Dwarf (ToF)

**Dwarves** are a race in the Tides of Fate universe. One of the recurring species in the world of Carokiiv, they are native to the continent of Setora, the northernmost landmass of the planet. Like the other dominant species, they have also somewhat accepted magic as part of their culture, despite their rather limited control of it. They are known and capable for their knowledge in the field of technology however, to make up for their shortfalls in magical power.

The greatest engineers and inventors have all been dwarves. They are also some of the best smiths known to the world, although their relative lack of talent in enchanting limits the power of the creations to whatever limit current technology has for them.

## Origin and Early History

The origin of Dwarves was that they were natives from the lands of Setora, having settled there before the Beast Races had their advent in Carokiiv and took over Setora. During the era of the Beast Races, the Dwarves were put into heavy slavery, like every other Near Human species. At this time, the Dwarves were known to be stockier and sturdier than most, and thus they were worked the hardest as slaves. They were the third race to rebel, after the Humans and the Elves.

When the greatest event to ever befall the Near Humans, the "Advent of Magic", happened, Dwarves and all the other Near Human races were granted the power of magic at their fingertips, and they now had the very weapon to beat back the Beast Races. Applying this newfound Gift, and using the many weapons they had crafted after biding their time, they drove the Beast Races back. The Beast Races fought back with savagery, and the Dwarves replied with equal force, till most of both sides had almost died out. The arrival of humans and elves clamouring for revenge sealed the fate of the Beasts, and they were utterly wiped out from Setora due to almost everyone emptying their rage.

The Dwarves never got to enslave many Beast men to build their civilisation, and thus they had to work on it themselves, as both the architect and builders. The Dwarves thus gained huge leaps in technology to replace their lack of slavery, but they lost out on the development of magic and entrenching magic into their civilisation. In the end, though, the Dwarves were not very skilled with magic, and they accepted they needed technology as a substitute.

## Modern Age

The Dwarves had build their civilisation over the ages via the use of technology, and they have never really relied on magic, using it only to serve their needs when it was absolutely required from them. Thus, their society had industrialized and used different technologies from the other nations, due to how they relied purely on hard science to make their infrastructure and homes.

Due to how their society was built, the Dwarves have implemented Democracy as a whole in their home nation of Setora, and have agreed upon that everyone should have the freedom to live the way they want to live. Thus, politics within their rather closed society continues to keep their government from passing purely nationalistic policies, and populism is not uncommon. While they do not have the same level of backstabbing as the elves, the machinations and corruption within the Dwarven government can be quite bad at times.

The Dwarves have also decided to set up an open economy, happily trading their technology out for various resources and pieces of knowledge to further their own interests. They are a strongly capitalist system where the rich are able to cement their own position in society via trading of resources alone. Some merchants are even powerful enough financially to affect the politics of Setora.

## Traits

Dwarves, like all other Near Human species in Carokiiv do look similar to humanity, other than generally having more defined and rugged features. Their men are known to be big on having beards and muscles. Dwarves are capable of breeding with any other Near Human race other than the Asterians. Dwarves are in fact no shorter than the average human, and their epithet comes from how small they seem when compared in scale with their technology.

Dwarves have a great affinity for technology and engineering pursuits, mainly due to their culture. They place a great deal of faith in technological solutions. This is due to their lack of talent in magic, which causes them to not see it as a very important aspect of their society.

There is a large variance in the magical talent of the individual dwarf, although they are known to be almost universally worse off the the other races at casting. The highest power level for a Dwarf mage is a full Strategic Class Mage, though. While many of them are born with a bare minimum of magic circuits, or even no circuits, some of them such as the mage family of the Khybelay Clan have similar magic capacity to their human and elven counterparts.

Dwarves are known to possess an ancient form of Dimensional Manipulation which allows them to store a seemingly infinite amount of things in another world connected to them. Thus, they can summon, banish and utilize many pieces of equipment without penalizing themselves for carrying it. This ability doesn't even use mana.

Dwarves have a connection with their Dimensional Gate, and thus can retrieve anything that is pulled from it, no matter the distance between the equipment and themselves. Some dwarves can fire weapons like arrows from the Dimensional Gate via a telekinesis like ability, and others are able to teleport to any equipment piece taken from the gate. The technological expertise of some dwarves also allow them to seemingly take less damage from an enemy they focus on, while dealing more by observing weaknesses.

With their limited magic, Dwarves can also push a piece of equipment to its maximum potential power for a moment, damaging the equipment when the reinforcement fades, or create a copy of an equipments technological shell via synthesis. This is a very world distorting class of abilities and can only be used once a day.

## Other miscellaneous details

Dwarves tend to be quite liberal in general, due to the education and lifestyle they have in Setora, which encourages them to live the way they want. They tend to scoff at magic somewhat, due to their belief in non magic based science and technology, which they see as being able to rival magic in due time. On the surface Dwarves seem to pride themselves on using technology and basing their society on it, but some more learned and scholastic Dwarves privately acknowledge that technology is in fact a poor substitute for magic.

Due to how liberal they are, the Dwarves tend to tolerate the presence of foreign outsiders from other races without even questioning their intent, but sometimes will show their incomplete acceptance as their belief in the Freedom of Speech gives them the "right" to belittle or mock other races. Thus, it is not that common to see people from other races mingle freely with the Dwarves, who can get very foul mouthed at times. Most Dwarves generally do not mind marrying a Dryad, Dusk Elf or Dark Elf, but due to their bad history with Humans and bad impression of High Elves tend to shun them.

Most Dwarves have very far left views, and they believe in the law of Freedoms being a basic right that all Dwarves should have, making them strong advocates of liberalism. They dislike too many hard rules, and always push to have more liberties at the expense of even social stability, for they believe that everyone is entitled to their own view, no matter how right or wrong. However, due to their fears, they do support laws that suppress crime and mass instability. Freedom of speech is always supported and they dislike any form of censorship.

Dwarves have already dismissed magic as simply an alternative to technology, and many do not actively seek to become mages, especially with their limited talent in magic. Some of them even look down on magic users, but a majority will express envy towards particularly strong mages. Dwarves aren't very magically sensitive by nature and thus are perfectly fine with people who do not have any magic circuits, or those with very low counts. Dwarves in general will also not go for "soul surgery" to upgrade their circuits or draw a Family Crest in their body.

Dwarves use a very unique and strange naming system, where people who get married will gain a combined two part last name from fusing their last names (E.g. Husband: Radric Stunghmz, Wife Celana Arkhroz, they get married, they both use the last name Stunghmz-Arkhroz). Any children they produce will have both last names registered until they turn 21, at which they must choose either their father's or mother's last name as their own, helping with inheritance records, although this can get very messy. A child cannot pick both last names, so there are often siblings who do not share the same last name in Dwarven society.