Dwarf

Stout, Subterranean Humanoids Who Travel the Back Alleys of Waking Reality

Dwarves (sing: dwarf) are a Humanoid Family of the root line Ur-Davva.

Dwarves on Waking Materia

Despite the plane's relative interplanar isolation, Waking Materia's dwarves are nearly indistinguishable from their cosmopolitan cousins around the Greater Lotrimin Crux Region (GLCR). They are stout and broad Humanoids, superficially similar to Meranthic humans but with highly evolved innards adapted to their often subterranean lifestyles, including redundant stomachs and added reflective features around the retina.

Gregarious and straightforward, yet notoriously untalkative about their vast, complex, subterranean civilizations, dwarves are a paradoxical folk. Trade with surfacers tends to occur in topside outpost towns, as only the Most Very Important of non-dwarven VIPs are allowed inside their heavily-guarded, underground cities. In a similar vein, romance and interbreeding with non-dwarves is rarely tolerated.

Worshippers of the dwarven god of skaldry and diplomacy, Galadnock mac-Kenzie, claim they existed as a species on Materia prior to the arrival of the First Extraplanar Empires (as noted by mac-Kenzie himself), a claim most scholars find suspect at best, empty boasting at worst. While it is true the first planar colonists did note dwarves were already present on Materia, they are not indigenous. The truth is more complex...

Appearance

See also: Dwarves Image Gallery (External)

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By dwarven standards, Waking Materia's population is diverse and cosmopolitan, displaying a wide range of dwarven features seen elsewhere around the Lotrimin Crux. Despite their classically Humanoid appearances, their subterranean lifestyles and long histories of traveling the Duskscape have left them with highly evolved internal physiologies, and thus they cannot typically interbreed with other Humanoid Families. For this reason they are sometimes given a classification all to themselves.

Material Societies

As Materia's overlying Arcane Layer is moderate in strength, so too is average daylight, and as such Material dwarves find surface life tolerable but not ideal. Some surfacer dwarves take on nocturnal or crepuscular lifestyles, and favour cloudier climates. It's not uncommon to see shaded glasses sold in settlements near to dwarven outposts.

Dwarven civilizations tend to only permit limited surfacer understanding of their societies. Nonetheless if you sit down to ale within an individual dwarf, you’ll likely know their life story before dawn arrives. Indeed, despite their belligerence and caginess, their compulsive honesty makes them difficult to distrust completely, and (with the exception of Nibelheim) they maintain a working, if erratic, diplomatic relationship with most surface cultures.

Túúr

Precious little is known about the dwarves of Túúr. They maintain a very chilly relationship with the surface cultures above their homes, traditionally imposing strict taxation on surfacer settlements in their "bright" territories and quick to war with those who break their sometimes complex laws around poaching, tresspassing, and the like. That said, they've taken pity on the surfacers who survived the Deluge and have permitted substantial regrowth of human-elven civilization in the lowlands of Valamon, to the east of the gate-city of Reíkh-Nokh-Hrínth.

Only the most well-respected of Valamonian traders and diplomats are permitted beyond Túúr's gate-cities: they return speaking of fantasic brutalist architecture and surprisingly edible food, but of sometimes marathon-long religious and governmental ceremonies. Túúrians are fond of boasting and see no faux-pas in lecturing surfacers on their superior ways. Though their tone is harsh, they are a poetic people, careful & exact in speech; they grow irritated easily with those who speak in vague or meandering ways. Debate is one of their most popular pastimes.

Nibelheim

Even less is known about Nibelheim, who assisted Emperor Olcadan of Dhund of the Great Juran Empire with his conquest of the archipelago now called the Broken Empire, but have all but disappeared after his death. Some bards whisper of a vast and advanced society beneath the eastern ocean, hidden behind a complex network of permanized shadowpaths.

The Diaspora of Oloraan

The dwarven diaspora of Marai may never retake the lost mazes of Oloraan from the wayangs, svirfneblin and their strange, cthonic, elder wyrm god, but continue to petition the Commonwealth to assist with the threat, and help the Maraians keep watch for any sign of their emergence. They've taken up residence in the lands of the Matsunagayama, and are considered a vassal clan to them, called the Oloro. A few dwarven families also settled among the arakh tribes of the Skylands.

History

Dwarves are widely considered indigenous Materians as their presence was noted by the earliest scouts of the extraplanar Kelpeater Empire. While it's true the dwarves were already on the plane before the First Empires, they are not indigenous: they had immigrated a half-millennium earlier, not via the demiphysical Void between planes but through the “back door” of the Near Umbra: the region of the Duskscape which overlaps and in some ways mirrors Waking Materia. As they are not an umbral species, the Duskscape would only have been a means of travel, but the identity of their home plane is lost to time. These early interplanar travels feature heavily in dwarven religion, song and storytelling, rich with tales of overcoming bizarre monsters and paranormal hazards. As dwarves are often considered boastful by other humanoids, few realize how accurate many of these tales really are.

Religion

Dwarven religion on Materia is a complex and non-hierarchical array of funerary cults, difficult even by most dwarves to track, let alone outside scholars like The Author. While some deceased heroes do represent certain concepts and are prayed to as such, others are worshipped as Ascendant heads of clans, militaries, or even social or philosophical collectives. Great believers in individual strength and will, worship is reverent but never obsequious or overly dependent.

Ascendent names are long-winded and generally divided into three parts: the title given at their wake, living titles based on their accomplishments, and a title chosen by the individual (such braggadocio is standard in dwarven society). Most well-known amongst surface societies is Galadnock mac-Kenzie “The Ungovernable, Shield-Anvil of Rochbilidin, Flamespeaker of Tong Deum, Whose Shouts Part Phalanxes,”, patron of surface travelers, fire, diplomacy and skalds. Primarchs popular in Hrínth include Odrim mac-Ghant, “The Ebb of Rage and Flow of Justice, Hero of Karst Outlook, Whose Feet Sunder the Tombs of Kings” and Meljaduul “The Merry, the Mandate-Giver, Scribe of the Tablets of Shel-Turinth, Judge of Kings and Taunter of Gods.” The list goes on.

If Waking Dwarves can be said to have an overarching god, it is the psychopomp Rhaogrúm the Silent, arbiter of a soul’s role in the Deadlands and eventually the soul’s worth in the Twilight Eternities beyond. However he is not worshipped except by the occasional cult: souls are expected to prove their worth, and entreating Rhaogr’m is seen to be an attempt at short-cutting the system, cursing their deceased relative with a vicarious show of weakness. What relation The Silent has to the death god Overshepherd Rom is unknown; he may be an aspect of the Overshepherd, a high-ranking member of the Pale Vigil or something altogether different.