Tell me about dwarves in your world

Die_Kluge started a great series on other races, but he doesn't have dwarves in his campaign, so he's going to leave them out. So I'll continue the series for Dwarf, the other white meat....


Here's my take on Dwarves, known as the Bjorn in my game. The Genari are the gnomes in my game (go see the Gnome thread...).

The Bjorn were an agrarian society. They lived on their large mountainous island, in peace, following their various prophets. Then, one day, the Genari came. And with them, the chain gangs. The Genari enslaved the Bjorn, forcing them to dig into the mountains for ore. The Bjorn resisted. Secretly rebelled. One day, the Genari finally relinquished control of the Bjorn homeland. By then, that land had been reduced to a near-desert. Few plants grew there anymore. But the Bjorn had learned much from their masters. They knew how to mine, and how to fight. And they knew how to conquer others. And so they went out to sea, and expanded to other islands.

Slowly, they became as strong as the Genari. In time, they knew they could make the Genari pay, to return in kind, what they had done to them. The Genari had met a new race, humans they were called. From a land called Tarai. The Bjorn made certain to approach the humans and ally with them, to ensure that the balance of power would not tip to the Genari side.

When the Formians began to attack the other races, the humans gave aid, and turned the tide. When the humans in turn entered a war against the Baran'G, the Bjorn secretly returned the favor. The weapons from the Bjorm which had been stolen from the Genari years previously, couldn't save the humans from annhilation, but it let them fight their last. The Bjorn saw much in common with the humans, and much opportunity.

Janx

Mine are very standard but might be a little more global aware then other races. 3 campaigns ago the Axw od the Dwarven Lords was found and the dworf become the ruler of all dwarves uniting the clans. As happens with all artifacts it eventually was lost and the clans seperated but the good relations between them still holds true.

They're evil. Most of 'em, anyway. The evil ones have a kingdom (the analogue of the Scottish Highlands) taken by force from 'Britain' (the dwarven kingdom was formerly the northernmost province). They have the typically gnomish level of tech (never made sense to me why the metallurgist dwarves wouldn't have tech), at an Iron Kingdoms level. So needless to say, they're the most powerful country militarily speaking. They're a very seafaring people, unlike the typical dwarf. They have lots of ironclads and cannons.

There's another population of dwarves that are more typically DnD living under the desert dominating the interior of the continent. They were formerly weakened considerably by an onslaught of undead caused by a buttload of wild magic, but they're coming back. The evil nation was founded by followers of a heretic cast out of this nation.

The dwarves in my world, Shattered Skies, were created by the goddess of prophecy during a great war between the gods and the demons, because the elves, the first humanoids created, were too afraid to help in the battle, so it was going against the gods. She created them by squeezing drops of blood from the fingerless palm of the all-father (the fingers had been severed and made into the progenitors of the elven race), and each of the drops became a dwarf as it hit the ground, immediately joining in the fight. Because of this origin, the dwarves in my world are properly referred to as Zokh-dre, which means 'bloodborn' in their tongue. They have blood-red skin, and have a knack for prophecy and a burning hatred of all demons and devils (as well as combat bonuses against them rather than against goblins and giants). After the war, the greatest fiends were bound into crystal prisons along with the greatest heroes of the dwarven race, who accepted this fate to ensure that the fiends could never escape. Their society is organized around massive citadels known as holdfasts (each bearing the name of the hero bound into the crystal there), each built to house the crystal prisons of the demon lords and archdevils. Apart from that, they are fairly traditional, as they are great miners and stone and metal-workers, and have one of the highest levels of technology among the races of the world. [Shameless plug alert] A much more complete account of their origin can be found in the fourth post of my brand-new story hour.

Well! I never....

I intended to do the dwarf thread.. you just have to be more patient.

Wow, a buttload of wild magic, huh? Is there really any other kind??

I think the thing that strikes me most about dwarves and half-orcs in general is just how stereotypical they are. Almost every dwarf I've ever played with was some dour, grumpy, bearded mass that liked to curse, (often speaking with a heavy Scottish accent), drinks lots of mead, and kill lots of things.

And half-orcs are generally are foul, loathsome, boorish, retarded things that like to speak mostly in sentence fragments and are most often found in the "barbarian" category.

Aside from the fact that I'm sick of seeing, fighting, running orcs and goblins, I have eliminated them from my campaign. Thus, conveniently removing half-orcs. Even in a normal campaign half-orcs should be so rare that it would almost be unheard of to hear of one, given the nature of how one *makes* a half-orc. Orcs don't strike me as big sex fiends looking to mate with human women. I think that is pretty much reserved for Martians from B-movies.

Dwarves are a bit more complex, but I just don't like the stereotype personality. I feel like someone can get much more mileage, and much more freedom of expression out of a gnome, and the two are closely related enough that I figure I could just easily replace the dwarf.

I don't know.. maybe someone in this thread will so inspire me with their concept of dwarf that I'll put them back in.

Well in my King Arthur campaign, I made dwarves more fey-like, so they get Dex instead of Con. Also, since there are no dwarven exotic weapons and no orcs, dwarves effectively lose some of their bonuses. By King Arthur's times they have almost died out, but can still be found (I have one Dwarven Fool (a jester type) in a Baron's court that the party has encountered so far). Dwarves end up being thinner, but are subject to Greed and Violence (elves are subject to Cowardice and Dishonesty; Humans, of course, are capable of *anything*). But they are not found in mines or mountains, and there is no mithral or adamantine in this world. So they are not the metal/stone geniuses of other campaigns.

Hi-

the Dwarves in my FR campaign are more along the lines of hard working and industriel types, like the Germans. They are a dour lot but when comes to their festival's, they let their hair down so to speak and step out.
Most Dwarves are Minors, Mage's and Armorers and have many clans scattered mainly around Silverymoon. They love their country music too.


Scott

Doomed - like this?

Hi-

Oh my gawd! thats perfect!



Scott

The hill dwarves in my homebrew are a dislocated people, forced out of their mountain homes into a large, heavily wooded swamp by a legion of demons and undead. Since then, they've become a water/river folk people, ferrying people through the swamp on flat-bottomed skiffs. Naturally, this means that most of the typical dwarfy skills have been replaced by ones more inclined towards operating boats and living in a swamp (stonecunning became swampcunning, which allows the dwarves to gauge depth of water and spot natural hazards on the waterways, instead of a bonus to Appraise for metal items, they get a bonus on, IIRC, Rope Use). As I think about it more, I'm beginning to think they might work as bounty hunters, too, with some skills similar to the thief-takers in the Wheel of Time. Of course, even given this, they still have the same personality (dour, grim, serious, and orderly), although for different reasons.

There might be subraces of dwarves present, but I never got near that issue in the one PbP I ran in the world, and now I'm thinking that it might just be one subrace (the mountain dwarves and duergar would be the same thing, likely).

Nick