Dwarves

Dwarves can be divided into four catagories, below.

* Cornelian Dwarf
* Moonstone Dwarf
* Obsidian Dwarf
* City Dwarf

Everything below is common lore between all three categories of Dwarves.

### **Rarity**

Clan dwarves vary in rarity amongst Clans to find on the surface world, yet are all still extremely rare, however, ‘City’ dwarves are just uncommon.

### **Race Alignment**

Clan folk: Usually lawful neutral, or lawful evil. City folk: Usually any neutral.

### **Natural Race Abilities/Affinities**

#### Blunt force

Dwarves are highly resistant to blunt force damage, being able to withstand thrice as much force as an average human could, with dense bones and tough skin, this also means they can withstand greater pressures - such as those found underground - than other races. This does not mean they can tank high speed impact blows from steel maces without damage, but take less than a human would.

#### Survivability

Dwarves are remarkable as they adapt to certain harsh environments. They can breathe with minor difficulty in environments that contain half as much oxygen as normal surface air, likewise they can breathe in environments that contain more of either nitrogen, sulfur or carbon dioxide in the air than any other race, making them the best candidate for deep digs.

#### Heat

They are resistant to heat, or more the effects of it. Heat does not burn the skin or singed hair quite so easily, though they will still sweat and direct fire damage from spells will do normal damage.

### **Appearances**

All Dwarves grow beards, regardless of gender, and are known to be quite hairy. Their hair does not stop growing at any point, anywhere on their body and as such needs regular maintenance.

Vivid ginger hair and freckles are extremely common amongst Dwarves, city or clan, followed by blondes and brunettes. With black hair being extremely rare. Skin colours are very human-like, but the odd blue hues have been known to very rarely appear.

Dwarves of Tourmefar are known to have a sickly ash look to their skin, though this can be taken away easily with good healthcare, food and clean air.

They can grow between 4’ to 5’5 min and max in their prime, and have stoutly bodies with large bones, muscles and strong features.

### Traditions

#### *Prejudices*

Many traditions have strong prejudices underlying them, fuelled by the Venetores and Asclepius as well as their Clan folk history.

They’re prejudices and negative views are:

* Obsidian folk are seen as violent brutes and hypocrites.
* Cornelian are unethical traitors.
* Moonstones are weak.
* City folk are also traitors.
* City folk and Clan folk despite each other for being ‘lofty’ and each believing they are better than the other and then being resentful for said belief from the other.
* Magic (unless holy and healing in nature) is seen as a bad omen with the magically gifted being stripped from their homes - or given - by the Venetores and never heard from again, and said families facing lashings for bringing a curse into the world.
* Outsiders, or ‘Aliena’ is their language, are viewed with resent and distrust. Many clan folk will try their best to alienate any outsiders who enter Tourmefar.

Paying homage to ancestors is a near daily tradition, with ancient pieces of armour and weapons passed down the family tree being held aloft, usually on a mannequin and against a wall, with chanting the bloodline’s quotes and sayings that have also been passed down, honouring the ancestors that came before, thanking them for the chance at life, lighting candles, incense and laying valuable offerings, such as jewels, every once a month to be added to a ‘lockbox’, or chest, which contains priceless gifts of whatever that family can offer spanning generations back. This chest is believed to be a gateway to the afterlife, to Silia, where their ancestors are believed to be.

These homage rooms will often take up an entire room of the dwelling, and it is regarded as a blighted omen to intentionally interrupt or incite violence within these rooms. This can lead these homage rooms to be safe havens for those seeking refuge from the Venetores, a trick used by the Asclepius as they turn their entire main hall into such a homage room for everyone to enter, should they not have rooms spare of their own, and hence preventing the Venetores from behaving aggressively within.

Another regular tradition is for the ruling family to host feasts once a month, where they are expected to feed everyone. However, these feasts have become less about food due to the lack thereof, and more about drink and just merry dancing, celebrating and one of the only peaceful days of the year where all woes, fights, and disputes can be forgotten for a short time.

Even the Venetores and Asclepius are known to share ale during this time, although resentfully and will prefer to avoid eachother.

Drinking is a sign of adulthood and maturity, and to reject an alcoholic beverage is an insult to the family of the one who offered said drink, this had led to a heavy drinking problem within Tourmefar, as such a tradition has only been founded and promoted by the Asclpius in the last 100 years, as a way to bring people some joy. A joy they regret, due to the increase in liver and kidney problems thrown at their door as a result.

Beards grow on both male and female Dwarves, and to shave one’s beard is a sign of heresy and akin to murder in severity. Therefore, shaved Dwarves are almost always City folk, who are not held to this tradition.

The length, tensile strength and puffiness of one's beard is heralded as a sign of that individual's healthiness; the bigger, the better. Jewels, beads and tassels will hang from these beards, and are often as well kept and orantely styled as the hair on their heads.

In this, men and women are also not seen as so different, there is no great divide between genders, so long as said Dwarf is loyal.

Clan folk who leave, for whatever reason, Tourmefar must go with blessings and permission from their family and their Clan King, with the agreement of returning every few years, or returning for good once what they have sought has been found.

### **History**

Dwarves were one of the first mortal races created by the Gods, made for the purpose of mining. As such, since the Great Awakening they have spread far and wide into the crust of the Aether. Their original tunnels even still exist today, spreading from Aramoor to the Regis Caeli and all the way to the land of the Jarlhoods.

They remained as exclusively as miners for the first 600 years, crafting Themegas currency for the surface. Back then, the Dwarves were but one clan, the Maldevite Clan.

But through years of internal strife and hundreds of ruling families laying waste to eachother, the clan was splintered into 5 sometime in the 6th century:

* Selenite Clan, supreme artificers.
* Obsidian Clan, warriors and battlemages.
* Moonstone Clan, record keepers and observers.
* Cornelian Clan, healers, apothecaries, and witches.
* Maldevite Clan, loyalists, builders, nobles.

However, much history was burned, buried and lost during the age of the Inquisition, what is known of the hundreds of missing years is the following:

* Selenites created masterful machinery, were steadfast allies of the Maldevites and are suspected to have created sentient machines.
* Obsidian Clan was fraught with internal war, they also lived the deepest underground and are believed to have engaged in hunts deep into the crust, though what for has been lost and is now rumoured to be Hrana. They were masterful warriors, trackers and hunters.
* Moonstones were the last to splinter and turned the tide for the Maldevites by supporting them after years of playing neutral, they had a library believed to have been the largest in the world before it was lost. Some expeditions hope to one day find this library again.
* Cornelians were known to experiment on their own kind nefariously, having great distrust from the other clans, they crafted a device that could bring the recent dead back to life in body and soul or even without said soul, and were the main opposition to the Maldevites before agreeing to a surrender deal.
* The Maldevites were the ruling nobles, backed by the support of the other clans it was agreed that they would host a High King or Queen, a totally neutral family that would ensure the clans keep peace.

In the year 904, High King Jorsik Stormhold was presented with an ominous gift from the Selenite Clan during a Landsmeet, coming in the form of a newly discovered Crystal, pulled from the earth merely a day before the Landsmeet was due.

The Selenite King, Thagnous Axearm, a decorated, respected, old war chief, saw an opportunity to earn more favour and power with the High King.

He ordered chunks of the newly discovered crystal to be crafted with gold into four large and lavish beard beads and with it, set off with his company of nobles and warlords to the gathering.

However, when King Thagnous arrived, other clans noted how “skittish, paranoid and angry” he had become. A far cry from his former wise and noble reputation. Other clans also noted how the entire company with the Selenite Clan behaved much the same, turning the Landsmeet into a hotpot for gossip.

The beads were presented by Thagnous abruptly during a dinner, during which his company started many a vicious fight and refused to regain control until the beads were presented.

Records of the Landsmeet at the time noted how thick with tension and apprehension the air was, how “...Selenite heads stared like deer before an arrow, one could see the red behind their pupils and how their faces turned to a haunting stone. It was as though they were witnessing the departure of a loved one…”

The Selenites departed hastily after the presentation, despite how much Jorsik adored the gift and granted them favour, they refused to stay for supper, disappearing into the tunnels without ever making it back to their Clan…

The Oushivians found almost 200 years later that, while examining the undead flesh of a physical demon they caught in the depths, they found the creature had DNA matching that of a Selenite Dwarven noble family, one that records show had attended the fateful Landsmeet. Leading, inevitably, to the theory that all the physical, ‘Revenant’ demons of the Aetherian Depths can be linked back to the Dwarves corrupted by the Curse.

High King Jorsik had been in the process of writing a Saxunomicron, a book of the earth, the crystals, mining methods, tools, advanced engineering and more, and nothing shows the High King's descent into madness quite like this Saxunomicron…

The first 400 pages are clean, ordered, informative, and show technical marvels never seen again on Aether, yet on page 466 the book is interrupted, going from knowledge on advanced mining machinery to babbling about a crystal with ‘chunks of Vesix trapped within’.

The pages become cluttered and messy, with repeated passages and frantic writing with pleas for help littered within, as though he knew something was wrong and was alone in the failing fight against it. With each turn of the page the evidence of the High King’s madness grows more troubling with each sentence.

Descriptions of demons, monsters and visions, ravings about a chamber glowing in red and flooded with this new crystal, his visions of this place and how he was filled with terror thinking about it, yet on the next page it brings him comfort and marks a development in the curse.

The book becomes a journal, with every intrusive thought splattered onto the pages.

On the last page, the words are incoherent, with only a few words being scratched into the paper with bloody fingernails screaming about Angra and hailing the new coming of the Lord before coming to a dramatic halt…

Other records of the High King from this time corroborate with the belief he had become corrupted, with half his council facing the same fate and even many more of the nobles, whom passed this madness further down the chain of class.

Jorsik quickly earned the title of ‘The Mad King’ and stories of him are rampant today throughout the Aether, ranging from injustice in his court, streaking across town and stealing bread, shouting so loud all could hear within the castle walls, to a dramatic increase in the number of bloody executions ordered.

The remaining unscathed from the council came together in secret desperation, eager to form a solution, and said solution was found in the form of the Dwarven Inquisition.

This Inquisition was placed into the hands of one of these nobles trained in demonic magic, Sadaeg Nightfury, who charged the Inquisition with the ruthless purging of all corruption and magic (from his own personal prejudice, he sowed seeds of fury against mages during this time), starting with the believed slaying of the Mad King and raising an army.

With the slaying of the Mad King - which some dispute did not happen due to a lack of evidence, many Dwarven warriors unscathed sought to aid this Inquisition out of desperation to fix the rapidly deteriorating situation, those who did not join were forced through various ruthless means.

Over the next 3 months, the Inquisition was deep into all clan territories, purging every man, woman and child they suspected of carrying the Curse, destroying homes, land, creatures, even purging the rock that had become corrupted.

However, this Inquisition was doomed to fail from the start as they threw every abled body person at this cause, subsequently also feeding the Curse they sought to destroy.

Even with the immense loans from and fighting aid from Silia, their technical marvels, their alchemy, their crafts, they dwindled, succumbing to the very thing they tried so hard to fight against, but it was akin to swimming against the tide.

Only a twelfth of the population remained and the Maldevites completely eradicated, the Inquisition was destroyed under its own weight and even Nightfury fell to the Curse, splitting into two: The Venetores, and the Asclepius Foundation.

The Venetores sought to uphold the principles and goals of the Dwarven Inquisition, taking to the surface with their loyalists and heading straight for Silia.

The Asclepius Foundation were more charitable, taking as many as they could to the surface to flee the danger in hopes of one day being able to return to their home once the Curse had nothing left to feed upon.

With such vast debt they could not repay, Silia offered but one solution: Tourmefar, The District of Mining.

Granting them a slice of land to mine within the capitol, watched over like hawks by the Venetores who were granted more power and reach, and leaving the Asclepius Foundation alone to deal their charity amongst their people.

All technical wonders had been lost, and with so many Dwarven masters falling to the Curse, there was none who could replicate their creations, leaving the Clans to be but a shell of their former majesty.

Created by Impy