TOLARIA - Dwarves

(This was something developed for a fantasy RPG campaign which never actually went ahead.)

Physically, dwarfs are short and stocky.

The average dwarf stands around five feet high, but their muscular build means that the average dwarf weighs the same as an average human.

There is no appreciable sexual dimorphism – female dwarves are as tall and muscular as their men folk. The external mammalia are small, and largely buried within the chest muscles. Female dwarves can grow beards, and most choose to do so. Given that both dwarf clothing and dwarf language are essentially unisex, it is often very hard for non-dwarves to distinguish between male and female dwarfs

Dwarves are considered mature at thirty, and normally live to between 150 and 200. However, a very small percentage simply stop ageing at around 150 (spry late middle age, by Dwarven standards), and can easily live to ages of 600 or more.

Such “living ancestors” have a nearly religious status in Dwarf society, especially as any onset of magical ability among dwarves comes at this point, rather than among puberty as among humans.

Dwarves can see notably better in poor light than humans, albeit only in shades of black and white, but they are still blind in complete darkness.

Dwarf homes are quite different from human ones, even allowing for the fact that they are generally part of a large underground complex. Most notably, they generally don’t have kitchens or bathrooms, as most dwarves eat in communal canteens, and relatively small living areas; dwarves will generally meet friends and socialise in communal areas, rather than at home.

Young dwarves who have left home often live in barrack-like bunkrooms, with just a bunk bed and a footlocker to hold their few possessions. While some are large transient lodgings, most house 4 – 6 dwarves, who are usually close friends and/or co-workers.

Chilldless older dwarves will usually share with just one other dwarf – often in what might be called a marriage, if dwarves recognised the concept - or even live on their own, usually in quarters with a little more room for personal possessions.

Dwarves with children almost invariably have notably larger quarters, with a separate room for each child, and rather more living space, since families with young children will spend more time within the home itself.

Wealthy or important dwarves may have quite extensive suites, but these often incorporate their workshops and perhaps even bunkrooms for apprentices or workers, and are business premises as much as homes.

Mated dwarves do not have any special legal status that equates to human marriage; they are simply two dwarves who choose to live together. The closest equivalent is dwarves who intend to have children, who will invariably enter a Khalzhan (“agreement for creating young dwarfs”) before doing so. This has legal status, and closely resembles a business partnership in form.

Dwarves regard inherited wealth as both divisive for the society, and debilitating to the individual; a dwarf should stand by his own accomplishments, rather than receiving unearned money by an accident of birth.

Other than a few momentoes to friends and family, and paying for a generally truly outrageous wake, most dwarves leave any wealth they’ve accumulated after settling their debts to various good causes.

Dwarves believe very strongly in meeting their obligations, and will use their wills to ensure that any outstanding debts are met. This includes social obligations – if a dwarf dies the day before a party he said he’d attend, nobody will be surprised when his coffin is carried in by his friends, so that he can still keep his word.

Dwarves in the Human states live under the political and tax structures of those states.

Within the Khazalid kingdoms, however, the dominant political system is a kind of weighted-vote democracy – individuals are assigned to one of a number of voting bands, and their votes weighted accordingly. For example, a simple worker’s vote might be worth five units, while the vote of a skilled engineer might be worth twenty. The phrase “Taking the measure of a man” is not a metaphor, in Khazalid.

Unusually, Dwarves extend the voting franchise even to children, down to the equivalent of a human ten-year old, albeit in a low voting band. As the dwarves say “What we do affects their future, so why shouldn’t they take part in the decisions?”

Voting is open – the idea of secret ballots are derided, as what kind of dwarf could respect a candidate whose supporters are too embarrassed or fearful to admit their allegiance?

There is a minimum age criteria for election to office, roughly the equivalent of thirty in human terms.

The executive body is the council of each hold, with a councillor receiving a seat on the council for each 10,000 weighted votes (the average number of votes per dwarf is around 10). A councillor can hold more than one seat, if he has the votes.

Any living ancestors the hold is lucky enough to have get an automatic seat on the council, in addition to the elected councillors. By tradition, they do not stand for election as a means of obtaining additional seats.

There is little dissent over this political system in the Khazalid kingdoms – it suits the dwarven mindset, with its belief in equality of opportunity, rather than equality of outcome. “We all start the same, but some make more of ourselves”, as one dwarven philosopher put it.

Political dissent is almost completely within the system – activism outside it is seen as showing that your particular cause isn’t strong enough to prevail in a test of reason. The closest a dwarf is likely to come to protesting against the system itself is by appealing against his voting classification, but even this is uncommon…though cynics might suggest that this is because the voting bands are linked to the tax bands.

Tax is a stepped poll tax – each dwarf pays a fixed amount, weighted according to the voting band he is assigned to. Note that though the bands may be the same for both votes and tax, the weightings need not be – a mine engineer might have four times as many votes as one of his workers, but only pay twice as much tax, since the bands emphasise knowledge and skill, rather than wealth.

A side effect is that dwarvish children also pay tax, albeit a very small amount. A dwarf would simply shrug at this, and point out that as they receive the benefits, so they should help support the system.

Dwarvish military and political titles are often translated using archaic human terms, (King, Lord, Thegn etc), but a more literal translation would be something more like overseer, supervisor or manager – the terms are the same as would be used in an industrial concern, as dwarves see government or war as trades, just like any other.

DWARVEN CLOTHES

Most dwarven clothing is straightforward and utilitarian, rather like the dwarves themselves. As most dwarfs work “indoor”, trousers and shirts are most common, with heavier jackets and coats for those who work on the surface. Fastenings are usually bone buttons, and belt pouches are more common than pockets. Dwarfs working in mining or physical labour have reinforcing patches on the knees and elbows of their clothes.

Dwarfs do have a nudity taboo – although they are happy to for their arms to be exposed, few will appear in public with torso or legs uncovered.

However, they don’t share human attitudes to display and smart-versus-casual dress – most dwarf garments are well-made, but a dwarf miner wouldn’t feel any problem with wearing the same clothes to meet the hold council as he wore to work, and a guild master might wear exactly the same rough shirt and trousers as his workers.

The one distinctive “dress” item that dwarves own is a broad sash, to which a dwarf sews his badges of qualification. These are earned by passing standardized tests administered by the craft guilds, and they represent the skills and knowledge a dwarf possesses. Dwarves will wear their sashes in any setting a human would wear smart clothes – interviews, formal presentations, meetings, going out to dinner – and in a very real sense, it is how a dwarf displays his accomplishments and worth. There are detailed rules regarding which are displayed most prominently, and when two dwarves meet, the badges on the others’ sash will usually be the first thing they look at, and will determine which gives the other social precedence.

Dwelling mostly underground, dwarf notions of time are much less tied to daylight than most races; a typical dwarf hold operates around the clock, and dwarves find the idea of a factory or office being idle just because it is dark outside bewildering.

Dwarves divide the day into three shifts of seven hours each, with a one hour break before each. Each dwarf uses these shifts as suits him best – one dwarf might do two shifts of work (quite possibly at different jobs), then have a shift of sleep before a shift of leisure time while another may work one shift, study for a second, and then sleep for the third.

Traditionally, the breaks between shifts allow a dwarf to clean himself up if necessary, grab a meal, and get to wherever he needs to be at the start of the next shift, and the corridors of a dwarf hold are filled with bustling activity between these times.

Dwarves do not associate particular meals with particular times of day as humans tend to – they will each the same dish at any mealtime, rather than thinking of particular things as breakfast foods, for example

Traditional dwarfish cookery makes extensive use of mushrooms and other fungi; most holds have extensive mushroom-farms in disused caverns and tunnels, and some have extensive tanks for rearing fish. Other common ingredients are grains and beans – most of the classic dwarven recipes are, from a human viewpoint, essentially rather bland gruels.

It is worth noting that dwarves tend to see cookery as a way of refuelling the body, rather than a fine art, and most dwarven homes do not gave kitchens – the owners simply eat at communal cafeterias. Dwarves living in human cultures often learn to enjoy the variety and flavour of human cuisine.

Dwarves will notoriously eat rat, though not if they can get anything better – it is less an actual dietary preference than the notorious dwarf pragmatism combining vermin control and a chance to get some meat into the basic gruel.

Dwarf ale is often a disappointment to humans who try it – while it does have the high potency and strong, nutty flavour dwarves often reminisce about, it is also extremely cloudy and rather yeasty; it is commonly regarded as much as a foodstuff as a drink, and human drinkers often have it sieved before drinking, to make it more palatable.

Khazalid

Khazalid – commonly referred to as “Dwarfish” among humans – is a very straightforward language, much like the Dwarves themselves. It does have several structural features that differ from common human usage, and many Dwarves carry these over into their sentence structure when speaking human languages.

All verbs are regular, and there are no homonyms – Dwarves regard having words that sound the same but mean different things as self-evidently foolish. It is very hard to make puns in Khazalid.

Dwarves do not generally use metaphor, either – describing something as “rock hard” would just lead to an enquiry about what sort of rock it was as hard as, and describing something as “beautiful as a may morning” would simply be unintelligible.

Unlike most Human languages, Khazalid does not use different terms when describing damage to living and non-living things – a dwarf would describe himself being “damaged” and “repaired” rather than “injured” and “healed”

All Khazalid words are neutral, rather than having masculine and feminine forms. Where gender is actually important, this is indicated by “male” or “female” – the normal would be “A Dwarf”, with “A male Dwarf” or “A female Dwarf” used only when relevant. Dwarves rarely think that gender is relevant in conversation.

Tenses are indicated by separate modifiers, rather than by changing verbs – the Khazalid equivalent of “I went, I am going, I will go” would be “I did go, I am go, I will go”.

Negation and emphasis are also indicated by separate modifiers – the closest equivalent of the human word “rarely” would translate literally as “double-plus un-often”

Contractions don’t exist in Khazalid, and punctuation is used much less than in human languages – a dwarf would simply say “and” between each item on a list, rather than using a comma. Where it occurs, punctuation is pronounced verbally – all dwarf sentences finish with the phrase “Ends”, as in telegraphese.

The written form of Khazalid uses an alphabet of 28 angular letters, easy to scratch onto stone and commonly known as runes. All words are written phonetically, exactly as they are written. There is no distinction between upper and lower case letters – the Khazalid equivalent of writing in block capitals is to scratch or draw a frame around the word.

Dwarves use Arabic-style numerals, and count in base-12; they say that the greater number of factors makes it a much better system than the human base-10, which they feel has no virtue other than coincidentally matching the number of fingers.