Can we have a Dwarf discussion thread?

mushrooms
maybe lichen

Why would dwarves not have farms outside a cave? They're going to need to get wood for all the spear shafts and axe handles from somewhere, can't just stay underground all day.

Do some reading on pre-industrial Finnish culture, change names, extend beards, reduce height, change "Eats Snow" to "Eats Rock", done.

There's a reason even the Vikings knew better than to fuck with these guys.

Viking-style longships would be perfect for underground waterways. If you build them right, they've got a draft of less than two feet, which would probably be helpful when you have no idea how deep the oily black water beneath your hull is.

What the fuck would tumblrinas know about dwarven mating rituals?

>ship-building
Elf detected

Males and females grow facial hair and tend to have massive beards. Unless fully naked, a dwarf can't tell the gender of another dwarf. Mating rituals involve carefully and politely figuring out the equipment of the other dwarf without getting hit by an axe.

Just thinking along the lines of Dwarves wanting to produce most of their food by themselves.

Or maybe lesser clans, or deeper holds that don't really have access to the outside world?

If deeper clans don't trade with other dwarves for these basics, how do they function? Pretty much any forged weapon and armor, which is something dwarves are obsessed with in most settings, require wood or leather in construction.

Unless you're willing to let dwarves eat rocks (which is pretty cool, there's too many underground scottish vikings who drink ale) or have a magic spell that lets them mold rocks like one would mold wood, I don't see it functioning in a sensible way.

Giant Mushroom stems and Blind Cave Weasel hides.

Boom, done.

God, fuck off with this gay Pratchett shit.

I just want a dwarf cuisine thread is that too much to ask?

Also I'm interested in seeing what kind of food would evolve from a purely cave-based ecosystem.

And in doing so, we might be able to have a deeper look at a Dwarven culture besides scottish ale drinkers.

Or the hides and bones of non clan-mate Dwarves. Just sayin'...

>Dwarven ale is brewed from lichen and fungus grown underground

>Although the effects are similar to alcohol, it's more of a pychodelic. Imbiding the ales makes the mind feel drunk, but the body is coordinated, hence why dwarven ales are so different from those produced elsewhere.

>Wood is a huge commodity for dwarves living deep in the holds of the barren mountain peaks. Ornately carved lacquered mohogany imported from the south is a huge sign of wealth among the nobility and are often centerpieces.

>Dwarven religious ceremonies incorporate bathing in natural saunas to clense the soul of sin, somewhat like in Shinto.

>Dwarven cuisine, ship-building, things like that?
They do it good.

That's all you need to know manling.

Realistically just about any plant with a strong taste (sweet, spicy, sour, whatever) evolved the taste as a response to environment. Sweet fruits are more likely to be eaten by an animal, allowing the seeds to spread. Spicy fruit might deter some animals or parasites.

There's no reason to stick to realism in a fantasy setting with magic, but anything that's too strange will be jarring. There could be donuts growing on a tree underground.

>not recognizing the only good high fantasy writer

I do recognize it, though. That's Pratchett's work. It's fucking dumb. No intelligent race could survive with such absurd (and fucking stupid) mating habits.

Fat relatives, skinny wives.

There's no such thing as a Mating Ritual, unless you count your clan head meeting with your spouses clan head to arrange your marriage as a mating ritual.

Husbands family pays the wifes weight in gold as a dowry to the wife's clan as a dowry, (the wife always joins the husbands family) but the husband must be able to wrap his beard around the wifes waist, TWICE.

So if you've got a Clan with a bunch of skinny wives and fatass sisters, cousins, neices etc. you know they've got some serous clout, or they'd never be able to get such profitable arrangements going.

(Dwarf Women having beards is joke played on the gits that've never seen a dwarf woman)

Depends a lot on how far you want to get from the stereotypical dwarf.

I never really dug the weird-undergrownd agriculture thing for dwarves. Seems a bit too high magic for me. I always though they should get most of their food stuffs via trade with humans or "hill dwarves" who live outside the traditional mountain cities. Plus if you have hill dwarves, you get to break up the standard mono-culture thing and have a rivalry between the two groups.

I always like the idea of dwarves with stone ships. Anything will float if you displace enough water. Maybe having hill dwarves use more practical and traditional wooden long ships.

Dwarfishness is sublimated male sexuality. They epitomise that archaic bargain between the attenuated male mind with its focus on extricating function from materiality and the spatulate female mind with its encompassing of social and environmental context. Dwarfs cannot conceive of the expansive thing that surrounds them but are digging and honing pointedness of purpose and covetice. The Rumpelstiltskin story typifies this bargain and appears in a large number of permutations. The story is that of the covenant between the sexes. One sex can do stuff that the other sex needs but claims mating rights in return. The other sex utilises social chicanery to evade the terms of the covenant. Hilarity ensues.

There is a way of looking at males as parasitic entities*. The fact that their investment in offspring is the lesser means they are compelled to go to greater lengths to demonstrate their fitness. Their gonads dictate this strategy - to infect viable females with endearing offspring that they will dedicate their lives to protecting and perpetuating the male's germline. Some males have this attenuated focus turned up too high: I once encountered a boy who couldn't speak but could focus for hours on rattling random objects around in a plastic container. I didn't know for sure but suspected he probably wasn't popular with girls. Such focus needs to be diluted with a little bit of context awareness.

When Dwarfs are thwarted they lose their shit. This is their schtick and sets their narratives in motion. This is what dwarfs are like and it matters not whether they are the kind of dwarf that is like a corpse that lives in the earth and hides from the sun or the kind that vies with the gods in superhuman romance epics the thing that binds them together is that autistic focus on the thing that consumes them and their tendency to fly of the handle when denied it.

Dwarven ships strong!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk

Fat short women who look like men

No, I've no idea why Tumblr would know about those, none at all.

>(Dwarf Women having beards is joke played on the gits that've never seen a dwarf woman)
That's generally how I did it too.
I had explained that a higher birth mortality rate, means that there's generally a surplus of middle aged and older widowed males. Combined with a greater sense of wanderlust in widowed dwarves, most other races only see males.

Dwarves are all about greed, and the frustration of greed.

Does it have anything to do with ancient finns not having anything of value?

I unfortunately can't disassociate dwarf fortress dwarves with any original thought of my own about them so I am fairly useless in this thread.

I'll have you know that my Dwarves are excellent mariners.

They have to be after their lands flooded.

How the fuck is that Tumblr? If she were Tumblr she would be illustrated like a human girl with standard adventuring gear and a hijab and a red tint on her nose.

Posting anons image would get you crucified by tumblrinas for oversexualization. Please don't wrongly use that term lest it loses its meaning

Lets make some dwarven mage schools, warlock groups or sorcerer families.
Or just talk about dwarvern magic. I've never really seen anyone play a dwarf mage or anything like that. Mostly it's just fighters/clerics/paladins.

Warhammer has the best dwarves. this extends to dwarf mages as well

Dwarfs are a little too practically minded to ignore something like free windpower.

Goes back to is dnd when dwarf was a class. Iirc they had spell resistance which lead to a the theory that their innate magic resistance made casting spells hard.

That with WHFB's dwarves only getting mastic in the form or runes and magic equipment meant that by and large dwarves wizards don't crop up much in fiction.

>I've never really seen anyone play a dwarf mage or anything like that
No benefits when it comes to the mechanics and I guess the usual dwarffag is not a big fan of mages.

It would make sense to me that dwarfs would be the best at creating artificial beings, running on magic. Depending on how magic-tech you want to go it could get crazier than just stone-golems.

>Posting anons image would get you crucified by tumblrinas for oversexualization. Please don't wrongly use that term lest it loses its meaning
You sound like a /v/irgin

I always like the idea it dwarves mages specialising in flechette/grapeshot spells. The sort of thing that a tough well armored dwarf could shrug off, but would shred lightly armored foes. So they could fire pretty indiscriminately.

>There's a reason even the Vikings knew better than to fuck with these guys.
If by "do not fuck with these guys" you mean "conquer them, settle half their territory, and end up being a significant, powerful minority of their population anyway when they gain independence"

>Pratchett
>Not intentionally absurd

Where in the hell do you think you are?

I like the concept of dwarves holds involving the nobility and military living inside the mountain, while the freemen and peasantry work the sides, raising goats, sheep, berries, and so on. The type of shit that lives and grows on the mountains would be what they worked with.

As far as building ships, and their engineering in general, it really depends on their environment and what materials they have available.

Since dwarf ale is so culturally important to them I assume barley is their main starch.

>Runes, golems and magical equipment
I covered this when I said Clerics/Paladins.
Not sure why I've seen a lot of dwarf clerics rely heavily on norse runes, but I can guess why there are so many clerics also make golems.
Ties into the whole dwarf creation story of them being made from the earth by whatever creator figure they have in their pantheon. Not to mention all the -forging- related gods they have.

Well for agriculture they would mainly have access to the underground and questionably fertile mountain terrace farming. They could make tunnels outwards to create Windows for lichen or moss farming, which could be used as a staple food if selectively bred or as feed for a farmed animal like slugs. They may also breed troglomorph fish and other animals for food. Of course they would also be very found of above ground excursions for compost materials for the creation of plump helmet farms, the primary ingrediant of dwarfish drink. They may also have mountain goats.
So I think dwarves would have a lot of gruel or stew based on lichen as their grain staple, cave fish meat, and fungus taking on the roll of fruit and vegetables as well as alcohol.
High grade foods would be surface berries and and goat meat. Trade with humans is likely valued for its considerable diversification of their diet. Fruit and poultry for mastercrafted stuff.
My dwarves haven't got mating, they're all genderless, though they look male thanks to the beard and lack of female characteristics.
Instead of reproducing normally they make new dwarves out of precious metals, stone and clay, and some living dwarf blood. This is an arduous undertaking that can take a clan several years of effort. The dwarf is then animated through ritual magic and inducted into the clan of his blood father. Dwarves are carved without beards, so beard length is the best way to identify age, as they show no signs of physical change due to age until the last year or so of their life where they begin to petrify back into stone. Dwarves who die violent deaths petrify instead of rot. After becoming fully stone a dwarf can be reanimated into a new dwarf after receiving matinence. The new dwarf has some of the memories of his predecessor but is still a new person. It is common for Dwarves who have old lives to be given gifts made of the beard of their predecessor, made by them during their petrification.

What are the best Dwarves, and why is it Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian Dwarves?

Dwarven magic is tied to three things

1. The power of the land itself. The mountain is their ally and it is mighty.

2. Ancestors, aka like necromancy, less skeletons more ghosts.

3. Craftsmanship, ritualizing their own trades into producing magic. This is where the steel runes come into play.

Annoyingly the Wfrp adventure Lure of the Liche lord had rules for badass spell resistant Dwarf guardian golems

GW of course ignored the fucking things, they'd have made awesome models

Depends on the setting, cultures should be native to the fantasy world, not lifted from earth

>2. Ancestors, aka like necromancy, less skeletons more ghosts.
Kinda reminds me of the Fading Embers dwarves with their crazy ancestor worship/cannibalism.

I could definitely see a sort of dwarven gerontocracy, but with it not necessarily ending with death. Fits with the long memories and old grudges themes.

Could just use galleys? They can be blocky, and they have a ramming prow.

The High king of dwarves has ruled for thousands of years, appointed by the Council of guild dynasties.

And since they keep appointing him he rules, despite inconvinences like his death.

>that year when there's a single nay instead of unanimous approval
Dark times.

Forgot to post this.

I kind of like the idea of rowing power.
They might have sails, but I don't think that dwarves would trust anything as fickle and unreliable as the wind.

Just saw this in another thread.
Pretty good advice.

I think you might want to start the creative process a step earlier though.

How does insert race differ physically from humans
Stuff like how they reproduce and how they can interact physically with their environment will have a major impact on the way they develop.

Spoken like someone who doesn't understand how wind power works.

Welll they are dwarves thats a given.

Tacking is a bitch.

>le tumblr boogeyman
You know you can follow whom or whatever you like on tumblr and make whatever you like there, right?

There are so many people left over from Gamergate on tumblr that you can literally just follow dungeon-building, character creation, painal and facial abuse, and rp stories and never see a single SJW post ever.

Ship-building could mix chinese paddlewheel designs with japanese "sea fortress" warships. Lots of rowers inside a vehicle resilient enough to get near, which then double as boarders.

You can make the hull out of concrete if you want. Those were a thing in WW2.

>they are dwarves thats a given.
Sorta.
A society that follows the all the women have beards trope is going to be different than a beardless women one.
Or do they go by one of the more exotic dwarven reproduction methods sometimes mentioned: like dwarf-crafting or beard-parasites or hermaphroditic dwarves.

...

This seems like the best design to me for dwarfs. The pagoda style Eastern ships scream floating dwarf fortress.

But what about non-military ships? Like trading vessels.

I like it. Might do the opposite and claim that beards are actually sensitive antennae.

Could do keep the color parts by saying they're color blind due to low light adaptations.

Fine lets go with

Dwarves have blindsenses like .

I say two genders because otherwise is mostly sillyness. Dwarves tend to be stalward creatures that endure the harsh conditions of the underground but do not have the best directional sense and thus mostly stay put.

Do your dwarfs actually know something about minerals, cave geological features and that there is more to mining than pickaxing rocks?

They should.

Besides being sturdier than average, what do you want of them?

Depends on the culture.

Dwarven artisan guilds certainly care about the cave's natural beauty. But we have plenty of humans who dont give a shit about scenary excpet for the resources it contains.

>Evil Dwarf Geomancer stealing the ancestors bones and reanimating them to overthrow the society that scorned him and reclaim the mountain for his banished clan.

Butas far as food is concerned
I work in a cave and the main thing about caves is they have absolute darkness. Literally no naturally occurring light at all. But the cave I work at has White flood lights that combine with the High Humidity (consistently above 90%) to let algae grow on the walls. So if you want the whole dwarves never leave the underground then you need a dwarf city, in a humid environment, with a source of white light to have agriculture. There could be crystals in some of the rooms that occur naturally and give off light that allows algae/other plants to grow. You could have an adventure be about recharging the crystals in the sun and how the dwarfs can't take it to the surface cuz reasons.

If you don't want that then you're going to have to look at shit. I mean literal shit. The only way the suns energy makes it inro caves is through bat shit. Bats fly out at night, eat, return, and poop in the cave. All the left over energy in thier poop is the basis for almost every single cave ecosystem in the world. Even in the deepest reaches of karst aquifers those blindfish eat something that ate something that crawled into the water after eating batshit/something that ate bat shit. even the fungii that grow in caves are dependent on the batshit. The fungii might not need light but they need something that is rich in nutrients to decompose. So I guess you can have the dwarves eat literal bowls of shit if you want to be weird.

>cont.

No idea personally. I imagine they'd value size and safely over speed. So maybe something like a cog.

But I like what user said early about terrace farming. Just Imagine Incan Dwarves. Terrace farms the spanish observed grew different crops at different elevations to match the needs of various plants. I can't find the diagram but it's pretty neat. Just remember that the Inca were the only Pre-columbian new world civilization with metal weapons and armor and had pony express style mail sytem for traversing their public highways.

They did a lot with the tech they had. Incans make a good inspiration source for dwarves.

I could see hidden valleys with terrace farming and underground highways feeding mountain fortresses.

So dwarfs need to farm bats.

But I dont think dwarves CANT leave the mountain, I believe they live inside it because its more defensible and because as I stated before, dwaves hate travelling.

To be fair, there can be plenty of insects. If you look at south american caves, there's all the bats shitting on the floor and all kinds of insects living on it. Large centipedes crawl up the ceiling and eat baby bats.

So... we have:

>bat jerky; self explanatory
>dwarven bread (made out of crushed insects); a very high protein and calorie dense food favored for long travel. Think of a modern day protein bar, but drier and nastier. Other races probably won't like them, especially when they realize what they're made out of, but dwarves are hardy and pragmatic.
>centipede... Not sure what one would make out of a centipede, but human cultures where eating large insects is common tend to just fry them over fire. So maybe cooked centipede on a stick.

I dont think its bread if you put meat in it.

Insects have a whole cuisine attached to it that can work rather well but I sustain my belief that dwarves primarily use barley as their starch and they hate doing anything that involves more then walking.

Kinda always saw them as master merchants. All that smithing has to have a market, unless you're doing it recreationally and melting down the finished product.

Dwarves trade metal goods, precious metals and jewels for lumber, foodstuffs and fabrics. Possibly services like banking and engineering too.

Have you seen the movie Snowpiercer? Kind of like their bug rations, but less hi-tech.

It would be called dwarven bread by everyone because it looks like small dense loaves of rye bread. Very dark coloration, sort of bitter aftertaste, dry.

Sometimes if I'm going for a more light hearted fantasy setting, I divide dwarfs by what sort of ground they dig in.
>Mountain dwarfs
>Hill dwarfs
>Mesa dwarfs
>Volcano dwarfs
>Deep dwarfs
>Glacier dwarfs
etc.

I think since dwarves arent going to need to do snowpiercer shit that they bug food will be like normal bug food

My dwarven cuisine is extreme. Between mining dust and that natural "hardiness and resilience" they boast about, their sense of taste is shot. They shell out their mineral fortunes on exotic spices, flavorings, and sweeteners because they pour the stuff on their food to taste it. Not only that, but their ironclad stomachs and resistance to poison lead to their traditional cuisine containing some materials that others would consider nauseating at best or caustic at worst. They consider the foodstuffs of other races awfully bland, almost without exception.

Dwarves are depicted as a very military culture in many settings. There are no nicely packed and canned rations in fantasy land... So traditionally, you'd use travel rations - dried meat, dried bread-based rations that don't go bad easily and can be carried en masse. So high density bars of insect stuff would make a very effective ration. Kind of like Lembas in Lord of the Ring, but with more protein!

If you consider that the common depiction of dwarves is famed for their endurance (and not being very famous for having mounts), you could imagine a battalion of dwarf soldiers marching through day and night for several days straight to get to their destination quickly, with just tiny ration bars to support their strength.

4 miles/hour, in full heavy gear, 24 hours a day for several days.

I think dwarves just need to be big into trade. They don't grow the food or the barley. They trade for it mostly. Maybe Hill Dwarves and Halflings are incredibly close, so trade is common there, and Mountain Dwarves get goods from Hill Dwarves in exchange for finished goods and materials.

Or, shockingly, Dwarves don't live entirely underground. only partially? They don't have the disposition of one who lives totally underground, that's more like Duregar.

Could also do this instead of canning, assuming they could get butter. Perhaps using goats or yaks?

youtube.com/watch?v=SdKzWQOVET4

>Dwarven cuisine, ship-building, things like that?
>ship-building
Here. Here you go. A fine dwarven ship. Doing what it's supposed to, where it's supposed to.

I do my Dwarves like Warcraft Dwarves.

They live above ground, but even the most humble farm is a bunker-like stockade as Dwarves don't take well to building large above ground features.

>Lets take a demihuman race with weird features, and turn them into humans!

>Let's get autistically angry when people try and flesh out Dwarves.

I just did them surviving on their Alchohol. Dwarven Ale is like Liquid bread, often flavored with Oranges and honey.

I will now spend six hours, over the course of a day or two, researching the kind of preserved food a cave-dwelling civilization could make. Thanks asshole.

It is pretty calorically dense. If you had the Constitution for it, you could live like that for a while. Although, an all liquid diet is going to be rough on a march.

Liquid shits aren't going to improve moral. Maybe that's why they're always surly before a big battle.

>bearded women

stop with this meme.

>ship-building
>Okay Yorik, I know it's what roof-bangers do, but hear me out. What if instead of digging tunnels under the ocean, we build ships to sail over it!
>Get this hothead outta here!

Dwarves sailing in an underground sea would be cool.

Extremely.

AND/OR

>Dwarves design light ships they can carry so they could store them in their inland holds

This. Something like Ironforge, Moria, or Erebor is for the big capital kingdoms, but much is also on the surface of the mountains too.