The dwarfs consider themselves to be the descendants of
divine ancestors, themselves born when the
Old Gods impregnated seven stones with their divine power. These first dwarfs were bequeathed the vast wealth and power of the deeps, and it is for this birthright that the dwarfs delve deep beneath the earth to this day. In the early years of
The Mortal Age, they made a common cause, of sorts, with the
Elves, forging the Ancient Compact. In this, the dwarfs agreed to provide arms and armour of fine dwarvern steel for the
Regime, in exchange asking only the freedom to govern their own holds as they saw fit, without interference. When the
Legion-Regime Wars began and the value of their goods soared, the dwarfs were able to secure a more favourable deal, granting the independence of the Holdgate communities and the promise of military aid in the event of
Legion aggression.
When the
Horde attacked the dwarf holds on the
Moraean face of the
Great Shield mountains, however, the elves did not answer the call for aid. Their counterstroke against the
Darklands did eventually draw off the assault, but several holds fell, and as far as the dwarfs were concerned, the Compact was broken. They closed their gates and cut off the supply of dwarvern steel to the Regime, and it was in part for their betrayal of the Moraean holds that the
Drow abandoned the Regime.
Ever since this, the Great Betrayal, the dwarfs have regarded all elves with suspicion, and refuse to bow to any law but their ancient dwarf law.
Dwarfs are makers at heart, but while they constantly refine the methods they use in
crafting, the spirit of innovation does not extend to society. Their culture is built on chains of
obligation and duty, primary to which is the concept that obligation is never expunged by death, neither of the debtor, nor of the creditor. A dwarf never forgets, nor forgives, and all debts must be paid in full; a standard to which they hold themselves first and foremost, for in honouring ancestral obligations, they honour their ancestors back to the founders. While obligation does not require an agreement, where a deal is made, the word of a bond is everything, and while terms can be renegotiated, they can never be unilaterally reinterpreted. These attitudes result in a deep and abiding conservatism that has kept dwarven culture largely unchanged throughout the centuries, with only minor variations even between populations separated by thousands of miles for hundreds of years.
A major part of this conservative viewpoint is that all dwarfs consider themselves of one culture, part of a world-wide kindred with a single set of laws and codes of behaviour. Each dwarf claims membership in one of the seven great clans, the linear descendants of the Seven Ancestors. Even within a clan, dwarfs are not remotely homogenous, but each is noted for specialities which directly honour their divine ancestor (but do not, by any means, encompass the totality of the clan's achievements, let alone those of its members.) As most dwarfs can claim descent from several, if not all of the Ancestors, which clan an individual claims alliance with is to some degree a matter of choice and more immediate family tradition, but it is important because clan determines which body of obligations and debts a dwarf inherits.
While the Seven Ancestors are revered, they are not truly worshipped. Instead, the dwarfs worship varied pantheons of deities, mostly associated with crafting and mining, with leadership and order, and always with duty and obligation. The exact deities of a given hold vary, but the same archetypes are clear. Mountain holds always worship exclusively dwarvern deities, but hill holds lend and borrow deities with their neighbours. This worship is led by the three orders of dwarvern priesthood:
- Stonespeakers (KhaZpelar) lead the ancestor reverence of the clans. They are deeply ingrained in all levels of dwarf society. They are also the keepers of the Stone Speech (KhaZpel), the divine language and alphabet bequeathed by the ancestors, of which ordinary dwarvern glyphs and dwarvern language are a mundane approximation. Stonekeepers work their divine magic through the Stone Letters, and they are used in the most powerful dwarf enchantments. The Stonekeepers are the keepers of deep lore, including the records of genealogy, obligations and grudges for each clan. They also keep the secrets of sacred Dwarvern Mathematics.
- Kinspeakers (DharZpelar) lead the cults of the holdgods, those culture deities adopted by the dwarfs of a given Hold. They are the ones who lead day to day worship.
- Skyspeakers (KanZpelar) are the priests of 'outsider' gods, those borrowed from or shared with neighbouring cultures. Their primary role is to attend to the spiritual needs of the Holdgate, but they also serve a diplomatic role.
Dwarfs and Identity
With almost no sexual dimorphism – all dwarfs have beards, and secondary sexual characteristics are slight at best – gender has a very limited role in dwarvern society. Since the race is long-lived and has a generally low sexual drive, they very rarely have any need or wish to know another dwarf’s biological sex. While they possess deep passions, these are rarely channelled into physical intimacy, for which most dwarfs have little desire or tolerance. This is a part of why dwarfs seem so gruff and standoffish to outsiders. Instead, desire, love and affection are all expressed through works of art; the creation of memorials, images,
poetry, artefacts and tokens of affection. To create an image of an unknowing subject, or to name a thing for someone without their consent, is considered a crime on a par with a physical assault.
Conservative dwarfs use ungendered pronouns, and differentiate between miners and smiths instead of by gender, concealling all traces of biological sex beneath heavy, gender-neutral clothing. Those who identify as miners are outgoing – by dwarf standards – work outside the home and typically engage in skilled, outdoor labour or trade. Smiths are more introverted and tend to work within the home, either at skilled indoor crafting or domestic labour. Miners use the ee/em pronouns shared with elven aesur, while smiths use xi/xer.
Dwarfs also identify either as Holder, Quarrier or Hollower dwarfs. Membership of these groups is a matter of inheritance, defined by the hold of your birth. Mobility between them is a matter not only of migration and cultural adaptation, but also requires a dwarf to complete a process of renunciation in which they pay off or transfer all personal and ancestral obligations to their former hold.
Holders - sometimes called mountain dwarfs, as they dwell in the ancestral mountain holds and deep mines - are those who hew most closely to the ways of their ancestors. They abhore all gender expression as improper and consider other races crude in the extreme. As the bastion of their species' conservatism, mountain dwarfs have a truly impressive collective memory for obligations and grudges.
Those who blend the traditions of the clans with those of neighbouring races call themselves quarriers, and are sometimes known as hill dwarfs, as dwarfs of this kind usually congregate in communities based around upland quarries. This cultural blending includes a widespread use of gendered pronouns, and in particular the employment of emphatic gender by younger hill dwarfs as a form of rebellion. This typically involves shaving – the head to identify as male, the face to identify as female – and the use of corsetry and padding to adopt a somewhat more humanised silhouette. Hill dwarfs retains records of debt and obligation going back generations, but are far more likely to be forgiving than their mountain kin.
Finally, hollower dwarfs - also called Blackstone or black dwarfs, as they almost all descend from that
Clan - are those who dwell in the
Underhollows. Considered strange by many other dwarfs, they see themselves as the truest dwarfs, holding to an ancient obligation to protect the world above from the corruption beneath. In addition to the Seven Ancestors, they also revered a number of
other gods who guided them in the Underhollows.
Dwarf Holds
Dwarvern society is built around the hold, a self-sufficient community encompassing individuals and families of many different clans and callings.
The traditional holds of the mountain dwarfs are exclusively dwarvern, usually based around deep mine workings which also house the majority of their members, including all of the hold’s leaders. These holds are ruled by an Autarch and a court of Demarchs, the rulers of the major families within the hold (usually the chief families of each of the hold’s major areas: each mine working, the forges and workshops, the field caverns, the armouries, the schools, and the Holdgate. This last is a dependent community, built on the surface at the main entrance of the hold, which acts as a bridge to the outside world and is typically the only part of the city in which outsiders – meaning all non-dwarfs and even many dwarfs from other holds – are welcome. Most mountain holds are polities unto themselves, independent by ancient compacts from the laws and customs of the lands around them.
Hill dwarf holds have much more on the surface, and are more akin to cities in the elven model. They are almost never ruled by a single Autarch, but by a council of leading citizens chosen from and by the members of the major industries of the hold, including agriculture and education. Many of a hill hold’s citizens may be non-dwarfs, and outsiders are welcome in all but the most secure and private of areas. Hill holds are also much less likely to claim absolute autonomy from other local polities.
Hollower holds are at once traditional holds in the mountain model and military fortifications. The Blackstone consider themselves the front line against the depredations of the Abyss, and in service of this obligation they are rigid authoritarians with a tradition of 100% military service, with all young adult black dwarf serving in the holdguard for a period of no less than ten years.
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