I'm reminded of that meme about a dwarf merchant selling what he considers to be "shoddy" merchandise to humans because dwarfs expect tools to last several generations, but because dwarfs live so much longer than humans the customers don't notice.
They can just commute, go from the underground to the surface and then back again. But it does make dwarves lifestyle a bit more like leafcutter ants than most people might be comfortable with.
alternative: dvarves developed from a big mining community that fled underground from a great catastrophy that made them flee underground. and by fate or dumb luck there they found a huge natural cave system with a huge lake and fish. cultivating fish and fungi they survived and eventually thrived after several generations during which they reconnected with the surface to trade for things they needed. example setting: khoras😅
Sounds a lot like how I run Kobolds in my games lol. Cultivating different mushrooms and fungi for food and building material while trading gems and ore with travelers, if they don't attack the Kobolds.
@@koljaleffek7290 That is how Warhammer Dwarves came about, they were originally humans that were forced underground to survive the rise of chaos, before the Ulthuuan vortex and Albion sorted things out mostly.
@@numbskullsncrossbones They are not much far from each other.. when I took note of that I replaced dwarves with kobolda on a world I made for a campaign setting.. When you set apart that one is strpng and favors a strong defense, while the other is agile and favors a cunning defense... what is left? Two races that live deep underground, are very able craftsmen and awesome miners.. and civilizations that places the group above the individual.. sure, dwarves shift to add value to an individual that proves their worth.. while the kobold double down on "the many above the one" unless one realy prooves being more valuable as individual then a cog.. ..in that sense, clan or warren, now we have Tasha's, the choice of grumpy stone-hard defense.. or of the witty clever agile.. became less a choice of race, and more a choice of character.. imho.. blurring those two closer together.
Dwarf Fortress does this well. Food sources are animal based or require surface crops for large scale, underground crops are predominantly mushrooms and still requires infrastructure to move water to fertilize soil, huge deforestation is required until a civilization can build magma forges to alleviate the need for charcoal and can grow titan shrooms to replace the need for wood as a building material. Once the civilization puts down roots in the soil they often rely heavily on trading not to starve as they begin to produce trade goods from the metals they extract from the earth. Minecarts are used heavily to alleviate the burden of extra mouths needed for hauling dwarves who have to move the stone that's broken from their quarries. Often players build massive stone structures above their fortresses to use the insane surplus of stone they have from mining.
This is all great also Ferun has another major point in that underground magic flows allow many kinds of fungi to grow without sunlight or new food much like the IRL radiotrophic fungi found in Chernobyl
@@keropnw3425 Wood in that game is used to power forges by way of making charcoal. It's also used to make a number of different types of furniture. Stone has problems in that its weight is so high that it makes it impractical for many uses, and in many cases its weight overcomes its strength and makes things prone to breaking. Dwarf fortress allows you to use metals instead of wood for many things, but wood is renewable, light, and cheap. It's very useful as a construction material.
In DF world generation, there are also several dwarves that go on to join other civlizations, becoming simple surface farmers with the humans, or marauders with the goblins. Many dwarves stray from the typical mining and smithing archetypes and instead become scholars or even necromancers!
I've always liked the idea that a Dwarf can metabolize alcohols more completely than the others. Dwarves can literally survive on alcohol alone as long as the alcohol *is* dwarvish in origin. They have special brewing techniques and special underground crops that their dwarven ales, spirits, and wines are equivalent to soups, stews, and broths to them and them alone. The other folk can't metabolize the alcohols properly so they can't get access to the nutrients through the alcohol solvents like they can through water solvents. The higher the alcohol content, the more nutrients they can fit in it. Dwarven spirits are like pemmican and hardtack. They trade for what foods they can with the metals they have and the way they preserve that food is through their fermentation, brewing, and distilling methods. Since high proof alcohols can be stored near indefinitely, it's one of the reasons dwarves are known to be "stubborn" or great defenders. Their cave systems are hard to assault as you basically can only assault the front gate and they're hard to siege because of their massive food stockpiles. A dwarf society is used to waiting out their opponents. Why would they negotiate when they can see your food and supplies are dwindling while their 5th and 6th food stores and wine cellars haven't even been opened in centuries. This "stubbornness" bleeds over into their culture too. Dwarves have a reputation for having strong constitutions and being resistant to poisons because most substances that are poisonous to humans are alcohol based which to them is just food. A poison might be a foul taste or cause them to think something is wrong with the flavor profile of their alcohol. They consume a variety poisonous substances like humans do, having their own versions of caffeinated and alcoholic drinks and drugs for feasts, celebrations, and daily consumption. Some of these would easily kill a human, some don't have any effect since humans and the like lack the enzymes and chemical pathways to suffer/gain the effects. Finally, while dwarves appreciate the brewing techniques of humans and other top-siders, to a dwarf, it's nothing but empty calories and junk food. A true dwarvish ale, spirit, or wine is a world class meal in a bottle to them. Or at least as good as that classically home cooked hearty meal. Thanks for helping me think this through a bit further than the fun little quirk about dwarves!
In my setting, the dwarves are known to have human cities built atop their greatest of holds, acting in symbiosis with one another. The idea that dwarves are gregarious traders and unmatched diplomats fits the theme in my game as a setting where humans, dwarves, and Orcs stand together as a united front against the Fae. The idea that dwarves are taciturn and socially unfriendly can he thrown out the window, as dwarves are a proud people who will show off their beautiful works to anyone who wish to see, which is most people. What's more, dwarven "Open Holds," featuring pit, open faced, or canyon-like mines that serve as cities for them, with more agrarian cultures of dwarves, fits incredibly well, especially Brewing Dwarves who focus on producing alcohol for their people, which they also trade in. There's likely mahor cultures of dwarven druids as a result. Dwarven gods of craftsmenship, secrets, and battle are going to still be common, but now there is a reason for god of friendship, of trade, and of dwarves in general. There is one group of creatures that also dwell underground I think you neglected: Dragons. Far from being enemies, I have to imagine that Dwarves have very good relations with dragons, trading their beautiful craft for protection, possibly enlisting kobolds as miners so that they can dedicate more dwarfpower to the crafting of gems and metals into works of art.
the very notion of a dwarven hold under a full on city is a fascinating combo even from a purely strategic level, if the city is besieged, or otherwise threatened, the city's population could seek refuge for a time in the hold, which would be the ultimate fallback position should the walls atop fail
The dragon angle is actually really important and could be the thing that allowed dwraven society to fully go underground. Need fire? Dragons! Need fertilizer? Dragon poop Protection? Dragons!
Yes, I always thought it odd that Sapient dragons would always be hostile & short term minded. Why attack a Dwarf Hold to steal the Riches & then just sit on the Loot that now can't grow? A smart Dragon if Evil would just to do a minor slaughter and establish itself as an Overlord with Dwarven Slaves who continue to dig out the gold etc & craft the goodies the Dragon loves & could be relatively quite light-handed with it's rule as the Dwarves are left unmolested to dig to their heart's content, but just now being subject to paying a Tax/Tribute to the Dragon. A even smarter Evil Dragon though would make a Treaty/Pact with the Dwarves. You Dwarves pay me a Protection Fee & I won't destroy your Hold or enslave you. A good Dragon might go further instead of threatening the Dwarves might just offer an Alliance & make the positive offer "Pay me some Gold etc & I'll guard your hold against the Goblins etc.
I respect your effort and creativity. But I personally wouldn't enjoy playing in that setting since my favorite Races are generally Elves and they have some connections to the Fey.
15:34 dwarves could also potentially domesticate bats as a source of food. It's certainly more realistic I find than them eating trolls. You know the big terrifying creatures that can pulp a dwarf with one or two blows
I don’t buy it. Even with the wings, a cave bat is about as big as a large mouse, and much smaller than a rat. A dwarf would have to butcher a dozen or so bats for one decent meal. That’s a lot of guano to give up and a lot of insects left uncaught for a very small return. Trolls are certainly dangerous, but not as dangerous as elephants, which humans have domesticated for millennia.
@@HelotOnWheels I dunno trolls can use tools in some settings which makes them seem more dangerous. Also the idea is the bats would be raised like chickens I don't imagine it would be hard to raise meal worms or something for them to eat. Also if this is fantasy there could be giant bats on top of the real life types so bat meat farms could be a thing
ah, but these dwarves wouldn't be farming the trolls on an individual (lone dwarf) basis - it would be more like handling elephant bulls in musth(sp), dangerous but useful.
I always took the D&D mountain/hill dwarf split to imply a social differentiation between the dwarves that live and work mostly underground, and those who live underground, but work and trade on the surface, interacting more with other peoples.
Makes sense. All societies depend on trade to survive, even the elves. The subterranean dwarves would trade with surface dwellers for food and other supplies in exchange for ores and precious gems.
In my world I went with three tiers of Dwarves. Mountain Dwarves live higher up on Mountains primarily living underground or on Cliff-Faces. Hill Dwarves live in the High Mountain Valleys, High Foothills, High Forest Belt & along the upper reaches of the Rivers & beside Lakes. Forest Dwarves dwell in the Low Mountain Valleys, Low Foothills, Lower Forest Belt & along the lower Mid-River Reaches and moved out into Flatland/Lowland Forests along lower reaches of the rivers where this branch broke away & developed to become known as Gnomes.
It's been pointed out that the general Dwarven resistance to poisons means their diet should consist of some things that humans consider poisonous (like how Humans can consume alcohol and capsaicin where other species realistically consider those as toxic). As such, we can get even weirder with food sources.
nightshade based sauces and salads with hemlock would fit right in to dwarven cuisine. I'm reminded of the Tumblr post suggesting dwarves would serve men and other races very very bland food out of fear they couldn't eat it: "should we salt it for a bit of flavour? what of course not, squishy humans can't eat rocks!"
Here's why Elves have diffused more and dwarves haven't. It's because elves are Hot. Everybody makes a myriad of fanfiction spin-offs in vain pursuit of hotness. Dwarves are Cool. Coolness is objective, it is unchanging, like the stone of dwarven cities. Dwarf does not need to change. Dwarf is perfect.
I'm shocked that elves haven't dispersed more given all that. An individual can live through geological ages but may have one kid, if that. And they won't utterly dominate their world despite all they can do in that time, even by accident.
The dwarf is so perfect and unchanging that all the scorching world of Athas. The world that changed elves into sleazy long-legged desert traders, And halflings into cannibals, could do to them was remove their beards.
@@iivin4233it usually helps that most stories seem to make elves have an extremely hard time reproducing or seeming to be somewhere on the asexual spectrum. Keeps there numbers down so that elf populations are stable
In Norse mythology, dwarves are basically a subspecies of dark elves since they are derived from the same origin. However, the dark elves of Norse mythology should not be confused with the Drow of the northern Scottish islands, who are of the same origin as trolls and draugrs and is counted among the Aos Si, or fairy folk.
@@majesticgothitelle1802 Rather, they are spirits of the dead ones in physical bodies. They're smart, they're cunning, and there are two types of them; land draugrs and sea draugrs, the physical spirit of one who died in battle and the physical spirit of one who drowned at sea.
@@danielmalinen6337 ain't all mythology undead maintain their souls. In myths from Europe medieval and Asian. Ghosts are tensible shift to intensible, invisible or wisp as well. and able to get a ghost pregnant by a living humans male in Asian myth too. Zombies maintain their conscience, sentience, and soul but are driven by emotions, well, or their souls come back to possess their own dead body by the mistreatment of the dead without the need to feed. Vampires are animated corpses that need to feed on the life essence to live and bathe in the blood to restore and preserve their body.
@@danielmalinen6337 I just wondered why in myth so many men are impregnation the undead from ghosts from Japan, zombie from Norse and vampires from British.
@@majesticgothitelle1802 Don't want to be impolite, but it is impossible to be sure what you mean, precisely. Your English is barely comprehensible. From what I did understand you mistake a lot o things: 1. Not all undead maintain their souls. Plenty of mindless apparitions in our myths. 2. Zombie are from African and more specifically Voodoo origin. They aren't driven by emotions as they are slaves to the Warlock. In many versions they also lack conscience and sentience. 3. In European myths we don't have impregnated ghosts. Only the other way around the ghostly creatures impregnate women. 4. Can't vouch for Japan yokai, but zombie aren't Norse and vampires aren't British. And I'm pretty sure you cannot impregnate them. Hope that helps? I'm honestly not sure at all.
This brings the problem of many troglophylic ecosystems, simply put it goes against thermodynamics, you need a source of energy to fuel a system, normally the sun, if not the life inside caves is small, blind and scarce mostly close to the surface to feed but otherwise…yeah they survive on whatever trickles down from the surface on glacial metabolisms
@@elskaalfhollr4743 Yes and no, there are a few places on earth where life will continue to exist if the sun was to just disappear and the earth turned into an igloo. Volcanic vents and geysers create ecosystems independent of the sun. The idea of Dwarfs harvesting that heat to create farms for unique crops isn't that far fetched.
@@deanreaver3268 it is tho, thermal vents are underwater and even there they are deep, rare and dangerous and the ecosystems around them span very few meters from them whilst being very delicate; even then most organisms still survive off of detritus from the upper layers. On dry land you encounter far more problems. First off, unless you are living on an active volcano (where constant seismic activity makes mining dangerous af) you would need to be ready to dig tens of kilometers down, hauling all of that loose material by hand and breaking bedrock made of igneous and metamorphic rocks that are super hard, even if you get to the point where temperatures rise, you would need to manually pump air since oxygen doesn’t reach that far, and besides you would suffer from toxic gases coming out of the mantle, you’d be throwing thousands of lives into the project in the off chance that some mold learns to eek a living there and isn’t too toxic to humanoids
I have a story concept where Dwarves are actually more insect-like and have a selective Acid based powers to melt the stone. They used Fungi to make a moonshine like Brew.
Love the guano and chimneys ideas. I’ll point out that my Pre-Columbian ancestors, the Nahua, worked out the issue of mountain agriculture by settling in a glacial lake and dotting it floating gardens called chinampas while having elaborate dams and canals to filter out waste and bring in snow melt and rain water from the surrounding peaks. Maybe dwarves have elaborate hydroponics in natural lakes AND artificial lakes made by pumping groundwater out of their mines. Volcanic ash is also an excellent natural fertilizer, so dwarves could hoard any of that for farming too.
A Venice-like Dwarven trading Coalition with stone-built City-States would be pretty cool ngl. (especially if it was organized like the Hanseatic League)
Gotta say; figuring out how a Dwarven Society would function in a Fantasy setting gets way easier when you remember that Tolkien was an Englishman living in England during the tail-end of the industrial revolution. Anyone who grew up in England and read Tolkien's descriptions of dwarves would immediately think of towns like Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and cities like Wolverhampton. Areas so renowned for their coal mining and magnificent steel works that the entire area is still known to this day as 'the black country' due to all the soot stains and blacksmithing residue coating the roads of the towns and the faces of the workforce living there. I don't know if Tolkien officially intended to make dwarves a one-to-one exact image of this region. But growing up in England certainly influenced his work. There's a real and strong legacy of the Midlands of England having a proud and stoic nature (almost dwarfish nature), happily sending most of their men into the mountains to dig and mine, which turned the Black Country into the economic powerhouse that fuelled the empire. (Until Maggie Thatcher closed all the mines and gutted all industry in the region at least, which is why the people there still hate her to this day. I only bring that up as a source of inspiration for budding Dungeon Masters - a plot point you could consider using if you want a reason for conflict/ an inciting incident for your fantasy setting. I won't dwell on Thatcher any further.) Main point is; most British readers of LOTR envisioned the dwarves and dwarven society as pretty much identical to the towns and cities of the Black Country. Everybody lived primarily above ground like in every other place in England, with overland farms and quaint little villages dotting the picturesque and beautiful countryside. The Dwarves were good at mining purely because they happened to be shorter than other folk (allowing for smaller tunnels and less wastage building man-sized tunnels) and because they had a proud tradition of specialising in it. The men left their cosy overland homes in the morning, mined in the mountains during the day, then returned home to their overland towns and drank the night away in cosy pubs and came home to sleep with their families in cosy thatched cottages. (I think I said cosy abut 3 times in that sentence 😛) No need for figuring out how dwarven society would function if they permanently lived entirely underground. As far as the original readers of Tolkien saw it, they didn't! 😝
While I agree with this, there's also the Hobbit and the Kingdom under the Mountain, which is pretty explicitly a fully fledged fortress city. However, even this one has a sister city right across the river, and another human settlement of Laketown further downstream. Dwarves never really lived in isolation in Tolkien's books. I don't remember if Moria had any such settlements or farmland mentioned, but they did have extensive trade.
@@krinkrin5982 cheers for the response :). You're right - Moria and the Kingdom-under-the-mountain were exceptions. But they're exceptions that prove the rule. I suppose I should rephrase my point to 'no dwarf societies ever lived exclusively underground with no support from overland farms AND thrived.' Both Moria and the Kingdom-under-the-Mountain were beset upon and felled by ancient evils from beyond the myths of time. That can't be a co-incidence. You can interpret Tolkien's message about the dwarves as saying "here's what happens when a society wilfully isolates itself from the rest of the world, becomes obsessed with digging the mountains for unfathomable gold and riches, then discovers bad things as they delve too deep and find either the Balrog or the Arkenstone." Both of those things either lead directly to their civilisation's demise, or inadvertently cause the people in charge to be cursed with the exceptional greed and paranoia of dragon sickness, ... something that makes them easy prey when an actual dragon to come knocking😝) Those two Dwarven nations were on their own when they faced their truly huge and existential threats. Because they'd isolated themselves to live entirely under mountains with pretty much 100% only dwarven populations. That meant they didn't have the diplomatic clout to summon an army of allies to help them, unlike with Gondor and Rohan, or the Elves and Men of the last alliance. Conversely the dwarves of a third dwarven civilisation - the Iron Hills - actually held out against Sauron during the war of the ring. Precisely 'because' the dwarves of that nation hadn't abandoned the world and hidden themselves away in mine-shafts. That was Tolkien's message with the dwarves. The Iron Hill dwarves still live as their ancestors did in overland villages alongside humans, which meant they found it easy to unite their neighbours together and call for aid from other lands and lead a fight back against Sauron's legions in the north. TLDR Grungeon is right. The current understanding of Fantasy dwarves is pretty much non-sensical. Even Tolkien's dwarves only thrived when they had settlements primarily above ground. Going full-on-'underground only' was the thing that led to their doom. Cheers again for the response
I always saw the Dwarven underground "Cities" as Holds ie Strong-Hold Redoubts. The Central Main City/Hold might well be the centre of Rule, Religion, Mining & Crafting, but the Main Hold & it's satellite Deep Holds would be supported by Holds closer to the surface/outside edges of the Mountain Range & those in turn would be supported by the Foresters in the Mountain's Forest Belt, by Herders in the Upper Valleys, by Crop Farmers in the lower Valleys, by the Dwarven Traders & Fisher-Men around the Lakes, along the Rivers & by the Mountainous Coast Fishing Villages & Trader Ports. It's often overlooked in fantasy that many Coastal areas are Mountainous thus giving Dwarves access to the sea for fishing, raiding, piracy & trade.
@@liamscott1905 Good point, you are right. 'Most' of the mines were already closed/ already tapped out or generally on their way out, that is true. So I'll re-phrase what I said. Thatcher closed all the 'remaining' mines in the UK, and all the communities who still relied on the remaining mines as the main source of their wealth lost it all. They were tenuously clinging onto their jobs and income and way of life, and suddenly it was all ripped away from them with nothing to replace it. All the money and focus from here on in was handed to the southerners in London, to the 'yuppies' and the bankers. At least that's the narrative of those who live in the North/ the Midlands. I'll admit that I personally didn't live through those times. I'm only reporting what my family witnessed. Bizarrely as well, I am a leftie with environmental concerns. I actually cheer on the closure of the coal mines, because I'm glad we finally moved away from coal as such a polluting fuel source. After many long decades of researching the topic, I've come to believe that it wasn't the closure of the mines itself that was the ultimate problem. It was the lack of a replacement industry. The people who'd specialised in mining for generations and generations weren't offered any meaningful state funded re-training scheme, and there was no other major industry the hordes of workers could suddenly jump to. For me personally, The issue isn't that all the remaining mines were closed. It's the suddenness of it, the lack of after-support or after-care for the job-stricken families, the fact that whole generations were suddenly left to the wolves and forced to fend for themselves, while the comfy London stockbrokers and day-traders received all the support and financial backing from the government. Even that last bit isn't too bad. I do believe that in the long run Britain did have to modernise, and having a strong financial service sector isn't an inherently bad thing... ... ... it's just the timing of it that rubs salt in the wound for the long neglected people in the midlands and north. And yes, if you think this tension does sound very similar to the works of George r. r. Martin, where northern 'Starks' are in constant contention with southern 'Lannisters', then yes you're right. It seems Martin knows his British history very well. The north and south of England have long been feuding, the mine closures were another slap in the face. Ultimately it's all history now. Great fodder for d&d campaign storylines. (edited for grammar and spelling)
For sure. Although some liberties are taken in terms of food, especially. 'Cave wheat' is certainly one way to do it, but I think it's worth considering other ways without inventing underground magic crops.
Consider: Dwarves as sailors. I mean, think about it. They're bearded, rough and bawdy, like drinking, love treasure and even tend to talk kinda like pirates. They're also hard workers, expert craftsmen, and technologically advanced. It would make sense for dwarves with access to the sea to quickly figure out how to build ships. Then maybe they start out as viking-style raiders, but later end up forming vast trading empires. That way they could bring in vast amounts of food, wood and other necessities to the dwarves down in the mines. And then maybe some of them decide they'd rather just attack other ships and take all their stuff.
You have to remove the one dimensional aspect that is attached to so many fictional races. In my game, dwarves live above ground in massive stone cities. They have farmers and hunters. All societies have to have a wide variety of skills to survives.
I went with surface cities for the dwarves too. Originally they lived in caves, but once the surface caves are filled up, there just wouldn’t be any point in digging more homes out of the ground rather than building on the surface. I may make a different dwarven people someday in a different mountain range who actually do live exclusively underground, simply because dragons and other aerial predators make the surface too dangerous to build on.
Oh, lots of ways, starting with the fact that three quarters of them are male and they're thus polyandrous, which has huge cultural effects. Darkvision makes a big difference too; fewer windows needed and troches needed for interior illumination, and two different words for "darkness" depending on whether it's in or out of darkvision range. A natural allergy to mana makes many of them unable to become spellcasters. That's just in my world; there's lots of room for creativity with dwarves. @@georgeuferov1497
Most fantasy settings that I know, had the dwarves created by a "god" who also helped them establish their civilization to start with. One universe that has some dwarves living on the surface for farming, is the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. Another possibility that you didn't mention is that most of the dwarves might actually live in farming villages located in hidden or remote locations within a large mountain range. As a result the dwarves that are most commonly encountered are the ones from the caves. An interesting thought about a Dwarven mountain is that people who have been around a volcano might mistake it for one and vice versa.
My dwarves almost never have pure Dwarven societies. The local dwarves, as in the ones the players will run into, have a large contingent of humans living in their above ground area. They exchange farm labor for a very safe place to stay and a high degree of autonomy. The dwarves don't care what they do as long as the food shipments come in, and the borders are highly mountainous, and the passes are guarded by Dwarven soldiers who are better outfitted than the neighboring kingdoms knights. The dwarves themselves are very highly regimented. All Dwarves work a 10 year stint the mines in their youth. They all start by checking tunnels for gas leaks fungus or signs of Orcs (also prolific tunnelers). The women mostly continue this practice, whereas the men almost always get into the hard rock breaking work, allowing them to build strength. Not all dwarves stay in the mines. In fact, quite a few don't, but it teaches them important skills to survive in the underground. Dwarves innately have the ability to see through stone as easily as they can see through the dark. This allows them to see fault lines and weak points in tunnel structure as well as detect pockets of ore and gems.
A couple of questions. 1. Ten years sounds like a long time as a stint, especially during the youth. Is it more of a cultural regimen that you're expected to do, or is it mandatory by law? 2. How high is their degree of autonomy? Is it self-governance as long as they pay taxes/dividends on their trade and produce or anything like that? 3. When you say most dwarves usually continue the practice of being in the mine regardless of what role that manifests in, do they do this coinciding with other professions or is it more of a specialty?
@inwit594 1. Ten years is a relatively short stint by Dwarven standards. It's the equivalent of doing some work for the family business over summer break. It takes dwarves about 30 years to grow into adulthood, and they'll live for 200 years or so, and the time in the mines usually starts in their late teens or early 20s. It's not mandatory, but it's generally thought that not doing so makes for a weak Dwarf. 2. So the farmers are set up such that they are paying taxes in the form of food and other grown things and receive protection from the Dwarven army. Non-dwarves are not required to serve in the army, though some do, and most communities are a mix of humans and dwarf. As long as obligations are met, the communities are self-governing and only hear from the monarch during harvest season. 3. What I meant was that the 10 years in the mine is used to teach them skills that are beneficial to living underground, like telling at a glance how stable the tunnel they're in is how to spot gas leaks and the signs that orcs are in an area, it also means most male dwarves have a pretty strong build by the time they reach adulthood. Practically speaking, only a very small percentage of dwarves stay as miners after their 10 years, but all dwarves could do the work of a miner if they choose to.
@@alexandercross9081in terms of detecting gas leaks, would it be possible for dwarves to develop receptors to actually smell methane as foul like we do sulfur compounds, making it so they might perceive gas leaks like we do without having to add additional gases? it could also explain some of their distaste for agriculture, as livestock animals would be known to create the most foul of scents to them.
1. Long lived 2. Multi-generational common goal (treasure) 3. Strong Engineering skills learned over time 4. Trade for needed materials, foods in exchange for lesser metals and processed goods 5. Anti social behavior most prevalent with outsiders, they are simply Xenophobic 6. Consider historic mining, smelting technology (Rome through Medieval) 7. They are a magical race in a fantasy environment, no stranger than tree dwelling Elves.
Dwarves can be more sensibly written. But for sure, elves living for millenia and remaining at the same level of technology and maintaining the same human-like psychology is much weirder.
Reimagining a fantasy setting where Dwarves were literally THE inventors of mining, metalworking etc is very cool. Having them be the first and most advanced inventors (alongside Gnomes if you include them in your setting) just makes all the sense in the world.
Sometimes but a sentence spoken in the right context is so inspirational! A dwarf using it's small stature to hide in cracks and hope their predators wont follow? I directly see this going well with dwarves being descending from humans! on the open plains where humans traditionally were to run, a clan of humans instead opted to hide, their stamina turned to perhaps magic, an elemental fortitude. a crack in the earth getting dug out into a home, earthen walls slowely rising around them as excess material has to be brought somewhere. a collaps between earthen crack homes creating a hole to develop wider and wider untill a town could be formed... With the traditional dwarven mountains no longer something that has been dug out from an already present mountain but rather created then and there...
My gripe with dwarves are mostly just their nonsensical use of axes. That is a tool that is completely useless in the natural environments and yet people always depict them with those weapons.
if their weapons are made for fighting other dwarves in their mines or cities, they'll have to fight heavily armored opponents in enclosed environments and low- or no-light conditions so they can't use: ranged weapons, large weapons especially if they must be swung, or weapons with low penetration that mostly leaves only axes, picks, hammers, maces, daggers and maybe spears
I disagree. While an axe isn't especially useful for mining, it's a much more effective weapon than a pick or hammer, particularly against unarmored foes (such as the orcs or goblins that dwarves would traditionally run into), with a sharp blade that enables you to slice through multiple foes in rapid succession, while also being a small blade that fits nicely in close quarters (the best place for a dwarf, given that a short stature makes you well-suited for close quarters combat) Dwarves, being flush in metals and likely experienced in preparation from how much planning it takes to mine successfully, would almost certainly design a tool exclusively for combat given time. This tool quite reasonably becomes the axe in my mind. Axes, then, are to dwarves what swords and spears are to humans. A weapon, not a tool. Though as I said, they're the kind of folk to have a diverse armory, and while the axe may be one weapon a dwarf may wield when in dangerous cave tunnels, an experienced dwarf warrior will bring whatever weapon best serves the situation. It just so happens that the axe
@@emirwattabor6991 Yeah for tunnel fighting I can see dwarves definitely using shields and spears and basically filling the tunnel with sharp pointy death. Axes also make sense for the reasons you stated as well as being able to be used to chop wood when outside of combat which I think fits the practical mind of a dwarf and means one less thing they have to carry
The Dwarven book for Pathfinder 2e, HighHelm, did go into some of the issues you mentioned and addressed them. Notably having a concept that even if I am not playing in pathfinder I adore. And that are dwarven druids who are take care of various multicolor fungi that help with regulating oxygen and well making it easy to breath underground to the point that even if they had to close their entry to the surface they could breath well for years if not decades. In terms of cusine, I like to imagine my dwarves with mountainous cuisines. So your standrd germanic Dwarf might have something like Alpine Cuisine, or maybe Norwegian if they are near the coast. But other cultures of dwarves could have cuisine inspired by Incan, Tibetan, or Uralic, or even native american(from the rocky mountains area) also could be there. That could even be a rp detail of a visiting dignitary from one of these lands. You still have the whole mountain theme but just by referencing food you can reference different cultures. And I do think that there would be dwarven farmers, herders and the like. I see not just the interior of the mountain being part of the dwarven city but the exterior. In a more germanic inspired city, Goats would be the animal of choice. In this society I see dwarves having a special relationship with goats, after all, tough and burly and more than a little bit grumpy short creatures describes both dwarves and goats. I do love your idea of them being friends with bats though. I think I will include that. For technology, Dwarves have often been shown to be technological advanced by a medieval level, some even approaching clockpunk or steampunk levels of invention. So the various technologies that you mention probably are there.
"Huge infrastructure is set up to allow sunlight underground" yes yes yes mirrors!! Huge mirror arrays on or between mountaintops which, during daylight hours, focus sunlight into tunnels that, kinda similarly to optic fiber, direct that light into the underground city. It would of course be made with setting-appropriate materials, like those high-melting-point legendary metals. Could be the light is distributed to farms specifically, or diffused through series of lenses at the top of the city that re-scatter the light and shine it everywhere equally, essentially working as an underground sun. Or maybe mirrors cover the entire cavern ceiling to distribute it more evenly, so instead of a sun they'd have the whole ceiling light up in a glow. I don't have any societies that are completely underground, but it could be a legendary world wonder type thing in a large mining city. They would need to figure out some way to get rid of heat though, and even then the equilibrium temperature might still be way higher than your average city at that latitude. These are mountains though, so if there's a rain shadow they can collect the huge amount of rainwater on the side opposite to it and use it as a heatsink, and maybe there's a famously hot lake on the leeward side formed by their dumping of this water. I'm already in love with this idea :D Edit: oof there I go being hasty again and commenting before I got to where you specifically mention mirrors xP Yet another edit: I remembered now that the Dwemer in The Elder Scrolls had an artificial sun in at least one city, Blackreach. Theirs however doesn't work with mirrors, it produces its own light, presumably by some mechanism rooted in Tonal Architecture (that's on the weirder side of TES lore and I'm not super familiar with it, other than it can do some wild stuff and apparently the Thu'um is a rudimentary application of the same... I guess magic system at the lack of a better term).
Great idea! By coincidence, the dwarves of my world are known as better trappers than hunters, and they devised a basilisk trap that works by suddenly confronting the basilisk with a mirror. That could be because they were already making lots of mirrors to direct sunlight into caves. And your dwarves perhaps could also use mirror traps for killing basilisks, or perhaps even concave mirrors for heat weapons (Archimedes supposedly did that at the siege of Syracuse).
14:00 I'm now imagining a dwarven keep doing what teremites do having lots of little holes in the top of their spire that they fill or open to regulate temperature and airflow and since these are dwarves they could manage that with a series of door controls and levers a bit like dwarf fortress
i've had an idea for an older race of bog dwarfs which use the older method of using bog ore to get iron. They'd need to be a bit taller since they'd be in a bog and since they'd be lacking in other ores they'd have less to trade so may need to be more self reliant.
here's my idea for why Dwarves love alcohol so much. Since one of the core things Dwarves are known for is poison resistance, and alcohol is a type of poison, a Dwarf would need to drink a lot more to have the same effect it would have on a human.
Tinker Gnomes could invent a hydroponic system of agricultural production for subterranean communities. Grow lights could be produced magically or via geothermal powered electricity
If dwarves end up using their urine to produce gunpowder (or at least did at one point for their proto-gunpowder), might this be some motivation for them to develop a heavy-drinking culture (as they're often portrayed)?
Maybe. Alcohol is also highly flamable and a good weapon in a pitch as well as a easy way to make torches which allow easy flame carryablility. With high amount of labour and cave in problems giving high stress, it is also a stress relief. Good alcohol is also a sign of nobility and water souces might be infected. Also alcohol is good for long expeditions and storing food purposes as well as medical sterilazation needs. Social side to alcohol is also important. As such alcohol is essential to survival, social interaction and mental health. Making gunpowder can be another reason but it is hardly the only one. Have more alcohol and do not worry which one you should choose it to use as.
Honestly, Dwarf Fortress's dwarves kinda fit a lot of these ideas. They're prolific traders, have domesticated numerous cave creatures and edible fungi, and as a mountainhome establishes itself dwarves will settle agrarian suburbs on the surface nearby.
solved this by accident in my campaign. wanted to cut down on the number of races so i made hobbits and dwarves the same thing. short people obsessed with their hobbies and good food/drink. surface dwarves (hobbits) do the farming, subterranean dwarves do the mining. the classic tropes remain intact, but they're a single society with most industries covered.
in my D&D setting, the oldest dwarven societies have long since depleted their mines, thus having to heavily develop their surface-industries, as well as developing high-magic economy around mining expeditions into the Elemental Earthplane requiring years of planning with divination and conjuration to survey where to open portals and predict how long they have to extract precious minerals before infinity-sized tectonic plates randomly shuffle around.
I am currently working on a setting in which dwarves are the natural progression of stocky ape-like primate ancestors, and elves mirror them in being the natural progression of limber flexible and athletic lemur-like ancestors. One was forced to live underground to avoid the apex predators of their world, (dragons, etc) naturally growing shorter, stronger, heavier, and harder working where the other was forced into the protection of an area dominated by exceptionally large trees with an especially dense canopy. Among many other details of course.
@@haeilsey These in particular are thin and lanky with grayish skin featuring darker and lighter rings left behind from the pigmentation of their fur, retaining some hair along their long thin tails, heads, and tipped at the end of their long ears. They have jet black eyes, somewhat protruding faces, fangs, and thin needle-like teeth that were used for grooming once upon a time. They used to live primarily among the trees in purpose grown habitats wanting for nothing, until they were forced out as their ancestral home froze over by unnatural means, leaving them scattered and lost, struggling to survive among the wasteland of their forgotten empire. Their language is evolved from a basis of "hoops and hollers" into a more refined melodic chant, the written form consisting of lines of differing length and curve to indicate phonetic change, growing out into spiralling artwork, a mixture of sheet music and traditional writing form, traditionally etched into tree bark or leaves to tell stories or keep history in the form of tribe-wide song and dance.
A minute 24 seconds in, and I have an idea: two-part Dwarven culture, the mines are separate from their abodes. When a mine is all mined out, they make it into an underground city. But they do also have parts that jut up to the surface where they can better do forging etc. As to food, either they have a slave species (maybe non-sapient, but naturally evolved agriculture skills) or they have a caste of farmers. Castes would be Farmers, Warriors, Artisans (which would include smiths), Builders (basically construction workers), and a child-rearing caste. And when I thought of the child-rearing caste, I also had a flash of dialogue: "There is no skill more noble than the forging of younglings into full-grown Dwarves!" Farmers would live and work above-ground. At least some of the Artisans work aboveground but live underground. The rest live and work underground. Their leaders would be picked from the Warrior caste, but candidates would have to also spend some amount of time living and working with some of the other castes as one of them to become well rounded enough to be a good leader. Either that or a council of leaders, one from each caste, makes all of the decisions.
I love this take Tom! Your channel is doing exactly what I wanted to do myself before. I love logical extrapolation of fantasy worlds without just using the "it's just magic" card to cover up, but not solve any and all inconsistencies ^^
There is an even bigger problem than mining: forging and smithing. The dwarves can't really use the raw ores, they must smelt them into metals to use them. And that requires an insane amount of fuel. And oxygen. Charcoal kilns won't really function underground either.
In collaborative worldbuilding project I'm a coauthor in, my friend & I have struggled for ideas on how to make our fantasy race analog for the "Dwarves" be more realistic. This video gave me some great ideas to get started. Thank you 🙏🏽
A way my brother did it on one of his campaigns is that some species have the same ancestors. In this case the ancestors lived in caves Where over time one part of society was focused on expanding the caves and went to the dark, while another part farmed in the hills near the cave . The ones going to the dark and mining evolved to become dwarves. The other branch evolved into halflings/hobbits. they have a form of symbiotic relationship where hobbits tend to settle in places where dwarven tunnels meet the surface. The halfling grow much of the food for the dwarven communities Halflings not being a warlike race they rely on the dwarves for protection. There are cultural leftovers in halfling society to them starting out as a hill people like them living in holes like Tolkien described: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
love this, definitely has given me somethings to think about in my dwarven lore. love your videos they always make me think twice about how i go about my worldbuilding
dwarves lend themselves to Japanese inspired society. clans, strict hierarchical social strata, metals being precious, etc. rolling hills growing rice above, digging deep for the rare metals below.
I like the fantasy trope of absolutely HUGE trees in which elves build villages and cities in the bark, and essentially on "shelves" around the tree, and on branches wide enough to support entire buildings The dwarves' source of wood is simple in my setting, they "mine" the thick roots of those trees, stretching far underground. The elves and dwarf's have had a long feud because of more than one elven village collapsing after the tree collapses with no roots to get nutrients from the soil.
The setting i had for my last campaign, the dwarves had an innate gift for "geomancy", their "earthseers" being the leaders of small dwarven clans under the earth. As they grew as a people, these dwarven lineages would become royalty, while "unblessed" dwarven families would pick up pickaxes and the like. Going with more common scenes from fantasy settings, I like to think that the early dwarven tribes would eat moss, lychen, fish from underground lakes and streams, mushrooms and the like.
My D&D game had a decent sized dwarven settlement along an old lava tube with farms of glowing cave lichen and a few types of underdark mushrooms some of which were wood like. Some were farmed to feed insects then fed to the blind fish, cray fish, and some of the lichen was fed to cave snails. They had a decent diet! XD
I like to imagine dwarves create tons and tons of Golems to do all their surface farming. Farms with zero sentient life bringing things down to the underground cities/ labyrinthine mines.
In my world dwarves originated in the eastern rainforests, where their shorter stature allowed them to walk under the tangle of vines. This also gave them an ample source of wood and food when they began their mines. In the current age, however, few of them still live in the forest, since a dragonborn colony was established on the rivers there. They're very pragmitic with their trade, though, and have an extensive trade relationship with the dragonborn that pushed them out of their former home, as well as many other groups including humans and orcs.
I'm glad to see someone else thinking down these lines. I have been writing a novel completely about dwarves and the conflicts within a dwarven society, specifically those underground, those deep underground, and those on the surface. Where all three are necessary to make the society run but ideas of tradition and proper dwarven behavior and what they value come in conflict.
I like the idea of there being fungi that fill the role of wood and cotton (like some forms of fungal fibers being soft enough to weave into clothing, others working as wood). Fungal beer would be interesting, might even help explain their poison resistance, also their beards and mustaches being organic gas/dust filters. As for the attitude, I like how Races of Stone put it: physical privacy is basically a luxury nobody can afford in the deeps, so they instead respect emotional privacy and consider prying into the feelings of others to be the height of rudeness. As for furnaces, I could see there being other chemical options for absurdly hot fires... even if most of the exotic ones are probably beyond fantasy settings unless you allow major magic.
The planning of food for a large underground community is a really excellent thought experiment. Bats (like you mentioned), giant cave fishers, and other aquatic seafood. Magical glowing mushrooms to provide some light for growing crops that need light. Tough tubers that dont need a ton of resources to cultivate. Burrowing Insects for protein. A bit of sustainable hunting of deer, elk, and goats out on mountain passes for variety and growing rice off the sides of terraced mountains. Also, consider their resistance to poisons and love of rocks. Spices and especially salt might be used in near toxic levels to season the food. Rice saki and mushroom wines, potato vodka, etc.
Thanks! I appreciate your brain storming and re-imaging videos. Been doing research on dwarves and trying to expand upon them. I was playing around where the surface dwarves were semi-nomadic attached to a subterrain dwarf city that guards from unground baddies. And have some other races be apart of the surface that provides food. Their food focuses more on meat from sheep and goats and milk (and milk based alcohol). Surface focuses on weaving crafts and below focuses on mining and smithing. You could demoted and promoted up above and down below. I added stone aqueducts to help solve water problems, but didn't think of the venting issue. Also, for heating, I was looking into volcanos and looking into places like Iceland that has to cool water to use it. Sorry for babbling and thanks for the videos.
I feel there is a way to keep them isolationist whilst also keeping them realistic (in terms of the alcohol thing). You could always say that there was a specific type of fungus that produces ridiculous amounts of alcohol
The setting I'm working on has dwarves as more of a mountain/arctic people rather than strictly underground, but the dark elves live in old lindworm tunnels spanning hundreds of miles underground. They farm glowworms and blind crabs that feed on algae from the cave walls and use them, both as food and to feed giant blind cave catfish that live in the lakes and rivers underground as well as for fertilizer for various species of fungi including glowing mushrooms for light and large fungal "trees" that form massive jungles underground and come in various varieties and can give "fruit" and "wood". They also domesticated giant blind intelligent spiders that eat bats and provide silk for clothing and building material.
What if Dwarven mines/cities function more like ant colonies. And they have an entire fungi crops growing underground like leafcutter ants, so they don't really need to venture above ground to often. Instead digging into "mountains" they simply made artificial ones like ant hills. What if as species they naturally like to burrow underground and any excess dirt was thrown out. Slowly forming hills but over the course of thousands of years them carving into the land they created the mountains in region they live in. Imagine those giant termite hills in Africa but on a much larger scale
From the game Core Keeper, they could grow roots for wood. Maybe even Potato's and other spud/ground growing plants, imagine a plant with roots that dig down to the cave's/caverns below that would have some sort of spud/ediblle.
Dwarves eat monsters Dwarves first invented industrial industry Dwarves challenge themselves with liquors and farming Dwarves invented trading standards Dwarves work to fulfil long self pleasures So what im hearing is that Dwarves are cool
Dwarf Fortress is a great game that's only gotten better with its Steam release, and it addresses many, if not all, the basic issues. I would suggest that those dwarves typically see in a different spectrum that we do, with an additional "stone sense" that that passes for a kind of limited sonar. They have favorite underground (and above-ground) crops for food and alcohol, supplemented with fish and meat as found in surface villages and underground caverns. The dwarves in question have a broader variety of personalities, among many other interesting features, including the sometimes magical-seeming Dwarven Physics... but I can't necessarily explain it well as a human, myself. I would gather, though, that they were initially forged by their gods, and sadly, where gods get involved, reason and logic often get thrown out the window (or, in this case, miasma shaft).
I've been developing a dwarven civilisation inspired by the Nabateans, who built the city of Raqmu (better known as Petra) in Jordan. Before they were cutting beautiful Greco-Roman building facades into the bare rock sides of canyons, they were nomadic traders. Their great advantage was their ability to cross the desert using fast routes known only to them and inhospitable to anyone else because they had carved out hidden cisterns to collect rainwater, where they could refill their water supplies and let their animals drink. If anyone threatened them they just retreated into the desert and lived off their hidden water supply until the threat passed. I think their love of gold and mastery of stonework make them an ideal basis for a dwarven society that is atypical but still grounded in both reality and traditional dwarf lore.
Your split reminds me of the situation that happened in Dragon Lance between the mountain dwarves and hill dwarves during the Cataclysm. Basically, the mountain dwarves became too isolationist and cut off the outside world, including their hill dwarf cousins. This led to a 50% reduction in their population as they mostly starved over the next few generations. It was not until late in the 4th age did the mountain dwarves begin to recover as they reestablished relationships with their surface-dwelling cousins.
A highly plausible history. You bring up many good points. Fresh air supplies. Fresh food supplies. Fresh water supplies. At a bare minimum, without these, living underground would be difficult for eperiods of time. Native flora and fauna would be domesticated as possible. Trollmeat. Yum.
I've always liked the idea of Dwarves domesticating a form of mountainous root vegetable like potatoes. They were traditionally grown in terrace farms. The Inca had a method of freeze drying the potatoes which would make the edible for up to 10 years. I think the dwarves might feel an affinity for the potato: it is native to the mountains and grows and multiplies underground. They could have huge terrace farms wrapping around the slopes of their mountains, with fortified walls guarding them at the base
Modern Dwarves, the thriving clans of Faerun , are not a self sufficient society (anymore). The larger and richer clans rely on humans for trade to give them what they don't have; sheep for meat, fresh water, wood. In exchange the dwarves provide mostly ores but also well crafted tools and weapons to sell and trade. Like the Amish in the USA, the Dwarves would come out of their closed society (mines) a couple times a year to resupply providing exposure to the surface races and an opportunity for the rare dwarves who chose a life of adventure to find others like themselves. Dwarves are not actually rude and ill tempered but are highly social. Their customs and manners are so completely different that they see humans and particularly Elves to be the rude ones. Having spent time in the Far East of the real world myself, those in that region have mannerisms that seem rude to North Americans while our customs look crass and uncultured to many Asians. Likewise Dwarves and Elves find those of other races to be mannerless since they are unfamiliar of their culture.
My dwarves in my novel primarily live under two massive mountain ranges, each with volcanic activity, primarily eat mushrooms with meat supplementing their diet including a very particular spider. The entire ecosystem is based around a spider called a Feros Spider that eats iron and iron rich plants that grow underground around vents. These spiders are the backbone behind how plants even live underground in my novel. Their waste product makes a sort of rich soil that can be used to grow a large amount of different mushrooms and other plants. On top of that I did make them have an extremely active trading partnership with the above ground folk, in this case a Lamia empire, that supplements their food as well. My novel also explains away a lot of the energy requirements by having most creatures on the planet use something called mana particles that exist in the atmosphere. The radiation from that is what allows for magic as well as many strange digestive systems that wouldn’t be possible on Earth. Slimes, for instance, are giant bacterial colonies that use mana to power them and eat materials for biological structures.
thank you for another great video. your comment about wood being a great necessity is a fair critic to depictions of dwarves that despise wood, saying that they rely only on stone and metal. like warhammer fantasy dwarves (well, I still love the franchise). biolimininescence is a great idea for a fantasy mining setting! about the food, there is a great point that was made by A Crowing Cockatrice, that there are some deep sea worms that can take nutrients from soil and volcanic vents, so maybe creatures like these (not accuatic but a cave fantasy version of them) can be one source of food if they can be eaten raw. about the ventilation issue for mining I remember a manga titled "The King Of Cave Will Live A Paradise Life" in which that issue was adressed and solved with some structure but I forgot the details. overall this video does inspire to do something different with dwarves. thank you again!
I'm about halfway through so don't shoot me if this comes up later, but could Gnomes which have a decent relationship with Dwarves be the gap between Dwarves & Halflings? Dwarves in ancient times were always underground, Halflings were always above ground & as they built relationships the children between the 2 races were Gnomes? Halflings natural curiosity & friendliness could have overcome the Dwarven isolationist attitudes & developed in to a reason the 2 races could have developed a relationship that could let Gnomes flourish for a time then develop into their own race & structured society taking elements from the previous 2 stand-alone races. (Shrugs) Probably not, but it is a fun thought experiment.
Another way to look at it that that dwarves are obsessed with crafting in general rather than just mining/smithing. This gets very interesting if you starting thinking of selective breeding as a form of crafting.
I swear this sounds like you plucked these ideas right out of my brain lol. Glad to know someone else has a same idea of having Dwarves/Dwarfs become more real. Love your work.
I figured that they would relay on acriciltral techniques like the tibetan empire. Aka mostly animal husbandry. Also they can grow root vegetables like carrots/potatoes
Excellent video as usual. I love the idea of dwarves being the best traders! I think I actually had that in a setting I wrote up once. In that setting, dwarves didn't originate underground, but rather in the mountains. They don't live underground (well, some probably do, but largely they don't). They still have the tradition and stereotype of being industrious, excellent crafters and smiths, and of course superb mining engineers, but that is largely because that is what they are good at compared to the other species. A lot of dwarven society in this setting was still just agrarian. Also, their society was actually a mix of dwarves and gnomes. Their 'kingdom' was more like an alliance between mostly autonomous cantons, a la the HRE. Most of the cantons were ruled by dwarven families but a few were ruled by gnomish families. There was a little intermarriage between the two but they couldn't (typically - except for a rare case that involved magic) interbreed. As such the society doesn't really have a concept of legitimacy of heirs - rather, the patriarch would adopt and name their heir. (Similar to the Roman Empire, though as far as Roman Empire analogs went the society of dragonborn fulfilled that role more closely)
Your observations regarding gunpowder are interesting. I'm going to be introducing gunpowder to my campaign but it's gnomes who have discovered it and it's only available in limited quantities.
So yes, You have inspired me to create a Dwarven society run by a group of Dwarven druids with bats or giant bat animal companions. One such of those societies could even be secretly manipulated by a vampire to do its bidding without the dwarves even knowing its happening. Sounds like an adventure or even a campaign.
Hill dwarves: surface dwellers, farmers, traders, beer brewers, the underclass of dwarven society. Mountain dwarves: classic dwavers, underground dwellers, miners and metal workers, upperclass.
I've been obsessed with the Eastern Roman Empire lately (specifically a fantasy version of it), and giving them a disproportionately large population of Dwarves is an awesome idea. The ERE was dominated by hills and had superior armor to most of their neighbors, replace the Bulgars with Centaurs, and we have something very exciting.
I really like the idea of dwarves using rice paddies to sustain themselves possibly importing something like "sunlight crysts" from elves or something that give off the same light as the sun and thus are used all through dwarven holds to keep plants alive etc etc
In my world, dwarves are a sub-species of gnome that lives in frigid climates. They survive almost entirely on meat and fish, and use stone, snow and ice for above-ground structures. Wood is traded for with other races, and extremely prized. Pelts, salted meats, and art objects carved from bones are primary exports. They do live underground, but only their industrial and/or military facilities are the stereotypical cave-like cities. Most residential towns and villages are centered around freshwater sources. Typical homes are cylindrical and 10-20ft deep, with access in or out from the roof, or via tunnels linking these living structures from below ground. Overall, a dwarven village would look more like the Shire in winter than the Mines of Moria in my setting.
For my own fantasy setting -- primarily a D&D setting -- I assembled an entire subterranean ecosystem using energy that does not come from the sun as it's basis (some species of fungi found in caves and caverns have adapted to "eat" magic in a way similar to how plants "eat" sunlight -- once you have a ground-level like that, filling in the rest of an ecosystem isn't too bad. Add some fungivores that eat the magic fungi, some predators to eat those, etc.) Dwarves in the setting are... very prone to trading with everyone around them, do have some significant agricultural practices, both on the surface and underground fungi crops. That they are resistant to poisons and such in D&D and many other fantasy tropes helps with that -- some of their diet would almost certainly make a human physically ill, and if you consider that alcohol is basically just a poison -- they can drink more without ill effect, give them some more efficient kidneys and they might even be able to survive on alcohol brewed with water from a stagnant source, without the horrible health issues that would result in for humans.. The widespread trading makes them... honestly one of the fantasy people's that are most univerally... at least tolerated, if not liked. Everyone wants access to the wealth and metalworks that come from their settlements, Very few are dumb enough to try to *siege* or *assault* a dwarven settlment unless they have some massive advantage they can leverage; so the dwarves occupy a kind of "Switzerland" position in the setting of... "We can be friends, but leave us out of your nonsense or you will regret it." ... they're also not as anti-social or socially-inept as the classic depiction. They're a bit gruff and blunt, as a general cultural trait, but not rude or particularly mean-spirited, and at least those in trade or diplomatic positions are more than capable of adjusting behaviour as-needed when interacting with non-dwarves. (They're also one of the more democratic and communal cultural groups. When a bad leader making a horrible decision could bring an entire mountain down on top of you; forms of government that add a bit more bureaucracy but remove the ability of any one person to make a catastrophic decision make a lot more sense.)
Dwarven consitution would then be a result of these evolutionary pressures: 1) Descended from Actual Rocks 2) Ancestors living off of random mushrooms, raw troll meat, and whatever could get the taste of troll out of their mouths. 3) Enough beer to make *anything* taste better. 4) Being besties with bats.
Eon had a mix of dwarf fort types. The ones who colonize the surface for farmland and logging, and especially the ones who start trading fr food, are much larger. The isolationist forts are much smaller because they hit a hard limit on how much food they can raise in an enclosed, self-sustained space. Wood and food are the big imports. Isolationist forts live on bugs, cave animals, fish, mushrooms, moss etc. Without wood, more structures use metal, leather and stone even where wood would be more efficient. Fire is one of the greatest dangers to any fort. The largest amount of workers in a fort are logisticians and buerocrats who facilitate and move goods and information and people about. A dwarf fort in Eon is mechanically advanced, using water power extensively. A fort will start to build more and more labour-saving infrastructure over the years.
What is instead of being a fully subterranean creature like a mole, they were nocturnal cave dwellers like bats. That could be a sort of compromise, during the day they could sleep in their underground halls and at night some could stay underground and mine while others go out to cut down trees and forage and hunt, this would also help them stay out of direct conflict with men who do most of their labor during the day and would be sleeping while they're out, which could also explain how they can afford to be isolationist. Maybe humans would even tell fairytales to their children warning them that if they go out at night they could be kidnapped by them (they really would be out there but wouldn't actually harm them, it would just be the sort of xenophobia that arises from lack of contact). Also nocturnal creatures like bats cats (technically cats are actually adapted for dawn and dusk) and owls do have good eyesight particularly low light vision but usually have some level of color blindness, but what sets them apart is their sense of hearing. While maybe some of them could be partially deafened by the sounds of picks and hammers I would think Dwarves would have a particular fondness for music, maybe (The Elder Scrolls does this) their halls could even be designed with acoustics and resonance in mind. Since this is fantasy maybe their magic is similar to that in Lord of the Rings where speech and music in and of themselves have magical power. Maybe because of this they're very precice and level headed in their speech because they believe that their words in and of themselves may have actual direct physical consequences. Maybe they drink because they believe that the only time they can speak without consequence is when their words are slurred. Maybe their religion even postulates similar to the Silmarillian that the world was created in song.
My dwarves in my homebrew world cultivate magic mushrooms which create light. They call them Sunbulbs. They use them to cultivate plants inside their subterranean settlements. As for air, they are capable of breathing in low oxygen areas and have specially bred fungus that feeds on carbon monoxide to aid in air filtration.
There is a whole "underdark" ecology in DnD. Mushrooms could have numerous variations that substitute for wood and leather. While old school dwarves weren't wizards, starting with 3e dwarf wizards have no restriction. They would have magic in place of gunpowder and other tasks. Also, fantasy lava doesn't release poison gas. How else could Bilbo, Sam, and Gollum casually wander into a cave with a huge lava pool in it? It also can remain molten for an indefinite period of time without turning that cave into a self-cleaning oven.
This guy has never thought about this. Early dwarfs would probably start above ground, move into caves for protection, make simple axes from stone and wood, use those to get access to better tools and eventually someone invents metalworking, and things become very dwarfy in no time. The main mistake here is too assume that they came out of nonexistance fully-formed as we see them in LOTR or Dwarf Fortress.
I had the idea that Dwarves live on surface cities, but early hunter gatherer level humans saw the sheer size of the buildings and could only conceive of them as mountains.
The BECMI system, had a gazetteer called the Dwarves of Rockhome that delved deeply into Dwarven society, which one of the clans was agrarian on the surface, and fungal farming etc, domesticated rock lizards. The Dwarves of Mystara, were specifically made by the immortals in response to a massive cataclysm in the past.
