Dwarves of Highhelm
Many say Highhelm is the heart of dwarven culture in the Five Kings Mountains, and it is that, but it is also much more. As a nexus of trade routes that stretch across the continent and beyond, the city is a fusion of contemporary Golarion with the long history of the dwarven people.
The heart of Highhelm is its long legacy. Through the centuries, the city has withstood attacks from foes above and below ground, the falls of political dynasties and splintering of religious sects, and even upheavals of its geological foundations. Through it all, Highhelm and its people have endured and survived. Drawing deeply on the city’s dwarven heritage, the general attitude of its people is that challenges come and go, but as long as they are met with patience, cooperation, and hard work, Highhelm will outlast and overcome them.
While that might strike some as a grim outlook, Highhelm’s residents consider it quite the opposite. The resolve of the city’s residents ensures their safety, and that security leaves room for plenty of joy, creativity, and openness. Contemporary Highhelm is thriving. A bustling city of people from many ancestries and backgrounds, Highhelm balances the support of community with the freedom of individual expression. People appreciate achievements and innovation in the high-quality products that the city is justifiably known for, but they value their neighbours just as much for contributing to the city’s arts, entertainments, and social life. Highhelm balances stability and innovation, cooperation and individuality, tradition and progress.
Highhelm is also a city of pride. To its citizens, it’s the pinnacle of dwarven culture. While there’s an obvious recognition of dwarven culture throughout the Inner Sea, especially among the other active Sky Citadels, to most dwarves there’s “no place like Highhelm.” To the people of the city, the phrase is a badge of honour, a recognition that there are things that even other dwarves can’t find anywhere else. From the elementally empowered forges of King’s Heart, to the tenacity of the people in the Depths, to the wealth of history that has direct and traceable ties to the time before the Quest for Sky, Highhelm offers sights and experiences exclusive to itself. Outsiders sometimes use the phrase as a way to mock the people of Highhelm, pointing out that a lot of what exists in the city has parallels elsewhere, not just in other dwarven settlements. The people of Highhelm are quick to dismiss this teasing, though, and reiterate the uniqueness of everything Highhelm offers.
As most citizens are dwarves, a majority of life moves at the pace of “a beard’s growth.” Due to their long lives, the people of Highhelm tend to take things slower than those in other cities. Projects will take months to spin up before even entering a planning stage, then take several more months or even years to actually begin. The people of the city are cautious and analyze their projects and way of life from multiple angles before moving ahead with any next steps. Although this leads to slower undertakings, it also allows most people to handle multiple tasks at once. A construction crew can plan several building projects at once and complete several in a row with little downtime between. This way of life has led many outsiders to note that the people of Highhelm are “slow to warm up a forge, but can keep many irons in the fire.”
Since Highhelm’s citizenry isn’t entirely dwarves, however, the city also has a reputation for brevity when it needs to be brief. Trade deals, alliances, and tourism with non-dwarves require many of the city’s citizens to know how to move quickly based on a given task. While this leads to many outsider interactions being left to the non-dwarven citizens, it also occasionally results in one of the city’s most amusing sights: the “quick dwarf.” Dwarves who have to deal with non-dwarves and others not used to the dwarven pace of life learn to adapt, sometimes acting and moving faster than even their non‑dwarf counterparts. These dwarves can finish caravan inspections in mere minutes or construct a new home in a few days, but never at the cost of quality. While most who experience the “quick dwarves” of the city believe the experience to be entertaining and intriguing, regular visitors to Highhelm note that this seems to be an innate skill for most dwarves, just one that they tap into only when the need arises.
Culture
Culture and cultural heritage
Daily Life
The typical workday in Highhelm starts before dawn, with the forges and bakers’ ovens fired up in preparation for work to begin when sunlight floods King's Crown. Many street-side food counters also open early, allowing citizens to grab breakfast on the way to the day’s employment. Hand pies are particularly popular breakfast choices, and enterprising chefs do their best to incorporate the most interesting spices that Highhelm’s extensive trade network brings to the city. Highhelm is no place for layabouts, so the morning streets are almost always crowded. The throng tends to be subdued in residential neighbourhoods, as citizens demonstrate respect for their neighbours who might keep odd hours. In Stonebreach and the Depths, it’s particularly common for folks to set a variable or nocturnal schedule for themselves, and eateries in those districts accommodate by serving an all-day breakfast menu. Once residents arrive at their places of business, they pick up projects laid aside the previous day and settle in for several hours of uninterrupted work. It’s considered rude in the city to call at workshops or attempt to make appointments during the morning, and disruptions are met with irritation. Even at offices and scriptoriums, morning is a time to complete paperwork and take care of administrative tasks. Messages received during the morning in Highhelm are often put aside to be read after lunch, or even filed to be taken care of in the next day’s work. Midday is time for a much-needed break after the concentrated attention of the morning’s labours. After a solitary morning, many residents gather with coworkers to eat a lunch brought from home or retrieved from a nearby shop. Lunch-hour potlucks and meal swaps are common, so it’s normal for a meal to consist of widely disparate elements. Over the meal, workers typically discuss family or personal news, or talk about their favourite hobbies. Talk of workplace projects is generally discouraged during the lunch break, as it detracts from the enjoyment of company. Afternoon in Highhelm is a time for socialization, collaboration, and planning. The vast majority of appointments and work-related visits occur in the early afternoon, following lunch. Inside businesses and workshops, workers meet to brainstorm or to contribute to joint projects that require the labour of more than one artisan. Clans and guilds conduct business meetings, and government officials usher citizens into their offices to hear complaints or process requests. On the streets of the city, afternoon tends to be the busiest time of the working day, so street entertainers often join the throngs, performing routines that they developed and polished during the quiet mornings. After necessary meetings and errand running, workers return to their places of business to put their affairs in order, make plans for the coming day, and tend to any urgent business that can’t wait until the morrow. This means that streets in the city largely are quiet once again in the late afternoon, so merchants, entertainers, and restaurateurs have time to prepare for the rush of the evening. The end of the working day often consists of a trip to the market or wholesale supplier to procure materials for the next day’s work. Merchants in the supply business typically arrange for such goods to be delivered overnight. City guards keep a close eye on packages left on workshop stoops, though theft of such materials is typically rare in most neighbourhoods. Most workers head home for dinner after the work of the day, and the early evening is time to spend together with families and tend to projects around the home. Traffic at the city’s restaurants is light for dinner, but later picks up significantly, as Highhelm’s residents come out to socialize. Highhelm’s residents play as hard as they work, and the evening air is full of boisterous laughter spilling from taverns and entertainment halls, lively music performed at clan and neighbourhood celebrations, and shouted greetings from friends as they move from venue to venue. Most establishments serve a late supper for revellers, and social gatherings often last well into the night—perhaps another reason that the streets of the city are so quiet in the mornings.Subculture and Counterculture
Highhelm's thriving cultural life has given rise to many groups that shape its artistic, political, and social circles. Though the influence of such groups waxes and wanes over time, they all help to form the bedrock of the city’s character.Classless
The Classless is a group that considers the structured social order of Highhelm a backward remnant of a bygone age. While the class system (see Dwarf Clans of Highhelm) does provide some flexibility for its members, the Classless contend that work roles and privileges ought to be entirely divorced from clan and kin. The group advocates for meritocratic reforms within the city, including establishing an examination system to qualify candidates for public employment.Delvers
Highhelm has looked upward and outward since its founding, but it’s still connected to its subterranean origins. The Delvers are a loose network of citizens from all walks of life who share an amateur interest in the city’s extensive cave networks, revelling in the mysteries of the Depths and other deep places in and around Highhelm. They meet on a monthly basis at their clubhouse in Stonebreach, but city leaders also call upon the organization to find or rescue wayward citizens who wander too far into unexplored territory or stumble into the Darklands.Winding Path
While many associate dwarven culture with a dedicated—some would say backward—respect for tradition, the followers of Highhelm’s Winding Path contend that convention, tradition, and routine need to be actively opposed to combat boredom and cultural stagnation. Adherents of the Winding Path dedicate their lives and livelihoods to innovation, searching for novel ways to make art, complete crafts, and form social bonds. Some go so far as to take different routes to work or the markets each day. The Winding Path sponsors the Spectacle of Whimsy each year to spread their philosophy across the city and encourage their fellow citizens to take a break from the expected.Common Etiquette rules
Highhelm residents have a respect for hierarchy, whether in the government administration, a merchant’s guild, or an organized crime syndicate. Going through the appropriate channels for a concern ensures that appropriate experts handle problems and that the valuable time of more senior officials isn’t wasted. Going over someone’s head or asking to speak to a supervisor is extremely bad form. This plays out in career advancement as well. Even very talented artisans are expected to learn the ropes at the lowest levels of a guild, for instance. While a high-ranking patron might speed along that experience, such tactics breed malcontent within the organization.
A custom of Highhelm that may seem rude to outsiders is the tendency of arranged meetings to start late and the willingness of guests to wait relatively long periods to be seen by their hosts. This custom is likely derived from the imprecise measurement of time in the city’s lower levels, though the high proportion of artisans in the city also plays a part. When working with hot metal or delicate instruments, some tasks simply cannot be interrupted, so even scheduled meetings have to wait on the vagaries of the forge and workshop. Residents carry books or small handicrafts to fill any downtime, and meetings are often arranged at taverns or social clubs so that attendees can pass the time in good company while waiting.
Common Dress code
Attire and Fashion
The dwarven passion for detail is not limited to crafting and engineering. Traditionally, attire and grooming were strictly regulated, but most dwarves now choose fashion and utility over custom. Dwarves customize human clothing styles to their own personal tastes, though as a whole they prefer simpler cloth and leather items (often decorated with metal, stone, or ivory) to anything frilly or likely to interfere with working. Metal is polished to gleaming brilliance and oiled against the elements. Dwarven clothes are made to last, with reinforced seams, careful stitching, and extra layers or padding where the maker expects to see the most wear. Workaday apparel is typically fashioned with a variety of pockets and loops for tools, this utilitarian approach often finding its way into formal attire as well. The colours of dwarven clothing are often muted earth tones, due in part to the dyes that are available, and to the dwarves’ affinity for underground living. Even the lowliest dwarf has some jewellery, and it is common to see gold or mithral wedding bands, regardless of social status. Formal clothing is either very functional, with a stark and aesthetic simplicity, or stretches the boundaries of utilitarian design through use of rich fabrics, or even gold and silver thread and adornments. Such ostentatious outfits are typically worn by wealthy dwarves engaged in sedentary pursuits, such as gem cutting or jewellery making.Dwarven Hair and Beards
Dwarves are a proud people who take pride in few things more than their hair. Within the confines of many Highhelm and many dwarven fortresses, the length of an individual’s hair and/or beard serves as an indication of their standing in society. The great thanes and dwarven nobility grow their hair to extravagant lengths, while shorter hair indicate a dwarf ’s rank as a warrior or craftsman whose work makes having a long beard or hair dangerous (long hair that could be grabbed by an enemy or singed in a forge would hamper dwarven soldiers and smiths). The elaborateness of braids may indicate station, or at least the dwarf ’s sense of self-importance; wealthy or noble dwarves often have clan-servants plait their hair into intricate patterns and adorn them with gold and silver, while dwarves of low social standing keep their hair relatively simple or festoon them with decorations of tin, bronze, and iron. Many ancient customs dictate that dwarves wear their hair in a particular style on certain occasions. A dwarf who lets her beard grow unkempt and unadorned is in mourning for a lost relative or close friend, for instance, while a beard that has been combed into a split and affixed with gold rings at both ends indicates that a dwarf has undertaken the ritual of courtship. Dwarves of every station enjoy decorating their hair and beards with metal rings and other adornments, particularly the clergy and most devout followers of Torag. Among the most popular decorations are clasps designed to prevent hair from getting in the way. Beyond their social significance, highly decorative clasps are often representative of an individual’s accomplishments, and can announce the presence of a revered or reviled dwarf long before proper introductions are given, especially if the clasp is made of exotic materials or decorated with gems. Decorations often signify personal achievements and reminders of important events such as births, marriages, and battles won or lost. It is not unusual for a dwarf to wear a token representing a promise made by that dwarf, or a promise made to that dwarf by another. Such tokens may also signify dedication to a particular god or goddess. Wealthier dwarves often take to bedecking their beards and hair with gemstones.Art & Architecture
Engineering
During their centuries toiling in the mountains—where the slightest mistake could result in disaster—dwarves became adept at engineering. Here they learned to design and build aqueducts to transport rivers of water, and modern dwarves still rely on cisterns and waterways created thousands of years ago. Dwarves also invented crude but functional pumps, and engineered large, heated baths by diverting underground streams, with the unclean water from the baths pumped out and used to flush waste from homes and public areas. Over time, these baths became important sites for social networking and politicking. Much of the knowledge learned in the time under the earth has been lost, and while dwarves continue to be seen as the masters of technology by other races, their golden era has passed. Modern dwarves rely heavily on existing architectural works, a testament to their ancestors’ genius. Even so, dwarves remain talented enough to evoke awe in the other races with their constructions, such as the Guardian King on the face of Emperor's Peak (see sidebar).Smithing
Dwarves produce armour and weaponry of a quality beyond the capabilities of humans, or even elves (though the latter might dispute such claims). Since smithing is directly linked to the worship of Torag, many devout dwarves seek a career at the anvil. Armour smiths focus on utility and protection rather than beauty or glamour. Warriors need not worry about the weight of their armour, since Torag has blessed them with the ability to wear with ease armour that would immobilize a member of any other race. Dwarves find the heaviness of their armour gives them a sense of confidence. They become like stone, a miniature impenetrable fortress that can withstand even the largest orc’s sword.Foods & Cuisine
Diet
A typical day for many dwarves begins with a bowl of hot porridge flavoured with mushrooms, along with a generous slice of bacon or well-seasoned sausage. When the day’s commitments permit a midday meal, the fare is usually coarse mushroom bread, sharp cheese, and perhaps a slice of salted meat, washed down with water or a mug of ale. Supper is often a hearty roast or savoury stew accompanied by root vegetables, hunks of bread, and tankards of good stout ale. While such meals remain popular, modern dwarves have adapted to surface foods and no longer have to rely on the traditional meats and mushrooms. Goats, sheep, and swine are the meat animals of choice, though many dwarves have developed a taste for beef as well. Fruit is usually eaten dried, and leafy vegetables are rare.Dwarven Ales
Almost as renowned as dwarf-crafted arms and armour are their potent and deep-flavoured ales. As a race, dwarves seem to share a universal love of fine beer. Dwarves prefer their ales strong, with a hearty bite; some non-dwarves find even the mildest dwarven ale to be potent to the point of distaste. Dwarves brew beers that both accentuate the flavours of their favourite meals and, for those dwarves who travel far from the citadels of their births, remind them of home. Many drinks possess a rustic flavour, reminiscent of low-burning hearths, well-cooked meat, and soot-stained ceilings. Almost all dwarves begin drinking at an early age, and it is not uncommon within feasting halls to see young dwarves sitting at the table of their clanmates, greedily drinking from mugs larger than their heads. Within the citadels, the love of ale has become almost as integral a facet of dwarven life as warfare against their hereditary enemies, and many dwarves lessen their pre-combat jitters by drinking several pints of their favourite ale before wading into battle.Common Customs, traditions and rituals
The established customs and behavioural norms of Highhelm help the city’s diverse array of residents maintain general peace and productivity in the tight‑knit confines of their mountain home. With thousands of years of inhabited history under Highhelm’s cavern roof, the origins of many traditions have been lost to time, but some customs are the product of more recent immigration, or of the mixing of newcomers’ ideas with the existent dwarven culture.
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