Kevlar
Troubadour
There are two types of dwarves I've enjoyed seeing in the past few years: Orzammar dwarves ,because they do twist some of the clichés, and Tyrion.
That being said, why not create a race that breaks all of the clichés, save short. It would then fail to be a dwarf, because dwarves are short people. I'll have a go.
With pale skin, grey, pink, or yellowish depending on their enic group, in response to the lack of UV energy in their subterranean homes, dwarves who ever travel to the surface will need to wrap up tight like an albino, sharing the same lack of melanin. Because of the heat underground they have no hair on their bodies, but the fleshy appendages on their chins are commonly mistaken for beards. These appendages actually have a variety of uses. Being more sensitive than the dwarves' strong fingers, and containing sensory organs thrice to four times as powerful as a human nose, they help the dwarves find the minerals and underground water that compose their diet. Dwarves also have eyes that, compared to their smaller bodies, are twice as large as a human's, with huge pupils and rarely excercised irises. The irises of dwarven colonies who use fire regularily, or live close to some other light source, such as lava or fantasy-typical glowing shrooms, have become more developed. This is especially true of smiths, who gaze into hot coal fires every day. Like their skin, their eyes have an almost complete lack of melanin, and so are red or pale blue. They have tapetum lucidum, allowing them to see in extremely low light, and giving them a green eyeshine in the same situations a cat might. While once all dwarves were born with carbon-high, very solid, protruding front teeth, upper and lower. With the advent of a mining tool in some way or another, this feature has shrunk to practically the size of their other teeth, though it remains dark compared to the others. These other teeth are used to chew other subterranean life, such as fantasy-typical subterranean mushrooms, even sometimes the glowing ones that give a tingly feeling, spiders that somehow survive without other bugs to eat, those spiders' giant counterparts, giant burrowing worm-things, and small cattle that live on underground islands.
There you have my non-cliché dwarf. Next up? Elves...
That being said, why not create a race that breaks all of the clichés, save short. It would then fail to be a dwarf, because dwarves are short people. I'll have a go.
With pale skin, grey, pink, or yellowish depending on their enic group, in response to the lack of UV energy in their subterranean homes, dwarves who ever travel to the surface will need to wrap up tight like an albino, sharing the same lack of melanin. Because of the heat underground they have no hair on their bodies, but the fleshy appendages on their chins are commonly mistaken for beards. These appendages actually have a variety of uses. Being more sensitive than the dwarves' strong fingers, and containing sensory organs thrice to four times as powerful as a human nose, they help the dwarves find the minerals and underground water that compose their diet. Dwarves also have eyes that, compared to their smaller bodies, are twice as large as a human's, with huge pupils and rarely excercised irises. The irises of dwarven colonies who use fire regularily, or live close to some other light source, such as lava or fantasy-typical glowing shrooms, have become more developed. This is especially true of smiths, who gaze into hot coal fires every day. Like their skin, their eyes have an almost complete lack of melanin, and so are red or pale blue. They have tapetum lucidum, allowing them to see in extremely low light, and giving them a green eyeshine in the same situations a cat might. While once all dwarves were born with carbon-high, very solid, protruding front teeth, upper and lower. With the advent of a mining tool in some way or another, this feature has shrunk to practically the size of their other teeth, though it remains dark compared to the others. These other teeth are used to chew other subterranean life, such as fantasy-typical subterranean mushrooms, even sometimes the glowing ones that give a tingly feeling, spiders that somehow survive without other bugs to eat, those spiders' giant counterparts, giant burrowing worm-things, and small cattle that live on underground islands.
There you have my non-cliché dwarf. Next up? Elves...
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