Most of Centerra believes in reincarnation, and the dwarves are no exception. They believe that a good dwarf (which is the same thing as a hard-working dwarf) will be reincarnated as a mole, the most sacred of creatures.
Moles are referred to as "beards of the earth". Killing a mole is not taboo (since they will just be reincarnated again as another mole), but grabbing or transporting one is.
(The dwarven reverence for beards is well-documented. You may slap a dwarf's mother in front of him and live, but you must never, ever grab him by the beard. Dwarves are uncreative, but they are not unemotional, and this is almost guaranteed to piss them off something fierce. Moles, which occupy the same conceptual space in the dwarven brain as beards, fall under the same category.)
Moles are holy. They are believed to dig constantly, and travel the globe. Many dwarves have a mole garden cavern behind their houses, or shared between neighboring domiciles. (This serves the same function as your mom's butterfly garden.)
Angels are giant moles (see also: dire moles) that ascend from heaven (which is located in the center of the earth) while crapping out gemstones where good (i.e. hardworking) dwarves are destined to find them.
This leads to the common dwarven expression of wonderment and/or fear, which is (translated as) "holy moley".
Rats
Dwarves believe that rats are the evil (lazy) antithesis to moles. Rats do not dig holes, but instead steal their burrows from honest moles. They do not earn their food, but instead steal it from other animals. It is known that rats can eat gemstones, and crap them out as especially foul turds. If a rat sleeps on top of a bag of gold coins, it will turn them into copper. And when a dwarf of either gender is especially evil (lazy), they will not bear children as other dwarves do, but instead give birth to litters of squeaking rats.
Talk to any dwarf about rats, and you will hear a dozen different "truths" about rats (and there might be a shred of truth to some of them.) You will also hear about how delicious they are.
While dwarves experience moles spiritually (think about the Hindu relationship with cows), rats are mostly viewed through a gustatory lens.
Dwarves. Fucking. Love. Eating. Rats.
A rat on a stick is the traditional food of the everydwarf, but dwarven recipes for rats are as numerous as the rats themselves. These usually vary in their sauces (e.g. honeyed rat blood) or their preparation (e.g. boiled in blackberry mead), but occasionally they will have their tails braided together and then fried into exciting poses.
Dwarven nobles also enjoy their rats, but prefer their feasts to be indicative of their extravagance (like most nobles). For example, picture a table upon which two thousand deep fried rats are arrayed, each one carefully posed in a combative stance, bristling with breaden breastplates and brandishing swords of spun sugar.
Rat jerky is still rat-shaped, and flats of rat jerky are usually sold with all the rats tied together by their tails. Rat jerky salesdwarves sometimes wear vests of jerky-rats; when the salesdwarf is shirtless, he goes home.
Booze
Centerran dwarves are uncreative laborers whose only goal in life is to work. They are the perfect lumpenprole. (And some say that they were engineered for exactly that reason.)
However, as soon as they get drunk, they start putting horns on their helmets, fetishizing axes, brawling atop barrels, and mysteriously speaking in Scottish accents. They loosen up. They become a lot less enthusiastic about working 14 hours a day. (The bottom line is that you can still play a generic fantasy dwarf in Centerra as long as you stay drunk.)
Not even the elves have an explanation for this phenomenon, and refer to it as the "pointless miracle".
Nice Dwarf discussion - I'd just point out that "lumpenproletariat"doesn't mean that. It's Marx's definition for the class of non-productive non-workers (both the bourgeoisie and proletariat are productive):
ReplyDelete"Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème."
Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème." - Marx, 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
I only mention it because it's a damn useful concept. Also I think the class includes tomb robbers and dungeoneers.
Noted. But now, I don't know any word that means "working class that gives no shits about being exploited and struggles to understand the concept" so I don't know what to replace it with.
DeleteNot quite what you're after but this might help you:
Deletehttp://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dGdb3BsiOXs/ViKEdhfzltI/AAAAAAAACLQ/u8_d-KWJsUc/s1600/Slide4.JPG
Well the Lumpenproetariat is also deemed by Marx as unlikely to develop class consciousness, I think it'd be hard to find a Marxist term for workers that knowingly enjoy their status as the producers of value who are not allowed to enjoy its fruits. Seems like a very non-Marxist idea, maybe even a non-human one.
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