Dwarf

* Current Realm and Enneade: Eternal Suns, Tuat, Atlas, Kess’Aai, Mirrormark, Qedseba, and Inet’Saret

#### **Statistics**

**Age**: Dwarves possess a lifespan of about 350 years. They reach adulthood biologically as fast as humans do, but they are considered adults culturally around 50.

**Characteristics**: Vitality +2

**Languages**: Ancient Markish, your home Realm’s language, and Dwarven

**Size**: Dwarves’ average weight is 70 kg, and their average height is 1 to 1.5 m. Your size is Medium.

**Speed**: 5 m base walking speed. Your speed can not be reduced by wearing heavy armor.

**Darkvision**: You can see in dim light within 12 m of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

**Dwarven Resilience**: You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage.

**Crafty**: You gain two skill points in Arts & Crafts (A craft of your choice).

##### **Hill Dwarf**

**Characteristics**: Cunning +2

**Dwarven Toughness**: Your health point maximum increases by 1, and it increases by 1 every time you gain a level. You gain advantage on any saving throw made to resist being shoved or knocked prone. In addition, if any effect would force you to move 2 m or more, you only move half that distance.

##### **Mountain Dwarf**

**Characteristics**: Brawn +2

**Forge Familiarity**: You gain resistance to fire damage. In addition, you don't suffer exhaustion from the heat of a forge or the heat of a desert day.

#### **Appearance**

While a dwarf seldom reaches heights above 1.5 m, and their stout frames make them heavier in the perspective of their weight than many other playable races. Their shape allows the dwarves to endure, hardy, and live comfortably in subarctic climates. Their facial features are very similar to that of a human, except for their ability to grow hair. Dwarves grow long and mighty beards during their lifetime. Females grow beards too, but they don’t end up as thick as a male’s beard. Depending upon the clan or the disposition of the female dwarf, they can have a tradition of shaving their beards. However, what is a universal trait across dwarf tribes is if the individual possesses a beard, it is well-groomed as a matter of pride and hygiene. Dwarf hair color ranges from blond to red, to all shades of brown, and their skin color from pale to light brown.

#### **Lore**

##### **Moqatri and the Dwarves**

Moqatri, as the Enneade of the forge, has always had a passion for creation. Not necessarily the Soul creation that Gera was devoting herself to, even if that greatly fascinated her, but to manipulate the World’s materials that the Enneade created. To transform them into new combinations and forms. Indeed, rumor has it that Moqatri was part of the process of creating stones and metals in the early days of the World's creation. Moqatri wanted to create a race that shared her love of innovation and the forge, which could utilize the vast resources of minerals in the earth.

When the dwarves were born, they indeed displayed a prominent talent and a love of creation, just as Moqatri wanted. Their love for stone and metal was not as successful, to Moqatri’s dismay. This love could quickly turn to greed and avarice for an individual dwarf. Despite this, the creation of the dwarves was a joyous event for Moqatri, and she spent a lot of time teaching her creation her craft and wisdom. The dwarves came to live in grand halls within mountains and underneath the surface, innovating wonder after wonder in their great forges.

More traits of Moqatri were transferred over to the dwarves than what she originally intended. They picked up her stubbornness, her courage, and her loyalty. These traits she was proud to see. But there were other traits within her she was saddened to see in her offspring, her wariness of strangers, her difficulties with offering forgiveness, and the negative consequences of her great stubbornness and loyalty.

##### **Dwarves and Duergar**

With the combined power of Moqatri, the Enneade of the dwarves, Isismia, the Enneade of the Elves, Tot, the Enneade of the gnomes, and Neter, the Enneade of the halflings, they created a Realm together. Neferia. These four Enneade later came to be named “the Patrons” Neferia grew to become the World’s largest and most popular than even the Mark in the late Age of Genesis. Several continents dotted the Realm of Neferia, and its nature was varied to allow many different Enna to thrive. Its central and most populated area came to be the central trading hub of all Enna in the World before the War of Collapse. Due to the traffic and the importance of trade access into this Realm, several lesser Enneade negotiated with the Patrons for safe passage into the Realm, have their Enna live their lives on Neferia, and be able to influence Neferia. These deals became so numerous that the Patrons had to relinquish their control of Neferia, and the Realm became owned by all Enneade in existence.

This turned the Patrons into influential players within the power structure of the Enneade at this time. The numerous deals they made with other Enneade often benefited their beloved Enna creations. This favor ensured that the elves, the dwarves, the halflings, and the gnomes were free to come and go as they please on various Realms. Hence, to this day, these four races possess vast populations in the surviving Realms. However, the open borders to Neferia also opened up a path for the more nefarious of Enneade. Fiends and other monstrosities, with their respective Enneade, started to populate Neferia, preying on its inhabitants. Some Enneade concocted devious plans to steal worshippers from each other. Some succeeded, others did not. But what happened to the dwarves might have been the greatest of victories or the most terrible of tragedies, depending upon who you ask.

By this time, most dwarves of Neferia had settled into a comfortable existence in their respective mountain halls with respectable troves of treasure to their name. However, the clan of duergar was singled out by Amaknuphis, the Enneade of oppression and leader of the Enneade alliance of the Seven Masters of Devils. He had helped create dwellings for some of his psionically gifted race of Enna far beneath the surface of Neferia, the Nuphians. While Moqatri was occupied elsewhere, Amaknuphis strengthened the Nuphian’s mental capabilities to ensure that their manipulative whispers reached the ears of the duergar clan far, far above them. Amaknuphis, through his Enna, preyed on the dwarves' lust for material wealth and slowly but surely created an obsession in them that just one more pick swung away deeper into their mountain, a treasure like no other awaits them. The duergar clan, in the end, lost all connection to the surface and dedicated themselves to this single goal. Lower and lower, they dug, and ultimately they reached the finish line, but it was not what they had imagined. Far away and hidden from Moqatri's gaze, the duergar clan was swiftly subjugated by the Nuphian’s psychic powers and came to be forever lost from their old patron's embrace of protection.

The duergar clan was heavily experimented upon by their Nuphian masters, and after several generations, they had been altered beyond return. The traits of Moqatri that had brightly colored the dwarves' Souls to shine with loyalty, vigilance, and love of creation had turned ashen grey with the colors of Amaknuphis instead. The duergar turned weak-willed, hateful and selfish, but had also gained minor psychic abilities from their masters. However, in no way had the duergar clan been rendered weak, and their masters underestimated them. All it took was for a leader to arise, someone to bolster the duergar's fighting will. Lysistrata rallied the duergar against the Nuphians by making a contract with Amaknuphis that they would forever serve him faithfully if Amaknuphis gave them a fighting chance against their masters. Amaknuphis agreed and passively supervised the battle. It was a bloody one, and many duergar lost their lives, but they were triumphant in the end and free of the psychic subjugation.

Lysistrata led the survivors up towards the surface again. What they discovered was a dwarven society that had forgotten them, declared them dead centuries before, and a god that had failed to help them. The duergar turned furious and bitter and lashed out at their lost brothers and sisters. This was the spark for a conflict of hostility and hate, still raging on to this day. Wherever the dwarves chiseled out their homes, the duergar followed, hellbent to enact their revenge and take everything that belonged to Moqatri's dwarves, just as everything was taken from them. Due to their limited numbers, the duergar focuses on guerilla warfare. They were target isolated groups of dwarves and surprise attacks from below their halls. The duergar also targets the dwarves' treasury, planning grand heists to steal their precious gold.

The dwarves, on the other hand, while incredibly bitter themselves after centuries of war and loss, still experience a measure of both guilt and sympathy for their lost kin, and therefore large-scale counterattacks are uncommon practice. They focus mostly on their defenses to minimize their losses. Scouting parties commonly gather intelligence of the duergar's movements and intentions and extraction teams who attempt to recover any treasure lost.

**Death of Moqatri**

During the war, the Patrons of Neferia voted for a passive strategy, something that frustrated Moqatri to no end. She wanted both to take a more active stance in the war to defeat the more sinister Enneade and bring down her hammer upon Amaknuphis in revenge. Isismia, Tot, and Neter initially out-voted her with a more neutral strategy. No one believed the war to become as tragic and deadly as it did. For a long time, the Patrons thought that neutrality would benefit them the most when the war was over. But Moqatri was able to keep herself somewhat occupied by secretly crafting arms and armor for her preferred champions, both Enneade and Enna, in the war. When more than half of the Enneade population perished, Tot, Isismia, and Neter started to doubt their position, but the situation was turning more chaotic by the second, and all the while, Moqatri became more and more agitated as her friends continued to be indecisive when her convictions only grew.

In the end phases of the War of Collapse, Amaknuphis was able to gather a powerful force under his name of the survivors of his faction as well as broken pieces of fallen factions, both Enna and Enneade. To not be hunted down and destroyed one after the other, the remaining Enneade had no other choice than to band together. Two sides, seemingly equally powerful, waiting for the other to make a move. This Moqatri ended. Amaknuphis called her out to the battlefield, taunting and tormenting her with her failure to protect her dwarves from him. Her friends tried to calm her down and begged her to see reason. It was a trap. But Moqatri wouldn't have it, her patience ran out, and she charged. The last free Enneade in the loose coalition had no other choice than to follow her. Even one dead Enneade on either side could open up a weakness, and so when Moqatri charged, Neter, Isismia, and Tot decisively charged with her.

Moqatri and Amaknuphis fought hard and long, but Amaknuphis, having absorbed another Enneade prior, was simply too powerful. Moqatri lost, but just as Amaknuphis stood over her corpse to absorb her power out of spite, Suhlmis jumped into the fray, pushed him aside, and stole his prize. That was the end of the story of Moqatri, and even if most dwarves look back at this event as a day of sorrow, as most races who lost their creator Enneade do, slowly but surely most of them grew to accept Suhlmis as their master and migrated to her Realm of Mirrormark after the war. Even if Suhlmis does not share all the qualities of what makes a dwarf a dwarf, they consider Suhlmis in a fair light, with the spheres of passion, wealth, artistry, and the forge, as well as saving their creator Enneade from Amaknuphis’ vile grip in her death, Suhlmis has gained some respect from this race of Enna.

Now, most dwarves can be found in great mountain halls in Mirrormark. Instead, a minority choosing other Realms for their reasons, where they continue their crafts and attempt to keep alive the dwarvish culture the best they can.

**Hill Dwarf**

As a hill dwarf, your ancestors lived closer to the surface and other settlements than the mountain dwarves. Instead of bunkering down deep within a solitary mountain and striving to achieve self-sufficiency, the hill dwarves opted to make more shallow homes closer to other civilizations. Out of all dwarf subraces, the hill dwarves were the least suspicious of outsiders and foreigners, and some could even enjoy the company of the other races. Their homes are usually constructed in several hills, instead of one main homestead as it would present itself within a mountain. Some hill dwarves live in larger towns and cities and have given up entirely on the subterranean tradition by living in "normal homes .”This diverting path have given hill dwarves some experience in diplomacy and street-smarts, joining in on trade and other interracial behaviors. Due to their more vulnerable position, not relishing a mountain hall’s safety, the more sturdy hill dwarves have carried their ancestry forward.

**Mountain Dwarf**

The mountain dwarves pride themselves on being the true keepers of dwarven culture and heritage. They have burdened themselves with upholding and safeguarding dwarven history and chide the hill dwarves for failing. Most mountain dwarves can be found in Suhlmis' Realm, and then a very select few in Tuat and Qed'Seba. It is the opinion of the majority of the mountain dwarves that it is their religious duty to follow Suhlmis as the successor of Moqatri.

The mountain dwarf is the most stereotypical subrace of dwarf, at least according to other races. They are the wariest of foreigners, somewhat secluding themselves from the rest of the World, and devotes their time to religion, tradition, craft, and wealth. The mountain dwarf is the tallest of all the subraces, usually slightly more muscular than their cousins and basic martial training is mandatory.