Dwarves

Description

Dwarves are solid and enduring like the mountains they love, weathering the passage of centuries with stoic endurance and little change. They are a proud and noble people who hail from the Snowfell Mountains. Their capitol city, Snowpeak, can be found in the largest mountain in the Snowfell Mountain Range.

Dwarves trace their ancestry back to the founding of their most ancient strongholds in the youth of the world. Their patron god is Duros, who upholds the dwarven ideals of industrious labor, skill in battle, and devotion to the forge. Bold and hardy, dwarves are known as skilled warriors, miners, and workers of stone and metal.

Racial Passive — Hardiness: +1 Stamina

History

During the Dark Ages, the dwarves were a republic, with power split between a Monarch, a Senate, and a Supreme Court. This republic lasted for hundreds of years.

From the year 3 to 400, the dwarves lived in a secluded state. While they had settlements south and north of the snowy mountains for farming, many of those settlements kept to themselves. Dwarves are a very isolationist people, and believe in putting their nation first above all others, even self. This has resulted in them being distrusting of outsiders.

In the year 400, King Thorin was assassinated by the Dark Dwarves who stole Mithrus and Ilterendi for themselves. The senate convened to appoint an emergency king, but the entire senate was killed when tunnels from underneath the senate chamber were collapsed by the dark dwarves. This resulted in a power vacuum. General Lokkhan stepped forward to seize control of a nation spiraling to it's doom. This incident began the Great War, which fueled a hateful relationship between the Sun Elves and Dwarves.

50 years after the start of the Great War, the Dwarves managed to bring the dark dwarves responsible for the instigation of the Great War to justice, and returned Ilterendi to the elves. This ended the war, and left the Dwarven nation in ruins, in more ways than one.

The Great War completely destroyed all of the farms north of Snowpeak. The soil had been contaminated and ruined to the point where it would take hundreds of years to grow anything other than weeds. The forest of Thrain was a tempting choice to cultivate, but it belonged to humanity. This drove the dwarves further south with their farming efforts. In the mean time, starvation and economic despair gripped the nation. King Lokkhan established martial law to prevent rioting and looting. Under his rule, the nation barely managed to prevent catastrophe.

In the years following King Lokkhan’s rule, future military generals would take the role of King, and also struggle to keep the Dwarven nation afloat economically. Unwilling to admit their vulnerability to the outside world, they kept the true nature of their poverty a secret. Large public works programs for those unable to get jobs were started, involving large digging efforts in Snowpeak to create reserve housing and storage for a longer, harsher war. These tunnels were massive, and carved over the course of hundreds of years.

In recent history, a massive battle during the Drums of War campaign resulted in the dwarves taking severe losses in resources and people. Since the war in Year 700 they have been locked away in their mountain and refuse to interact with the outside world. Very few dwarves still roam Hellan. Those that do tend to be in relationships with humans, or otherwise have a good reason not to be holed up in the dwarven capital city, Snowpeak. They are very rare.

Personality

Dwarves are well known for their work ethic, whether they are a blacksmith, baker, or politician. Stereotypes tend to cast dwarves as being overly fond of both money and alcohol, though in truth most will put family and clan above all else. Their courage and endurance is renown in Ilisara.

Most dwarves are resolute and down-to-earth. They care not for the whimsical inventions of humans, nor the fanciful religion and arts of the elves; dwarves are rational, honest, and believe in what they can see and touch. They tend to form strong internal bonds and have insider jokes and customs that outsiders will either never see or never understand. As a result, many dwarves seem difficult to like and lack the charm of other races, though this trait isn’t common to all dwarves. Dwarves are not entirely unsocial and more than a few have a natural knack for bartering or judging the value of an offer, something that sat well with their legendary crafting abilities.

Many dwarves inherently desire gold and precious gems, owing to their creation by the god of earth. It is an instinctual call to their divine roots. To some, this might be called “greed”.

Appearance

Though they stand well under 5 feet tall, dwarves are quite broad and compact and weigh as much as a human. Dwarves are a long-lived race, and reached physical maturity somewhat later than humans. A dwarf is traditionally considered an adult once he or she reaches fifty. Dwarves age like humans but over a longer period of time, remaining vigorous well past 100 years.

Dwarven skin ranges from deep brown to a paler hue tinged with red, but the most common shades are light brown or deep tan, like certain tones of earth. Their hair, worn long but in simple styles, is usually black, gray, or brown, though paler dwarves often have red hair. Male dwarves value their beards highly and groom them carefully.

Combat and Professions

Dwarves make excellent warriors, smiths, and masons. They have a knack for visualizing spaces and a great understanding of physics owing to their race’s fantastic feats of tunneling.

Society

Pride in their ancient kingdoms rich in grandeur, halls carved into the roots of mountains, the echoing of picks and hammers in deep mines and blazing forges, a commitment to clan and tradition; these common threads unite all dwarves.

Politics

When humanity offered to create a Confederacy, the dwarves accepted out of necessity. They could not afford another war with the Sun Elves at this time, even if they wanted one to avenge the centuries of suffering inflicted upon them. This has lead to an ever-bitter distaste for elves among dwarves, who otherwise would be too proud to admit why they hate elves.

In present day, the economic crisis has largely passed, and the Dwarven nation has been returned to one of prosperity thanks in large part to the peace provided by the Confederacy. However, the Confederacy still represents how desperate the dwarves have become. Many would rather see the dwarves depart from the Confederacy and live as a free nation-state, while many others would rather see the Confederacy grow to expand their influence.

Dwarves in present day belong to two political parties. There are the Traditionalists, who believe in the old republic's ways, glorifying the past republic as an example of what they should return to, and the Militarists, who believe in the current social order of military leadership. Currently the Militarists outnumber the Traditionalists, and thus the military has been able to retain power.