Nulbita's Surface Guidebook
Written by the dwarven explorer Nulbita Brightflame, this book was written soon after the Rising to help dwarves adjust to the surface world. The surface world is far different than the Deephollow Caverns: There's just a big open space with no tunnels to be seen, the plants are all green, the sky changes every day, and more. The first dwarves to live on the surface following the Rising were complete fish out of water. While a small handful of dwarves had visited the surface as gardeners on their mountain slopes, there was a big difference between spending under half a day on cultivated slopes and leaving the world you know for one you've only heard tales of from gardeners. Nulbita saw this, and decided to do what she did best: explore this weird new world. She was used to wandering the tunnels, finding new things and writing about them for the dwarven public. She spent several years above ground, learning both from lived experience and from the surface races, then putting it all down on paper. She then made dozens of copies and sold them to the dwarves who went to the surface world, branding her book as an essential survival guide. While the dwarves found the guide useful, the folks of the surface also bought copies. This portrayal of the normal world around them as this weird, alien landscape was a very novel read that gained a following even outside of the target audience. As the surface was more explored, Nulbita published updates and supplementary books, but even through the editions the original was remembered fondly both for it's usefulness and for how silly it is in hindsight. The guide contained such pearls of wisdom as
-There is a large fireball that flies around the sky. DO NOT PANIC, THIS IS NORMAL. Surface folk call it the sun, and use it to see and tell time. The flying rocks that appear when the sun disappears are also normal, they are called moons.
-When the sun is in the sky, that is called day. When the sun is not in the sky, that is called night. Surface folk break up time by day and night cycles, though they use the term "day" for each period, consisting of one day and one night.
-Due to the lack of stone walls to carve into, surface homes are often made of neatly piled either stones or wood. Sometimes both. These homes may also have a subterranean storage room but they will be almost entirely above the ground.
-Swirling white shapes in the sky are normal, though if the white shapes turn grey you will want to find cover. Water will begin falling from the sky, which is called rain. It is not dangerous, there is no leak that needs to be fixed, though it is irritating. Sometimes this rain is accompanied by explosions and flashes, which are only dangerous if you are struck.
Document Structure
Publication Status
While the original guide has left publication, it's successors are still in production today. Nulbita's Surface Guidebook was the first in what would become a series of half encyclopedia half guidebooks aimed at preparing dwarves for life on the surface. She would also publish several more specific guides to things like the other sentient species, wilderness survival, and the geography of the surface. She keeps the survival guide format alive both as an homage to her first works in the series and because she finds the "heroic explorer sharing her wisdom" persona fun.
As Nulbita explored, she found company, fellow explorers from the surface. She has a publishing house from her time writing about Deephollow Caverns, and has occasionally published works from her friends. She takes care to vet these works though, making sure they're up to Brightflame Publishing standards.
Comments