Dwarven Puzzle Tomb - Part 1

This is my Week 3 contribution to Dungeon23.  I'm writing a dwarven puzzle tomb.

>>>HERE<<<

I'm trying to take my own advice on puzzle dungeons to see if my advice is worth a damn.  Turning theory into practice, that sort of thing.

Discussion

The dungeon is built around the idea that this is a puzzle tomb that is easy for dwarves to navigate, but deadly to humans.

Because of this, the players need to enter the dungeon with a basic knowledge of what dwarves are like.  This takes the form of a hand-out (which should all be familiar information for anyone who's played DnD before).

This is sort of the over-clue that informs a lot of the puzzles.

The first puzzle at the entrance relies on this knowledge (dwarven infravision allows them to see the temperatures of objects) and is probably trickier than the next few puzzles but I wanted to make sure that players were thinking along the axis of "easy for dwarves, deadly for humans".

This is only the first few rooms, so the puzzles are pretty simple--mostly meant to familiarize the players with how a puzzle dungeon operates.

The diorama puzzle is the weakest of the bunch and I am almost certainly going to overhaul it when I rewrite these rooms (for like the 4th time, lol).

If anyone has any ideas for improving the diorama puzzle, let me know in the comments.

Soft Locks

There's a shitty little draft map in the PDF, but you can see that the dungeon has a tree-like shape.

I'm doing this because I want to utilize soft-locks, so that the players will only have ~3 puzzles to work on at a time.

You don't want to put all of the puzzles in front of your players at once--it's overwhelming.

Inversely, you don't want to have your puzzle dungeon simply be a linear chain of dungeon rooms presented one after the other--it's boring, and if you get stuck on one puzzle, you can't take a break and go work on some other puzzle.  You're stuck with the one puzzle that's frustrating you.

Hence, soft locks.

Here's a sketch of the dungeon layout from last week.  In this sketch, room 3 (the one with the three statues) has to be encountered before room 6 (measuring across the floor) can be solved.  Likewise, room 5 (the diorama) is required before room 10 can be solved.

If you work your way through the drawing above, and imagine how players might hypothetically progress through the dungeon, you'll see that they have ~3 puzzles available to them at any given time (except at the beginning, when they have less).

This is what I mean by flow control.

Benefits:

• Sort puzzles from easy to hard
• Make sure that players have learned the principles on an easy puzzle before I ask them to use it on a more complicated puzzle
• Helps tell a linear story

Because there are 8 tombs in this dungeon, and they are all arranged in the order that members of the dwarven work crews died, it allows me to tell a story of how the mountain was excavated.  Players will learn which dungeon areas are near the surface (excavated early) and which ones are at the bottom (excavated later) and how the whole dig got much more perilous as the project grew.

Puzzle dungeons benefit more from flow control than other dungeon types.  

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Here are previous entries in the Dungeon23 thing.

Week 1

Week 2

Some Words on Dwarven Gender

 Gender

The two dwarven genders are miner and blacksmith.

Gender is among the first ways we describe someone, along with age, name, and where they're from.  "My new boss is this woman from Texas."  Most of the time you don't even have to say whether someone is a man or a women, since the pronouns do it for you.

Dwarves do the same thing.  "What's their name?  What's their craft?"

So it will come as no surprise that dwarven have pronouns indicate profession.

Gender and Profession

Of course, miner is used in both the literal sense (they literally mine ores) and the general sense, as in anyone who collects raw goods might also be referred to as a miner.  (The word is unfortunately ambiguous when translated.)

And literally translating blacksmith is also misleading, too, since it can also refer to anyone who transforms raw materials into a more unfinished state.

Human: "So your mason is also a blacksmith?"

Dwarf: (Rolls eyes.) "They don't work with metal.  I told you they work with stone.  But of course, yes, they're a blacksmith."

Human: "Huh?"

That's what they put on their tombstones.  Instead of "devoted mother and wife" you'll encounter "diligent mason and bondholder".

Some parts are non-intuitive.  Warriors are usually considered to be miners, except for cavalry, who are considered blacksmiths.  Of course, in a war, everyone fights.  It's just that miners are expected to fight, while blacksmiths are not.

Which seems a little bit silly to humans.  "Surely you still need miners during a war, and surely a blacksmith can fight as well as a miner?"  It's a cultural norm, not a rational decision.

Gender and Names

Human names are gendered.  You can usually tell someone's gender just by their name.  Tabitha is a girl.  Scott is a boy.

Dwarven names are the same.  Oskerval is a miner.  Gathron is a blacksmith.

Dwarves give themselves their own names when they are young.  It is considered important for dwarven children to have good role models of both genders.

Gender and Language

Dwarven pronouns are also built around the same divide.  They don't have he/she.  Instead they have a different set of pronouns based on whether you are talking about a miner (raw material collector) or a blacksmith (manufacturer of finished goods).

Even dwarven nouns are gendered in this way.  (It's a bit like German in that way.)  It doesn't always make sense.

A pickaxe is a miner, but a shovel is a blacksmith.  Rubies are miners, diamonds are blacksmiths.

Birds are neuter.

Is Gender Even the Right Word?

Not really.  It's not quite like how we use gender, but "gender" is the closest thing that we have for the dwarven concept.  It's probable that the roles for blacksmith and miner evolved out of the types of gender roles that humans are familiar with, so it's possible that dwarves were like us, once.

Dwarves see the world in a certain way that makes them want to put everything and everyone into these two fundamental categories.  A person is either a miner or a blacksmith.  Even animals and objects have associations as one or the other.  

Humans do the same thing with gender.  Cats are kinda feminine, dogs are kinda masculine.  "Don't be catty." "You dog!"

Among dwarves, snakes are kinda minery and goats are kinda blacksmithy.  If a dwarf calls you a snake, he's not accusing you of lying--he's saying that you have a lot of the negative traits associated with miners.

There is a little bit of prejudice against miners.  Most fathers desire blacksmiths.

by Sergio Artigas

How Dwarves See Humans

Imagine a man who goes to a faraway place to visit a new people.

The foreign men there are a little odd, having characteristics of both men and women.  That's fine, though.  The man can handle people that are a little genderfluid.

But then half of them AREN'T LIKE THAT!  HALF OF THEM ARE JUMBO-SIZED CHILDREN WITH TUMORS ON THEIR CHESTS!  

That's how dwarves see women, with their high-pitched voices and smooth chins.

A dwarf goes to visit a human city.  The men are easy enough to interact with.  A lot of them shave their faces (which makes them look like children--like someone wearing a diaper in public) and most of them of genderfluid (they transition between miner and blacksmith all the time--not even like transitioning once in their life, but they switch back and forth daily.)   That's okay, though, the dwarf can handle people that are a little genderfluid.

So even human men tend to make dwarves uneasy.  Younger dwarves tend to be cool with it.  They'll just smile and say "That's fine!  That sort of thing doesn't bother me at all!  If a human wants to shear a sheep and then weave it into cloth himself, that's fine!  I don't judge him.  I'm not a bigot!"

Dwarven elders tend to be more conservative.  (This is an understatement.)

Women are a much stranger concept for dwarves, and if a dwarf hasn't been around humans for very long, expect lots of staring.  Dwarves are also more comfortable talking to men, especially men with beards, and especially men with beards who fall neatly into either the miner or blacksmith category.

This is why dwarves who emigrate to human cities tend to seek out blacksmiths or other crafters early on.  (Cities are full of crafters.)  And since most dwarves who emigrate are miners, in the few cases where a dwarf falls in love with a human, it's inevitably some sort of crafter.

Dwarven Women

Human: "So how come I never see any dwarf women?"

Dwarf: "Eh?  What's a wimmin?"

Human: (laughs and points at a woman) "That's a woman.  What are dwarf women like?"

Dwarf: (getting red in the face) "NO SIR!  There are no dwarven women!"

So you can see how the confusion originally arose.  

But the dwarf is right--there are no dwarven "women".  Dwarves don't have a high degree of sexual dimorphism, and their society lacks any comparable role.

Do Dwarves Identify as Male or Female?

Once dwarves are introduced to the human concept of gender, nearly all of them identify as men.  (They didn't realize that we sorted ourselves by gender, like farm animals or something.)

Most of them have a harder time relating to women in the beginning, mostly because they lack beards and have high pitched voices.  To dwarves, they seem like mutant children.

And to humans, all dwarves look like men, so humans assume them to be male, and address them as such.  To dwarves, the whole distinction is rather pointless ("why does it matter so much?") so they don't really care what gender humans assign them.  They have more important things to do.  Fool humans.

Gender Coding Among Dwarves

There's a lot of little behaviors that can make someone seem more masculine or feminine.  Sitting with your legs crossed.  Watching sporting events.  Wearing tight pants.

Dwarves have even more of these than humans do.  Once you've lived among dwarves for a while, you'll notice that there are hundreds of little things that miners do differently from blacksmiths.  Miners tend to stack their fists when they sit at a table--blacksmiths almost always lay their hands flat.  Blacksmiths wear pockets on their chests, but miners never do.  This extends to how they hold mushrooms during meals, how they stack coins, how they hold shovels, how they braid their beards, how they laugh, and how they sneeze.

And when humans go to dwarven citadels, they fuck this up constantly.

Dwarves like to be clean, like anyone else, but miners are expected to be a little bit dirty.  After a bath, a miner will sometimes apply a little black paint under the tips of their fingernails, so they look a bit dirty.  Or a quick smudge of kohl on the cheek, enough to look casual.

Dwarven Sexuality and Romance

The primary engine for dwarven sexuality is labor.

Dwarves become attracted to other dwarves for a few reasons, but the largest one is their work.  A blacksmith might be impressed by the quantity of a miner's ores, or by their skill in prospecting them.  A miner might be impressed by a blacksmith's steady hand.

There are plenty of stories of a dwarf encountering a hammer, falling in love with the craft of it, and then seeking out the dwarf that made the hammer, already enraptured.

Dwarven gender and dwarven sexuality are closely linked.  When two dwarves fall in love, it's always a miner and a blacksmith.  When two dwarves move in together, it's always a miner and a blacksmith who are in love with each other.  Dwarves have a hundred reasons why that's natural and correct.

Sometimes miners fall in love with miners, though.  Or a blacksmith falls in love with a blacksmith.  These unions are (kindly) regarded as misguided, or (harshly) seen as disgusting and bad for society.  The two dwarves in question are usually shunned or exiled.  In some cases they are killed.

Dwarven society is very repressive in its own way.

Dwarven romance is actually highly analogous to human romance.  There is a large emphasis on gift-giving, though, and a weirdly high value placed on punctuality.  When a couple exchanges money, they use envelopes, and the money is not counted by the recipient.

"Sexuality" isn't quite the right word, either, but they do have sex.  Why did you think they were so eager to move in with each other?

I won't go into the details, but I will say that dwarves are not as obsessed with their genitals as we are.

The reason you don't see dwarves making out all the time is because most of the dwarves you'll meet outside of the citadels are all miners.  Their blacksmiths are all at home (and their miners miss them dearly).

Additionally: dwarves are all pretty faithful in their relationships, but even if they weren't, why would a miner want to kiss a miner?

Dwarves also use possessives to refer to their partner.  "my wife" "my husband" "my blacksmith" "my miner".  This also causes misunderstandings.

Dwarven Reproduction

Reproduction is something completely different from sexuality.

In fact, dwarves think it's kinda gross that humans think the two things are the same.

Of course, dwarves understand that among animals, the boys hump on the girls and that's where babies come from.  They raise plenty of domesticated animals; they are not stupid.

But the separation of sex from reproduction is one of the primary things that separates us from animals.  And in fact, it's boggling that humans have so little self-control over it.  It's as fundamental to society as using a toilet instead of shitting in your front yard.  That's what makes us civilized.  Why can't humans separate the two?

The reasons that a dwarf might want to have a child should sound familiar: it's to have (a) an heir, (b) an apprentice, (c) a family, (d) to give/receive love, (e) to give meaning to their life, (f) to fix the mistakes of their parents, (g) to give someone else a good start in the world, (h) someone to pass their debt on to, so their tomb isn't resold after they die, (i) their father expects them to.

All the same reasons that humans have kids for (except for maybe the debt thing).

When a dwarf wants a child, they prefer to adopt.  Dwarves love adoption.  You get to skip a lot of the unproductive years that way, and the kid will still be loyal to you when they grow up.  (Maybe "loyal" is the wrong word.  Adult dwarven children have a shocking amount of legal and financial obligations to their parents.  Marriages can be annulled, but the obligation that a dwarf owes his father can never be discharged.)

When there are no young dwarves to adopt, a baby will be made the old fashioned way.

The father is the one who pays for the baby.

The father might supply seed, field, or neither.  

Paying for seed is cheap.  Paying for field is expensive.  But when you're done, the new father gets a lovely baby to raise, and everyone is happy.  So many tiny clothes to make!

Dwarves don't care much if their sons are related to them.  It's seen as a little bit prideful if all of your sons are related to you.  A dwarf will probably hire one or two genetic parents based on their rates and the quality of the expected offspring.  The spouse may or may not be one of these dwarves.  The prospective father may or may not be one of these dwarves.

If there is a dwarf you greatly admire, you may want to hire them to be a genetic parent to one of your sons.  It's not rare for dwarves to hire their debtholders to be genetic parents for one of their children, but if their debtholder has a uterus, they probably can't afford it.  Paying for field is so expensive because the dwarf usually has to take time off of work.

The dwarf's spouse is not especially involved in this process, although they are on the short list of dwarves that are considered when choosing a genetic parent.  Most dwarves admire their spouses, after all.  But it's also common for spouses to never father* each other's children, even when they have compatible genitals.  Reproduction has nothing to do with gender.

Honestly, it's far more civilized than whatever humans do.

*In this sentence, it's still "fathering" even if you're the one supplying the uterus.  Sorry if this blogpost is so confusing--English doesn't have a good vocabulary for dwarven gender and reproductive roles.

Mothers and Fathers

Dwarves don't have mothers.  They only have fathers.  

I would describe dwarven society as hyper-patriarchal, but without any women in society, the term is kinda hollow.

Dwarves don't deal well with the concept of shared ownership.  "This baby belongs to both the mother and the father."  Huh?  That's all just dumb shit that humans say.

Dwarf: "So who owns this house, then?"

Man: "Well, I share it with my wife."

Dwarf: (rolling his eyes) "But who owns it rightfully?  If you got a divorce, who would get it?"

Man: "That depends.  We'd probably have to go talk to a judge."

Dwarf: (under his breath) "So the bloody judge knows who the house belongs to, but the man paying taxes on it has no clue.  Fucking incredible, I swear to Gox."

Fathership is a type of ownership.  The young dwarf has rights, of course, but they also have a great many obligations to their father.

Young dwarves dread their birthdays, because that's when their father usually presents them with the itemized list of parenting fees for the last year, and reviews their debt repayment plan.

However, dwarves do have uncles, which is a formal legal status reserved for the brothers of the father.  It is also frequently extended to their spouse, close friend, or debtholder.

In rare cases, it is sometimes even extended to the other genetic parent.

Previous Dwarven Culture Posts

A Few Words on Dwarven Culture

A Few More Words on Dwarven Culture

Dwarven Architecture

The Dwarves of Mt. Doldrum

A Disclaimer

Dwarven culture is not monolithic (even though dwarves will insist that it is.)

This blog post mostly refers to the dwarves of:

• the Seventh Citadel and all its sons and grandsons.
• the Third Citadel of the Fifth Citadel, and all its sons.
• a couple of orphaned citadels in Tramaldea, part of the Cordyceps Diaspora

So if anything in my posts seems to contradict itself, don't worry!  I was just talking about slightly different dwarves.

Dwarven Architecture

Evolutionary psychology has been drawing on the backs of napkins for a while now, and one of my favorite theories concerns the genetic basis for the appreciation of beauty.  Why is beauty?

The rationale is this: protohumans were preyed upon by big predators, and so they benefited from living in places where they can see a long distance without interruption by bushes or tall grass.  Open spaces, instead of deep forests.  And trees gave us fruit (one of our favorite foods) as well as a refuge and a good viewpoint.

And so protohumans that liked living in those locations prospered, while the ones that liked living in tangled forests got eaten by thylacodons.  And that evolutionary motivator that made us move into rolling grasslands with a few tall trees, that motivator was beauty, or at least a certain predisposition toward a certain kind of appreciation.

One one hand, it's poetic.  Beauty saved our lives.  Trees plucked us out of the mouths of tigers.

On the other hand, it's dehumanizing.  The only reason we enjoy parks is because of some ancient genetic imperative in the back of our brains that has long since outlived its usefulness.

But that's just speculative.  Let's talk about dwarves, which are totally factual.

Dwarves are not just short, hairy, drunk dudes.  Dwarves are alien.

This means that they have alien notions of honor, of family, and of beauty.  They will disagree with you about what a city is supposed to do, and how you are supposed to interact with it.  They do not go to parks to relax.

A Few More Words on Dwarven Culture

Dwarven Religion

Dwarves don't worship the dwarf god.  There are no dwarven gods (possibly because no dwarf has been creative enough to invent any) and in fact, the whole notion of gods usually requires some explaining in the first place.

Hesaya is the primary religion of the dwarves, just as it is the primary religion of the entire continent of Centerra (although it takes a few different forms).  Like everyone else, they indirectly revere Zulin, Prince of the Upper Air and directly worship a multitude of local priests and slave-gods.  But how do you get dwarves to worship an air god?

Missionary: "What is better, the earth or the air?"

Dwarf: "The earth, because it gives us toil, tombs, and bread."

Missionary: "But does not the act of digging create an air-filled tunnel, which allows you to access more of the earth?  You claim to love the earth, yet you strive for its absence."

Dwarf: "Harrum.  This does not seem to be entirely untrue."

And so this is the root revelation of the Dwarven Covenant: that goodly dwarves will never escape the cycle of rebirth and enter the Heavenly Mansions of Truth.  Instead, goodly dwarves will simply be reborn as dwarves, to dig in the endless earth for all eternity.

One knock on effect of this philosophy is that each dwarf believes that they are already the best lifeform possible.  There is no hope for a better life, because the dwarven life is the best life for them.  This leads to a great deal of civil contentment and smugness.

Note: If you're a regular reader of this blog, don't try to follow Hesaya too closely.  It's gets rewritten every couple months because I can't make up my mind.

The Dwarven Crusades

Given the Hesayan predilection for antonyms and inversion, it is entirely possible that the Riddle of Air is not a metaphysical one, but a physical one.  And it is possible that the answer is to be found downward, rather than upward.

And so the most devout dwarves engage in the Quest to Find God, which mostly involves digging as deeply as possible.  It's a cross between mining, a never-ending pilgrimage, and the Crusades.

There are multiple, concurrent Under-Quests.  Each one is a legion of dwarves digging to the center of the world, supported by supplies from their surface cities.  In the centuries since they started, the front of this ant-line has moved deeper and deeper into the Underworld, leaving dozens of empty cities and cathedrals behind them, abandoned as they build new ones deeper and deeper.

Quite of few of the Dwarven Crusades have become lost, and the fate of these unknown, eternally digging colonies is not known.

Dwarven Gender and Sexuality

Dwarves have no concept of gender, and struggle to discuss sex.

Male and female dwarves look identical, unless you get them naked.  They are completely unromantic when sober, and marriage and conception is something that is usually performed in the service of their king or council.

The non-creative, work-obsessed dwarven psychology disappears entirely when they are drunk.  It is during these times when dwarven acts of passion are committed.  These include marriages and joint mortgages, but they also include more traditional one night stands (which are usually accompanied by a lot of fumbling around with belts and beards, and a lot of speculation whether the other dwarf's hardware is a "bolt" or a "nut".  Not that it changes the outcome much, except when it comes to pregnancy.)

They don't have gendered pronouns.  The closest thing that they have are the concepts of craftsdwarf and miningdwarf, which they use as translations for 'female' and 'male' respectively.

A big divide in dwarven culture exists around the concepts of those who obtain raw resources (the miners) and those who refine them (the crafters).  This schism is large enough that dwarves often lament their irreconcilable psychologies ('craftsdwarves are from Venus, miningdwarves are from Mars').  And like human genders, these labels come with a host of stereotypes and cultural expectations.

Craftsdwarves tend to care more about their appearance and be more assertive, for example.  (The appearance thing is not to be understated; some miningdwarves are filthy, and spend decades without beds, baths, or razors.)

Dwarves use craftsdwarf and miningdwarf as stand-ins for 'woman' and 'man' in private, or around humans if they are still largely unexposed to human culture.  This is because miningdwarves are usually away from home, doing hard labor, while craftsdwarves rarely travel too far from their hearths.  This is the most salient detail dwarves notice when trying to tell apart human men and women.

They struggle to notice boobs and timbre.  Gender just doesn't sit very close to sexuality in the dwarven headspace.

The biggest oddity is that dwarves sometimes change professions throughout their lives, especially in the miningdwarf to craftsdwarf direction.  This leads to odd questions, such as:

Dwarf: "You repaired that saddle excellently.  Are you planning on becoming a woman in a few more years?"
Man: "The fuck you say?"

It is rare, but not unheard of, for biologically female dwarves to adopt human culture down to its gender roles.  These dwarf-women shave their beards; other dwarves usually mistake them for halflings at this point.

Dwarven Names

Dwarves frequently identify themselves according to what their labor produces.  Here are some sample names for a miner, gemcutter, and warrior.

• Brevigon the Calcite Strand
• Tivik the Smagdarine Eye
• Korlag the Nine Orcs

First names are reserved to intimate friends.  Those who meet Tivik had best become accustomed to addressing the dwarf as "The Smagdarine Eye" for a while.

<digression>This is similar to how dragons identify themselves by their hoards, or by the most valuable item in their hoard.</digression>

Dwarven Rulers

Being non-creative, sober dwarves struggle in leadership roles.  For this reason, dwarven kings are never kings themselves.

They are known for kidnapping clever people and forcing them to rule the dwarven kingdom.  (They are good at detecting duplicity and schemes.  They are non-creative, not stupid.)

But they sometimes engage in the practice of shackled kings.  This is when they summon a clever devil and force them to become their king after extracting a lengthy and comprehensive contract has been drawn up.

And not just one devil-king.  They usually get a hold of several devils and force them to work at cross-purposes.  (Pitting the Devil King of Infrastructure against the machinations of the Devil King of Military keeps the devils working in the dwarves' interest.  Most of the time, anyway.)

The only time that dwarves are ruled by dwarves is when they have a Council of Drunkards.

Upside-Down Colonialism

When dwarves invade a place, they usually kill all the underclasses, but preserve the nobility.  The captive aristocracy is confined to their houses, but is generally allowed to continue going on as they always have.

They are attended by dozens of servile dwarven war-butlers, armed with daggers in case the old nobles try anything funny.  The children of these nobles grow up in a city that is 99% dwarven.

The former aristocracy will be depended upon to run the administrative tasks until the dwarves figure out how to take over these things themselves.  Then these human families will be ushered into service industries: masseuse, psychiatrist, and bards (roles that dwarves struggle with, or despise doing).

Dwarven Debts

Dwarves have a great love for contracts and courts.  They have a great many of each.

Debt is something that is common to many dwarves, and they frequently incur a mutual debt in order to cement a treaty or a marriage.  It is a revered--almost holy--tradition.  Since one dwarven family might be richer more than another, or they may be unequal when it comes to repayment, it is often that one family slides into debt to another.  A large proportion of dwarves are born with huge debts.

This isn't seen as too onerous, since it is honorable work.  It only requires fourteen hours of labor a day for several decades, and then the dwarf is free.  Working your way out from under a large debt is immensely respected among dwarves, and is accompanied by parties, laurels, and all the tasteless beer they can drink.

Dwarven Prisons

Dwarven prisons are always fortified labor camps.  This is also not seen as too terrible, since there is always work to do and the work is always tallied accurately.  Sometimes a human is condemned to a life of hard labor in a dwarven work prison, and the dwarves will wonder why the human cries so much when the sentence is read.

The second-most terrible thing you can do to a dwarf is to cut off their beard.  The single most-terrible thing is to cut off their hands.

Even dwarves in solitary confinement are given bricks to stack or a pile of straw to sort.  Lacking that, dwarves go insane, and will smooth the walls until their hands bleed, or slip into the idiosyncratic madness known of fleshmining.

Dwarven Madness

More than any other race, dwarves tend to go insane.  There is a lot of genetic pressure on their behavior, and it creates a lot of psychic friction.

Stable colonies of insane dwarves are known as the duergar.

But there is an upside to this madness.

It is well-known that magic items (aside from scrolls and potions) are only created by a master craftsman in a mindset of great instability: fear, love, and of course MADNESS.

Dwarves are also the most likely of the races to allow madness to run its course.  Mad dwarves are often sealed up inside their homes and given the materials needed to perform their crafts.  A close eye is kept on them, and they usually send for the healer when the mad dwarf begins headbutting the floor monotonously or eating their own beard.  This is why dwarves have more magic weapons than anyone else.

They also sometimes die from overwork, but this is something to be revered, like starving to death because you gave all your food to hungry orphans.

Dwarven Tombs

What do dwarves do when they have no work to do?  When there is an absence of gems to cut or metal to work into armor?  There must be a release valve somewhere, for the overflow.

And this is the function of tombs in dwarven society.

A dwarf's most prized possession in their tomb.  The usually begin digging it when they are very young, and they will slowly excavate it throughout their entire lives.  They like this because it is concrete and (relatively) impossible to steal.  It is eternal.

And so every dwarven city is surrounded by a halo of tombs, most of which are occupied.  This also helps with their brand of ancestor-worship.

If you do a great service for the dwarves, they will probably reward you with one of the royal tombs.  (The laborers who built the royal tomb are already buried under the floor.  It is their tomb, too.)

Humans who would prefer to have territory, money, or soldiers instead of a royal tomb are usually given these lesser honors, with a shrug.  Who can understand the minds of humans?

Remember. . .

According to the high elves (who alone have a history that predates the Time of Fire and Madness), dwarves were created by them be a race of asteroid miners.

I've been thinking a lot about dwarves lately.  Hopefully this will make the beards stop.

See Also:
A Few Words on Dwarven Culture
The Dwarves of Mt. Doldrum

A Few Words on Dwarven Culture

Holy Moley

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".