Dwarves
Dwarves are a short, stocky and hardy people. They are identified by other people as smiths and masons, warriors, and as boisterous people who are stubborn and short-tempered. They stand between 4 and 5 feet tall and average about 150 pounds. They have short legs and arms and stubby fingers. For their size, they are strong and rugged and they know how to use their low center of gravity to enhance their stability and leverage. Their skin is gray or brown in complexion, and leathery and rough. Their eyes are similar in tone, typically brown or gray with blue being rare. Their hair color ranges across nearly every color, although the range is smaller among each ilk, but as a rule turns gray early, especially among male dwarves - almost all dwarves past the age of forty are gray.
There are three main ilk of dwarves based on where they live: alpine, highland, and tundra dwarves.
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Dwarves are most comfortable living within the earth versus above it. Wherever they live, they excavate earth and stone to build tunneled communities like warrens. Their communities, called holds, are compact in size, incorporating residential and industrial regions within close proximity to each other compared to the sprawling towns and farm fields or other resources of humans. They usually start with a mine or quarry for ore and stone and then the residential for the workers is built alongside the industry. The holds get their name from many different sources. Often they are named after the dwarven clan or their leader, but they can get their name from a natural feature or something in its history like a battle.
The dwarven people eat hearty meals with meat, dairy and fruit and nuts but few grains and vegetables with the exception of root vegetables and fungi. They typically live in areas that are not conducive to farming - lacking open, fertile land - so they tend to be hunter/gatherers. The primary meat they consume is dependent on their home environment, but they are partial to deer, boars and other wild animals as well as sheep and goats. They prepare meat in stews, dozens of varieties of sausages, and jerky. Any open fields or grassland they are near is more valuable for their livestock to graze than to grow the limited grains or vegetables. Without broad access to grains, dwarves are not known to brew beer, instead making cider, spruce beer, and harder liquor distilled from those brews. After meat, dwarven cuisine is best known for using mushrooms, which prosper in their underground homes. Surprising to outsiders, many dwarves are actually vegetarian, replacing meat with the many varieties of fungi in similar recipes. Apples are the main fruit or vegetable they cultivate, growing trees near their communities, and they forage for berries and nuts. They use drying and especially smoking methods to preserve meat and fruit.
Dwarves have two main areas of industry, both of which they excel at: metalwork and stonemasonry. They are knowledgeable and hard-working miners, able to get the most out of a mine whether it be for stone or metal. They are master smiths making some of the finest weapons and armor in the land in addition to any other metalwork. Dwarves are the only people known to be able to work adamantine, they hold the secrets to its smelting and smithing closely within their ranks. The holds where they work and live are dug deep into the earth, which offers natural protection, but they also are premier builders using stone to build walls, towers, and full castles. They had their hand in building up many of the large cities of man. They make proficient lumberjacks, and they can be hired to fell many trees efficiently, but they do not like using wood for construction themselves, being people connected to fire they prefer not to risk their structures burning down, and use stone, or brick, and metal for building. They are also good at hunting, and while they may not be as stealthy as elves to sneak up on game, they are - if not patient - persistent and stubborn enough to track and wear down game and also are proficient in trapping.
Dwarves are known as fierce warriors. While mostly known for using hammers and axes, in large battles they are more likely to use a spear and shield. As laboring people, almost all dwarves are handy with hammers or axes, or both, and their proficiency with the tools and the feel and weight makes their martial versions easy to master. Though they are thought to use the same tool for battle, no self-respecting dwarf would use the same item for both purposes and make specific ones designed for each. A dwarf may have a dozen or more different versions of the same tool and weapon such as hammers specific for a singular use. They use crossbows of various sizes for ranged combat and then initiate a battle with a shield wall with spears to counter their lesser reach than others. A dwarven shield wall can remain impenetrable for hours and battles between dwarves are known to stretch days, becoming a contest of will and endurance to outlast their opponent, consuming jerky and spirits to keep up their energy. Crossbows allow them to use their mechanical knowledge to counter their shorter pull possible on a regular bow
To outsiders, most dwarves may not seem as spiritual as other people, but their beliefs and traditions are very important parts of their culture and their individual identity. They believe that all things on Eost have a spirit, and that even the rocks and soil, and especially anything living, have magical energy. They see their industry and crafts as spiritual pursuits, investing personal energy into their works that make even mundane items near magical. They can instill creations with power making them relics that rival the most powerful ones made by human and elven enchanters. The most common type of magic used by dwarves is runic magic, inscribing them on items to instill them with power. They believe that names themselves have power, and when a name is written in runes that power can be tapped or even enhanced. They tell the tales of their ancestors and heroes in poems and songs that are told only to other dwarves, a shame as other people might gain a new perspective of dwarven culture if they could hear these tales. There is little a dwarf enjoys more than participating in seasonal sacred festivals such as Midsummer and Midwinter fire festivals. Dwarven Augusts (their name for priests or clerics) oversee ceremonies like marriage and funerals, but also serve as judges at moots where dwarves can make claims against each other and the minister makes judgment. They believe that their souls pass on to an afterlife, with different ones for different vocations or achievements made by the dwarf, with dying in battle being the most honored and celebrated afterlife.
The Curious Quill will detail many more aspects of dwarven culture in entries, to read them all check out the #dwarf feed.
Alpine Dwarves
Alpine dwarves, as their name suggests, live in mountainous regions. They are the most numerous and widest ranging dwarves and thus most preconceptions about them come from the alpine ilk, with unique physical and cultural traits listed here. They are the tallest of their people, and their hair color is generally brown or black. Blond or red hair is a sign of heritage from their cousins in the highlands or the tundra.
They have a prominent accent with strong inflections, not dissimilar to Pythian (dwarves claim the Pyth were influenced by alpine dwarves). They pronounce r and h strongly, their v’s sound like a w and ‘th’ like d or z. They do not pronounce short i’s which sound like ‘ee’.
They have the strictest social and bureaucratic practices, and the most regimented social hierarchy with nobility and upper class people not really seen in the other ‘wilder’ dwarves. They also have the strongest organized religion of the dwarven people with established temples and rigid positions in their priesthood.
In battle, they favor hammers (as well as maces, mauls, and other bludgeoning weapons) as their martial weapon after spears. They are the only dwarven people with what is considered a knighthood in units of highly trained and well-outfitted soldiers who are revered and given special standing similar to nobles even if they are not of a noble family, though they often come from long lines of venerated families. It is rumored that there is a sect of ascetic, meditative warriors who use runes in martial forms though they are rarely encountered in the outside world.
Their holds are built into the mountains, branching off the tunnels leading to their mines. They do not construct much externally, only the occasional tower near a gate, preferring to let attackers come into the entrance tunnels where they can use their specialized tactics to whittle them down as they enter. They will rain down crossbow bolts, rocks, even boiling oil from openings above them and then a few dwarves can hold off an entire army at pinch points at doorways leading deeper in. Attacking an alpine dwarf in their hold is like attacking a badger cornered in its den.
An important livestock to alpine dwarves are mountain goats. Though they cannot really be domesticated they are guarded and watched and used for their wool, milk, and meat and hides. They train lynxes as guardian animals mainly to help watch over mountain goat herds. They keep marmots as pets, and alpine dwarf children also keep shrews.
Highland Dwarves
Highland dwarves live in rocky hills, highlands, as long as they have a resource such as a vein or ore or a valuable rock, or a forest or even peat bogs nearby. They are less remote than other dwarves, and though alpine dwarves are more numerous, a dwarf in a human city is more likely than not to be from the highlands. They have brown or red hair and are the only dwarves known to sometimes trim either their beard or mustache and go with a mutton chop or chin curtain style, always with their sideburns connecting to their beard or mustache.
They favor axes (including throwing axes and halberds) as their primary weapons. They do not wait for battle to come to them, and will charge in throwing axes first, then hitting the front ranks with their battleaxes to hew shields and create openings to rush through. They are known best for their units of berserking warriors who invoke the spirit of the wild boar.
Unlike alpine dwarves whose homes are all interconnected in complexes of tunnels in the mountains, their homes are familial. They build them into the hills with a doorway that leads down into them and occasionally will make a structure above the surface, especially protective walls and towers to provide a view of the area around them for defense.
Living in the highlands, they are able to herd sheep which graze in the hills. They domesticate pigs used as draft animals, there are some units that will ride warhogs that are more closely related to boars. They hold swine as sacred and do not partake of their flesh. They also train badgers as guardians of both their herds and homes. The sheep provide wool and mutton as well as milk. Their sheep milk cheese is a delicacy even to other people and their mutton sausages come in dozens of varieties. Their clothes are made of wool with leather accents and leather coats to protect from the highland rains.
Though they are not foresters as a culture, they will hire themselves out to humans who want trees felled and they are known as hard workers who can clear faster than men. For fire they gather peat from bogs which they also will sell to other people. You know you are approaching a highland dwarf settlement when you see lines of smoke rising from the hills from the chimneys that direct the smoke of peat fires in their hearths above ground.
Tundra Dwarves
As their name suggests, tundra dwarves live in either arctic or mountainous regions above the tundra line, in harsh, cold regions where no trees grow. In both regions they have adapted to the cold temperatures and snow, but in arctic areas they also deal with the extremes of no or all daylight throughout the seasons. They have blonde or black hair and tend to be shorter than other dwarves and trimmer due to more difficult access to food.
Tundra dwarves use spears and crossbows for hunting and battle when necessary. Because wood is scarce, they use bone and antler and sinew as parts of their weapons. They hunt arctic hare and rodents like lemmings and marmots and caribou. In the mountains they hunt mountain goats - the steinbock - for food and wool and leather. In the open lands of the arctic, they use draft reindeer and musk ox to pull sleighs and the ox provide wool. Arctic tundra dwarves honor polar bears and do not hunt them, seeing them as peers in their land. They keep arctic lynx as guardians and hunting companions. They gather the lichen and other edible plants they can find and birch sap in Spring to make an alcoholic birch beer.
They dig into the earth as all dwarves do, going deep into the ground where it stays warmer than the frigid surface temperatures of the arctic or alpine tundra where they live. The entrances are carved from snow and ice and as a widely available material, they are known to destroy and reconstruct the entrances in honor of special occasions such as the appointing of a new leader. They hold annual ice carving competitions.