Dwarf

Dwarves were a stout people of unparalleled fortitude, makers of wondrous things. Native to the mountains of Rubicos, divine forces shaped each dwarf, imbuing them with artistry, drive, obstinance and, above all, a bottomless well of creativity.

Appearance

Dwarves stood much shorter than most humans, rarely reaching over 5 feet tall. Despite their short stature, dwarves were so broad and compact that they could weigh as much as a human standing nearly two feet taller. Dwarven skin ranged from deep brown to a paler hue tinged with red, but the most common shades were light brown or deep tan, like certain tones of earth. Their most distinctive feature was their hair, freighted with cultural importance. Male dwarves valued their beards highly and groomed their carefully, while female dwarves were known for their elaborate braids.
Facial hair on female dwarves was uncommon but often seen as a sign of good luck.
Though they mature at the same rate as humans, dwarves were among the longer lived of the Great People. On average, they live about 350 years. On rare occasions, however, a dwarf's lifespan would extend even longer, particularly if there was some unfinished task that kept them alive. In these instances, dwarves had been recorded living for thousands of years, though extreme senility always afflicted such rare individuals.
Dwarves often lived much of their lives underground, granting them unique traits and abilities:

• Dwarves could see clearly in the dark, though not in color.
• Many dwarves had an ingrained understanding of certain types of stonework and architecture.
• Due to their low center of gravity, dwarves often proved quite difficult to push or knock over. This also made them somewhat slower on their feet than the taller Great Peoples.

Culture

Main Article: Dwarven Culture
The chief unit of dwarven society was the clan and dwarves highly valued familial bonds. Even dwarves who lived far from their own kingdoms cherished their clan identities and affiliations, recognize related dwarves, and invoked their ancestors’ names in oaths and curses. To be clanless was the worst fate that can befall a dwarf. Each clan was ruled by a thane, tasked with improving the clan's yield and glory, but every dwarf was responsible for working the forges or the mines or the parapets in betterment of the clan. They were suspicious of outsiders but deeply rooted in their own communities.
All dwarves shared a desire to create. To them, it was a need as urgent as eating, drinking or breathing. Their preferred mediums were iron, steel, bronze, gold, silver and above all stone. A dwarf strived ever to perfect their creation and would often scrap a work entirely to start again from scratch. Criticism and critique were vital elements of dwarven culture – dwarves felt it is their duty to inspect and critique the work of their peers. Theirs was a strict meritocracy – the better craftspeople in a dwarven clan naturally rose in power and influence. Even their children were considered creations, raised with the same deliberate care an artisan would a masterwork.
A dwarf’s memory was deep and profound. They revered their own history and traditions. All dwarven poetry was pure history, recounting the deeds and tragedies of the past. So too were their grunges legendary; to dwarves, time healed no wounds. For this reason, alcohol held a special place in dwarven society. Rather than making them forget, drink caused dwarves to remember, to access the racial memory of their people. A dwarf who drank alone, however, was likely to dwell on shameful – rather than glorious – thoughts of the past.

Ancestries

Derro

Main Article: Derro
Dwarves who could mysteriously no longer create, derro were utterly depraved ghosts of their former selves, deserperate to jumpstart their creativity by whatever means necessary. With their strange gait, beardless chins, dilated pupils and sunless skin, they resemble a subterranean cave-dweller more than the proud dwarven people. Early signs of derroism were patchy beard – pulled out by clumps when struggling to create – and chewed nails, signs of their creative anxiety. The older the derro grew, for they could not die of natural causes, the more haggard they became.
How the first derro came to be, none know. When a dwarf was denied the ability to create, they slowly began to lose their mind. All their creations were nonsensical and shoddy; flimsy and breakable machines that served no purpose. They stole items of worth, items they cannot hope to recreate, and studied them irrationally. They cannot breed and were thus obsessed with children, seeking often to capture them and thus inspiring many dwarven bedtime stories.
What’s worse, the affliction seemed contagious – any dwarf who listened too long to the mutterings of a derro risked catching the creative block themselves.

Duergar

Main Article: Duergar
Those dwarves whose delving bid them penetrate the sacrosteel shell beneath Ondûn crust were transformed by the malevolent power of Yog into duergar. Their skin ashen gray and their beards sharp as quills, the duergar were perhaps the rarest of Yog's corrupted citizens, found in the world's deepest places and only openly during Yogoth's conquest of the Fourth Age.

Religion

Among the Great Peoples, the dwarves were the first to discover the presence of the gods and to tap into divine power. Thus, as far as dwarven history is concerned, there was no time when they did not worship the Prime Pantheon, albeit their interpretation thereof.

Dwarven Pantheon

In contrast to the elven melodrama or the orcish beasts, the dwarven pantheon was a family; fathers, mothers, uncles and daughters. The dwarves believed that the gods dwelled beneath Khûm, like any other clan, but that only the dead could find the entrance to Zhanhol, the Hidden Hold. The dwarves were also notable for their protectiveness over their own pantheon; the practice of secretism was widespread for much of First and Second Ages.

• Umbor was the dwarven god of strength and creation. The father of the gods, Umbor shaped the dwarves from seven minerals found beneath the earth and guided them in their own creations.
• Hemdal was the dwarven god of dexterity and theft. Umbor's shiftless brother, Hemdal was a perennial trickster deity that most dwarves would rather ward away than ask for aid.
• Zamût was the dwarven goddess of constitution and war. Ignon's fearsome sister, Zamût took a vow of both silence and chastity, dedicated only to defense.
• Athad was the dwarven god of intelligence and wealth. The son of Umbor and Ignon, the brilliant Athad was ultimately a disappointment to his father, too focused on coin and trade.
• Ignon was the dwarven goddess of wisdom and the earth. The mother of the gods, Ignon gave her life to create the earth as a prison for Yog and was most revered by the dwarves.
• Qavish was the dwarven goddess of charisma and alcohol. The daughter of Umbor and Ignon, the cheerful Qavish was also the goddess of death who honored the fallen with toasts.

History

Main Article: Dwarven History
Many tales populated the prehistory of the dwarves; shaped by Umbor into seven clans, a precious gemstone from the sky, wars against fire giants. These tales – as much myth and history – predate written records and are thus impossible to verify. It was only when Durzov and his party of adventurers united the three Great Peoples into the Sister Empires, the dawning of the First Age, that specific history began to be recounted, even if only orally. The Prayer to Umbor – an ancient dwarven epic – recounted dwarven mythology, laws, innovations and eventually history and constituted the only piece of cultural fiction the dwarves ever produced.
Khûm's First Age saw the foundation of many institutions – the iron tax, the written word, the stoneway – beneath a long string of Clan Truesilver sovereigns. Two conflicts marred this period. In 386 1A, Clan Glimmergem attempted to challenge the Truesilver claim on the crown and were thoroughly crushed in the Glimmergem Rebellion. When Thanatos began their invasion in 899 1A, King Havhed the Hammer led the crownguard to war in Auros and eventually his own death. Following this defeat, the dwarves of Khûm retreated somewhat from global politics, the Sister Empires all crumbling to internal strife.
The Second Age proved especially dark for the dwarven people. Black bloat ravaged the population. A rise of religious fanaticism, spearheaded by an occult movement called the Mystriarchy, deeply divided the people. Another succession crisis – called the Twocrown War – brought the first non-Truesilver to sit the dwarven throne. A decline in Khûm's precious minerals, coupled with dreadful mining accidents, briefly saw an utter cease in mining. Lastly, a tyrannical despot, called King Karuzh the Crazed, ruled over Khûm during its darkest hour. Called the Seven Sorrows, a string of catastrophies struck the Hidden Kingdom, from a lack of resources to exploding volcanos, to white dragon attacks, to hordes of troglodyte boiling up from beneath the earth. Forced to abandon their homeland, the Retreat dispersed dwarves across Rubicos and the world beyond, not to return for hundreds of years.
For five hundred years, Khûm lay abandoned until, in 573 3A, an adventuring party led by Harada Hornwinder rediscovered the ancient ruins of Hornhollow and a bumper crop of minerals, once again redolent in its mines. This immediately triggered the Advance, dwarves from across the world streaming back to populate their rejuvenated homeland.
In the Fourth Age, Khûm was slow to lend its aid to the Covenant Kingdoms, believing Yogoth to be a distant threat at best. By 890 4A, however, dwarven forces lended their aid to help battle Yog's advance.

Dwarven Ancestral Traits

• Ability Score Increase: Your Constitution score increases by 2; your Strength or Wisdom increases by 1.
• Size: Your size is Medium.
• Speed: Your base speed is 25 feet. Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor.
• Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
• Dwarven Resilence: You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.
• Dwarven Combat Training: You have proficiency with the battleaxe, handaxe, light hammer, and warhammer.
• Tool Proficiency: You gain proficiency with the artisan’s tools of your choice: smith’s tools, brewer’s supplies, or mason’s tools.
• Stonecunning: Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to the origin of stonework, you are considered proficient in the History skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check, instead of your normal proficiency bonus.
• Languages: You can read, write and speak Common and Dwarven.

Dwarven Heroes & Villains

• Adra Emberaxe 
• Kut Bladeforger 
• Pigen Ironwonder