Tweaking the dwarves

[Svrtnsse]

I did some thinking about the dwarves in my setting last night and I figured I'd share some thoughts here.

The dwarves are mainly underground creatures, the live in caves and mines, often in perpetual darkness. They will either have very sensitive eyes to allow them to make use of what little light there is or they'll be nearly blind, kind of like moles.
A consequence of this is that dwarves in the outside, surface, world are mostly active during the night. In the day it's too bright for them and they have trouble seeing well enough to work. In the modern day the existence of sunglasses has changed this slightly, but most dwarves still prefer night-time activity.

Another consequence of living underground in the darkness is that facial expressions as a component of communication is almost completely absent. With humans and other daylight, surface dwellers, facial expressions say a lot about a person when they're talking, but not so with dwarves. Instead they have a much more varied vocal language. They have to make up for the lack of facial expression through the sound of what they're saying. Tone, volume, speed, accent etc all have a lot more import in dwarven speech than among the other races.

A side effect of this is that dwarves are highly praised as singers.

The main sustenance of the dwarves comes from the mineral dust that wafts through the air in their caves and tunnels. It's filtered through their beards in order for them to get rid of particles they don't need and then transported to their mouths/feeding holes (I haven't really gotten into exact details about exactly how they eat).
Somewhere under the beard is a mouth of some kind which is where the mineral dust enters the body.
I imagine it's a bit similar to how large whales live on plankton that they filter out of the water they swim through. In the same way the dwarves live off of mineral dust they filter out of the air they breathe (social consequences when interacting with non-dwarves to be pondered at leisure).


Bearing the above in mind I've got this image of the typical dwarf on the surface looking a bit like a mix between Super Mario and on the bearded guys in ZZ Top.

 

[CupofJoe]

Up until the bit about filter feeding I had an image of Welsh coal miners...

 

[Svrtnsse]

Up until the bit about filter feeding I had an image of Welsh coal miners...

Yeah, bringing up the filter feeding thing sort of ruins the image a bit as it suddenly makes them seem a lot more weird (hint, they're actually a form of fungus and not actually mammals). I figure that as far as visual appearance goes this won't actually have any impact on them, they'll still look pretty much like whatever you think of when someone mentions the word "dwarf" in a fantasy context (except maybe for the sunglasses).

It's a fun/interesting thing for me to know from a world building perspective though.

 

[Svrtnsse]

In case anyone's curious, the articles I've written about dwarves so far can be found here: Dwarves - Odd Lands Wiki

 

[GeekDavid]

In most fantasy traditions the Dwarves have some sort of see-in-the-dark vision, usually a version of being able to see into the infrared.

 

[Svrtnsse]

In most fantasy traditions the Dwarves have some sort of see-in-the-dark vision, usually a version of being able to see into the infrared.

I thought about this. They might also have some kind of sonar (like bats). I'm more inclined to that as it would support their more advanced vocal communication.

There's something else though - shared memory. When a dwarf "dies" their memories are passed back to the main plant and then shared to all future dwarves that spawn from it. In this way dwarves in an old dig will have generations upon generations of memories of all the tunnels and holes in their caves. They know exactly how many steps it is between points and where different rock formations are. This can also be used for maneuvering in the dark.

 

[Saigonnus]

Why not make them completely blind from the long centuries underground? that way they can employ sonar or even clairvoyance to get around in their native homes. This could make for interesting challenges when they try to go above ground, adjust to the way sound bounces around instead of in somewhat predictable ways.

As for eating, there are species of fish that live in underground lakes and rivers... not to mention moss and lichen, maybe fungi in the damper regions.

 

[Ireth]

The dwarves themselves are fungi (see post #3). Eating other fungi might be abhorred as cannibalism.

 

[GeekDavid]

Why not make them completely blind from the long centuries underground? that way they can employ sonar or even clairvoyance to get around in their native homes. This could make for interesting challenges when they try to go above ground, adjust to the way sound bounces around instead of in somewhat predictable ways.

This idea, I like. A lot.

 

[buyjupiter]

Gosh, now I have dwarf creation envy. My dwarves are, well, rather characteristically dwarven. I like what you're doing here, Svrt! And you've given me other areas to think about in my race creation as well. Since I still have to create the dwarves racial enemy as well.

Thank you!

 

[Zero Angel]

I loved the bit about the voices. Very logical.

As far as the filtering goes, why even bother going that far? They could just absorb the sustenance through their beards directly, especially if they're evolved fungus (now I'm picturing the Mario Bros movie).

 

[DassaultMirage]

I blame R.A Salvatore. Everytime I read the word dwarf I instinctively hear the grunts of Bruenor Battlehammer in the back of my head.

 

[Queshire]

Hmmmm.... I haven't put much thought into Dwarves in my latest setting. I wanna do something epic. Something that invokes how they were treated in Norse Mythology. The dwarves in Norse mythology could make some trully epic stuff. A lot of the Norse Gods most iconic weapons and artfiacts were made by the Dwarves! Only a single dwarf is likely to show up. Maybe living in exile from the rest of his people or something? He'd be small and ugly but not otherwise immediately distinguishable from regular humans except for a diet of stone and rock. I figure he'd be working at an automobile garage fixing cars and what not. Maybe something about how he likes the challenge of forcing himself to not upgrade the cars he work on to something crazy awesome or something? Dunno. Anyways, he'd be the only one able to hack the stuff that gives the main character his magic?

 

[musycpyrate]

I actually had a very similar thought and felt that the movie, The Decent, did a good job of how I think Dwarves would really be. (Well maybe less gruesome...) Cave people that evolved differently than Humans did. Pasty white, blind, rely on sound, hairless, and carnivores. More bestial and unorganized with the demand for food. Survival of the fittest.

 

[Dragoncat]

I don't think there's any species of fungus that looks and acts remotely like a person, let alone, have a brain, internal organs, a beard with hair...

I mean it's your story, BUT is there a reason you made them fungi?

 

[Svrtnsse]

There are certain fungi that are able to move around on their own. The one I saw for myself looked a but like a scrambled egg and moved at a speed of a handful of feet per day - so no, there aren't any precedent for this type of fungus in the real world.

It's been a while since I created them like this so I don't remember the exact reasoning for them. I do recall that I wanted them to be different in some way, I also pondered whether to have dwarven females or not and whether they'd have beards or not. Making all dwarves fungi would remove the need for a gender like we normally know it.
It also creates some interesting options for character motivations, seeing as they have no sex drive.

Edit:
As I recall the dwarves of Middle Earth only exist as males - someone else is sure to correct me on this.
In modern sf/fantasy the most notable occurrence of fungi as sentient beings are the orcs of the Warhammer (and 40k) universe.

 

[Zero Angel]

Edit:
As I recall the dwarves of Middle Earth only exist as males - someone else is sure to correct me on this.
In modern sf/fantasy the most notable occurrence of fungi as sentient beings are the orcs of the Warhammer (and 40k) universe.

I wasn't sure if it was just a quirk of the movies throwing it in for humor, but here's this:
"In The Lord of the Rings Tolkien writes that they breed slowly, for no more than a third of them are female, and not all marry; also, female Dwarves look and sound (and dress, if journeying—which is rare) so alike to Dwarf-males that other folk cannot distinguish them, and thus others wrongly believe Dwarves grow out of stone. Tolkien names only one female, Dís. In The War of the Jewels Tolkien says both males and females have beards.[23]" from Dwarf (Middle-earth) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I just recently re-read the LotR, but I don't recall this statement about them breeding slowly. It was probably in one of the appendices though. I have no reason to doubt it, I mean, they obviously have families, and even the ents have entwives. Plus, it's not like Tolkien mentions many female characters of any race anyway.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Thanks ZA.
I recall having heard something about the female dwarves looking the same as the males, but I got the idea it was from Terry Prattchet so I figured Tolkien wouldn't go with that. I also checked with a friend of mine who plays LotRO and apparently there's no option to chose between male or female dwarf when creating a character.

 

[wordwalker]

In most fantasy traditions the Dwarves have some sort of see-in-the-dark vision, usually a version of being able to see into the infrared.

This brings up a longtime musing I've had. D&D likes to say dwarves (and almost every nonhuman) have some such vision, but:

Tolkien said the opposite. His dwarves are good at moving underground, of course, but they always prefer some kind of light. Almost every description Tolkien gives of a dwarven city in its prime begins with how it's ablaze with candles. And in the Misty Mountains adventure, the dwarves can't run away down the goblin tunnels without Gandalf giving them a bit of light to move by--and the goblins seem to be the same way, though some are sneakier than others and able to creep up on the dwarves.

It's easy to say someone just "has dark-sight" to wave away night problems, but you can also go into how someone gets around using touch, and memory, and any faint light there is. The more nocturnal folks might add scent, and possibly even sonar.

But Gollum had to have actual darkvision. After all, he hunted goblins with impunity and lived well below their tunnels, so he was at home in true darkness... but if that was by mastering touch and scent and the rest, Bilbo wouldn't have fooled him at all with the Ring (just as the wolves were ready to sniff Bilbo out in the very next chapter). So Gollum's centuries with the Ring must have given him the ability to see in darkness, which he relied on more than his other senses-- but when you wear the Ring you're as invisible to that as to normal sight. The precious is so tricksie.

 

[Zero Angel]

This brings up a longtime musing I've had. D&D likes to say dwarves (and almost every nonhuman) have some such vision, but:

Tolkien said the opposite. His dwarves are good at moving underground, of course, but they always prefer some kind of light. Almost every description Tolkien gives of a dwarven city in its prime begins with how it's ablaze with candles. And in the Misty Mountains adventure, the dwarves can't run away down the goblin tunnels without Gandalf giving them a bit of light to move by--and the goblins seem to be the same way, though some are sneakier than others and able to creep up on the dwarves.

It's easy to say someone just "has dark-sight" to wave away night problems, but you can also go into how someone gets around using touch, and memory, and any faint light there is. The more nocturnal folks might add scent, and possibly even sonar.

But Gollum had to have actual darkvision. After all, he hunted goblins with impunity and lived well below their tunnels, so he was at home in true darkness... but if that was by mastering touch and scent and the rest, Bilbo wouldn't have fooled him at all with the Ring (just as the wolves were ready to sniff Bilbo out in the very next chapter). So Gollum's centuries with the Ring must have given him the ability to see in darkness, which he relied on more than his other senses-- but when you wear the Ring you're as invisible to that as to normal sight. The precious is so tricksie.

Yes absolutely. They also mention that Frodo can see better in the darkness and near dark because of his time with the Ring. However, I doubt that the dwarves were crippled by the darkness. After Gandalf seals the door against the Balrog, he doesn't have enough magick to make a light, so he calls Gimli up to help him find the way. That said, there's a difference between not being crippled and being good to charge after goblins in the dark or even fight in the dark.

At least they adjusted for 3rd edition D&D and took away the INFRAVISION they had given elves. That's a bit over-the-top for elves. I gave infravision to lizardfolk, but I mean, they're lizards sorta, so it makes sense.