Dwarves

## Overview

Dwarves are the blacksmiths, the inventors, the party-animals of Womura. Ask a dwarf for a sword and it'll be in your armory in half a day, or maybe commission a self-propelled minecart for your local metal mine - be careful however, as they drive a hard bargain! Though it's rumored that if you befriend a dwarf and fill their belly with the choicest booze, they might not be quite as stiff with their prices...

## Description

Dwarves are, as one would expect, pretty short at around 3'6", though their height depends on the climate - cold climate (CC) dwarves are smaller and stockier, while hot climate (HC) dwarves are taller and leaner. CC dwarves are lighter-skinned than their HC counterparts and have smaller features.

All dwarves have relatively large features and extremities, and dilated pupils adapted to living in their huge cavern cities and working in their bustling mines where there isn't much light. They're often thick with muscle due to the intense manual labour (inventors less so), but there are a couple of more slovenly dwarves that have a bit more fat on their bones.

## Culture

### Physical

Dwarves typically wear practical clothing or their work uniforms, and very rarely (if ever) wear more expensive clothes to work due to the risk of ruining them. Therefore, clothing is generally a shirt, some trousers and some thick leather boots to protect against the harsh rock floor; female dwarves don't wear dresses.

It is rare to see a clean-shaven male dwarf, and they sometimes decorate their beards either for fun or as a sign of their wealth. While female dwarves aren't often as thickly bearded, they do sometimes grow some stubble from time to time. Coupled with the fact that female dwarves are not exactly scrawny, many people suspect that they have a naturally higher level of testosterone than women of other races.

### Spiritual

Dwarves are rarely spiritual and are firmly grounded in reality, and so are often atheistic or simply uncaring. The few that are spiritual practice at home as there aren't many dwarven churches, and while there are of course a couple of mindless idiots that tease them for being religious, the vast majority of dwarves just leave them to it as they do no harm.

### Mythical

One of the major myths dwarves gossip about is that of Kalei, the mother of dragons. She fought a thousand demons singlehandedly (the figure varies with each retelling, some claiming it to be in the millions), and the Demon King cursed her to become a fearsome dragon, ordering her to be his personal pet in the underworld; she defied him and took his head, banishing him and his army to the underworld once more. She then flew away, never to be seen again, but dragons started mysteriously appearing in the mountains that would later become Faurge.

### Environmental

Being very industrious folk, they emit a lot of smoke and fumes and use a lot of materials; they do try to filter unclean air before it leaves their cavern (they have to be able to breathe, after all) but otherwise they're too far into their industrial lifestyle to change much. They have disposal contraptions that incinerate trash but as for sewage, they simply dump it out the back of the mountain; you can tell if a mountain is home to a dwarven society by whether it stinks or not.

## Magic

Dwarves are less magical than humans, at about 0.85kFx.

They rarely cast spells outright, and instead enchant their inventions - which explains how they seemingly power themselves, and how dwarven swords seem to cut much deeper than human or even orcish swords. For this reason, if there is a trap that involves an enchanted object, a dwarf was the culprit.

Dwarven magic is of the basic variation.