Luxurious Beards

I want my settings dwarves to be a well developed society loosely based on the Mesopotamian cultures. Can Veeky Forums give me some ideas besides
>Impressive masonry
>War carts
>Braided beard masks
>God Ancestors

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortals_(Persian_Empire)
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Siege towers
Writing on stone tablets
Pantheon worship that associates gods with cities
Claimed pedigree to ancient civilizations
Names commonly contain a deity component
Chariots
Tunics
Ancient and bitter rivalry between city-states

Being literally the only civilization in a sea of tribes and nomads.

Interesting tell me about the gods being associated with specific cities more

Well my plan right now is for them to be the major civilization in an area shared by them, the indo-chinese dragonborn, and the steppe barbarian bedouin human hoardes that mill about like rats.

To the far East are the Greco-Roman orcs, and the south the Pacific Islander Halflings

You from Babylon? You're worshiping Marduk, motherfucker. He's the one making our armies strong and making the crops grow - not that fucking poser Ashur. Nah, we overthrew that cunt when we steamrollered Assyria. And if anyone tells you Ashur actually killed Tiamat and not Marduk, shank 'em, cause they're fucking LIARS.

I can see a system here where each Dwarven city state worships a different ancestor hero and each claims the eminence of their particular divine hero, with most of the tales and deeds of them being conflated or attributed to all of them in some form or another.

Check out Morrowind Dwemer

>dwarven city-states go to war
>before the battle commences, the various city-criers begin rattling off the various legends about their city-god simultaniously, trying to out-shout the city-crier of the opposing city-state
>the listing of the legends can sometimes take hours, so all dwarven soldiers typically carry a chair or some pillows to battle so they can sit comfortable for a few hours before the battle starts, after which they leave their chairs or pillows on the battlefield

Does this count?

Take a look at Sumerian list of kings. Chronology there is completely fucked, with more ancient kings recorded as living for thousands of years

Ale can only be brewed by young, virtuous maidens born on holy days, in order to preserve its delicious purity and properly worship your god of alcohol.

The maze of halls and chambers carved within the mountain are the Dwarves' heart, where they share their luxuries and innermost thoughts with their kin and those they choose to trust. The towering, many-tiered ziggurat they've shaped the outside of the mountain into is the Dwarves' outward strength and majesty they present to all others.

Dwarven gilgamesh and elven enkidu

To be fair here, not all gods were city gods. There were also commonly worshipped ones like Ishtar/Inanna/Astarte (goddess of love, sex and childbirth), Shamash (sun and justice) or Nergal* (sun and death)

*To be fair here he was both a common god and a city god

And to be fair here I evidently overuse this phrase

chaos dwarves from WFB

Stealing this

Lots of ruined dwarven fortresses with inscriptions all over the place that proclaim the greatness of the everlasting city.
"Look upon my works, ye mighty and despair" was actually a pretty common thing around that time.

Where the Dwarves encountered no mountains in which to dwell, they built their own.

I really like the idea of these Dwarves carving or building ziggurat mountains and farming on their terraces, Hanging Garden style.

Why bring chairs, when you can have chair-axes that folds into simple chairs, but can be picked up and then fought with?

The courts of dwarven kings are filled with engravings of them torturing/killing their enemies, just so anyone coming to see them knows they're not to be fucked with.

Really it's probably best to just give each city a patron god.

The capital city of their empire/kingdom/whatever is the one who has the chief god as their patron.

(Or vice versa. If another city manages to become dominant, their god will start to take over. And also political schisms will lead to religious schisms or the other way around.)

Did someone say mesopotamian dwarfs?

Sargon knew how to keep some good facial hair

The Dwarven kings are all high-priests and philosophers, with legions of noble bureaucrat clerics working under them.

YES, MORE IDEAS, FEED ME YOUR THOUGHTS

The dwarves used to live in mountains but when they traveled south they had to leave them behind

So they built their own damn mountains

What if you made your dwarves Babylonian and also elves?

battles turn into massive WWE matches with folding chairs

Long sets of strictly enforced laws.
Steal something? Lose a hand.
Kill someone? Tortured to death
Eavesdropping? Lose an ear

Dwarves have ritual cage fights to settle disputes and please the gods, but as they have become a massive spectator sport as well as highly politicised, the outcome is often pre-determined by the priests and the participants merely put on a show.

And of course the great Dwarven King is served by the Dwarven Immortals, an army of religious warriors.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortals_(Persian_Empire)

>Mesopotamia, Dwarves and Professional Wrestling

All of my want!

Didn't the Chaos Dwarves in ye olde 40k have a Mesopotamian look going on?

>worships a different ancestor hero
That is essentially how the Mesopotamian mythos started out.

>every city has their own epic of gilgemesh

Oh god...i just want 100 equally epic versions of gilgemesh

That's an interesting idea. You'd eventually have two distinct Dwarven Empires, one beneath the mountains and one upon the dunes.

I could imagine the Mountain Dwarves as having heavier, more geometrical Assyrian architecture carve from their mountains and a more dour, insular and traditional culture while the Dunnish Dwarves' ziggurats are lighter, airier and more cosmopolitan in design because they are more exploratory and mercantile as a people.

I'd say for a more deep mountain type dwarf you could go with the Hittites of Anatolia.

Have them live on a massive plateau crossed with mountains and valleys where they build their city-states. Give them secret metalworking techniques, and a lot of rare mineral wealth (gemstones and such).

then you would have made a unique and amazing setting