How have halflings come to be the setting's dominant political, military and industrial power...

They couldn't. Neither could the dwarfs, gnomes, or any other short race. Even in a fantasy setting it's extremely unrealistic. Every last single one of the could be twice as smart as everyone else and their proportions would still hinder them in basically everything. Short races eternally a shit.

Stealing this

I'm not even sorry

Make them Monglians.

Would that make dwarfs 1.2lings?

OP is so specific it is not in peoples settings though. And his thread starter is formulatet in the meme way.

the Dwarves tried to mine below halfling territory, which resulted in conflict. in the end, the halflings won because they were able to repeatedly sneak into dwarven holds and manipulate machines, steal supplies and in the end fuck with the air venting of the dwarven fortresses, causing mass asphyxiatons. They then worked out how dwarven technology functioned and put it to their own use, becoming the industrial and military powerhouse of the world.
Because they are a lazy bunch, they began to use their wealth to buy slaves doing all the shitty jobs. As the market could not supply enough, they turned to war and enslaved the humans.

its cheesy and it has holes, but its an idea

It turned out, to everyone's great surprise, that smoking weed grants temporary but considerable magical abilities, and that by complete coincidence a halfling inventor by the name of Tom Feeblegut has managed to create an internal combustion engine fueled entirely by turnip oil on the 2nd year of the Third Age. The halflings, who were tired of turnips anyway thought this was a great use for the vegetable and suddenly realized the benefits of the technology, re-organizing their farming culture around the cultivation of fuel turnips for factories and motor vehicles.

They're already hillbilly stereotypes, it was just a matter of time before they developed shotguns centuries ahead of everyone else so they have something to wave around in the year when yelling at people to get away from their pigs.

But it can't be in my setting. My setting doesn't have halflings.

And I doubt most settings have halflings that have exterminated the dwarves and enslaved the humans. That's pretty goddamn specific.

I'm just going to point out that a wolverine is tiny and weighs like 30-35 pounds, but is still pretty ferocious. Also, the Romans were pretty small compared to some of the peoples they conquered. Not halfling-small, but still significantly smaller. But let's quit beating around the bush. A chimp stands maybe 4 feet tall and can tear a human apart. If that chimp were capable of effectively wearing armor and using a sword, it would be truly scary, indeed. So I think it's pretty hard to say that a halfling couldn't do shit vs. humans due to his height, given that it's a fantasy world.

Stealing this

A. Chimps muscles are vastly different in build and structure as well as anchor points, tendon strength, elasticity, and thickness, and overall nerve density ontop of their bone structure. Halfling last time i read said they were small humans like a new race like black or white or asian.
B. You can fuck wolverines up super easy. Good boots, jeans, clothes, canvas jacket, your weapon of choice. The trick is not to be a pussy like most people and turn around and run away. Just punt the thing square in the chest and you'll break its sternum whih basically means it's already dead and crippled. Then finish it however.

>Halfling last time i read said they were small humans like a new race like black or white or asian.
Halflings, the last time I read, could go toe-to-toe with humans and hold their own, and were only slightly less strong, a fact compensated for by being slightly more agile.

True enough. Depends if we're talking balancing fluff or real world type applications. My point was merely that they're not an entirely separate species like chimps where we'd see the vast physiological differences that would explain the difference in strength so expecting them to have scaled strength via size makes sense.

Good cooking.

Breeding like rabbits ofcourse, the little fuckers require less food so they just have litters of 20 or 30 quarterlings.

They are an exclusionary and somewhat xenophobic group who use their history of persecution to preclude attacks against themselves when they insulate themselves into a society through their economic prowess. They publicly preach fairness and tolerance while privately exclusively supporting each other and freezing out non halfling competitors. They've successfully put out the idea that they are an intellectual elite while also convincing people that they don't act as a group, which is aided by their child like appearance and history of persecution.

So deeply are they ingratiated to humans in particular (a naturally open and trusting people) that when the dwarves (a naturally distrusting and traditionally standoffish) began a series of pogroms against them, claiming them to be economically devastating the dwarves and robbing their great wealth while eroding their traditional society, the humans rode to their rescue and so thoroughly crushed the dwarves that the few remaining renounce their traditional society and hold so much guilt that they almost universally refuse to breed, ensuring their looming extinction.

The technically Dwarven nations have been bringing in large amounts of goblins to make up for their population shortfall and assure the other races that they are the future of Dwarven society and proof that they no longer hold their hateful anti halfling views.

/pol/ plz go

Oh you.

Are you making some kind of suggestion? This is fantasy, things like this couldn't actually happen in real life.

I love you user

As in real life, they formed agriculture first, which meant they learned to ferment grains first, and with beer, they created the first truly great civilization while humans were still figuring out fire and the dwarves were fucking around with flint.

As soon as the human and dwarven barbarian hordes began attacking the fringes of halfling society they began to cull the tribes with targeted assassinations, slaving, and good old fashioned ethnic cleansing. The humans submitted and the dwarves did not. There are no more dwarves.

The same way the Communist Chinese came to power after WWII. They were supplied lend lease arms and equipment by the allies and they only sent token forces to aid Chiang Kai Shek during the war. After the Japanese forces were defeated they took their well armed and supplied military against the spent Republic forces and overran the country.

You ever notice how you always see people named Bumblebarley and Sweetfoot writing these papers on how orcs would be alchemists and wizards if humans didn't keep expelling them to the badlands?

Really makes you think

Trench warfare

Once upon a time, halfling beer was just a good, hearty and popular beer.

The Brandywell family, meanwhile, struck it rich on outside investments, and used the profits to take over all their halfling alcohol manufacturing rivals. A minor modification to a classic brew, the addition of an infamous swamp fungus, caused a terrible addition among non-halflings, afflicting its victims with intense psychological need with little more than a glass, and while (debated to be) unintentional, nearly thirty percent of civilized populations developed a crippling need for the hydrocarbon concoction. Their lower classes ailing en masse, the rulers of human kingdoms submitted to the Brandywells to keep their subjects healthy. Said rulers of course had their requests for a continuous supply of Brandywell beer fulfilled...after an impromptu tasting.

If you want to have a reason to make a race dominant, think up some HFY tropes and sanitize them.
For halflings you can make them build both burrowed and overground houses; expand rapidly and defend with guerilla tactics if another race tries a war. Eventually halflings are in all cities and declaring war on them is a bad idea. And since, they live long a breed lots the other races are the minority.

They cooked them all up.

Some they ate, some they sent back for being too gristly.

Halflings and short races in general are strong for they're size since they just don't really work otherwise. No idea how they get over basic fucking leverage though

Would halflings be wholelings?

Shirefolk or hobbitkin
Halfling would be a terrible term and forbidden by silent agreement, lest our tiny overlords hear with their twitchy ears.

Not to mention using ogres to gang rape their political enemies and use the half offspring to gangrape and bully everybody else. Fantasy kikes at their best.