Speaking Dwarf

[Ancient History]

Ages ago, I had a player with a...very idiosyncratic view of what it meant to be a dwarf. To the point that he developed a peculiar view of Dwarf language and culture. For example, he discovered that the Greek word nanos meant "dwarf" and then started to refer to lengths and distances in "nanometers" - by which he meant, about as tall as his character was. By a similar chain of logic potatoes became "Dwarf apples." Bottles of wine on his character sheet became good dwarvenly vintages of turnip wine and onion wine, and carrot juice with vodka became "Elf-driver" by some circuitous theory that elves, being obsessed with wood, had invented screws.

Have any of your players ever started speaking dwarf?

[nockermensch]

Nope, but if I ever play a dwarf, I'd have him as a Dwarf Fortress one. Named Urist, obsessed with alcohol and magma, hating carp and elephants, etc.

[shadzar]

Futhark, that counts for dwarf many times, but that is about it. Often my players have named their own things such as the game was made to do.

[LR]

Nope, but if I ever play a dwarf, I'd have him as a Dwarf Fortress one. Named Urist, obsessed with alcohol and magma, hating carp and elephants, etc.

Guess this is as good as time as any to post this.

Champion of Koganusan

"OH MY GOD. Sankis is on a bloody rampage! He mauled a baby and a cow, and now, at this very instant, he's beating the Elite Marksdwarf Kadol Lokumad into paste!"
"DID I MENTION HE IS ON FUCKING FIRE!??"

Requirements:
Race: Must be a Dwarf or must have lost relatives to the Elven Hordes and joined a Dwarf civilizaton (or just joined a Dwarf civilization for normal reasons).
Skills: Craft 8 ranks
Proficiencies: Proficiency with all martial weapons.

Hit Die: d12

Class Skills: The Champion of Koganusan's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (all skills taken individually) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), and Use Rope (Dex).

Skills/Level: 4 + Intelligence Bonus

BAB: Good

Saves:
Fort: Good
Reflex: Poor
Will: Poor

Level	Features [/b]
1st	Strike the Earth!, Moody (Tantrum), Dwarven Weapon Drills, Alcohol Dependent
2nd	Bearded, Extract Goblinite, Favored Enemy: Goblins
3rd	Moody (Martial Trance), Dwarven Engineering
4th	Favored Enemy: Elephants, Socksense, Quantum Storage
5th	Moody (Fey Mood), Catsplosion, Legendary Miningdwarf
6th	Thermonuclear Catsplosion, Favored Enemy: Hippos
7th	Moody (Fell Mood), Scry Lava, Remove Construction
8th	Dwarven Atom Smashing, Favored Enemy: Unicorns
9th	Moody (Secretive Mood), Favored Enemy: Eagles
10th	Praise the Miners!, Favored Enemy: Carp and Sponges

All of the following are Class Features of the Champion of Koganusan class.

The Champion of Koganusan gains abilities according to the above table. All saves are 10+1/2 character level+Con modifier unless stated otherwise.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Champions of Koganusan are proficient with all crossbows and all dwarven racial weapons. Champions of Koganusan are proficient with light, medium, and heavy armor and shields, but not great shields.

Strike the Earth! (Ex): As long as a Champion of Koganusan wields a pick, he has a burrow speed equal to his class level * 5. He can burrow through solid stone, and his burrowing leaves a hole large enough for a large creature. Tunnels created by a Champion are always structurally sound.

Moody (Ex): A Champion of Koganusan sometimes falls sway to a mood. These moods may be the result of both the Champion's fragile psyche or a possessing spirit, but they all result in the Champion gaining powerful new abilities and a grim, certain purpose. The Champion gains moods according to the table above. Activating a mood is an immediate action. A Mood lasts for 1 minute and a Champion may only have one mood activated at a time. Once activated, a mood cannot be rescinded.

Tantrum: A tantruming Champion may act as normal except that they must attempt to attack the nearest creature (or unattended object, if no creatures are available) within 30 feet at least once per round. A Tantruming Champion deals +1d6 damage on attacks for each odd class level. This damage only applies to normal iterative attacks and does not apply to bonus attacks of any kind.

Martial Trance: A Champion may only activate this ability while being flanked. While this Mood is active, a Champion gains a +4 insight bonus to hit, a +4 dodge bonus to armor class, Improved Uncanny Dodge, and the ability to move without provoking attacks of opportunity. A creature with sneak attack must have 4 more levels in classes that grant sneak attack that the Champions has character levels in order to flank the Champion.

Fey Mood: A Champion that enters a Fey Mood may use Fabricate as a spell-like ability at-will and may craft magical objects as if he had any Item Creation Feat and could cast spells as a Wizard of his character level. Also the Dwarf can make Feycraft items because why not.

Fell Mood: A Champion that enters a Fell Mood may, as a full-round action, touch a creature and transform that creature into some kind of ghoulish object made of the touched creature's flesh. This is a Death Effect, and the creature may make a Will save to resist this effect. If the touched creature has a CR greater than or equal to the Champion's, it has a 5% chance to become a thoroughly powerful and thoroughly Evil magical artifact.

Secretive Mood: While in a Secretive Mood, a Champion becomes immune to all targeted Divinations and becomes invisible (as the spell greater invisibility), except that no sense is useful for detecting the Champion. A creature must make a caster level check (DC 11 + the Champion's character level) to locate the Champion with true seeing. If the attempt fails, the Champion cannot be located by that creature for the entire duration of the mood except by a successful Disbelief save.

Dwarven Weapon Drills (Ex): A Champion of Koganusan is deadly with any object. Any object in a Champion's hand can be treated as a club of the object's size and can be thrown as a club. Any object can be used for this purpose, including unlikely objects such as puddles of vomit or dragonflies. For the purposes of this ability, objects include any creatures that the Champion can comfortably throw. Strangely, creatures thrown by the Champion are not harmed by the experience. Additionally, a Champion can reload any crossbow as a free action even if he has no available hands.

Alcohol Dependent (Ex): The Champion of Koganusan must drink at least one gallon of alcoholic beverages to get through the working day. Failure to do so inflicts a cumulative -2 penalty to his Dexterity and Wisdom (neither score is reduced below 1 by this ability) each day until he drinks the requisite amount, in which case the penalties are completely removed. The Champion gains a +10 racial bonus to saves against alcohol intoxication and is immune to hangovers.

Bearded (Ex): If the Champion of Koganusan does not have a beard (the horror!) he immediately grows one (and can regrow it if lost with a night's sleep). As long as the Champion has his beard, he gains a +1 competence bonus per character level to all Charisma-based checks when dealing with Dwarfs.

Favored Enemy (Ex): The Champion of Koganusan gains a +1 competence bonus per character level on Bluff, Gather Information, Knowledge, Listen, Sense Motive, Spot, and Survival checks when using these skills against the creatures listed below. Likewise, he gets a +2 racism bonus per class level on weapon damage rolls against such creatures.

At 2nd level, the Champion gains all Goblinoids as favored enemies. At 4th level, the Champion gains all kinds of Elephants as favored enemies. At 6th level, the Champion gains all kinds of Hippos as Favored Enemies. At 8th level, the Champion gains all kinds of Unicorns as Favored Enemies. At 9th level, the Champion gains all kinds of Eagles as Favored Enemies. At 10th level, the Champion has transcended simple dwarven training and adds the dreaded Carp, Sponge, and all other aquatic monsters to his list of Favored Enemies.

Extract Goblinite (Ex): After killing a creature with the Goblinoid Subtype, the Champion of Koganusan can extract pure iron from its corpse as a full-round action. As many as 10 pounds can be extracted for each of the Goblin's hit dice.

Dwarven Engineering (Ex): A Champion of Koganusan can construct structures with impossible engineering. Any structure constructed or overseen by a Champion may remain suspended in the air as long as it is attached to at least one load-bearing object (regardless of that object's actual ability to bear a load). For example, a Champion of Koganusan could keep an entire castle suspended in the air with a single Immovable Rod.

Additionally, the Champion of Koganusan can create normally impossible devices like waterwheels that refill their source and these devices will actually produce significant amounts of mechanical power. The Champion could also place a burning object into an airtight container without snuffing it out.

Socksense (Ex): The Champion of Koganusan knows the direction of any sock in contact with the ground (or inside shoes in contact with the ground) within 1 mile per character level. The Champion furthermore can discern the exact location of any socks that are within 100 feet. The Champion automagically appraises the workmanship, worth, and ownership status of any detected sock.

Quantum Storage (Ex): The Champion of Koganusan can store any amount of material in any container, regardless of limitations such as volume, weight limits, or container strength. Retrieving an object from quantum storage is still a move action.

Catsplosion (Ex): A Champion of Koganusan can produce a cat and cause unadopted produced cats to disappear as a free action. If the cat is allowed to exist for more than a minute, the cat adopts a random sapient creature within the cat's line of sight (Will negates). If the cat fails, it attempts again after another minute. The adopted creature cannot bear to see harm come to the cat and will become hostile to any aggressors of that cat. A Champion may produce no more than 10 unadopted cats at one time.

Legendary Miningdwarf (Ex): The Champion of Koganusan can burrow through solid metal, regardless of the metal's hardness.

Thermonuclear Catsplosion (Ex): Cats thrown by the Champion of Koganusan deal +1d6 fire damage per class level to the target and 1d6 fire damage per odd character level to all other creatures within 20 feet of the cat (Ref half). The cat is instantly killed upon impacting the target, which may cause problems if the cat adopted someone. Treat a missed cat as a splash weapon.

Scry Lava (Ex): A Champion of Koganusan knows the location of all molten rock within 1 mile per character level. This ability can pass through any intervening barriers.

Remove Construction (Ex): The Champion of Koganusan can reduce any unattended artifically constructed objects in a 10x10x10 cube, including magical constructions such as walls of force, into their constituent parts as a full-round action. These parts can then be transported elsewhere and used to restore the original construction.

Dwarven Atom Smashing (Ex): As a full-round action, the Champion of Koganusan can create a 10x20 drawbridge anywhere within touch range, which immediately lowers. If the bridge lowers onto solid ground, anything caught between the bridge and the ground must make a Reflex Save or be destroyed. Objects larger than the bridge prevent the bridge from lowering and creatures larger than the bridge merely take 1d6 bludgeoning damage per character level (Reflex half). The drawbridge must be anchored to some kind of solid object but is also subject to Dwarven Engineering.

Praise the Miners! (Ex): The Champion of Koganusan becomes a great king of the mountains. Upon becoming King, the Champion gains a nigh-impenetrable mountain fortress, equipped with Pest Control Levers, Automated Showers, and lush bedrooms suspended over boiling lakes of lava (fit for the fortress's many nobledwarfs). His Fortress operates as a business (primarily dealing with adamantine), operating in a metropolis (over 100,000 people) with a risk factor of 15/1 month (risks typically come from the adamantine mines). The resources are already well taken care of with his ownership of the fortress.

Additionally, the Champion becomes immune to fire while wearing any kind of adamantine armor, and adamantine automagically becomes as light as mithral when used by the Champion. Also, the miner can burrow through any object (including force).

[name_here]

That is the most hilarious thing I have encountered today.

[nockermensch]

It's a thing of beauty. While it's obviously over the top comedy, I can steal the martial trance and some other tidbits to use on dwarves here.

[Korgan0]

That is beautiful.

[Ted the Flayer]

To say I made up cultural stuff as I went along when I played a dwarf is misleading because it meant that I didn't do so with other races.

I noticed that DMs that started with 3E tended to let me do that with the least interference, whilst 1E DMs had a very strict view of what my character was and hit me with XP penalties when I made cultural shit up.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Nope, but if I ever play a dwarf, I'd have him as a Dwarf Fortress one. Named Urist, obsessed with alcohol and magma, hating carp and elephants, etc.

The dwarf who made the name Urist famous was apparently actually female, FYI.

[Maxus]

Love the class. The only thing it's missing is "beard abrasion" engraving methods and therefore a Claw Attack with the beard in a grapple

[Avoraciopoctules]

Nice class.

An Urist would be very tempting, but I could always try a Dwarven Adventurer named Carlos if that didn't work out.

[Username17]

To say I made up cultural stuff as I went along when I played a dwarf is misleading because it meant that I didn't do so with other races.

I noticed that DMs that started with 3E tended to let me do that with the least interference, whilst 1E DMs had a very strict view of what my character was and hit me with XP penalties when I made cultural shit up.

I've seen some DM push-back with "basic" races (Dwarf, Elf, Halfling), but I've been given fairly free reign to make up whatever culture I wanted for "non standard" creatures like orcs, hobgoblins, or giant bugs.

-Username17

[PoliteNewb]

To say I made up cultural stuff as I went along when I played a dwarf is misleading because it meant that I didn't do so with other races.

I noticed that DMs that started with 3E tended to let me do that with the least interference, whilst 1E DMs had a very strict view of what my character was and hit me with XP penalties when I made cultural shit up.

I find that kinda bizarre...because 3E actually publishes books detailing stuff about demihuman cultures (in their "Races of" books), while 1E never did that (as far as I'm aware). Seriously, 1E dwarves could be Tolkien dwarves or Terry Brooks dwarves or whatever.

I find it's generally easier to make shit up when there aren't official books filling in the gaps already, but YMMV. Of course, most of the cultural shit in the "Races of" books was fairly bad, so it's pretty easy to throw that stuff out anyway.

[K]

There is a fine line between playing in a setting and making your own stuff up, but I've always felt that default cultures for races is pretty racist and weird.

So if a player wants to play a Dwarf from some dwarf-city that doesn't use psuedo-Scottish/Tolkien clone and doesn't have a fetish for bearded women, I'm more than cool with that.

[Maj]

Dwarves became Germanic in our games because one of the players decided that's the way his character was. The DM was more than happy to roll with it, and so when I think Dwarves, I think mighty fortresses and castles, sausage, and copious quantities of beer. Oh, they still had facial hair (but not the women - they're blonde with braided buns on the sides of their heads).

[Prak]

Last time I ran, I based Dwarves off of Gravedust from Guilded Age, so, semi-nomadic desert wanders with necromantic shamanistic arts. They still mined, they just used tarps and such to block wind.

Time before that, they were from space, but otherwise pretty typical germanic/norse/scottish shit stereotypes.

[ckafrica]

Last one I played was more of an Appalachian hillbilly. He got plenty of laughs but certainly didn't win any points for cultural sensitivity. But its okay to make fun of them because their white.

[Shatner]

Over the course of a couple of campaigns, dwarves took on some pretty specialized qualities that really enhanced the race's identity as something other than "underground, beard-obsessed scotsmen". The four significant changes were:

1) Heartstones: All dwarves have what amounts to a crystaline pacemaker, called a heartstone. It's a quartz-like gem that regulates their heartbeat; without it a dwarf will last about as long as someone's grandpa with an untreated, systemic heart condition. The point is, dwarves aren't born with one of these, one has to be surgically installed soon after birth or else the child won't survive. These heartstones leech minerals from the dwarf during their lives, doubling in size every sixty years or so (from the size of a grain of rice for an infant, up to about the size of an apple at the maximum age of 450). The only way to make more heartstones is to harvest them from deceased dwarves and then cut them into smaller fragments (dwarven gem-cutters take their trade VERY seriously). This means that dwarven population growth is pretty severely checked by both how old it's members can survive to be (an ancient dwarf is the heartstone equivalent of 128 youngsters) and how reliably bodies (or at least the heartstones) CAN BE RECLAIMED. Also, the heartstones have to be blessed about once a month by a custom 0th-level cleric spell to keep them running.

Effect: Elders are massively important (it is literally worth it for 50 young dwarves to die protecting one elder). Also, this explains how the dwarves are few in number but able to replenish their ranks while their race is under CONSTANT SIEGE by goblins, orcs, drow, undead, kobolds, and just about everything else that lives underground. Since dwarves mature about as fast as the "younger" races (i.e. orcs, humans, halflings) and since they are racially more robust than just about everyone, a settlement can keep it's population up despite continuous waves of invaders (provided they can reclaim all the bodies of their fallen) without having dwarves be the master race who overpopulates and overwhelms the world. It also allows the dwarves to get all emo when an entire settlement is overran or lost in some natural disaster because each lost heartstone is 60+ years of dwarven reproductive potential irrevocably lost. Finally, requiring a cleric to recharge a heartstone gives the clergy a VERY strong central position within the community, which helps keep dwarven culture so conservative and slow-to-change.


2) Partial Lithovores: Dwarves eat food like normal and their metabolism is very efficient (meaning they need to eat less-by-weight than, say, an orc or human would) but their bodies require both more and a wider range of minerals to act as catalysts for their internal chemistry. If a dwarf ate nothing but human food, he'd develop severe deficiencies in a few weeks. If a human ate nothing but dwarf food, he'd get sick from lead poisoning or a copper overdose or something. The dwarves are able to reclaim the vast majority of these minerals through various agricultural and alchemical means, but it does mean that a settlement of dwarves will need an initial stockpile of iron and tungsten and copper and gold and silver and so on for each member dwarf it contains. In addition to needing a stockpile of what most races would consider wealth, it also needs a steady trickle of minerals coming in to accommodate population growth and the small amount of minerals that can't/aren't reclaimed.

Effect: Dwarves MUST mine or acquire minerals through trade. Dwarves are incentivized to hoard "riches" and go to great lengths to acquire piles of raw materials. This means that the dwarves are perfectly happy to trade you a five pound masterwork sword in exchange for 100 pounds of raw iron. Also, it makes dwarven cooking noticeably different and offers all manner of comedic gold (e.g. the dwarven adventurer seasoning his salad with copper-shavings instead of croutons). Also, it helps explain why dwarves really do hate rust monsters. Finally, it allows the dwarves to eat minerals WITHOUT turning them into locusts, since minerals are generally-speaking finite in supply.


3) Corporate Theocracy: A dwarf must pay for every service he receives from his settlement. Food, military protection, access to tools and raw materials, leasing room to live in or operate a business, access to the temple to pray, etc. The prices for all of these things are tallied by the settlement's clerics (who keep the dwarven histories as well as doing the bookkeeping) and then charged to each dwarf several times a year. Everything a dwarf produces is bought by the settlement including skilled labor, goods, services. Since the prices for everything are dictated largely by centuries-old traditions, this makes the dwarves operate on a planned economy, making them either communists or members of a large corporation. Everything is an ascending scale of ownership, with individuals owned by families, professions owned by guilds, guilds and families owned by settlements, settlements are owned by kings/CEOs, and the entire dwarven race owned by Moradin (though the clerics act as the executors of his estate on the Prime Material Plane). Children, who aren't productive members of society yet, accrue debt to their family and their coming-of-age ritual is "buying themselves" from their parents by paying off this debt. One quirky thing is that the settlement will buy "honor" off a dwarf and will pay a nice premium for it. Prowess in battle, cunning in business, or mastery in some craft will earn honor which the clerics will buy off the dwarf so that it can be added to the settlement's histories (as it is now owned by the settlement).

Effect: Since the fastest way for a young dwarf to attain adulthood is to take the risks their elders shouldn't, they tend to fighting recklessly or mining in the really dangerous areas. This is nice because it explains why young dwarves come off as self-destructive or stupidly brave warriors. The dwarves really are profit-minded since that is an intrinsic part of their culture, which should make them seem really weird to everyone else who is still in a feudalistic barter system. Also, the dwarven clerics can act as conservative historians, accountants, and/or board members to ensure their company (i.e. the dwarven race) is ran the way they think it should be ran.


4) Rock Docs: Dwarves know a LOT about stone; how to mine it, how to shape it, etc. They also have a lot of clerics with the Earth Domain, so if you invent a handful of spells that act as lesser versions of "Flesh to Stone", then you can have dwarven medicine largely ignorant of biology. To mend a broken bone, a dwarven doctor will petrify the afflicted area, use stone shaping spells to reform it, and then restore the stone back to flesh. Wounds? Petrify, re-shape, restore. Surgery? Petrify, take a couple of days or weeks working on the vivisected statue of your patient, restore; subjectively, no time has passed for the patient. That's how they install the heartstone to an infant (petrify, surgery, restore).

Effect: This is both funny and another bit of flavor to make the race more interesting. It also allows a dwarven adventurer to be completely baffled by everyone else's medical tradition (yet another thing for the party elf and dwarf to bicker about). EDIT: Furthermore, imagine how appalled the dwarf would be to witness the doctors of other races hacking on their patients raw flesh, or doing something so crude as to sew a wound closed as though they were lacing up their boots. Madness! Savagery!


Finally, all of this comes together to explain why dwarves act as greedy, conservative, insular-to-the-point-of-xenophobia, elder-venerating, warrior-merchants. It also explains why the traditional dwarven adventurer is typically a cleric (because they can keep their own heartstone charged) and is obsessed with returning to his people to be buried (so they can use his heartstone for the next generation). Invent some sort of item or feat to allow the Gimli's of the world to adventure without a cleric and you're good to go on explaining why the dwarves are jerks... but for good reason. Also, it makes them much more interesting a group.


Anyway, that's some of the nuances my group added to dwarves.

[name_here]

This means that dwarven population growth is pretty severely checked by both how old it's members can survive to be (an ancient dwarf is the heartstone equivalent of 128 youngsters) and how reliably bodies (or at least the heartstones) CAN BE RECLAIMED.

Recovery of Geneseed... Is worth any risk

[Avoraciopoctules]

Pretty interesting.

Does the debt accrual for everything include the heartstone installation? About how expensive would that end up being? Does society subsidize certain goods or services?

[Prak]

Damn. With my space dwarves I tried to do the "race is treated as a business" thing, but you executed it much better than I did, Shatner. I'm jealous.

[Shatner]

This means that dwarven population growth is pretty severely checked by both how old it's members can survive to be (an ancient dwarf is the heartstone equivalent of 128 youngsters) and how reliably bodies (or at least the heartstones) CAN BE RECLAIMED.

Recovery of Geneseed... Is worth any risk

Yeah, the whole heartstone thing was heavily inspired by the Warhammer 40k geneseed mechanic that the Space Marines use.

Pretty interesting.

Does the debt accrual for everything include the heartstone installation? About how expensive would that end up being?

The heartstone installation would indeed be an expense incurred by the parents, and therefore passed on down to the child; it'd probably cost about as much as a getting a 3rd level cleric to cast a 2nd level cleric spell for you plus the cost of having a 3rd level expert use their expertise for you so... (checks the PHB) about 61gp. While that's not much scratch for an adventurer, that is a hefty price to pay compared to what a birth costs for the other races (which is to say, 3sp for a midwife and/or 10gp for a 1st level priest to cast a cure spell).

Does society subsidize certain goods or services?

The way we explained it, the prices of stuff as well as for labor, i.e. wages, were set by the dwarven clerics (we called them Ollams, after the dwarven orator/cleric prestige class), who are also the primary bookkeepers and accountants for each settlement. As such, the clerics can figure out what a living wage would be given a number of common expenses (food, military defense, rent, paying to have access to the temple so you can have your heartstone recharged, etc., etc.) and price things accordingly. Since both your income and your expenses are largely pre-defined (and since dwarves aren't going to waste precious metals minting coins; for inter-settlement exchanges they use fiat currency or just maintain a yearly expense account on the company's books), everything is as subsidized as the Ollamic Council wants to make it. Each settlement is ran a little bit differently, so some will be a proletariat utopia where no one is left wanting and each is afforded a lifestyle in accordance with their utility to the settlement, while others will be more "capitalism gone awry" with wage slaves toiling away to afford the basic necessities from the company store while the executives live a life of affluence and material indulgence.

[Shatner]

We also had it so that names had to be bought (all of which were owned by the settlement). The parents would lease a name from the Ollamic Council and if the kid died before reaching adulthood (i.e. buying himself), they could save money by giving their next kid the same name. Incidentally, a lot of dwarven names are either gender neutral or have male and female versions (because if they bought rights to the name Tordak, they're damn well going to get their money's worth and have a kid named Tordak/Tordaka). Once the kid comes of age, they are allowed to purchase a new name for themselves. If they want to start their own family they actually have to buy an unused last name as well. It's equivalent to the startup fund needed to start your own business; a lot of dwarven businesses are literally a family operation with kids too young to join a proper guild working as employees for their parents... all labor costs money, even having your nine-year-old sweep up the shop.

The value of a name was based on it's past within the settlement; if the last couple of Tordaks had been awesome, the name would fetch a high price. If the last Tordak had been a coward or an apostate then the name would be quite cheap. Having a good name is a status symbol (because you could afford one), while an ignoble name is a mark against you, and both establish others expectations in you ("Tordaks are always mighty warriors so you must be planning on becoming a professional soldier" or "I never deal with a Roldar, they're all cheats"). This all stems from the idea that Moradin created all the dwarven archetypes by the time the first couple of generations of dwarves had come to be. Therefore, every dwarf is not so much an individual as a continuation (or avatar, if you will) of one of those progenitors, just like every hammer is just an example of the Platonic Ideal of The Hammer; some hammers are bigger than others, some hammer things better than others, but they are all hammers and all fundamentally the same... and the same is true of Kobins and Drokles and Realgars. This goes to show that the specter of the Past is both powerful and inescapable within dwarven society.

EDIT: The greatest shame a dwarf can face is to have their name revoked by the settlement; as they have no name they will not be recorded in the histories and therefore will be lost to oblivion (they also won't last long since the nameless can't receive the Benediction of Moradin, i.e. have their heartstone charged). To the dwarves, the only legacy that endures is within the race's histories... to die is only a minor loss as you are but a continuation of something far older and greater, but to be forgotten is to be unmade and have never been.

That said, dwarven history doesn't have anything negative to say about the original holders of any given name (and many are in fact considered paragons). Therefore, it is considered heroic for a dwarf to intentionally claim a crappy name and work to redeem it, just as it is considered a worthy endeavor to reclaim a settlement that was lost long ago. The dwarves are generally of the impression that things currently suck but that they used to be really, really awesome (whether this is true or not is literally a matter of faith, since it is the faithful who keep the records). They make a big deal out of anytime someone reclaims something from that past that was lost due to the ravages of time and unending strife.

Again, very Warhammer 40k inspired.

[infected slut princess]

It only cost us $2000 to have a dwarf hang out with us in Vegas for an entire weekend. The best part was that he would let us pick him up and throw him. He had to be flown in from Texas and it was worth it. I recommend everyone rent a dwarf when they go to Vegas.

[Username17]

A dwarf must pay for every service he receives from his settlement. Food, military protection, access to tools and raw materials, leasing room to live in or operate a business, access to the temple to pray, etc. The prices for all of these things are tallied by the settlement's clerics (who keep the dwarven histories as well as doing the bookkeeping) and then charged to each dwarf several times a year.

This isn't possible. Society provides services to its members that are greater in value than the production capacity of every single member added linearly. Because the sum of the parts is greater than the individual inputs, you can't keep a full accounting for every person in society. Everyone would acquire societal debt all the time, meaning that consumption would be near zero, meaning that peoples' productive capacity would be under utilized due to low demand, which would drive their debt up even faster.

-Username17