What do Dwarves eat?

[DoctorB]

In my campaign, the player characters just arrived iin the Dwarvenhome, a huge hollowed out mountain that serves as a colossal fortress and kingdom for the dwarves. One of my players brought up the problem of how the dwarves feed themselves. I thought of lots of mushrooms, and hardy crops on the mountainsides along with goats and other high altitude creatures. Perhaps they could have permanent daylight spells underground or mirrors to bring sunlight in from the surface.

So what do dwarves eat in your world? Do you think the ideas above are enough?

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[Furn_Darkside]

Salutations,

I follow a similar line of thought as you do, but I also make them big on the nightshade plants (tomato, tobacco, potato, eggplant, etc).

Also- they do a lot of trading with nearby races. They need to do something with all that mining/forging produces.

FD

 

[Hand of Evil]

Hydroponics - special caves designed to be a type of cannal of slow moving water. Shallow waterways with walkways and planters between them. The planters hold mushrooms and such, and in lighted caves normal grain stock or fruit trees. in the waterways fish and crayfish can be found. Waste from the dwarven city feeds into this system.

(this idea is based on a Mayian system - small area producing a lot)

In some places I have had dwarves build out onto hidden valleys, where they keep sheep, goats, lemmings, guinea pigs and such.

 

[Chimera]

In a world where many races live in caverns deep underground and never see the light of day, they probably don't rely on 'light' spells to grow 'surface' plants. That would require too much time and effort, and be outright trouble for some races.

Nope. In this sort of world, there would be hundreds and thousands of different varieties of edible fungii, molds, mushrooms and other dark-dwelling plants; none of which would be familiar to us. There would also be all manner of insects and small animals for food as well.

IMC (a couple of years ago), upon venturing deep underground to stamp out some Gibberlings that were tunneling up into the lower levels of a hidden settlement, my players stumbled into a vast cavern, some 6-800 feet wide, 2-300 feet tall and over a mile long, stepping down slowly into the distance. The whole thing was dimly lit by several varieties of bio-luminecent molds and fungi and the floor was covered with hundred of varieties of the same, some as big as trees, and many edible. Small creatures they had never seen before darted (or crawled) between the 'plants'.

 

[DoctorB]

Thanks for the cool ideas!
BTW, one friend of mine says his dwarves eat coal!

 

[Nopau]

Food Stuffs

I am sure there are more than enough food stuffs as mentioned above in caverns, but you must also thing a lot of stuff is imported as well. Such as water to the underground. Around Silvery moon, (FR) it is known that trades go to the underdark. But these items are also expensive and hard to comeby so only major clans might get dibs on stuff.

Nopau

 

[Tonguez]

A diet only needs two things - carbs an protien (fancy fungi are just bonus extras)

Insects and the huge variety of beasties found in caves and dungeons makes up for protein - so where does the carbs come from? - edible roots?

 

[fba827]

I actually addressed this in a game session once. The PCs were dining with the high dewrven council, etc. etc.

It was basically little subterraneous creatures. With the occasional odd root or fungal plant tossed in for variety.

I made up names for the little subterraneous creatures like "Krelg" and "ifshtans" and one of the dishes was called "Krelg mogumk" which the chef later translated to the PC's as Krelg intestines ;-)

 

[Hand of Evil]

A diet only needs two things - carbs an protien (fancy fungi are just bonus extras)

Insects and the huge variety of beasties found in caves and dungeons makes up for protein - so where does the carbs come from? - edible roots?

BEER, MEAD, ALE

 

[kkoie]

In the Crystal Shard Trilogy(that name right?) there was a scene where Bruenor Battlehammer and Drizzt had just killed some giants and if I remeber correctly, Bruenor was talking about how good it would be to stew the giants brains. So apparently Dwarves have some pretty hardcore ideas about cuisenne. If they eat giant brains, I immagine they'd eat just about anything else thats meat. I always got the impression that Dwarves are pretty heavy in the meat dept. as far as stuff to eat.