What makes dwarves and humans such natural allies in works of fiction

>being this mad at a fictional race

Love of strong drink.

>You will never be an honorary elf.

There is an entire term for such things. Ruathar, it comes with a blessing that makes you long lived like elves.

What setting is that from?

Their shared love for crafting, engineering and alcohol.

'D&D' (It's got info for how to include it multiple settings. It's from Races of the Wild, not a campaign-tied splatbook.)

Both are industrious races that, in fantasy, believe in the value of good work, and insist that ambition and drive is a good trait. In DnD, it's easy for them to get along because when you really look at the situation, humans are just more relaxed and carefree dwarves.

>implying xenophobia is bad.
I mean when there are races of literal, genetic murder rapists why would you not be?

Ah, so it's not actually canon to anything, but rather is just an optional fluff component.

Still, that sounds neat, I'll have to look through that book sometime.

>Ah, so it's not actually canon to anything, but rather is just an optional fluff component.

More than there is for dwarves though (And the 'Races of X' books being non-canon is a bit of a weird line to take).

> And the 'Races of X' books being non-canon is a bit of a weird line to take
It's an optional splat for one particular rule system of about three different rule systems made by the same company, involving an ubiquitous fantasy race so...?

It's as canon as you want it to be.

>Inb4 /pol/ shit up another thread

You're right. Even in the real world, xenophobia is a survival mechanism based on caution of the unknown.

People seem to forget it's only relatively recently that the traveller from out of town wasn't something to be cautiously observed. You'd be courteous, hospitable even but cautious, especially because everyone knows everyone in town and no one knows what or who this guy is or what he is capable of. He'll you'll still find some old towns where that is still the case.

It's not from a literary work, so it's non-canon to anything. I get the meaning and I agree with it. Fluff in a rpg isn't the same as canon in a great work of litterature.

I like the concept of that blessing. I might use it in my setting as a bond between an elf and a non-elf that prevents them from aging with the catch that when the elf dies, so do they (the opposite is true too). It'd be reserved for special circumstances, such as an elf having a non-elven lover who they wish to be together with for the rest of their lives.

>some
Try much of rural Europe, from what I've been told, especially if you don't look any kind of European. These are the places where the next village over is practically another country (because it was at some point) and the village's history is longer than that of every North American country's combined.

As some have pointed out, it's an optional splat made for a rule system as opposed to a setting.

Otherwise we'd have people still quoting the Complete Book of Elves from the AD&D days and that book is horrendous.

Dwarves are pretty much the only race superior to humans, who think you can redeem yourself to virtuous actions such as loyalty, willpower and skill.

Whereas elves just look down on everyone else as disposable and inferior; racist effeminate soyboys they are. Fight along a Dwarve's side and he will regard you as a battlebrother.

Fight along an Elve's side and he will be happy to be so succesful at manipulating his little pet to his will and pat his own shoulder for it.

I highly doubt the settings you are talking about actually exist.

It's kinda funny, but a lot of hate for the elves still stems from that book, so, in a sense, people still act as if it's a thing.

I'm pretty sure someone on Veeky Forums actually made such a setting unironically.

It's called warhammer.

People still act like Drizzt clones are a thing as well.

>Dwarves are pretty much the only race superior to humans

fuck off, stunty

As in 'who are superior to humans, but regardless don't look down on them by default and instead offer them chances to prove their merit', brainlet.

t. orc

You mean the setting that has Asur actively helping the empire? Where Asrai have a long history with Bretonnia? You mean the setting that is not every setting out there?

What about the harpers?

>Bretonnia
Who?

Fantasy genre has been around for so long, its parodies are actually taken as a common interpretation of things by serious works. What originated as a joke now hundreds of neckbeards will defend like a gospel.

Shit's weird.

Spoken like a true jerkass of a dwarf.

The Woodelves are the closest thing you to an alliance you can reach when interacting with elves. It is cannon that they look down on Bretonnia and the empire and see them as nothing but meatshield against outer threats, even taking delight in primitive races like humans and orcs slaughtering each other. Woodelves genocided whole Bretonnian and imperial towns for armies getting accidently lost in the woods and the Orion's Wild Hunt thinks of humans as easy prey, because they are absolutely worthless.
Highelves have the same mindset, but are even more isolationist, so don't manipulate humans as much.

Because they're usually both relatively good races.

tolkien did it

No he didn't. There's alliances between Men and Elves most of the time but not between Dwarves or anyone.

user please, the dwarven word for human-made is also "shoddy" or something similar. They deem humans to be lesser races as well. There are Asur that are actually sympathic towards humans, like Finubar. Don't forget their involvement in the founding of the college of magic. I mean, yes, most elves are assholes in this setting full of assholes, don't except dwarves from that.

Like what? I don't remember any alliance between them.

...

The difference being, that dwarves would still repay their debt to you and honor pacts, probably even build up friendships if you are a cool enough dude, whereas Elves are portrayed to be only self interested and don't apply their usual virtues to lesser races, because they are not worthy of them. To boil it down; generally speaking Dwarves look at humans as children (maybe not very bright ones), whereas elves regard humans as something akin to oxen.

There are always exceptions of course.

>The Elves xenophobic and isolationist to the point of segregating themselves from all other Elves are the ones you can ally with
>Not the Elves that the Empire and the Dwarves have repeatedly allied with
Take your 40k-MUH-HOOMANITY Glasses off for a moment, because you are fucking wrong. Wood Elves are cranky cunts, the lot of them, and Asur have plenty of contact with the Empire. They are about as isolationist as you can expect from a sovereign empire living on another bloody continent. There's lots of exchange between them and the Colleges of Magic and they have helped the Empire aplenty in the past.
Hell, you can sooner strike an alliance with the fucking Dark Elves than with the Asrai. Dark Elves actually do shit, they are interested in glory and profit. The likelyhood of some noble or even just raider captain showing up and you striking a deal that goes well for you is bigger than a Wood Elf ever voluntarily leaving his fucking forest and lifting a finger.

Most Dwarfs view humans as complete idiots and barely capable of holding an oath. Don't romanticize their friendship, it rests solely on the very few exceptional humans befriending some few, powerful dwarves.
The same goes for the High Elves. The only reason Dorfs and the Empire interact more is by sheer necessity, sitting close together on the same continent, what with the Dwarves having kicked the Elves teeth in during the War of Vengeance and booting their pansy asses back to Ulthuan.

>The difference being, that dwarves would still repay their debt to you and honor pacts
Not because they like you, but because they are autistic about that. They will also fuck your shit up if they think that you've done them any wrong.
>probably even build up friendships if you are a cool enough dude
Malekith and Snorri, before Malekith turned edgy.

Because generally speaking, dwarves are the only race that can show any form of respect for humanity, and vice versa.

lazy writing

I think this is pretty generally speaking.

...

>Y-yeah you see my dwarves are totally best at crafting best at magic very attractive and manly are totes friends with humans are super honorable and do the best things they never are evil because they are all manly bros and and and

Dwarffags have finally become what they want Elffags to be.

>Elves/Dwarves are fags, but fighting with them at your side is okay, i-it's not like I like them or something
>Halflings are pretty okay dudes
>Humans go way too fast and get shit done, too bad they die off so quickly
Sound pretty much the same to me.
Dwarf-Elf tsundere relations are still the funniest shit to me.

Oh, and let's not forget
>I will totally ignore or misinterpret half the canon of the established setting as long as doing it paints my waifu race in good light

when have dwarves ever been the best at magic?

>very attractive
To be fair, some of them want them to be ugly, because they think that's manly.

It depends on the setting exactly why Humans and Dwarves are allies. But as for the archetype, let's look at the relationship between the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and the Men of Rivertown, pre-Smaug.

There was no land competition as the dwarves didn't have any farms above ground, outside of a few ranches for sheep, and likely other animals that went unmentioned. farm land does not make good ranch land and vice-versa, so there was practically no resources to fight over.

This lack of resource sharing also means that each society has a niche to fill for the other. Dwarves don't farm above ground but that doesn't mean they dislike farmed foods and wines from vineyards, both of which the men of Laketown had. Dwarves also liked pelts, which while they could hunt, they did not hunt as far, wide, or as numerously as the men of Laketown.

On the other side, the men of Laketown did not have mines or nearby mountains outside of the Lonely Mountain, which while you may seem as a point of contempt between the two, wasn't. The Lonely Mountain had so much to mine that the men of Laketown couldn't have possibly done it. There was not enough men to work the Lonely Mountain unless the town devoted their entire town to this. But then they would just be a less efficient Lonely Mountain.

Similarly, the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain didn't just turn Laketown into a Vassal state because they could not trade and do diplomacy like the humans could. A good example of this is in The Hobbit, Bilbo wears a mithril shirt made for an elf prince. There is no way the dwarves negotiated with the elves to make them things, it, without a doubt, went through the humans as an intermediary, and would have likely been shipped by them between the two as well.

TL:DR, Dwarves and humans are similar and where they are different compliment a strong relationship between the two. While humans can get by without dwarves and vice-versa, both benefit from close relationship.s

Rune magic

>Buffs, Debuffs, Nukes, everything you need
>Reliable, never turns you into a puddle of tentacles or summons demons
>Create items of awesome might with it
>Not the best
Beardling, please

>REAL runic/enchanting magic boy, not that gay-ass pansy elf shit

Had this happen.

Okay, maybe magic is a stretch, but they usually have something that's just as good as magic/can leverage the absence of magic.

So you can't be friends with a dwarf, but your child can be one.

On the contrary! Dwarf cuisine is fucking terrible. Even dwarves will tell you that.

I mean, they might say some shit about how a true dwarf eats hardtack and doesn't waste time on frivolities, or that tasting like gravel gives it character and makes your beard grow long, but they'll never tell you that their food tastes good.

Not unless it also involves downing large amounts of booze.

Man, nobody gives a shit about rune magic. Nobody. Rune magic is the special olympics of magic.

>Insulting the wisdom given to us by the ancestors

What setting is that from?

>On the contrary! Dwarf cuisine is fucking terrible.
Gimly hyped the shit out of Dwarf meat, though I forgot if he also did that in the books.

I dunno.

Honestly I'm just having fun making shit up.

It SOUNDS like it could be true, doesn't it?

That elf seems improperly dressed

Its amazing the amount of discussions people get into concerning generic fantasy with no truly published setting to back up anyones assertions, just assumption about magic, races or technology.
Someone should compile all of our shared assumptions into one unified fantasy setting for Veeky Forums, it would make for an interesting project.

>Someone should compile all of our shared assumptions into one unified fantasy setting for Veeky Forums, it would make for an interesting project.

We already had unified setting plus one half-assed attempt at another. It didn't go well.

To date, the most Veeky Forums setting ever made is Dungeons: the Dragoning.

Well, Veeky Forums isn't unified. You only have to look at the elf threads and dwarf threads and warhammer threads and the occasional kobold and drag threads to see that.

So trying to make a Veeky Forums inspired setting would really require someone to ask these questions and then cherry pick answers for the type of setting they were trying to create.

>Suddenly the flashbacks of the furfag assault return.
Shame to that was actually going good for a bit.

>>What makes dwarves and humans such natural allies in works of fiction
Both Dwarves and Humans are inclined towards stable organized societies that while often warlike, are also inclined towards trade. Dwarves and humans are best optimized for living in different environments that happen to be close to eachother. Both these environments also happen to have things that both species need.

Humans want precious ores and rocks. Dwarves want food/wood/other exotic surface world stuff. Since each species is better suited to acquiring these resources anyway, trade is often more efficient than conquest. This means Dwarf holds and human kingdoms are likely to have significant economic ties to eachother, and that outside threats threatening one will muck with the others economy even before a single butt fucking orc or goblin steps foot in their own territory.

It's disheartening, isn't it? Instead of actually becoming knowledgeable about fantasy and thus being able to contribute to healthy discussions people will rather be lazy and shit out random ideas, which are often enough biased based on the little exposure they have on fantasy. There is a pdf thread up right now where you can find all kinds of source books and novels, but it seems that reading is hard. Veeky Forums is supposed to be excellent at stuff, that you could find all kinds of weird knowledge was one of the reasons why I initially fell in love with board. But then you get anons that make me question why they are here in the first place if they have no real interest in the topic.

Nothing against homebrew settings of course, but those are not the topic of threads like this.

We're just all going to gloss right over the fact that the dwarf in the OP has a fat, wrinkly pecker for a finger then?

the high elves literally founded the colleges of magic and have embassies in marienburg and Altdorf. They are on par with kislev when it comes to being empire allies.

Not a single Dwarffag in the history of the hobby has said Dwarves are the most physically attractive or the best at magic. Most [Race]fags concede that Elves are the most attractive/best at magic. Quit getting mad at your own strawmen

I’m an Orcfag btw

>Knowledgeable about fantasy
It’s all make believe. How can I become knowledgeable about your headcannon?

By checking the definition of headcanon.

That's going right in the book.

I argued some weeks ago with a dwarffag that claimed dwarves are getting more pussy than elves because they manlier. It's not the same thing, but a similar idea.

>Kislev
They need the Empire's help all the time?
Jokes aside the Dwarfs are the more important ally to the Empire because they are their neighbours and the Empire's god is a Dwarf friend.

Well it would be interesting to try and nail down what the default assumptions are when someone posts a thread asking about elves, magic or dwarves etc.

As if you can write with deformed fingers like that.

>muh dwarfs are more important
this isn't mandred the skavenslayer's time gramps. Elves have proved themselves to be capable allies of the empire on par with the dwarfs. At least the elves won't destroy strategic fortresses because they were missing 2 pennies.

Only in WHFB, and in there they show off their greed by betraying and killing humans because of one coin. Dwarfs are ugly little malicious race.

>>Kislev
>They need the Empire's help all the time?

>It's disheartening, isn't it?
I actually find it really interesting. The different interpretations allow for a great variance in potential settings. Granted, if you were looking for some kind of deep, intellectual discussion concerning just the facts as they are represented in literature, you... probably shouldn't have come to Veeky Forums? But if you're casting a net to fish for ideas, and if you're willing to pick through that net instead of just dragging the whole thing up, it can be pretty fascinating to see all the disparate viewpoints.

I don't think you really got the gist of that post, but considering that there is some
>it's supposed to be shit
in yours doesn't surprise me.

That's something that really should be more present in games, the distinct views the common folk would have on an outsider deppending on wether you are in a town in the middle of nowhere, in the capital, or in a major trade city.

Say what you want about the elves, but they have the best food you could wish for, the best wine money can buy and the best doctors there are.

Elven pastries are the stuff of legend.

>You will never be an honorary elf. To Elves, you're like a dog that learned not to piss on the rug.
Say what you want about the elves, but I like their migration policy.

> don't think you really got the gist of that post
"Veeky Forums sucks, wahh wahh, why don't you all live up to my standards"
did I get it right

We both like gold and booze. And hate elves.
Fucking elves.

People who haven't read the Appendices (or even books at all, apparently, since the alliance between Dale and Erebor is spoken of at length in the Hobbit and mentioned in passing in Fellowship, iirc) shouldn't argue about what Tolkien did and didn't do.

And don't get me started on the Union of Maedhros, or the relationship between Eregion and Khazad-Dûm.

Why do /pol/boys hate elves when they're the whitest race?

/pol/ wants to be conservative, but lacks culture.

They aren't. They're the natural ally of elves. The two cover for one anothers weaknesses.