and in a few generations, this might become pronounced.   Mondarians have what is considered a thick, but understandable accent relative to their Meckelorn and Stahlheim kin. Penarchian dwarves are so far removed geographically and culturally from other dwarves that their native tongue is now functionally a different language altogether.

Different dwarf societies have different values and norms but a few traits are common across all four major dwarf cultures.   -A job worth doing is a job worth doing well.   -Honor is important. Personal honor and family honor are deeply intertwined. Dwarves without clear family ties are often subjects of pity and suspicion.   -Respect for elders is considered virituous, years of service is the number one factor in determining promotions and advancement.

All dwarf societies tend to be thrifty and view being wasteful as a social taboo. Note, a distaste for waste is pretty widespread in Scarterra. Almost every dwarf nation has had periods of lengthy famine during their past history, so dwarves are even less wasteful than the average Scarterran. Of the four dwarf subcultures, Meckelorner dwarves are the most thrifty on account of having a grey haired elders still alive to tell tales of when food was scarce. Stahlheimer dwarves are the least thrifty because the last few centuries have been pretty good for them.   Having children out of wedlock is a taboo in every dwarf society, a little bit less taboo for Mondarian dwarves but the sentiment is still there.     Mondarians are the exception. First, Mondarian humans and Mondarian dwarves are very close allies, so intermarriages are a natural byproduct of this. Second, Mondarians have lots of Healing theurgists, so they can pull off safe ciserean procedures much easier than most other Scarterrans.

divine origins of dwarves

    Most believe that the first dwarves emerged from the The Great Stone of Meckelorn. The Great Stone of Meckelorn is a life stone of immense power that many dwarves make a point to make a pilgrimage to at least once in their lives. The Great Stone radiates vitality to anyone near it, but dwarves always felt a special kinship to it. The Great Stone is the spiritual and geographic center of the kingdom of Meckelorn.  

the first dwarves

 

-Beslyfle the gnome, high priestess of the Fumayan Tenders

The first dwarves appeared at some point in the Second Age when elves were already firmly established as the dominant race in Scarterra.   Fortunately for the dwarves, the Second Age elves were not especially fond of the mountains or the deep caverns of Scarnoctis, so the dwarves were able to move in without having to immediately go to war with elves, but there was a lot of friction between the two races.   When the first dwarves first emerged onto the face of Scarterra, elves were alreay used to the idea of sharing Scarterra with several other mortal races. I hate to use the term ‘humanoid’ because humans didn’t exist yet, but elves were the first humanoids and dwarves were the second.

  Dwarves were more physiologically similar to elves than any other race yet seen and the elves were somewhat threatened by this. Some called them ‘demi-elves’ or ‘false elves’   Dwarves astonished elves with how quickly they reached technological parity with them. Their feats metalwork and engineering actually surpassed the elves. This bred to jealousy and resentment on the elves’ part   The dwarves were not exactly thrilled that the elves were claiming all of Scarterra’s most fertile food producing regions and not sharing which bred jealousy and resentment on the dwarves' part.   Mera, in her divine wisdom, intervened. She created gnomes. Gnomes, having traits in common with elves and dwarves and having non-threatening demeanors and silver tongues were able to act as intermediaries. With the help of gnomish diplomacy, relations between elves and dwarves became much mroe smooth.   Unfortunately this didn’t last. The Second Age ended with the Second Unmaking.

 

the Second Unmaking

 

by Eron12 with Hero Forge

-Akeem of Magicland, Professor Emeritus of History

Most Unmaking scholars estimate that approximately 90% of all mortals perished during the Second Unmaking. I hate to sound crass, but the dwarves only suffered 75% casualties of their entire race. We can make gallows humor about it now, but three out of four dead is still unimaginably terrible.   As far as historians have pieced together, the armies of the Void, spent less effort on conquering Scarnoctis than they did conquering Scarterra proper. The caverns of Scarnoctis may have provided some respite from the demons, but they were not exactly safe. Many dwarves avoided the claws of the Void demons only to perish from cold or starvation.

  At the height of the Second Age, there were at least five separate dwarf nations and at least one nomadic dwarf tribe. At the dawn of the Third, only two dwarf enclaves remained, one in Meckelorn and one in Penarchia.   Both groups assumed they were their enclave was the only group of dwarves to survive the Unmaking, so they didn’t bother looking for each other. Both were isolationist so they didn't send out explorers who might accidentally find each other. They only knew of the other group as a vague tall tale human adventurers, and they ddn't have a whole lot of contact with humans, at least initially."

 

rise of the morlocks

  The secret history of the morlocks is not known to Akeem or any other respectable Scarterran historian, human or dwarf. A few dwarves have put two-and-two together but they are loathe to admit their findings out loud.   Food was scarce during the Second Unmaking and in the immediate aftermath. A lot of mortals were forced to turn to cannibalism and more than a few were infected with Cannibal Sickness.    

dwarves during the Red Era

 

-Fielwa the barmaid, Meckelorner gnome

 

During the Unmaking, the dwarves learned that the mountains provided a modicum of safety and the lands outside the mountain brought death. Old habits are hard to break. It took centuries for the scattered bands of haggard dwarf survivors to rediscover each other and rebuild their society. When they did so, they opted to pursue an isolationist path.   As far as the dwarves were concerned, the elves hung them out to dry during the Second Unmaking, so the dwarves were not eager to reestablish ties with the surviving elves.

  Their relations with the newly emerging humans weren’t much better. The dwarves of the Red Era were not overtly hostile to the humans, but neither did they offer the humans aid.   Relationships with gnomes were pretty good (who doesn't love gnomes?). A disprorportionatee number of gnomes who survived the Second Unmaking were those that had allied with the dwarves. Eventually the gnomes were able to coax dwarves into revealing themselves to the rest of Scarterra, but it was a very slow process, centuries slow."

 

The Founding of Mondert

 

Male Mondarian Dwarf, tan version by Me with Midjourney

-Makahol, Mondarian hunter, fisherman and craftsman

"Dwarf politics is less chaotic than human politics, but we aren't saints. Meckelorn has lasted longer under the name 'Meckelorn' than any other nation on the face of Scarterra, but that doesn't mean Meckelorn didn’t have a few coups and dynastic upheavals among the ruling class over the centuries.   King Cronic was probably the most hated dwarf to ever sit on the Mekelorn and he was jealous and paranoid that his more popular younger brother, Prince Mondarias, would overthrow. He forced Mondarias into exile and much to his surprise, a huge number of dwarf commoners opted to enter exile with him, nicknamed the Mondarians. The Mondarians wander Scarterra without a place to call home for decades enduring many hardships.

  Eventually our ancestors found some generous human islanders willing to take them in. The dwarves needed the human islanders to teach them how to find food in this strange environment and the humans needed the dwarves to teach them develop better weapons and tactics in order to defend against the many monstrous threats to their island homes. Our alliance stands to this day and most successful inter-racial alliance of equals Scarterra has ever seen before or since."

 

Early Feudal Era

 

male Stahlheimer Dwarf, tan version by Zeta Gardner

-Thostas Oakbeard, Stahlheimer merchant

 

"As the Red Era drew to a close, Mondert and the Penarchian dwarves were practically invisible. the only dwarf settlement of note was Meckelorn. Meckelorn was reversing it's prior isolationism and began setting up trade agreements with the elf and human rulers of the day. This were looking Just when the Meckelorn dwarves were starting to warm up to humanity, some walking dead humans starting wrecking things. Vladimir the Conqueror and his army of vampires made their bid for world domination.

 

Vladimir's focus was on dominating humanity, he mostly left the dwarves and elves alone. Vladimir never sent an envoy to the king of Meckelorn, but he didn't need to. Any dwarf that fought alongside humans against the undead hordes was killed with extreme prejudice and any dwarf that stayed underground was left alone. The king of Meckelorn took the hint and opted to stay neutral during the Vampire Wars. This didn’t exactly make dwarves popular with the race of humans,

by me with Midjourney

  But it wasn’t all bad news. A few dwarves ignored their kings proclamation and opted to help the human kingdoms. With the help of gnome intermediaries and dwarf ranger smugglers, the dwarves quietly supplied weapons and armor and a few foolhardy adventurers to aid the humans who opposed Vladimir’s regime.   The dwarves who were doing this, set up a headquarters in what is now called Stahlheim which is an area already being considered for a new dwarf settlement.   The dwarf clans the supported the humans war effort were eventually rewarded with a bunch of gold and they used the gold to turn a smugglers hideout into a true settlement, and when the humans wanted to buy dwarf goods, they could choose the dwarves who backed them up against the vampires or they could choose the dwarves who bolted into their fortresses and locked the doors.   Stahlheim was able to hammer out lots of luctrative trade deals with the humans and the rest, as they say, is history"

 

Late Feudal Era

 

by Eron12 with Hero Forge

-Krogresli, Eclipsed Caste Dwarf

 

"Many centuries after Vladimir was turned to ash, a new terrifying warlord arose to threaten West Colassia. A half-orc known as Mordock the Destroyer. Mordock and his coalition of monsters and tribes had managed to conquer most of Meckelorn and his forces even captured the Great Stone itself.   Much to the shame of Meckelorn, Mordock the Destroyer died peacefully in his sleep at a ripe old age. Half-orcs are born sterile, so Mordock had no clear heir.

  His grand coalition fragmented without a clear successor, but the orc warlord who took over Meckelorn was not eager to relinquish it. The dwarves managed to slay him, but another orc warlord took his place. Then another.  

There was a bright spot in the dark. When Meckelorn was in exile and friends were all too few, the kalazotz helped us. Without their help detecting threats with their sonar and teaching us how to find food in unlikely places (such as which insects were edible and which were not), I doubt our people would have surivived.   We dwarves do not forget our friends. Our alliance with the kalazotz continues to benefit Meckelorn, even in peacetime. My clan, my temple and many others will make sure our friendship with the Batfolk lasts for all time.

Commissioned kalazotz on foot, grey background by Diana Rahfoth

  It took many decades of guerrilla warfare for my ancestors to reclaim the Great Stone and by extension, reclaim our homeland. They were only able to secure victory after Stahlheim sent an army to reinforce them. What should have brought our two dwarf nations closer together exacerbated our rivalry instead. The Stahlheimers resented the Meckelorners for their lack of gratitude for saving them. The Meckelorners resent the Stahlheimers for sitting out most of the war and then swooping in at the last minute to claim victory.   The two nations almost went to war over which nation would have control of the Great Stone, but the priesthood of Hallisan intervened.   A new nation was formed around the Great Stone. A very tiny nation made up of a couple priests and priestesses of Hallisan, the Order of the Stone. Neither Meckelorn nor Stahlheim would control the Great Stone, and the Order of the Stone would regulate the flow of pilgrims to and from the Great Stone.   That was roughly 200 years ago. A few living dwarves still remember the time of the Meckelorn Exile, but they are all very old now. We will never forget this time of strife, but we don't have to wallow in despair forever.   Dwarves of different backgrounds have been working together more than ever. Roughly 100 years ago, Mondarian dwarves managed to act as middlemen to help Penarchian dwarves exchange ambassadors with both Stahlheim and Meckelorn. Penarchia is too far away from West Colassia for any meaningful alliance or trade agreement to be possible, but now the two lost branches of dwarfkind are tall tales no longer. At least we know we are less alone than we were before.   This spirit of cooperation isn't just affecting our long lost Penarchian kin. Stahlheim and Mondert have created joint ventures to sponsor dwarf crew trading ships sailing to the far corners of Scarterra.   Meckelorn is no longer a sad kingdom in exile, we are a force to be reckoned with, capable of influencing politics in West Colassia. For the first time in centuries, we are gaining new allies faster than we are gaining new enemies.   The elders might call me childishly naive but I am cautiously optimistic about the future. I know still we have challenges ahead but the future of dwarfkind looks sunny to me."