Dwarves

Dwarves are a swarthy, dark-skinned race, whose individuals possess dark brown or red hair and dark eyes. They are short, usually standing between 41/2 to 5 feet in height, and markedly stocky in build; they appear superficially similar to short humans, though there is no relation between the two species.
Their senses are tailored for dark, rocky places, and they often only feel at home in the thin alpine air or deep underground. Dwarves live longer than the average human, usually living between 130-150 years, and they have very few children. Dwarven pregnancies are usually complicated and risky for the mother, and should the baby survive childbirth, they are highly dependent upon their parents for the better part of decades.
Dwarves have no innate magical ability, and deeply distrust magic in general. They prefer solitude and usually live fairly separate from each other. Almost paradoxically however, they usually have very powerful clan ties; all but the most stand-offish dwarves swear allegiance to a clan, and these clans have incredibly variable relations with each other. No matter where one goes, it seems there will be two clans who claim true friendship with each other, two clans who are at bloody war, and one clan who refuses to talk to the other four, and which clan is which changes every generation or two. Individual dwarves may go weeks or months without talking to another soul, absorbed in their own trades, before returning to their clan house for boisterous news and business.
Dwarves have an almost innate distrust and dislike of the other races. The dwarves of Mirilarin are highly xenophobic and generally very introverted: while the clans in the Seldarin Mountains have treaties with Asanon, Yeto and a few Northland tribes permitting them to mine, they otherwise will not talk to the human countries, and, worse still, do not allow passage over “their” mountains, restricting travel to only brave and unobtrusive souls who sneak between the clan boundaries.
'Halfling' is derogatory, human-centric slang that can refer to dwarves or their closely-related 'cousins', the Hobbits. 
Category:Race