Dwarf Fortress Dwarves in 5e

So my Game Master is wanting to give himself a bit of a challenge in world building for the next 5e campaign he's running. To that end, he's allowing each of the players to pick a race, then build up a description of how their society works, with us each going to have the selected race being what our Player Character would be when the game starts. I had decided to use Dwarves, under the thought that I could build them up to be like those in Dwarf Fortress. I need a bit of help, though.

The first part I need help with is the Pantheon. I know I want to have Armok as the chief god, but I am unsure what the best way to fill out the rest of the pantheon would be. Further, while I know that I want to give him the domains of 'War' and 'Death', since there is no 'Blood', I am uncertain as to which alignment he should have.

Next, I am uncertain about something with the nobility. Specifically, how I should implement the idea of the fortress overseer succession games tend to use. I know at first it seems easy, but the succession games tend to portray the overseer as having more authority than the King/Queen over the workings of the fortress, since you can treat their mandates and demands as suggestions if you so choose. Sure there's a bit of punishment, but it's upon a random dwarf rather than directly upon the dwarf that's 'in charge'.

Speaking of punishment, I also need help in figuring out how to represent the justice system the dwarves have, especially with the random assignment of punishment to failed demands and mandates.

I'm probably forgetting some things, but this is a start, at least.

In general, in your typical fuedal system, lords would govern their lands as they saw fit. In theory they answered to a King, but of course practically speaking this was not always the case.

But for your dwarves, my suggestion is this: The Dwarven King/Queen is the high priest/priestess/Theologian/whatever of Armok

They dispense Armoks mad (?) whims to the dwarven nations. Those who disobey their mandates are 'cursed' by Armok, aka, struck by divine or magical affliction. Punishment is directed at a fortress as a whole, rather than an individual. It's just luck of the draw whatever poor sap gets hit with it.

Dwarves are essentially all self sufficient self governing enclaves who operate as they see fit. Fortress Overseer has ultimate authority. The only thing that unites the dwarven enclaves is religion, cats, and a mutual distaste for all non dwarven life (and fear of carp)

You should have at least one god of craftsdwarfship, and a goddess of mushrooms and farming, and a god of trickery and levers.

Armok is the only god. The dwarves pray to their ancestors for all other things. Like if a dwarf had an ancestor who was a really rich man, he would pray to him for wealth if they had a strong ancestor, they would pray to them for courage. Etc.

So the dwarves keep huge detailed chronicles on their family tree and all aspire to be great in some way to be venerated by their descendents.

Also, while the dwarves have a nobility, it is purely ceremonial, and they function as little more than priests, leading rituals to honor the ancestors. The nobles were once true rulers, but have fallen by the wayside to a sort of meritocracy, the Overseer system, who are basically dictators that handpick their successors from among the most capable.

Punishments are carried out semi-randomly based on divinations from the ancestors. Decrees and bans are also based on divinations. These divinations are carried out by the nobility and enforced by the Overseer.

How about nobles as the /nominal/ rulers, whereas most acknowledge that the TRUE power in any proper Fort is the architect.

Because, sure, an individual dwarf might know the tunnels that they walk every day, and sure, the Nobles may have a fancy title, money, and command of some loyalists, but ONLY the one who designed the fortress knows ALL of its ins-and-outs.

And that's why the architect holds the most power. They know all the secret passages, hiding places, mysterious levers, traps, flooding devices, and other traps inside the fortress.

Don't do what the king says?? The king MAY punish you... Or some other dwarf. Nobles are arbitrary like that. But don't do what the ARCHITECT, says?? Well, just maybe you'll find your bedroom suddenly flooding with lava later tonight!!

Dwarves have two separate concepts for social status that humans conflate into the same individuals - Privilege and Duty. Nobles are inherently due privileges like expensive living quarters and suchlike, while overseers and workers are responsible for doing the work and making the practical decisions that keep Dwarven society running.

So the Barons, Counts, and Dukes would represent lesser hereditary priests, the Generals, Champions, and Outpost Liasons being meritocratic priests, and the Mayors being populist priests? They all have demands/mandates as well.

Dwarves do create their own gods in DF worldgen. Maybe it could be a case of the gods of the pantheon below Armok are legendary heroes having undergone deification after their deaths? Maybe each large fortress having their own patron deity and other forts adopting an the god of their fortress of origin as their own until one of their own is deified?

So the society would have originally been a theocratic nation that has degraded to being structured under the basis of many meritocratic city-states held together by a partially-populist, partially-hereditary, partially-meritocratic, theocratic coalition? Sounds like politics would be a bit of nightmare to navigate through.

Curious, could the divination be used to explain why embark sites can be anywhere in the world and always have adamantium? Possibly with Armok directing the so the adamantine source always has a gate to another plane sealed within, to introduce more threats into the world?

That sounds neat, but if the architects are run like succession game players, there is the fact that even they don't know everything about the fort (see: the room in Headshoots(?) that no one could figure out how to get into, or the conventional 'no one knows what exactly this lever does'.), and their power tends to derive from being able to tell dwarves to do whatever they want.

It seems like that could fit pretty neatly into the fuedalistic meritocratic theocratic society as well, with practical being in the domain of the city-states and overseers, and spiritual being in the hands of the overarching coalition, war declaration entirely in the hands of the latter because of the domains of the chief god.

Wait a sec, on the last bit I mentioned in my prior post about war declaration in the hands of the spiritual side due to the Chief God being of war. Would that mean that every single war declared by the dwarves would be at least a Holy War, maybe being up to the level of Crusade?

The random punishments are considered a punishment to the colony as a whole. Suddenly you have one less miner and the expansion falls behind schedule. Or you don't have a baker and all your bread tastes like soggy cat arse.

The punishments are carried out to appease Armok, should the overseer fail to deliver on the king's divined decrees.

Dwarves are at war with everyone, perpetually. Armok demanda blood. Even the animal kingdom is an enemy. Even the trees are enemies. Any sort of ceasefire or trade agreement is just so that they can focus their efforts on digging deeper into the holy earth to cleanse it of demons; before returning to the vile, maddening surface world to cleanse it of sun-addled surfacers.

>It seems like that could fit pretty neatly into the fuedalistic meritocratic theocratic society as well, with practical being in the domain of the city-states and overseers, and spiritual being in the hands of the overarching coalition, war declaration entirely in the hands of the latter because of the domains of the chief god.

Sure. The main thing you want to do is make clear that it isn't a king's business to rule, but making sure a noble's mandates are met is considered the same sort of "Well, duh, that's how these things are done" sort of priority as having a roof. You can live without it, if you call that living. Dwarven society in general has to consider the obvious metric of a successful society to be "How well do we take care of our nobles?" in much the same way that we say things like "How big is our GDP?"

It should come off as a little insane and inscrutable to non-Dwarves, but you also want to make it parallel human experiences enough that people don't automatically reject it as kookiness.

This is relevant to Dwarven social orders.

>Dwarven society in general has to consider the obvious metric of a successful society to be "How well do we take care of our nobles?"
They act as diplomats and status symbols in addition to ceremonial duties. The prestige of a colony is measure by the luxury and wealth of its nobles.

If a noble is treated like crap by one colony, the other colonies will treat their whole colony like a dirty rural backwater.

Also, all dwarves live in fear of Armok and disrespecting the ancient bloodlines is a sure way to earn his wrath.

Looking at the description of what Armok does 'reforging the world when things become stagnant', wouldn't forever war just be another form of stagnation?

You know, I better check with the GM to see if he'd allow for alignment changes of the races. To properly represent things, there's likely to need to be a racial shift towards Lawful or True Neutral rather than staying Lawful Good. Don't think it would go all the way to 'evil,' since my impression of Armok is that he doesn't really care about good or evil.

Care of nobility would be high up in how well off dwarves consider a place to be, but I think Megaprojects would be effectively tied.

Good god, the economy. Almost forgot about that. How in the world do you translate that chaos?

Though what constitutes 'disrespect' may differ from what humans consider as being 'disrespectful'.

Best of luck OP. Blood for the blood God!

Got an answer from the GM. The dwarven racial alignment is able to be shifted, but only to the point of Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, or Neutral Good.

Speaking of Armok, what would be a logical build for a Cleric of his?

>dwarven racial alignment
What?

>logical build for a Cleric
Any particular reason that straight up Cleric wouldn't work? 5e's pretty good about letting you just straight up take a class and have it not suck.

Unless you're an elements monk. Or a ranger. Or a sorcerer in the same party as a wizard. But hey, still better than the previous editions!

these are really great and creative idea's, i'm surprised I expected this to devolve into DF memes

Strike the earth!

Obviously standard Mace and Board face slapper. War/Death domains, high str, get in and slap shit. Warpriest all the way, buff all the things, kill all the things.

>still better than the previous editions!
*except 4e which had actual class parity across the board by addressing the fundamental problems in D&D's traditional action economy and spell systems

Going by my chart, Lawful Neutral sounds about right yes

4e had half a dozen shoes you could fill at best and way too many ways to fill them. There were clear winners and clear losers, partly because of the WE NEED A CLASS AND RACE AND ARCHETYPE AND EQUIPMENT AND ABILITIES FOR EVERY FLAVOR OF THE RAINBOW attitude.
5e, thanks to not (yet) having terminal splat cancer and option cancer actually has decent balance. For now. I'm sure they'll fuck it up too.

Unearthed Arcana is beginning of the end brother. It's all fine and fun now, exciting new options and such. Soon, our veins will be full of splat, splat will rain from the sky, all will be splat and the splat will fill us.

>dwarven racial alignment
>What?

I'm using that phrase to refer to the typical moral alignment an individual dwarf would have. There would be ones outside that alignment, but a majority of dwarves would have that alignment.

The memes will undoubtedly come eventually, but for now, we seem to be in more stable discussion.

The question is, what alignment would Armok have? That is the big thing that will influence them.

Dwarven society itself is clearly LE, what with the random executions and strict yet inane rules in a nearly totalitarian structure. Despite that, most dwarves don't give a fuck and are straight up LN: They do their job, take their breaks, eat their state-provided meals, and carry on.

Armok is Chaotic Neutral/Evil.

Dwarves are Lawful Neutral. They do their best to appease Armok's madness because he is their maker and/or because they fear him.

Armok either possesses them and uses their body to create great artifacts or just outright drives them mad. Depends on how much he likes them.

Armok is true neutral if you have to slap an alignment on him, but more properly he's everything at once.
There's infinite ways to play DF, and ARM_OK embodies all of them.

So much of the hereditary and meritocratic priesthoods and theirs control on the national scale would fall into the 'Lawful Evil'' category (with the occasional Lawful Neutral), while the common dwarves, overseers, and mayors would be in the 'Lawful Neutral,' the occasional 'Lawful Good' cropping up, essentially balancing everything so the typical is 'Lawful Neutral'? Combine that with the decay of the priesthood's power, things seem primed for a civil war or French Revolution-style event...

I'd actually say that the nobles, hammerer, guards, etc would all be LN too. There's no apparent malice in the hammering orders, it's just how Things Are Done.
It's like a puppy-kicking machine. No component of the machine kicks puppies in and of itself, but when you put it together and dump a puppy in the chute, every part does its job and the puppy gets a boot.

So he's pretty much the dwarven version of the draconic deity Io, only not splintered?

So it could be more a case that the dwarves were taken over by a Lawful Evil force early on, and over time, the typical Lawful Good alignment of the common dwarves and the Lawful Evil alignment of the ruling dwarves both degraded to the current Lawful Neutral rather than the ruling priests being overthrown? Could explain the larger propensity towards flashier megaprojects could be a leftover of the old nobles wanting massive projects being built in their name, possibly the discovery of the Magma Cannon having occurred in that time.

It's a lot like a mermaid farm.

More fluff:

Dwarves consider the open sky to be dizzying and frightening. Those who spend too much time outside go "sky-crazed". This may or may not be superstition. During long expeditions, they make temporary burrows underground along the way to recuperate. Some dwarves seem to be immune to this and don't mind the outdoors. Other dwarves are wary of these deviants.

Dwarves cannot comprehend cultural differences at all. To them, all other races are either evil or sky-crazed.

Humans? Dig into the earth to drag out the stones and build artificial caves called houses. Big ones are called castles. Why not just live in the hole they dug? There's no logical explanation for this. Sky-crazed.

Elves love trees, those green stupid things that you cut down for firewood. Why do they care about inanimate trees? No logical reason. Sky-crazed.

This. Most nobles don't want people to get hammered to death. They just do their duty, which is divining Armok's will and passing down divine decrees. Some of them are religious fanatics and are all gung-ho on the insane mandates and hammering lottery, but not all are like that.

Might there also be a 'deep-crazed' condition as well, from being in the deepest depths of the fortress for too long?

Armok is not a god that the dwarves worship. Armok is not an element of any universe which is created, no dwarves have ever worshipped him as a deity. Armok is a fickle god who creates worlds for his enjoyment, who creates conflicts and then abandons and destroys worlds which bore him.

Armok is no god, but the player themself. Armok is the overseer of every fortress. Therefore, to produce an equivalent, perhaps each fortress has one particular dwarf who calls from a higher being that all dwarves respect and hold in high regard. They do not worship this higher being, but culture dictates that this dwarf is not to be directly denied.