Can we have a Dwarf discussion thread? Specifically, the topics

>>51950407
>Dwarven ship-building
Pumice is one hell of a material.

>>51950407
lots of mushrooms

i want to play dwarf fortress now

>>51950407
even though its a littlw obvious i think the Viking ships are perfect. they have a blocky looking hull and the crew os exposed to the elements, which dorfs wouldnt give a fuck about

also its powered by dwarf muscles

maybe ones without sails

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>>51950407
Mating rituals?

>>51950592
thanks for inviting Tumblr to the thread fucktard

>>51950683
Dude, nobody cares.

Cuisine: mushrooms, dried -whatever crawls around underground-, rocks and gems
Mating rituals: finding the biggest softest rock and making it your wife

>>51950578
It's fairly safe to say that a dwarven civilisation living underground would have subterranean rivers, perhaps even oceans in the more fantasy-based settings, that they would have to cross.

Sail-less ships make sense.

>>51950503
What about bats, lizards, fish, lichen, moss and all the things associated with them?

Cave fish would have to lay eggs, so that's caviar sorted for the fancy Dwarves.

I'm sure you'd get some sort of crab, or lobster as well. What I want to find out is what kind of vegetables, or perhaps fruit, you could grow in a completely underground setting.

>>51950801
mushrooms
maybe lichen

Why would dwarves not have farms outside a cave? They're going to need to get wood for all the spear shafts and axe handles from somewhere, can't just stay underground all day.

>>51950407
Do some reading on pre-industrial Finnish culture, change names, extend beards, reduce height, change "Eats Snow" to "Eats Rock", done.

There's a reason even the Vikings knew better than to fuck with these guys.

>>51950578
>>51950779
Viking-style longships would be perfect for underground waterways. If you build them right, they've got a draft of less than two feet, which would probably be helpful when you have no idea how deep the oily black water beneath your hull is.

>>51950683
What the fuck would tumblrinas know about dwarven mating rituals?

>>51950407
>ship-building
Elf detected

>>51950592
Males and females grow facial hair and tend to have massive beards. Unless fully naked, a dwarf can't tell the gender of another dwarf. Mating rituals involve carefully and politely figuring out the equipment of the other dwarf without getting hit by an axe.

>>51950868
Just thinking along the lines of Dwarves wanting to produce most of their food by themselves.

Or maybe lesser clans, or deeper holds that don't really have access to the outside world?

>>51951231
If deeper clans don't trade with other dwarves for these basics, how do they function? Pretty much any forged weapon and armor, which is something dwarves are obsessed with in most settings, require wood or leather in construction.

Unless you're willing to let dwarves eat rocks (which is pretty cool, there's too many underground scottish vikings who drink ale) or have a magic spell that lets them mold rocks like one would mold wood, I don't see it functioning in a sensible way.

>>51951441
Giant Mushroom stems and Blind Cave Weasel hides.

Boom, done.

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>>51951215

God, fuck off with this gay Pratchett shit.

>>51951441
I just want a dwarf cuisine thread is that too much to ask?

Also I'm interested in seeing what kind of food would evolve from a purely cave-based ecosystem.

And in doing so, we might be able to have a deeper look at a Dwarven culture besides scottish ale drinkers.

>>51951509
Or the hides and bones of non clan-mate Dwarves. Just sayin'...

>Dwarven ale is brewed from lichen and fungus grown underground

>Although the effects are similar to alcohol, it's more of a pychodelic. Imbiding the ales makes the mind feel drunk, but the body is coordinated, hence why dwarven ales are so different from those produced elsewhere.

>Wood is a huge commodity for dwarves living deep in the holds of the barren mountain peaks. Ornately carved lacquered mohogany imported from the south is a huge sign of wealth among the nobility and are often centerpieces.

>Dwarven religious ceremonies incorporate bathing in natural saunas to clense the soul of sin, somewhat like in Shinto.

>>51950407
>Dwarven cuisine, ship-building, things like that?
They do it good.

That's all you need to know manling.

>>51951516
Realistically just about any plant with a strong taste (sweet, spicy, sour, whatever) evolved the taste as a response to environment. Sweet fruits are more likely to be eaten by an animal, allowing the seeds to spread. Spicy fruit might deter some animals or parasites.

There's no reason to stick to realism in a fantasy setting with magic, but anything that's too strange will be jarring. There could be donuts growing on a tree underground.

>>51951510
>not recognizing the only good high fantasy writer

>>51951700

I do recognize it, though. That's Pratchett's work. It's fucking dumb. No intelligent race could survive with such absurd (and fucking stupid) mating habits.

>>51950592
Fat relatives, skinny wives.

There's no such thing as a Mating Ritual, unless you count your clan head meeting with your spouses clan head to arrange your marriage as a mating ritual.

Husbands family pays the wifes weight in gold as a dowry to the wife's clan as a dowry, (the wife always joins the husbands family) but the husband must be able to wrap his beard around the wifes waist, TWICE.

So if you've got a Clan with a bunch of skinny wives and fatass sisters, cousins, neices etc. you know they've got some serous clout, or they'd never be able to get such profitable arrangements going.

(Dwarf Women having beards is joke played on the gits that've never seen a dwarf woman)

>>51950407
Depends a lot on how far you want to get from the stereotypical dwarf.

I never really dug the weird-undergrownd agriculture thing for dwarves. Seems a bit too high magic for me. I always though they should get most of their food stuffs via trade with humans or "hill dwarves" who live outside the traditional mountain cities. Plus if you have hill dwarves, you get to break up the standard mono-culture thing and have a rivalry between the two groups.

I always like the idea of dwarves with stone ships. Anything will float if you displace enough water. Maybe having hill dwarves use more practical and traditional wooden long ships.

Dwarfishness is sublimated male sexuality. They epitomise that archaic bargain between the attenuated male mind with its focus on extricating function from materiality and the spatulate female mind with its encompassing of social and environmental context. Dwarfs cannot conceive of the expansive thing that surrounds them but are digging and honing pointedness of purpose and covetice. The Rumpelstiltskin story typifies this bargain and appears in a large number of permutations. The story is that of the covenant between the sexes. One sex can do stuff that the other sex needs but claims mating rights in return. The other sex utilises social chicanery to evade the terms of the covenant. Hilarity ensues.

There is a way of looking at males as parasitic entities*. The fact that their investment in offspring is the lesser means they are compelled to go to greater lengths to demonstrate their fitness. Their gonads dictate this strategy - to infect viable females with endearing offspring that they will dedicate their lives to protecting and perpetuating the male's germline. Some males have this attenuated focus turned up too high: I once encountered a boy who couldn't speak but could focus for hours on rattling random objects around in a plastic container. I didn't know for sure but suspected he probably wasn't popular with girls. Such focus needs to be diluted with a little bit of context awareness.

When Dwarfs are thwarted they lose their shit. This is their schtick and sets their narratives in motion. This is what dwarfs are like and it matters not whether they are the kind of dwarf that is like a corpse that lives in the earth and hides from the sun or the kind that vies with the gods in superhuman romance epics the thing that binds them together is that autistic focus on the thing that consumes them and their tendency to fly of the handle when denied it.

>>51950440
Dwarven ships strong!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

>>51951098
Fat short women who look like men


No, I've no idea why Tumblr would know about those, none at all.

>>51951791
>(Dwarf Women having beards is joke played on the gits that've never seen a dwarf woman)
That's generally how I did it too.
I had explained that a higher birth mortality rate, means that there's generally a surplus of middle aged and older widowed males. Combined with a greater sense of wanderlust in widowed dwarves, most other races only see males.

Dwarves are all about greed, and the frustration of greed.

>>51951018
Does it have anything to do with ancient finns not having anything of value?

I unfortunately can't disassociate dwarf fortress dwarves with any original thought of my own about them so I am fairly useless in this thread.

>>51950407
I'll have you know that my Dwarves are excellent mariners.

They have to be after their lands flooded.

>>51950683
How the fuck is that Tumblr? If she were Tumblr she would be illustrated like a human girl with standard adventuring gear and a hijab and a red tint on her nose.

Posting anons image would get you crucified by tumblrinas for oversexualization. Please don't wrongly use that term lest it loses its meaning

Lets make some dwarven mage schools, warlock groups or sorcerer families.
Or just talk about dwarvern magic. I've never really seen anyone play a dwarf mage or anything like that. Mostly it's just fighters/clerics/paladins.

>>51952915
Warhammer has the best dwarves. this extends to dwarf mages as well

>>51950578
Dwarfs are a little too practically minded to ignore something like free windpower.

>>51952915
Goes back to is dnd when dwarf was a class. Iirc they had spell resistance which lead to a the theory that their innate magic resistance made casting spells hard.

That with WHFB's dwarves only getting mastic in the form or runes and magic equipment meant that by and large dwarves wizards don't crop up much in fiction.

>>51952915
>I've never really seen anyone play a dwarf mage or anything like that
No benefits when it comes to the mechanics and I guess the usual dwarffag is not a big fan of mages.

It would make sense to me that dwarfs would be the best at creating artificial beings, running on magic. Depending on how magic-tech you want to go it could get crazier than just stone-golems.

>>51952855
>Posting anons image would get you crucified by tumblrinas for oversexualization. Please don't wrongly use that term lest it loses its meaning
You sound like a /v/irgin

>>51953069
>>51953073
I always like the idea it dwarves mages specialising in flechette/grapeshot spells. The sort of thing that a tough well armored dwarf could shrug off, but would shred lightly armored foes. So they could fire pretty indiscriminately.

>>51951018
>There's a reason even the Vikings knew better than to fuck with these guys.
If by "do not fuck with these guys" you mean "conquer them, settle half their territory, and end up being a significant, powerful minority of their population anyway when they gain independence"

>>51951754
>Pratchett
>Not intentionally absurd

Where in the hell do you think you are?

>>51950407
I like the concept of dwarves holds involving the nobility and military living inside the mountain, while the freemen and peasantry work the sides, raising goats, sheep, berries, and so on. The type of shit that lives and grows on the mountains would be what they worked with.

As far as building ships, and their engineering in general, it really depends on their environment and what materials they have available.

>>51950503
Since dwarf ale is so culturally important to them I assume barley is their main starch.

>>51953069 >>51953073
>Runes, golems and magical equipment
I covered this when I said Clerics/Paladins.
Not sure why I've seen a lot of dwarf clerics rely heavily on norse runes, but I can guess why there are so many clerics also make golems.
Ties into the whole dwarf creation story of them being made from the earth by whatever creator figure they have in their pantheon. Not to mention all the -forging- related gods they have.

>>51950801
Well for agriculture they would mainly have access to the underground and questionably fertile mountain terrace farming. They could make tunnels outwards to create Windows for lichen or moss farming, which could be used as a staple food if selectively bred or as feed for a farmed animal like slugs. They may also breed troglomorph fish and other animals for food. Of course they would also be very found of above ground excursions for compost materials for the creation of plump helmet farms, the primary ingrediant of dwarfish drink. They may also have mountain goats.
So I think dwarves would have a lot of gruel or stew based on lichen as their grain staple, cave fish meat, and fungus taking on the roll of fruit and vegetables as well as alcohol.
High grade foods would be surface berries and and goat meat. Trade with humans is likely valued for its considerable diversification of their diet. Fruit and poultry for mastercrafted stuff.
>>51950592
My dwarves haven't got mating, they're all genderless, though they look male thanks to the beard and lack of female characteristics.
Instead of reproducing normally they make new dwarves out of precious metals, stone and clay, and some living dwarf blood. This is an arduous undertaking that can take a clan several years of effort. The dwarf is then animated through ritual magic and inducted into the clan of his blood father. Dwarves are carved without beards, so beard length is the best way to identify age, as they show no signs of physical change due to age until the last year or so of their life where they begin to petrify back into stone. Dwarves who die violent deaths petrify instead of rot. After becoming fully stone a dwarf can be reanimated into a new dwarf after receiving matinence. The new dwarf has some of the memories of his predecessor but is still a new person. It is common for Dwarves who have old lives to be given gifts made of the beard of their predecessor, made by them during their petrification.

What are the best Dwarves, and why is it Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian Dwarves?

Dwarven magic is tied to three things

1. The power of the land itself. The mountain is their ally and it is mighty.

2. Ancestors, aka like necromancy, less skeletons more ghosts.

3. Craftsmanship, ritualizing their own trades into producing magic. This is where the steel runes come into play.

>>51953073
Annoyingly the Wfrp adventure Lure of the Liche lord had rules for badass spell resistant Dwarf guardian golems

GW of course ignored the fucking things, they'd have made awesome models

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>>51953559
Depends on the setting, cultures should be native to the fantasy world, not lifted from earth

>>51953676
>2. Ancestors, aka like necromancy, less skeletons more ghosts.
Kinda reminds me of the Fading Embers dwarves with their crazy ancestor worship/cannibalism.

I could definitely see a sort of dwarven gerontocracy, but with it not necessarily ending with death. Fits with the long memories and old grudges themes.

>>51950578
Could just use galleys? They can be blocky, and they have a ramming prow.

>>51953846
The High king of dwarves has ruled for thousands of years, appointed by the Council of guild dynasties.

And since they keep appointing him he rules, despite inconvinences like his death.

>>51953964
>that year when there's a single nay instead of unanimous approval
Dark times.

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Forgot to post this.

>>51953920
I kind of like the idea of rowing power.
They might have sails, but I don't think that dwarves would trust anything as fickle and unreliable as the wind.

>>51954111
Just saw this in another thread.
Pretty good advice.

I think you might want to start the creative process a step earlier though.

How does insert race differ physically from humans
Stuff like how they reproduce and how they can interact physically with their environment will have a major impact on the way they develop.

>>51954113
Spoken like someone who doesn't understand how wind power works.

>>51954144
Welll they are dwarves thats a given.

>>51954149
Tacking is a bitch.

>>51950683
>le tumblr boogeyman
You know you can follow whom or whatever you like on tumblr and make whatever you like there, right?

There are so many people left over from Gamergate on tumblr that you can literally just follow dungeon-building, character creation, painal and facial abuse, and rp stories and never see a single SJW post ever.

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>>51950407
Ship-building could mix chinese paddlewheel designs with japanese "sea fortress" warships. Lots of rowers inside a vehicle resilient enough to get near, which then double as boarders.

You can make the hull out of concrete if you want. Those were a thing in WW2.

>>51954243
>they are dwarves thats a given.
Sorta.
A society that follows the all the women have beards trope is going to be different than a beardless women one.
Or do they go by one of the more exotic dwarven reproduction methods sometimes mentioned: like dwarf-crafting or beard-parasites or hermaphroditic dwarves.

>>51954345
This seems like the best design to me for dwarfs. The pagoda style Eastern ships scream floating dwarf fortress.

But what about non-military ships? Like trading vessels.

>>51954383
I like it. Might do the opposite and claim that beards are actually sensitive antennae.

Could do keep the color parts by saying they're color blind due to low light adaptations.

>>51954374
Fine lets go with

Dwarves have blindsenses like >>51954383.

I say two genders because otherwise is mostly sillyness. Dwarves tend to be stalward creatures that endure the harsh conditions of the underground but do not have the best directional sense and thus mostly stay put.

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>>51950407
Do your dwarfs actually know something about minerals, cave geological features and that there is more to mining than pickaxing rocks?

They should.

>>51954422
Besides being sturdier than average, what do you want of them?

>>51954607
Depends on the culture.

Dwarven artisan guilds certainly care about the cave's natural beauty. But we have plenty of humans who dont give a shit about scenary excpet for the resources it contains.

>>51953676
>>51953846
>Evil Dwarf Geomancer stealing the ancestors bones and reanimating them to overthrow the society that scorned him and reclaim the mountain for his banished clan.

Butas far as food is concerned
>>51950407
>>51950801
>>51950868

I work in a cave and the main thing about caves is they have absolute darkness. Literally no naturally occurring light at all. But the cave I work at has White flood lights that combine with the High Humidity (consistently above 90%) to let algae grow on the walls. So if you want the whole dwarves never leave the underground then you need a dwarf city, in a humid environment, with a source of white light to have agriculture. There could be crystals in some of the rooms that occur naturally and give off light that allows algae/other plants to grow. You could have an adventure be about recharging the crystals in the sun and how the dwarfs can't take it to the surface cuz reasons.

If you don't want that then you're going to have to look at shit. I mean literal shit. The only way the suns energy makes it inro caves is through bat shit. Bats fly out at night, eat, return, and poop in the cave. All the left over energy in thier poop is the basis for almost every single cave ecosystem in the world. Even in the deepest reaches of karst aquifers those blindfish eat something that ate something that crawled into the water after eating batshit/something that ate bat shit. even the fungii that grow in caves are dependent on the batshit. The fungii might not need light but they need something that is rich in nutrients to decompose. So I guess you can have the dwarves eat literal bowls of shit if you want to be weird.

>cont.

>>51954607
No idea personally. I imagine they'd value size and safely over speed. So maybe something like a cog.

>>51954973
But I like what anon said early about terrace farming. Just Imagine Incan Dwarves. Terrace farms the spanish observed grew different crops at different elevations to match the needs of various plants. I can't find the diagram but it's pretty neat. Just remember that the Inca were the only Pre-columbian new world civilization with metal weapons and armor and had pony express style mail sytem for traversing their public highways.

>>51955017
They did a lot with the tech they had. Incans make a good inspiration source for dwarves.

I could see hidden valleys with terrace farming and underground highways feeding mountain fortresses.

>>51954973
So dwarfs need to farm bats.

But I dont think dwarves CANT leave the mountain, I believe they live inside it because its more defensible and because as I stated before, dwaves hate travelling.

>>51954973
To be fair, there can be plenty of insects. If you look at south american caves, there's all the bats shitting on the floor and all kinds of insects living on it. Large centipedes crawl up the ceiling and eat baby bats.

So... we have:

>bat jerky; self explanatory
>dwarven bread (made out of crushed insects); a very high protein and calorie dense food favored for long travel. Think of a modern day protein bar, but drier and nastier. Other races probably won't like them, especially when they realize what they're made out of, but dwarves are hardy and pragmatic.
>centipede... Not sure what one would make out of a centipede, but human cultures where eating large insects is common tend to just fry them over fire. So maybe cooked centipede on a stick.

>>51955183
I dont think its bread if you put meat in it.

Insects have a whole cuisine attached to it that can work rather well but I sustain my belief that dwarves primarily use barley as their starch and they hate doing anything that involves more then walking.

>>51955203
Kinda always saw them as master merchants. All that smithing has to have a market, unless you're doing it recreationally and melting down the finished product.

Dwarves trade metal goods, precious metals and jewels for lumber, foodstuffs and fabrics. Possibly services like banking and engineering too.

>>51955203
Have you seen the movie Snowpiercer? Kind of like their bug rations, but less hi-tech.

It would be called dwarven bread by everyone because it looks like small dense loaves of rye bread. Very dark coloration, sort of bitter aftertaste, dry.

Sometimes if I'm going for a more light hearted fantasy setting, I divide dwarfs by what sort of ground they dig in.
>Mountain dwarfs
>Hill dwarfs
>Mesa dwarfs
>Volcano dwarfs
>Deep dwarfs
>Glacier dwarfs
etc.

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>>51955314
I think since dwarves arent going to need to do snowpiercer shit that they bug food will be like normal bug food

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My dwarven cuisine is extreme. Between mining dust and that natural "hardiness and resilience" they boast about, their sense of taste is shot. They shell out their mineral fortunes on exotic spices, flavorings, and sweeteners because they pour the stuff on their food to taste it. Not only that, but their ironclad stomachs and resistance to poison lead to their traditional cuisine containing some materials that others would consider nauseating at best or caustic at worst. They consider the foodstuffs of other races awfully bland, almost without exception.

>>51955499
Dwarves are depicted as a very military culture in many settings. There are no nicely packed and canned rations in fantasy land... So traditionally, you'd use travel rations - dried meat, dried bread-based rations that don't go bad easily and can be carried en masse. So high density bars of insect stuff would make a very effective ration. Kind of like Lembas in Lord of the Ring, but with more protein!

If you consider that the common depiction of dwarves is famed for their endurance (and not being very famous for having mounts), you could imagine a battalion of dwarf soldiers marching through day and night for several days straight to get to their destination quickly, with just tiny ration bars to support their strength.

4 miles/hour, in full heavy gear, 24 hours a day for several days.

I think dwarves just need to be big into trade. They don't grow the food or the barley. They trade for it mostly. Maybe Hill Dwarves and Halflings are incredibly close, so trade is common there, and Mountain Dwarves get goods from Hill Dwarves in exchange for finished goods and materials.

Or, shockingly, Dwarves don't live entirely underground. only partially? They don't have the disposition of one who lives totally underground, that's more like Duregar.

>>51955620
Could also do this instead of canning, assuming they could get butter. Perhaps using goats or yaks?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdKzWQOVET4

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>>51950407
>Dwarven cuisine, ship-building, things like that?
>ship-building
Here. Here you go. A fine dwarven ship. Doing what it's supposed to, where it's supposed to.

>>51955937
I do my Dwarves like Warcraft Dwarves.

They live above ground, but even the most humble farm is a bunker-like stockade as Dwarves don't take well to building large above ground features.

>Lets take a demihuman race with weird features, and turn them into humans!

>>51957075
>Let's get autistically angry when people try and flesh out Dwarves.

>>51955620
I just did them surviving on their Alchohol. Dwarven Ale is like Liquid bread, often flavored with Oranges and honey.

>>51956135
I will now spend six hours, over the course of a day or two, researching the kind of preserved food a cave-dwelling civilization could make. Thanks asshole.

>>51957239
It is pretty calorically dense. If you had the Constitution for it, you could live like that for a while. Although, an all liquid diet is going to be rough on a march.

Liquid shits aren't going to improve moral. Maybe that's why they're always surly before a big battle.

>>51951215
>bearded women

stop with this meme.

>>51950407
>ship-building
>Okay Yorik, I know it's what roof-bangers do, but hear me out. What if instead of digging tunnels under the ocean, we build ships to sail over it!
>Get this hothead outta here!

>>51957366
Dwarves sailing in an underground sea would be cool.

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>>51957396
Extremely.

AND/OR

>Dwarves design light ships they can carry so they could store them in their inland holds

>>51957038
This. Something like Ironforge, Moria, or Erebor is for the big capital kingdoms, but much is also on the surface of the mountains too.

>>51957318
>bearded midgets who like to get drunk and speak with a scottish accent is a good meme

>>51957366
I have a kind of dwarf that hail from Storm Giants (because dwarves obviously came from giants). They populate shores and seaside cliff-faces, building large ships in hidden underground harbors.

I maintain that Dwarves should have the sort of stoic dickishness that's attributed to elves. They also have long lives, but tend to be lawful in nature, as opposed to the chaotic elves. I argue they should be bigger dicks than elves, because they're also dicks to elves.

>>51950592
Fundie Mormonesq, wealthy and powerful dwarf males drive away younger dwarf males with byzantine laws and general abuse so that they can have more wives. Which leads to the younger dwarves to become adventurers and all around assholes, since they are not allowed to return without a dwarf wife/wives.

>>51951791
I like that.

>>51951516
When I was thinking the same sort of thing I turned to three sources for inspiration.

Dungeon Menshi
The pictures of food from Dragon's Crown
Actual Asian food, the weirder the better.

I lost my notes, I will see if I can find them before the thread dies.

To everyone that think Dwarves don't have shipbuilding here's something that they could make with steam technology in Warhammer Fantasy

>>51959914
We're waiting for the pic.

I'm just going to rattle off a few ideas I have for dwarfs in my setting. Tell me what you think.

Legend has it that dwarfs were born from stone underground and dug their way out to the surface. This is sort of to explain why dungeons are so chaotic and complex. They were cursed with flesh for using stone and metal as weapons when they first met elves. Ant people pretty much single handedly saved them from extinction by teaching them how to farm fungus and giant aphids.
Ancient dwarf culture was a caste system with "light bearers" at the top. Mages that use magic to light the entire fortress. The system was reformed after bees were introduced to the underground ecosystem. While the beekeepers didn't take over as the ruling class they're still held in high regard.
Not all dwarfs have beards, most can grow very long ones (same for women) but whether or not beardless (or bearded female) dwarfs get ridiculed is based on individual clan culture.
Dwarfs have been close to dying out many times so avoiding interbreeding is paramount to dwarf leaders. Mass arranged marriages between clans has become common. Wars among them are almost unheard of in recent times, though they are closer now than ever (I'm not sure why yet.)
Women have breasts and child bearing hips to differentiate them even if they have beards. Most fucking gets done during week long holidays they have for religious or historical reasons. Otherwise most are too dedicated to their craft to flirt or look for someone to marry. Dwarfs almost always marry outside their job cause parents that spend all day together tends to leave a lot of orphans.
I don't know about ships. I like a lot of the ideas in this thread though.

Any criticism or comments help.

>>51955620
I am against this because, as I iterated before. I am firmly against the idea dwarfs willingly travel.

Most of their militarization is defensive. They may have rations but its not a main thing, it only would be if they are constantly on the go. Like gypsy dwaves.

>>51960521
fuck I tried to make that wall of text into paragraphs I swear.

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>Dwarves reach desert
>No mountains
>WE MUST MAKE THE MOUNTAINS
>Pyramids happen

Why are Dwarves so fucking lame? No one wants to be a manlet.

>>51953063
Really depends on the dwarf society.

>>51961271
>no one wants to be masculinity, hardworking and useful

>>51951018
>5% of the population
>total control over the government
>Åland outright refuses to acknowledge Finnish sovereignty
Just fuck my shit up!

>>51961832
>hardworking and useful
That's an elf
>masculine
Midgets can never be masculine.

>>51961832
Please tell me you were dead-serious about this.

I am a manlet irl and it's not fucking fun, trust me.

>>51961849
>hardworking and useful
>elf
We're not discussing their global prostitution industry.

>>51961865
>he doesn't work extra hard to make up for height
>he doesn't put extra effort into his actions
>he doesn't overcome discrimination by being so much better than the rest that discriminators are only butthurt

>>51961893
>the tall people already work better than me
>all I do is cry irl and have zero friends

>>51961875
What setting?

>>51953069

It was one of those retarded early D&D weirdness moments where they flung shit at the wall and some of it stuck. For no explanable reason Dwarves [The guys in norse mythology that created all the Gods magical goodies and turned into Dragons to protect magic Gold hordes] were made anti-magical for no explainable reason. The best we can figure is that it was just early D&D weirdness where they flung shit against the walls and some of it stuck like all Giants being obsessed with Rock throwing or there being an an entire class based on Aragorn. The fucked up part is just because it existed retarded old grognards still thumb their noses at the idea of Dwarves with magic as if it ever made any sense in the first place

>>51951023
>>51954345
>>51954973

I can't help but picture a dwarf version of Sunless Sea.
>Large fortress ships and smaller galleys rowing across a pitch black subterranean ocean full of fucked up monsters and deep sea fish.

>>51962029
Because it shows up a lot its considered a tied ability.

Granted I dont really like the idea of wizards to begin with in my fantasy settings. If magic is used it has to come from SOMEWHERE. Either a bloodline, ambient energy (in which case the magic is heavily device centric), nature, powerful beings and pacts. You cant just be like "I am smart so i can cast fireball."

>>51954345

I was watching Jap tea ceremonies earlier and it made me really want to make my own short story dwarves like the Japanese in a few ways.

>>51962158

Ok slow down here boy

In D&D there are spellcasters. Thats just the way it works

The Dwarves in D&D were based on Norse Mythology combined with Tolkein.

LOTR didnt have everyone using magic but that standard isnt applied to everything

Norse Mythology had Dwarves as a race of magical beings that could interchangablly be just another kind of Elf.So the "Magical race" thing is already here

Yet for some reason Dwarves are singled out in D&D were originally singled out as the only inherently non-magical race

This made no sense

Do you understand?

Dwarves are stout, on a physiological level, it takes them more energy to move than most races. Very rarely will a dwarven army ever march, and when they do, the armies don't venture very far from their established boundaries. They fight in the territory that they know and this has given them the reputation as a very difficult species to war against.

Their inability to efficiently roam the land has led to a fondness for home on an individual level and a culture that promotes staying close to their birthplace throughout their lives. This ultimately gave rise to a dense and complicated system of clans within their own stone hives. The enduring nature of these ageless clans promotes a sense of honor and nobility to even the most common dwarves. A good deed can be remembered for centuries, and a bad one will be a scar on their family name until the end of time. Very few people of any species would be willing to lay such a burden at their families feet.

The mating rituals of these clans are likely to be fairly basic, A clan would take special care in marrying off a daughter to another clan and a clans sons would have an expectation to uphold themselves upright within their community so as to not shame the family name.

>>51962290
>LOTR didnt have everyone using magic but that standard isnt applied to everything
Don't they sing as well as magic? Don't their eyes glow? This is some thing out of the hobbit, which is a long time ago for me.

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>>51953237
And what's the fucking point of being intentionally absurd if you aren't doing a comedy setting/campaign?
Also picrelated, best female dwarf 'beard'.

>>51950407
Dwarves have bred a species of Snail that eats a variety of carefully cultivated fungus strains, turning the fungus into alcohol within their shells.

As a defense mechanism, they're able to squirt the liquid out while contracting their muscles, forcing their shell to snap together and make a spark, acting as an impromptu flamethrower.

tl;dr: Snails that are basically like tequila with the worm in it, except they do it themselves, with the shell as a convenient drinking horn.

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>>51960550
>I am firmly against the idea dwarfs willingly travel.
How come? Just the little legs?

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>>51962321
Well, the Dorfs of my setting were chased in immemorial times (mainly be Giants and other titan-spawn), so that's why the majority live in caves/little bunkers than are easy to hide and/or in difficult places for big folk to reach. Because they were exterminated like rats they are very paranoid about they holds and citadels, than tend to be full of defenses and hiden in the terrain, but it depends of the dwarf culture. The ones the PC find the most are the Castro Dwarfs for lack of a better term (think Hill dwarfs if it's easy for ya,they are the great majority of the dwarfs people see because they trade with other species and live closer to civilized sentients) than live mostly above ground with they excavated little hills full of tunels and rock-looking buildings and whole wooden stockades mixing bushes, stone and trees. They pasture in the night, mostly goats, pigs and donkeys, and guard they animals in little dorf-made caves than can be hidden with ease. Barley and Rye, lots of nuts (chestnuts, hazelnuts, acorns being the prefered) and silvan fruits (apples for cider, blackberries, etc) are part of they diet,Hill dwarf holds are easy to find for the vast quantity of those kind of trees and the orderly way they grow. But the star of Dorf cuisine are tubbers. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, Carrots of all colors, turnips etc surround dwarf holds,and make the basic of they diet, than were normally bepased be the old giants.

>>51952855
>red tint on her nose
>not appropriate for a dorf

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>>51962321
Fk, I didn't want to link to your post bro.
>>51962996
In Gaztelu/mountain Dorfs the tubber are even more important, but mushrooms, beans and fish-pounds are a lot more common than with Hill dwarfs, while Talaiotic/Sea dorfs use a lot of procesed seafood, algae and vines of all kinds than they grow in scarped cliffs ,near they caves or even in floating rafts, and a fuckton of goats and pigs.
Hill dwarfs, being a lot less paranoid and more sociable than Mountain or sea dorfs (and even then they are considred crass and paranoid be humans) adopted lots of practices from they cousins, and are tolerated be the rest of Dwarf cultures, so are in the main the more varied of them all, but deeply conservative for human cultures.
Dwarfs are also very different than humans in they way of mating. There are super-females/queens,non-reproductive females and males. Males used to have Two variants too, but the titans damned the super-male kind (bigger, smarter and way more fertile) and are know still big but dumb and unfertile. The lower males/dwarfs propers can mate with Queens, but it's a lot more difficult and "gross" for the queens. Still,every few generations some dwarf super-male or king arise, and Dwarf kingdoms form uniting the clanish populations of even different kinds.

>>51951516
>I just want a dwarf cuisine thread is that too much to ask?
In my setting dwarves are pretty much literally omnivorous.
I took a page from the immune to poison book.
This is why there alcohol is nearly lethal to other humanoids.
Their cuisine is fairly intense.
Born of a practical culture, as theirs was the first race to pioneer into strange lands and establish colonies, much of their food is intended for long-term storage. They cook and store food often in strong vinegar which adds to the intense flavoring of their meals. They often considered other humanoids' food bland in comparison, aside from properly cooked meats which they often eat fresh themselves.
They adore spices and grow the few they can undergound and have a robust fungus culturing and farming community.
They often trade their "superior dwarven works" for foreign seasonings.

Their primary livestock is a rare species of giant mole they use for tunneling and hauling but they regard it as nearly sacred so never harvested for food, leather, or other materials and often lay the creatures to rest in stone as they would a dwarf.
Their secondary livestock is a rare breed of short stocky yak that was originally found in caves and mountain tops. They domesticated it and often use its milk, meat, wool, and hide for leather.
The one dwarf clan that managed to inter-breed yak with the common human variety forged the largest known community of mixed dwarves and humans.
Their town grew very prosperous through exporting their unique wool.
These dwarves have worked towards expanding dwarven cuisine to include human novelties such as "bread".
They have been shared with other dwarven settlements, but have not yet found widespread popularity.

is there any fantasy universes where dwarves ARENT on the verge of extinction or merely a shadow of their former self?

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>>51965139
You know, I can't think of any, but that does give me an idea.

Dwarves are mainly in decline because they were in decline in Tolkien, right?

In the Hobbit (1937), they were based at least a significant amount on Jews and the wandering stereotypes of Jews without a homeland.
LoTR was written in stages between 1937 and 1949 - Israel only became a thing in 1948, no-one knew if it would last, and prior characterisation is a thing.

So now, 80 years on from The Hobbit, we know what sort of nation you get when the wandering race that inspired Tolkein gets to settle down in their ancestral homeland.
At the very least it makes the idea that every dwarf wears armour and carries an axe make sense

You could add historic industrialisation parallels as well - consider scotland, where the clans got broken to but a shadow of themselves, but that then became a huge source of engineers, soldiers, scientists and industry

>>51963130
>Born of a practical culture, as theirs was the first race to pioneer into strange lands and establish colonies, much of their food is intended for long-term storage. They cook and store food often in strong vinegar which adds to the intense flavoring of their meals.
I think this really fits dwarves. They seem pretty obsessed with hoarding, I don't see why that wouldn't apply to food to.

>Good luck trying to starve us out
>I've got fifty years worth of pickled beets and kimchi

>>51965139
It never made a whole lot of sense for them to be dying out to me. They're tough, usually rich as a race, and have a major technological advantage over there traditional enemies.

If I include dwarves it's usually as a thriving if geographically limited race.

Dwarves travelling has precedence in the Poetc Eddas. In the Voluspo they speak of dwarves travelling:

The rocks they left, | and through wet lands
They sought a home | in the fields of sand.

So some dwarves would have left their mountains, traveled through wetlands, where i'm sure some settled, and further to a great desert, where they also settled.

>>51965410
I really like this idea. Maybe with orc and goblins being pushed into an ever shrinking psuedo Palestine.

Would set up a perpetual state of animosity between them and bordering orc nations.

Bonus points if a human state is helping to prop them up because "they're our only friends in the region"

>"Dwarves"
>descended from the feral goat-men of old
>stout, hairy fellows clad in their own wool, with horns of their own bone
>can and *will* eat almost everything
>live high up in the mountains, in secluded valleys or far-off canyons, and the boreal forests
>build crude but sturdy huts
>adept climbers but rarely stray far from their villages unless led by an elder
>of moderate intelligence, slow thinkers but prone to sudden epiphanies in the form of minor seizures that leave them paralyzed for a few minutes

>>51965535
I don't see much dwarf in this.

>>51965595
it's all in the visuals and the various states of drunkenness, man.

>>51965139
There's Warcraft. That's one, at least.

>>51965595
I kinda like it. If you kept going with it and made them more dwarfy.

Horned mountain dwarves with weird goat eyes sound pretty cool. No real affinity for mining, but it's a profit making venture in thier preferred habitat.

Might have diplomatic problems if every traditional negotiation starts with a head butt.

>>51965608
>>51965674
I'm not here to tell you to stop liking what I don't like, just think that dwarves without some kind of mining and smithing are just buff halflings or gnomes.

>>51965733
I see what you mean. I think I'd you give dwarves to many goat Characteristics, they probably fit more into the setting as orcs than dwarves. But it's interesting to see a new take, as long as it isn't too fast from the source material.

Never liked gnomes as a race. They just seemed like discount dwarves.

Halflings are okay. But i'm not a huge fan.

>>51954383
THAT'S FUCKIN COOL

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This is the best kind of design for female dwarves.

>short
>stout
>thicc
>square but feminine faces
>large but not bulbous noses
>big tits in push-up plate bras

>>51962979
The legs but also how long it'll take for dwarven stuff to well, happen. Carving out mountains for stonework isn't easy and with such a firm appreciation for the old (which is usually rather recent for them) I doubt the dwarfs are that interested in new things.

It's just that a lot of things about dwarfs make sense when you put "Hates moving" as a reason.

>>51965961
Think you've got to see some movement for dwarves to hey access to goods they can't get in the mountains and to sell the predicts they make. Unless another race works as the go between.

I could see traveling merchant being a lower class, even if it was a profitable one.

>>51965139
Eragon

>>51962158
>>51962029
This is rather overstated, Dwarves and Halflings in the old editions had better saves against most things because they are more, and I quote, "sturdy" not due to being non-magical, that came later.

>>51966243
Then its a warhammer thing?

>>51962029

This goes back to Tolkien, whose Dwarves were resistant to the corrupting influence of Sauron's rings and were made by Aulë to be hardy and resistant to all things. The only thing the rings managed to do was amplify the greed of dwarves, but otherwise they were fine.

>>51966270
No, see
>>51966326
Warhammer just riffed it.

DnD riffed it later after it stopped being its weird sort of post apoc fantasy with Americanisms.

>>51966326
Dwarf stronk

>>51966398
>weird sort of post apoc fantasy with Americanisms
Can you explain? I didn't play old school dnd

>>51966326
this. also because in Tolkien dwarves have a different creation than elves or humans so they are also more different/alien on some things

weird that dwarves in Tolkien were basically specifically made to fight evil but they just turned out to be jewsits why warhammer dwarves are better.

warhammer also has dwarf mages in case people dont know. the chaos dwarf sorcerers

>>51966436
The chaos dwarfs dont count because of all the rigarounds the dwarfs had to do to get there.

I'd argue you really shouldn't frame anything in the vein of "this doesn't do that", because then you start elaborating bullshit reasons about why this doesn't do whatever.

In the case of dwarves and magic, I'd argue it should'nt be framed as "dwarves don't do wizards" and more "dwarves use magic just like everyone else", and how you differentiate that is a matter of flavor.

When you frame things as "do not", you start inviting all sorts of bullshit exceptions where by definition anyone doing anything outside the racial stereotype doesn't belong to that race.

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>>51966436
>weird that dwarves in Tolkien were basically specifically made to fight evil but they just turned out to be jewsits

That's the beauty of it, though.

Sure, they were created in such a way that they would be perfectly-suited to fight evil, but they have true freedom of will and were able to do as they pleased and pursue their own desires.

Besides, they did fight evil on a few occasions. They fucked the orcs of the Misty Mountains so hard that the North was safe for a long time.

>>51965733
gnomes and dwarves are kinda the same thing in my language.

>>51966553
>human wizards are like students, who can access magic more easily the more they focus on it and repeat it
>because of this, humans tend to learn magic either at special schools (rare) or from an elder wizard who takes an apprentice
>human magic takes the form of fixed spells that do one thing and nothing else, because humans can only learn this kind of magic

>orc wizards are like shamans, whose souls can only be touched by magic through an external object of devotion
>this object does not need to be physical as long as the wizard *thinks* it actually exists and has magical powers (e.g. a forest spirit, the concept of valor, a well crafted staff)
>this primal connection to magic makes orc spells primal in nature, most of them being healing magic or spells that enhance the body
>if the wizard begins to doubt the magic power of his totem, the magic fades, and they need to find a new one
>a totem yields more powerful magic if more orcs believe it to be magic

>dwarf wizards are like idiot savants; while their souls only rarely open up to the constant stream of magic that flows through the world, when they do the magic flows into them at full force
>what they lack in terms of control or finesse, they make up with raw power and their spells are seemingly random outbursts of supernatural energy that induces a violent change to their immediate surroundings (e.g. a thunderstorm, a heat wave, a really loud yell)
>to prevent their wizards from accidentally destroying everything around them, dwarves have invented all kinds of useful anti-magic trinkets and safety protocols
>therefore, dwarf warriors are known for their efficiency when dealing with magic-using individuals

>>51969942
In a setting I am making for a game dwarves, gnomes, and kobolds are all the same thing basically, just different cultures and slight different morphologies.

>>51966420
A little hard to but, when your planet is filled with crashed UFOs to loot, ancient robots, barsoomian white apes, ect. all with a veneer of fantasy viewed through a filter of a very American man, you got one crazy world.

>>51962923
>best female dwarf 'beard

This. I like the idea of dwarf women just fashioning their hair in a manner that can be mistaken for a beard.

>>51966491
Chaos Dwarfs always count, best part of Chaos AND dwarfs in Warhammer.

>>51971424
>In a setting I am making for a game dwarves, gnomes, and kobolds are all the same thing basically
Kobolds?

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What is everyones opinion on Warlord Battlecry's Dark Dwarves and evil dwarves in general?

Dwarves require several metals as micronutrients: lead, arsenic, tin and mercury amongst others are required for healthy metabolic function and good mental health. This leads to heavy proclivity towards exposure and work with metal an their salts, and their metabolisms' high resistance to 'poisons'.

Travelling dwarven merchants or dwarves whom live away from the forges and mines of their homes often keep a shaker of dwarven salt to season food. Whilst it tastes somewhat similar to sea salt prolonged use of this salt by non-dwarves leads to chronic heavy metal poisoning, and a slow death.

Are heavily armored dwarves basically the terminators of the fantasy realm?

>>51971994
I pretty much use the Drin from Tanith Lee's Night's Master for my evil dwarves, aka Duregar.

They're also essentially a slave race of the Dark Elves/Drow.

>>51971578
Im not saying they arent cool but their magic literally petrifies them so they appear more of a reason why dwarf wizards dont exist then anything else.

>>51972226
Try the webcomic Goblins. It's mostly shitty gore-porn, but there are some genuinely clever ideas; one of them is a heavily armored Dwarven Paladin murderstomping everything between him and the monsters he's hunting.

>>51965430
>I think this really fits dwarves. They seem pretty obsessed with hoarding, I don't see why that wouldn't apply to food to.
Thanks, I tried to capture the essential aspects of dwarfhood.

>>51965139
>is there any fantasy universes where dwarves ARENT on the verge of extinction or merely a shadow of their former self?
In my setting, the time period is roughly analogous to the Renaissance and the Dwarven colonies are roughly analogous to the United Kingdom.
So, they're doing alright.
But they're far more cautious than the human nations who nobody is quite as expansive as.

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>>51962101
I'd buy it

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What about Space Dorfs?

So what's a good flying mount for dwarves? Humans and elves always get things like dragons and wyverns and pegasi, but dwarves almost always have to go without (except for warhammer, and even then they had to build it themselves).

Personally, I think dwarves should ride bats. They both live in caves and mines, and its already been mentioned in this thread how important bats are to cave ecosystems. Since dwarf mines are always fucking huge, they could just hang from the ceiling out of sight above dwarf cities until their rider calls them down.

Shame about all the guano though.

>>51977091
The guano is the most important part of bats to a cave ecosystem so they are probbably bred for that.

Its possible that dwarf hardiness makes them immune to bad dung while its actual toxic to the other races, letting them use the bat shit as bioweapons. Smear it on a axe and when that cuts boom, infection.

Common mushrooms, funghi, lichens and mosses are considered peasant food. The Dwarves' strong sense of tradition and passing down knowledge means most Dwarves are taught which are safe to eat and which are poisonous from a young age.
Farmed varieties give a better yield and taste considerably better but given how cheaply they can be grown it's still considered food fit for paupers.

A common soup eaten by the lower classes consists of a broth made from boiling rocks covered in white moss. The rocks and leftover moss are strained out and thick cut mushrooms are simmered in the stock along with rocksalt and lichens for flavour.
Insects and more exotic funghi are sometimes included in variations on the soup.

>>51977418
So do dwarves bore a series of small holes into the top of the mountains for sunlight for the farms or do they farm on the outside and the more defensive holds are inside?

>>51977599
Most of their crops don't require sunlight coming from the cave ecosystem. Fruits and vegetables grown in sunlight are typically traded from the outside.

Ungor beetles are foot-long armoured bugs with nutritious, fatty flesh Dwarven miners traditionally pack for as their lunch.
The beetle's innards are scooped out and the foul-tasting organs separated from the meat. The meat is then mashed with vegetables and different seasonings- traditionally cave lichens and funghi, more exotic Elven herbs and produce brought in by spice merchants have surged in popularity.

The mash is cooked in the carapace which imparts a unique smokey sweetness on top of the other flavours added. One popular recipe calls for leek and capsicum to be added, along with Elven turmeric and wythtree bark.

When a vein of gold or platinum is struck and a Dwarven clan celebrates their cook will procure expensive Marley snails and cave-yak milk. The milk is simmered over coals with plenty of sugar, salt and spices along with stinging moss or Human chillies.
The milk is then left to cool and the snails added to soak it up, swelling out of their shells so that they can be easily extracted and deep-fried in lard.
The outside of the snail turns crispy and golden while the inside retains a soft creamy texture. They're often served with a thin dipping sauce made from sharp-tasting hanging funghi.

Rich Dwarven nobility indulge in a dessert made from the eggs of the ghostly white giant crabs that populate the rivers of surface freshwater which flow through Dwarven caves.
The crabs are fiercely territorial and innately magical, making diving for their eggs a dangerous and highly profitable pursuit.

The eggs boiled with sugar until they caramelise, then fat from the cave-yak (now almost entirely replaced by Human cattle-butter) is stirred in along with 4 specific Dwarven spices only sourced from their caves. The caramelised eggs and their rich chocolatey sauce are served over fruit or softened sweet mushrooms.
The specifics of this recipe is a closely-guarded Dwarven secret, though they will gladly serve it to foreign royalty, diplomats or rich members of merchant guilds.

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Why can't they eat rocks?

>>51950592
She'needs embroided sideburns.

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>>51950592
Plenty of alcohol involved, and it lasts a long time - dwarven endurance is pretty useful there