Over the campaigns I've ran, a number of weird and interesting nuances to various fantasy cultures have been invented. I was looking over some of my old campaign notes the other day and came across some of these, and I thought I'd post them here for the amusement of others. If you have examples of your own devising that you'd like to share, feel free to use this thread to do so.
In one campaign, the party came across a halfling village that had been largely confined to one area because the advancing ice age had frozen the lake and river leading south and the surroundings had grown too harsh to support a mass migration of civilians. Hoyle is the mayor of the village and leads groups into a nearby swath of ruins, overtly to scavenge for supplies, but also to thin the number of halflings because they're bumping up against the region's Malthusian limit.
Hoyle is planning on having [one of the PCs] create a couple of boats. The boats need to be able to break the ice on the river. To this end each boat will contain a sky-glass prow which will act as an ice breaker. Hoyle is then going to have a bunch of flaming fragments contained in the prow to help weaken the ice. He actually has all the skyglass and metal to make this fleet but he needed to take a bunch of "mother-less" lads into the Wreckage to thin their numbers. The party will return to find the 22 redshirts reduced to 14 due to fights with the ghouls. Hoyle will mutter "damn, too many" and see if there are any wounded. Two are ("ah, that'll do") so Hoyle will slit their throats on the grounds that they have contracted Ghoul Fever and will reanimate/transform otherwise (at least one is certainly not bitten). Then he'll have the bodies piled up and burned.
If questioned he'll relate the following: "Around here we pray to the Goddess Yondalla to give us plenty and we pray to Dullah Thaun to make our problems go away. When a child is born it's custom to pray to one or both of the goddesses depending. If the parents figure they have food and time enough to raise the kid then they'll put the figure of Yondalla in their window, asking for a blessing of health and fertility on the child. Come the morning, the family will find a basket of flowers and sweets from Yondalla on their porch and the tike will be raised with his mother and everyone'll be happy. If the family can't raise another kid but there neighbors ain't doin' too bad then the figures of Yondalla and Dullah Thaun will be left in the window, asking that the child and mother be blessed but the problem be removed. The next morning they'll find that the goddesses have moved the child to the door of another family. Both families get a basket of food. If the kid's new family can't keep him then up goes those two figures in the window and the goddesses will see that the tike is then sent to a new family and so on until a home decides to keep the little guy, or the kid's old enough to fend for itself with the rest of the 'motherless'. Now, if times are hard and there just ain't enough food to go around then there'll just be the figure of Dullah Thaun in the window. Then the child disappears entirely. Now, me wife is gettin' low on goodie baskets and I'm gettin' real tired of reminding everyone that the goddess Dullah prefers you not to lock the back door if you want to receive her blessings. Way too many problems have been tossed through a hole in the ice and even more have not come back from the Wreckage. It needs to stop and I aim to make it, even if I have to paddle the damn boats you're buildin' myself."
Interesting Fantasy Cultures
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Interesting Fantasy Cultures
Last edited by Shatner on Fri Dec 21, 2012 4:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.
In that same halfling town (which is really two villages grown together), it is considered taboo to marry from the same village you were raised in. As such, it is custom to steal a spouse from the other. This has been ritualized over the generations to having the newly weds hiding in the groom's village while the bride's family goes all angry mob (torches and knives at the ready) and demands to know where their daughter is. After some back and forth, the location of the couple is disclosed (generally it's the main hall, for convenience sake) and the families from both sides converge on the couple to hear a diatribe about their forbidden love. The daughter's parents "begrudgingly" consent to the match, and then everyone goes to the main hall for a party. It's all arranged ahead of time, everyone just plays their part for the sake of fun and tradition.
Before consenting to the match, the daughter's father is allowed to launch into a long-winded tirade, pointing out the many failings of his prospective son-in-law, the son's family, and pretty much anyone else the father can think of who has even the most tenuous connection to the groom. This is considered one of the highlights of the whole ceremony, and tirades are judged based on their length, vitriolic nature, and the creativeness of the insults hurled. A father who fails to at least slander the whole of the groom's immediate family is considered to have performed poorly.
In that particular campaign, a member of the party who was particularly glib got a fair amount of money and free drinks from selling exotic new words and phrases to prospective fathers-in-law; since the character was from "far away", the locals didn't even notice when the character ran out of real insults and just started inventing new ones.
Before consenting to the match, the daughter's father is allowed to launch into a long-winded tirade, pointing out the many failings of his prospective son-in-law, the son's family, and pretty much anyone else the father can think of who has even the most tenuous connection to the groom. This is considered one of the highlights of the whole ceremony, and tirades are judged based on their length, vitriolic nature, and the creativeness of the insults hurled. A father who fails to at least slander the whole of the groom's immediate family is considered to have performed poorly.
In that particular campaign, a member of the party who was particularly glib got a fair amount of money and free drinks from selling exotic new words and phrases to prospective fathers-in-law; since the character was from "far away", the locals didn't even notice when the character ran out of real insults and just started inventing new ones.
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OgreBattle
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About 200 years (probably a little less since this was part of the southern-most area that was locked in an ice age). These halflings could trace their lineage back to an archipelago that featured several sea-faring halfling tribes. This particular group had traveled far up a chain of great lakes and rivers, both north and west of their home islands, to arrive where they did. A couple of generations into their new home, the skies clouded over and an early and unending winter fell. The halflings thought it was a temporary weather pattern and that the seasonal freezing of the waterways had simply come early. Unfortunately, this was a magically-induced change and so the thaw never came.OgreBattle wrote:how long had they been isolated, and is there a parent civilization they came from
This was part of a campaign about isolation, cultural differences, and language barriers. The short version is that a nation of fire mages had built tensegrity spheres out of a fantastically strong glass and used those to support floating cities. This fire mage civilization had a couple of fundamental flaws in their grasp of mathematics which resulted in some small design flaws finding their way into their engineering. However, when you build a geodesic sphere the size of a couple city blocks, small flaws are scaled way, way up, resulting in the spheres being very difficult to maintain at their critical temperature. The mages made some questionable pacts with extra-planar entities to acquire some weather control artifacts. These protected the cities from extreme weather patterns and nearly doubled the amount of sunlight that was warming them due to so much sunlight being reflected from the cloud cover. This worked out beautifully for the floating cities but it caused the already pretty cold land below to be plunged into an unending, overcast ice age. Not that conditions on the ground matter overly much for those floating overhead.
Because of the centuries of isolation, those few land settlements that had managed to survive had gotten pretty weird, and you had all sorts of odd combinations of cultures, languages, as well as a bewildering variety of adaptations to living in a harsh, dark, northern climate. In that particular campaign, the three-PC party couldn't even communicate with one another; the party face had to translate between the sherpa/ranger and the fire mage.
Last edited by Shatner on Mon Dec 24, 2012 6:02 am, edited 3 times in total.
I ran a campaign once where a huge swath of land (collectively called The Wildlands... very creative, I know) was suffering from the after-effects of a war between two powerful, magical factions. The end result was that you had six city-sized pockets of normality (collectively called the Oases) each about 10 days ride from one another, each separated by a hostile wilderness which 1) prevented most magic from functioning and 2) caused anything sentient to devolved into permanent, feral animalism within a day or so. A few, rare individuals were capable of maintaining their sentience for longer and so they became in-effect a combination of mailman, missionary, and secret agent for the pan-Oasis organizations they worked for. Each Oasis has a dominant culture which I derived as a unique combination of three binary choices (Honesty vs Deception, Spiritual vs Material, Form vs Function), but each is home to representatives from six different organizations; these organizations are waging memetic warfare with one another over control of the six Oases. It's memetic warfare because the nature of the setting disallows any projection of force more threatening than a delivery of bibles, or diplomatic-intrigue-by-mail.
There are six organizations that are competing for the hearts, minds and sometimes souls of those in the Oases:
1. Judicators (Honest, Spiritual, Function)
Lawful in the extreme, seek to impose order on a disordered world
The Judicators represents the followers of Heironeous and Saint Cuthbert joining forces. Their organization is heavily governed by a centralized authority and a unified code of jurisprudence. All must answer to the Law and the Law is given down from the Gods themselves. Living under the Judicators may be restrictive but Heironeous will not suffer the oppression of the meek so the divide between the haves and have-nots is pretty small. They tend to make good neighbors and bad party goers. They get along well with the Stonewardens, who are also lawful pragmatists, and the Celestial Host, who are open in action and listen to the will of the Divine. They constantly strive to oppose The Implacable, who are not only individualistic and affluent but also seek to escape their ultimate judgement.
2. Celestial Host (Honest, Spiritual, Form)
Summoners and clerics, seek to bring The Heavens to the Prime
Celestials are Good personified. They are incorruptable and unshakable in their pursuit to bring Good to the whole of creation. The clergy of Pelor and a council of Summoners have unified to expedite the triumph of Good. As far as bosses go, Celestials are pretty awesome by Iron Age standards. No one goes hungry, no one is sick and everyone is free to seek purity within the Light of Heaven. However, the Light demands it be spread so for the good of everyone, everyone must be Good. Anything evil or unsightly must be purified so the victory of Good will be complete and eternal. They tend to make good leaders but annoying neighbors. They get along well with the Judicators, who also listen to Gods worthy of respect, and the Acolytes of Boccob, who recognize that real beauty and power lies beyond this world. They are steadfastly opposed by the Wolves of Obad Hai who would have the world remain in a perpetual stalemate between Good and Evil AND have sided with Evil once, centuries ago, forestalling the inevitable victory of Good.
3. Acolytes of Boccob (Deceptive, Spiritual, Form)
Obsessed with the study of the arcane, seek to wield real ultimate power
The mundane world sucks. People have to grow food, walk places and be forced to obey every law of physics ALL the time. Balls! But magic is different; magic is AWESOME! With magic you can conjure food, fly for no damn reason and tell physics to suck it! And Boccob... that guy is living it up! No one tells Big B what to do; he just chills, being all omnipotent in his pimped out pad in the Outer Planes. But he wasn't always the big man; he was just a dude once, a little poindexter like everyone else, but he mastered magic and become the best. God. EVER! So why can't we get a little slice of that? Ain't no reason we can't, we just gotta have the skillz and the will to reach for it. Acolytes of Boccob tend to make cool stuff but won't feel bad if they blow up your house. They get along well with the Celestial Host and The Implacable because both groups use judicious amounts of magic and make cool things. They are opposed to the Stonewardens who are too narrow minded, too ossified and too boring to ever do anything cool except dig around in holes all day. Punks!
4. The Implacable (Deceptive, Material, Form)
Necromancers and immortals, seek to build great things in this life
The gods are fractured parts of a whole and as such each one has an agenda that is certifiably insane. They have laid claim to something that is not theirs to possess: the souls of mortals. But there is more in the world than could ever be in the warped domain of a deity; the Prime contains everything and could contain anything if we create it. Necromancers seeking to enjoy this world for as long as possible have banded together to fill it with the fruits of their labor; amazing devices and complex magic which shows that mortal minds are more powerful and more creative than any other force in existence. Some Druids, who are themselves eternal, have joined The Implacable to use their combined skills to better combat the encroachment of the divine. The Implacable throw great parties but tend to be too concerned with their own impossibly long-term plans to care about such trivialities as helping their neighbors (who will grow old and die in a few short decades anyway). They get along well with the Acolytes of Boccob, who seek individual empowerment and worship a god that is aloof enough to butt out of most mortal affairs, and the Wolves of Obad Hai, who share the same anti-deist position and actually live long enough to matter. They are at odds with the Judicators who seek to enslave the minds of men in shackles of faith and insert the judgement of the gods into every walk of life.
5. Wolves of Obad Hai(Deceptive, Material, Function)
Druids and pals, seek to make all things balanced and keep it natural
The Druids were the first casters on the Prime and it is only because of their stewardship that the Prime remains inviolate. Gods use mortals as agents to expand their influence into the Prime, disturbing the Balance and threatening all. Casters seek to wield powers beyond their ken and in so doing imperil the very firmament of existence. The wildlands were once home to the greatest threat to the Balance that has ever happened. It was here that scores of Druids were permanently slain and it was here that the schism of the Pack occurred. This is still a land of great power and it must be guarded; the pack maintains an overt presence here, even recruiting agents from the local populations to help keep those who would upset the Balance in check. That mix between Druids of the Pack and locals is called the Wolves of Obad Hai. They make good, if unreliable, leaders because they will completely oppose something until it is brought back into balance and then violently support their former foes if the Balance demands it. They get along with The Implacable, who are opposed to the machinations of the godly, and the Stonewardens, who have grown to be reliable allies over the course of several millenia. The Pack still bears a grudge against the Celestial Host who even to this day seek to commit the same folly that almost doomed the Prime so many centuries ago.
6. Stonewardens (Honest, Material, Function)
Dwarves and related groups, seeks to preserve and perservere
Dwarves were created by Moradin the Soul Forger. They were not created to praise him nor were they sent to conquer in his name. They were sent to live, to labor and to learn the true meaning of both. This is why his creations were given such a daunting task; to live beneath the ground, carving hearth and home from the very bones of the Earth, withstanding the numerous and insidious forces that seek to undo their labor from above and below. The dwarves of the OreDelver clan live below the wildlands and suffered from the onslaught that took place above. The Druids, some of whom are dwarves themselves, recognized the dwarves as allies and coaxed the OreDelver clan to remain in the wildlands to act as a stabilizing presence. Due to the calamity from centuries ago, the dwarves can not provide entirely for themselves and must trade with those on the surface. The Stonewardens are those (dwarven and others) trusted by the dwarves to liaise between the surface and the Underdark. They make great neighbors but are very aloof and more than a little penny-pinching. The Stonewardens are allies of the Wolves of Obad Hai for reasons mutual respect and tradition. They also respect the Judicators, who adhere to traditions (nearly) as old and immutable as their own. They refuse to deal with the Acolytes of Boccob, who follow no tradition, seek to rise above their station in life and care for no community except that which furthers their own goals for personal power.
There are six organizations that are competing for the hearts, minds and sometimes souls of those in the Oases:
1. Judicators (Honest, Spiritual, Function)
Lawful in the extreme, seek to impose order on a disordered world
The Judicators represents the followers of Heironeous and Saint Cuthbert joining forces. Their organization is heavily governed by a centralized authority and a unified code of jurisprudence. All must answer to the Law and the Law is given down from the Gods themselves. Living under the Judicators may be restrictive but Heironeous will not suffer the oppression of the meek so the divide between the haves and have-nots is pretty small. They tend to make good neighbors and bad party goers. They get along well with the Stonewardens, who are also lawful pragmatists, and the Celestial Host, who are open in action and listen to the will of the Divine. They constantly strive to oppose The Implacable, who are not only individualistic and affluent but also seek to escape their ultimate judgement.
2. Celestial Host (Honest, Spiritual, Form)
Summoners and clerics, seek to bring The Heavens to the Prime
Celestials are Good personified. They are incorruptable and unshakable in their pursuit to bring Good to the whole of creation. The clergy of Pelor and a council of Summoners have unified to expedite the triumph of Good. As far as bosses go, Celestials are pretty awesome by Iron Age standards. No one goes hungry, no one is sick and everyone is free to seek purity within the Light of Heaven. However, the Light demands it be spread so for the good of everyone, everyone must be Good. Anything evil or unsightly must be purified so the victory of Good will be complete and eternal. They tend to make good leaders but annoying neighbors. They get along well with the Judicators, who also listen to Gods worthy of respect, and the Acolytes of Boccob, who recognize that real beauty and power lies beyond this world. They are steadfastly opposed by the Wolves of Obad Hai who would have the world remain in a perpetual stalemate between Good and Evil AND have sided with Evil once, centuries ago, forestalling the inevitable victory of Good.
3. Acolytes of Boccob (Deceptive, Spiritual, Form)
Obsessed with the study of the arcane, seek to wield real ultimate power
The mundane world sucks. People have to grow food, walk places and be forced to obey every law of physics ALL the time. Balls! But magic is different; magic is AWESOME! With magic you can conjure food, fly for no damn reason and tell physics to suck it! And Boccob... that guy is living it up! No one tells Big B what to do; he just chills, being all omnipotent in his pimped out pad in the Outer Planes. But he wasn't always the big man; he was just a dude once, a little poindexter like everyone else, but he mastered magic and become the best. God. EVER! So why can't we get a little slice of that? Ain't no reason we can't, we just gotta have the skillz and the will to reach for it. Acolytes of Boccob tend to make cool stuff but won't feel bad if they blow up your house. They get along well with the Celestial Host and The Implacable because both groups use judicious amounts of magic and make cool things. They are opposed to the Stonewardens who are too narrow minded, too ossified and too boring to ever do anything cool except dig around in holes all day. Punks!
4. The Implacable (Deceptive, Material, Form)
Necromancers and immortals, seek to build great things in this life
The gods are fractured parts of a whole and as such each one has an agenda that is certifiably insane. They have laid claim to something that is not theirs to possess: the souls of mortals. But there is more in the world than could ever be in the warped domain of a deity; the Prime contains everything and could contain anything if we create it. Necromancers seeking to enjoy this world for as long as possible have banded together to fill it with the fruits of their labor; amazing devices and complex magic which shows that mortal minds are more powerful and more creative than any other force in existence. Some Druids, who are themselves eternal, have joined The Implacable to use their combined skills to better combat the encroachment of the divine. The Implacable throw great parties but tend to be too concerned with their own impossibly long-term plans to care about such trivialities as helping their neighbors (who will grow old and die in a few short decades anyway). They get along well with the Acolytes of Boccob, who seek individual empowerment and worship a god that is aloof enough to butt out of most mortal affairs, and the Wolves of Obad Hai, who share the same anti-deist position and actually live long enough to matter. They are at odds with the Judicators who seek to enslave the minds of men in shackles of faith and insert the judgement of the gods into every walk of life.
5. Wolves of Obad Hai(Deceptive, Material, Function)
Druids and pals, seek to make all things balanced and keep it natural
The Druids were the first casters on the Prime and it is only because of their stewardship that the Prime remains inviolate. Gods use mortals as agents to expand their influence into the Prime, disturbing the Balance and threatening all. Casters seek to wield powers beyond their ken and in so doing imperil the very firmament of existence. The wildlands were once home to the greatest threat to the Balance that has ever happened. It was here that scores of Druids were permanently slain and it was here that the schism of the Pack occurred. This is still a land of great power and it must be guarded; the pack maintains an overt presence here, even recruiting agents from the local populations to help keep those who would upset the Balance in check. That mix between Druids of the Pack and locals is called the Wolves of Obad Hai. They make good, if unreliable, leaders because they will completely oppose something until it is brought back into balance and then violently support their former foes if the Balance demands it. They get along with The Implacable, who are opposed to the machinations of the godly, and the Stonewardens, who have grown to be reliable allies over the course of several millenia. The Pack still bears a grudge against the Celestial Host who even to this day seek to commit the same folly that almost doomed the Prime so many centuries ago.
6. Stonewardens (Honest, Material, Function)
Dwarves and related groups, seeks to preserve and perservere
Dwarves were created by Moradin the Soul Forger. They were not created to praise him nor were they sent to conquer in his name. They were sent to live, to labor and to learn the true meaning of both. This is why his creations were given such a daunting task; to live beneath the ground, carving hearth and home from the very bones of the Earth, withstanding the numerous and insidious forces that seek to undo their labor from above and below. The dwarves of the OreDelver clan live below the wildlands and suffered from the onslaught that took place above. The Druids, some of whom are dwarves themselves, recognized the dwarves as allies and coaxed the OreDelver clan to remain in the wildlands to act as a stabilizing presence. Due to the calamity from centuries ago, the dwarves can not provide entirely for themselves and must trade with those on the surface. The Stonewardens are those (dwarven and others) trusted by the dwarves to liaise between the surface and the Underdark. They make great neighbors but are very aloof and more than a little penny-pinching. The Stonewardens are allies of the Wolves of Obad Hai for reasons mutual respect and tradition. They also respect the Judicators, who adhere to traditions (nearly) as old and immutable as their own. They refuse to deal with the Acolytes of Boccob, who follow no tradition, seek to rise above their station in life and care for no community except that which furthers their own goals for personal power.
Last edited by Shatner on Wed Dec 26, 2012 9:59 pm, edited 3 times in total.
I had each of my three PCs pick a faction to openly champion (they each had to pick a different one) as well as one or two to secretly aid (there was no restriction for their secret alliegences), and then do the following:
Describe the oasis that founded the organization of your open allegiance. There are six Oases (zones where magic still works and people don't devolve into ferals within days) and each one is ruled and/or heavily influenced by one of the six organizations. Each oasis is roughly spherical and has a diameter of 20 miles (for a frame of reference, the Greater Austin Area [including Pflugerville and Round Rock] is about that size). In theory, each oasis is full of casters spanning 1st to 13th level (so 1st to 7th level spells), meaning that a lot of fantastic stuff is possible. The whole thing may be one giant city, or dotted with tiny communities living among a pastoral landscape lit perpetually through daylight spells, or several cities each built around a pyramid that extend as far up into the air as they do into the ground inside which the dead toil beside the living or WHATEVER YOU WANT! Have fun with it. The only restrictions are as follows:
1) each oasis should have a population of at least 10,000 inhabitants
2) each oasis must be self-sufficient. Whether you grow your food or summon it (for example) is up to you.
3) each oasis should physically or socially reflect the philosophy of the organization that headquarters there
4) each oasis should have lots of casters, though you get to define what "lots" means
5) each oasis must tolerate the runners and representatives of every other organization. Furthermore, each organization must have at least a small presence in each oasis, even those operated by their rivals.
6) each oasis must have some means of protecting itself from the beasts and ferals that come in from the Wildlands
The oases form a hexagon, with the top-most point being home to the Judicators, followed clockwise by the Celestial Host, the Acolytes of Boccob, the Implacable, the Wolves of Obad Hai and then the Stonewardens. Consider the following crude illustration:
...Jud
../ ... \
Sto ... Cel
.|.........|
Wol ... Aco
..\ ... /
...Imp
Realize that, aside from runners and a few very, very, very rare individuals, no one who lives in Oasis A has EVER been to Oasis B. So, if oasis B is dominated by the Celestial Host than any Celestial Host followers in Oasis A were converted by mail. Seriously. At some point in the past, some runner came over and delivered the equivalent to a Bible and enough people read it and thought it was a good idea that they built a temple to GOOD and started preaching.
Also realize that you have access to a lot of "cheat" magic when it comes to imagining your oasis. Fabricate can allow a determined caster to produce a volume of finished goods equivalent to a workforce of 100+ craftsmen. Create Food and Water has obvious utility, as does Gentle Repose for storing food-stuff indefinitely. Even the humble 0th level spell Create Water can be used to fill cisterns and power mills. Endure Elements alleviates the need for clothing come winter or summer. Summoned creatures, undead or golems can serve as an inexhaustible workforce, police force or both. Wall of Stone and Wall of Iron create tons of material that is permanent AND shapable. A permanent wall of force can support any weight, even while suspended in the air. Also, illusions have great utility when it comes to communication and entertainment; basically the sci-fi hologram and the fantasy illusion can be made to serve the same purpose. And finally, prestidigitation can alleviate the need to cook or clean; a single casting can make gruel taste like lobster and get rid of stains and b.o. without ever getting near soap.
Finally, know that it is possible to leave the oases via plane-shifting. It is not possible to reliably return to an oasis via planeshifting. As such, the truly powerful have the option of taking their stuff and their friends and going. Everyone still in an oasis is there because they want to be or because they have no means of leaving.
Then I wrote up an example for them to use
Example Oasis: Juridence, HQ of the Judicators
Walls, well-ordered towns surrounding a central city, Judges and water/population control
Note: your Oasis write-ups don't need to match mine in length or detail. They can be shorter or longer provided they cover the aforementioned requirements.
Juridence is actually the name of the central and chief city of the northernmost oasis within the Wildlands. Radiating out from Juridence at precisely 60 degrees from one another are six sub-cities; their arrangement mirroring the positions of the six oases. Around each of those are six hamlets in identical formation, meaning there is a total of 43 communities in the Juridence Oasis (Juridence + 6 sub-cities + 6*6 hamlets). A massive wall, perfectly circular, surrounds the entire cluster of settlements within the Oasis. At the center of that is another stony circle surrounding Juridence itself. Each sub-city is circularly walled in and so to are the hamlets. This same pattern is repeated within the towns themselves, with a courthouse/water tower at the center, then residences and workshops fanning out hexagonally from there, each surrounded with a circular fence or similar barrier. When viewed from above, the oasis looks like a hexagonal fractal of circles extending from a central hub (a sort of variance on the Sierpinski Triangle)
The Juridence Oasis is hemmed in by three hills, with the city of Juridence more or less at the lowest point therein. The ground is rocky and mineral rich but generally arid and ill-suited to agriculture. What water there is tends to pool inside the valley and flash-floods are a major seasonal hazard. Elaborate drainage systems, pipelines and pumps collect the surface water and send it to massive cisterns in Juridence, where the water is purified. Within the central temple/court house in Juridence these cisterns are emptied via elaborate mundane and magical mechanisms into aqueducts, back to the sub-cities and, from there, to the hamlets and, from there, to individual buildings. This water is metered out according to a baroque system according to the caste, profession and allowed size of the family. Yes, in Juridence there is strict population control: if you have more kids than you are allotted then you are punished, your children are taken by the court and given to more law-abiding families. Shame on you. Everyone in Juridence is required to contribute a set amount of food according to their station (with the lower castes required to provide more while the higher castes are busy tending the elaborate legal and, well, mechanical mechanisms of the society). This water rationing keeps a very large and concentrated population alive despite the relative lack of water AND it stabilizes society by centralizing control; if it comes to it, they can always cut off the water to a bunch of undesirables until they submit.
The rule of Law is absolute within Juridence. A caste system exists with laborers at the bottom and judges at the top. The elaborate wall-and-gate system allows travel to be tightly controlled within the oasis; anyone who enters or exits is scanned for the merest hint of chaos and everyone not from a given sub-city is escorted to and from their destinations (which must be declared in advance and okayed by a court official). Part of the great works of the Judicators is to codify rules capable of governing every walk of life; the other part is getting everyone to follow them. However, the Judicators agreed to the Compact (and they are nothing if not law-abiding) and therefore must allow representatives of all the organizations into Juridence. As such, embassies (of a sort) have been set up in each of the sub-cities and runners and converts to other organizations are allowed to reside there. Begrudgingly in the case of the Wolves, Acolytes and (especially) the Implacable.
Juridence itself is a massive city in which more than 36,000 souls reside. Imposing temples and courthouses of Law dominate entire blocks, adjacent to massive apartments teeming with residents. All told, Juridence is one of the least "flashy" oases with it's magic. Most of the sorcerers and clerics within the kritocracy spend their days consulting big books of legal precedance and sticking their noses into places to ensure things are orderly. However, it requires a massive effort to maintain the elaborate pipeworks that pumps water to and from the hub; the pumps themselves are typically powered by summoned formians or elementals, and if it's a dry year then everyone has to pitch in and summon water to meet the quotas. The vigilance required to keep everyone scanned for signs of chaos and deceit as well as using divinations to make sure each ruling is a just one consumes the bulk of the remaining local magical talent.
Now, Juridence isn't all Orwellian bad-wrongness. Heironeous, one of the two deities worshiped by the Judicators, demands the rights of the meek be upheld; as such the law is very even handed and the peasantry isn't much worse off than the priesthood, materially-speaking. The walls and large police force keep the terrors of the Wildlands at bay and the clerics are required by law to provide relief to those that need it during droughts, famine and plague. The Judicators emphasize the ubiquity of law and therefore attempt to reform rather than execute offenders. Everyone is allowed a fair hearing and punishments are carefully prepared to be strict but fair. The whole package might seem galling to our modern sensibilities but by Iron Age standards being guaranteed fair arbitration and emergency relief is a HUGE boon; one well worth submitting to the demands of a draconian social contract for.
Ironically, there's a fertile riverside valley only thirty miles west of the arid oasis but, due to soul drain, it might as well be 300 miles for all the good it does the people of Juridence. Thems the breaks.
Describe the oasis that founded the organization of your open allegiance. There are six Oases (zones where magic still works and people don't devolve into ferals within days) and each one is ruled and/or heavily influenced by one of the six organizations. Each oasis is roughly spherical and has a diameter of 20 miles (for a frame of reference, the Greater Austin Area [including Pflugerville and Round Rock] is about that size). In theory, each oasis is full of casters spanning 1st to 13th level (so 1st to 7th level spells), meaning that a lot of fantastic stuff is possible. The whole thing may be one giant city, or dotted with tiny communities living among a pastoral landscape lit perpetually through daylight spells, or several cities each built around a pyramid that extend as far up into the air as they do into the ground inside which the dead toil beside the living or WHATEVER YOU WANT! Have fun with it. The only restrictions are as follows:
1) each oasis should have a population of at least 10,000 inhabitants
2) each oasis must be self-sufficient. Whether you grow your food or summon it (for example) is up to you.
3) each oasis should physically or socially reflect the philosophy of the organization that headquarters there
4) each oasis should have lots of casters, though you get to define what "lots" means
5) each oasis must tolerate the runners and representatives of every other organization. Furthermore, each organization must have at least a small presence in each oasis, even those operated by their rivals.
6) each oasis must have some means of protecting itself from the beasts and ferals that come in from the Wildlands
The oases form a hexagon, with the top-most point being home to the Judicators, followed clockwise by the Celestial Host, the Acolytes of Boccob, the Implacable, the Wolves of Obad Hai and then the Stonewardens. Consider the following crude illustration:
...Jud
../ ... \
Sto ... Cel
.|.........|
Wol ... Aco
..\ ... /
...Imp
Realize that, aside from runners and a few very, very, very rare individuals, no one who lives in Oasis A has EVER been to Oasis B. So, if oasis B is dominated by the Celestial Host than any Celestial Host followers in Oasis A were converted by mail. Seriously. At some point in the past, some runner came over and delivered the equivalent to a Bible and enough people read it and thought it was a good idea that they built a temple to GOOD and started preaching.
Also realize that you have access to a lot of "cheat" magic when it comes to imagining your oasis. Fabricate can allow a determined caster to produce a volume of finished goods equivalent to a workforce of 100+ craftsmen. Create Food and Water has obvious utility, as does Gentle Repose for storing food-stuff indefinitely. Even the humble 0th level spell Create Water can be used to fill cisterns and power mills. Endure Elements alleviates the need for clothing come winter or summer. Summoned creatures, undead or golems can serve as an inexhaustible workforce, police force or both. Wall of Stone and Wall of Iron create tons of material that is permanent AND shapable. A permanent wall of force can support any weight, even while suspended in the air. Also, illusions have great utility when it comes to communication and entertainment; basically the sci-fi hologram and the fantasy illusion can be made to serve the same purpose. And finally, prestidigitation can alleviate the need to cook or clean; a single casting can make gruel taste like lobster and get rid of stains and b.o. without ever getting near soap.
Finally, know that it is possible to leave the oases via plane-shifting. It is not possible to reliably return to an oasis via planeshifting. As such, the truly powerful have the option of taking their stuff and their friends and going. Everyone still in an oasis is there because they want to be or because they have no means of leaving.
Then I wrote up an example for them to use
Example Oasis: Juridence, HQ of the Judicators
Walls, well-ordered towns surrounding a central city, Judges and water/population control
Note: your Oasis write-ups don't need to match mine in length or detail. They can be shorter or longer provided they cover the aforementioned requirements.
Juridence is actually the name of the central and chief city of the northernmost oasis within the Wildlands. Radiating out from Juridence at precisely 60 degrees from one another are six sub-cities; their arrangement mirroring the positions of the six oases. Around each of those are six hamlets in identical formation, meaning there is a total of 43 communities in the Juridence Oasis (Juridence + 6 sub-cities + 6*6 hamlets). A massive wall, perfectly circular, surrounds the entire cluster of settlements within the Oasis. At the center of that is another stony circle surrounding Juridence itself. Each sub-city is circularly walled in and so to are the hamlets. This same pattern is repeated within the towns themselves, with a courthouse/water tower at the center, then residences and workshops fanning out hexagonally from there, each surrounded with a circular fence or similar barrier. When viewed from above, the oasis looks like a hexagonal fractal of circles extending from a central hub (a sort of variance on the Sierpinski Triangle)
The Juridence Oasis is hemmed in by three hills, with the city of Juridence more or less at the lowest point therein. The ground is rocky and mineral rich but generally arid and ill-suited to agriculture. What water there is tends to pool inside the valley and flash-floods are a major seasonal hazard. Elaborate drainage systems, pipelines and pumps collect the surface water and send it to massive cisterns in Juridence, where the water is purified. Within the central temple/court house in Juridence these cisterns are emptied via elaborate mundane and magical mechanisms into aqueducts, back to the sub-cities and, from there, to the hamlets and, from there, to individual buildings. This water is metered out according to a baroque system according to the caste, profession and allowed size of the family. Yes, in Juridence there is strict population control: if you have more kids than you are allotted then you are punished, your children are taken by the court and given to more law-abiding families. Shame on you. Everyone in Juridence is required to contribute a set amount of food according to their station (with the lower castes required to provide more while the higher castes are busy tending the elaborate legal and, well, mechanical mechanisms of the society). This water rationing keeps a very large and concentrated population alive despite the relative lack of water AND it stabilizes society by centralizing control; if it comes to it, they can always cut off the water to a bunch of undesirables until they submit.
The rule of Law is absolute within Juridence. A caste system exists with laborers at the bottom and judges at the top. The elaborate wall-and-gate system allows travel to be tightly controlled within the oasis; anyone who enters or exits is scanned for the merest hint of chaos and everyone not from a given sub-city is escorted to and from their destinations (which must be declared in advance and okayed by a court official). Part of the great works of the Judicators is to codify rules capable of governing every walk of life; the other part is getting everyone to follow them. However, the Judicators agreed to the Compact (and they are nothing if not law-abiding) and therefore must allow representatives of all the organizations into Juridence. As such, embassies (of a sort) have been set up in each of the sub-cities and runners and converts to other organizations are allowed to reside there. Begrudgingly in the case of the Wolves, Acolytes and (especially) the Implacable.
Juridence itself is a massive city in which more than 36,000 souls reside. Imposing temples and courthouses of Law dominate entire blocks, adjacent to massive apartments teeming with residents. All told, Juridence is one of the least "flashy" oases with it's magic. Most of the sorcerers and clerics within the kritocracy spend their days consulting big books of legal precedance and sticking their noses into places to ensure things are orderly. However, it requires a massive effort to maintain the elaborate pipeworks that pumps water to and from the hub; the pumps themselves are typically powered by summoned formians or elementals, and if it's a dry year then everyone has to pitch in and summon water to meet the quotas. The vigilance required to keep everyone scanned for signs of chaos and deceit as well as using divinations to make sure each ruling is a just one consumes the bulk of the remaining local magical talent.
Now, Juridence isn't all Orwellian bad-wrongness. Heironeous, one of the two deities worshiped by the Judicators, demands the rights of the meek be upheld; as such the law is very even handed and the peasantry isn't much worse off than the priesthood, materially-speaking. The walls and large police force keep the terrors of the Wildlands at bay and the clerics are required by law to provide relief to those that need it during droughts, famine and plague. The Judicators emphasize the ubiquity of law and therefore attempt to reform rather than execute offenders. Everyone is allowed a fair hearing and punishments are carefully prepared to be strict but fair. The whole package might seem galling to our modern sensibilities but by Iron Age standards being guaranteed fair arbitration and emergency relief is a HUGE boon; one well worth submitting to the demands of a draconian social contract for.
Ironically, there's a fertile riverside valley only thirty miles west of the arid oasis but, due to soul drain, it might as well be 300 miles for all the good it does the people of Juridence. Thems the breaks.
Last edited by Shatner on Thu Dec 27, 2012 1:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Avoraciopoctules
- Overlord
- Posts: 8624
- Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 5:48 pm
- Location: Oakland, CA
Oh! I think you started a thread on the classes you used in that campaign a few years ago. Let's see..Shatner wrote:In that particular campaign, the three-PC party couldn't even communicate with one another; the party face had to translate between the sherpa/ranger and the fire mage.
About 200 years (probably a little less since this was part of the southern-most area that was locked in an ice age). These halflings could trace their lineage back to an archipelago that featured several sea-faring halfling tribes. This particular group had traveled far up a chain of great lakes and rivers, both north and west of their home islands, to arrive where they did. A couple of generations into their new home, the skies clouded over and an early and unending winter fell. The halflings thought it was a temporary weather pattern and that the seasonal freezing of the waterways had simply come early. Unfortunately, this was a magically-induced change and so the thaw never came.OgreBattle wrote:how long had they been isolated, and is there a parent civilization they came from
This was part of a campaign about isolation, cultural differences, and language barriers. The short version is that a nation of fire mages had built tensegrity spheres out of a fantastically strong glass and used those to support floating cities. This fire mage civilization had a couple of fundamental flaws in their grasp of mathematics which resulted in some small design flaws finding their way into their engineering. However, when you build a geodesic sphere the size of a couple city blocks, small flaws are scaled way, way up, resulting in the spheres being very difficult to maintain at their critical temperature. The mages made some questionable pacts with extra-planar entities to acquire some weather control artifacts. These protected the cities from extreme weather patterns and nearly doubled the amount of sunlight that was warming them due to so much sunlight being reflected from the cloud cover. This worked out beautifully for the floating cities but it caused the already pretty cold land below to be plunged into an unending, overcast ice age. Not that conditions on the ground matter overly much for those floating overhead.
Because of the centuries of isolation, those few land settlements that had managed to survive had gotten pretty weird, and you had all sorts of odd combinations of cultures, languages, as well as a bewildering variety of adaptations to living in a harsh, dark, northern climate.
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=40000
Wow, so I did. I'd completely forgotten about that. Judging from the outdated tags used for the formatting and the fact that the dates on the posts are older than the date I signed up in this forum, I'd wager that those were posted back when the Gaming Den was hosted on bb.boy. Anyway, I've updated the Pan Lingua post so it no longer looks like poorly formatted word spaghetti.
Avoraciopoctules, I'm impressed you remembered that thread, or bothered to look it up, seeing as I did neither. That was a fun campaign, though re-reading the classes makes me think of the Elothar, Warrior of Bladereach PrC; a class obviously designed for a specific player.
Avoraciopoctules, I'm impressed you remembered that thread, or bothered to look it up, seeing as I did neither. That was a fun campaign, though re-reading the classes makes me think of the Elothar, Warrior of Bladereach PrC; a class obviously designed for a specific player.
More notes from my Wildlands campaign.
A brief history of the OreDelver Clan.
Once upon a time the OreDelver clan owned four cities and numerous exploratory mining operations beneath the Wildlands. When the Celestial Host went all portal-happy, the dwarves mostly stayed out of things (isolationism being the dwarves default foreign policy) until the Druids convinced them to open their underground passageways to druidic agents. Initially the Druids used the routes logistically but once their war grew desperate, they used them to deliver their anti-magic payloads.
The clan was aware of the need for severing the Wildlands from the Astral (and the dwarven mindset takes a grim sort of satisfaction in suffering for a greater necessity) so they did not fault the Druids for what they planned. However, most of their infrastructure was near ground-zero of the Prime-Astral decoupling and the situation was too dire to allow the dwarves a full evacuation. Some dwarves were able to hastily relocate to Khazak, a hitherto unimportant mining operation located below the future site of an oasis, but a heck of a lot of people and stuff had to be left behind. Once the anti-magic rite was completed, a millennium of dwarven labor was lost or destroyed; tunnels collapsed, structures were abandoned due to soul drain, mineral wealth worth millions of GP was left sealed away and sites of profound significance to the clan, sites that represented the spiritual and material heart of the OreDelvers, had to be locked away and left untended.
The clan was crippled by its loss of assets. Extracting mineral wealth from the underground is time-consuming and labor-intensive, yet that is the core of the dwarven diet; a shortage of miners would result in a famine. The dwarves require a core of priests to charge their heartstones; a shortage of ollami (dwarven clerics) would result in a mass die off. The dwarves require records to guide their society; a loss of their written histories would leave the clan aimless and despondent. The dwarves require the heartstones of those lost; without body reclamation, the dwarves can not effectively sire children, dooming the dwarves to a slow decline beneath the earth. Those that made it to the oasis had to vote on whether to live on as an incomplete and possibly unviable clan or to take their own lives and have the Druids return the most significant of the OreDelvers' assets (heartstones, histories and a few relics) to another clan outside the Wildlands.
The Druids wanted the dwarves to remain within the Wildlands as allies and as a stabilizing force in the region. A vote was taken and, by a narrow margin, the dwarves decided to stay. To assist, druidic agents had led thousands of non-dwarven survivors to the oasis. The OreDelvers were able to trade their wealth and expertise to the surface dwellers in exchange for laborers, foodstuff and... loopholes (more on that below). Now the dwarves are oh-so-slowly regaining their footing within the wildlands but they have been forced to adopt new modes of living to survive. This illustrates that, given the choice between death or change, the dwarves will take change... but only barely and they won't be happy about it.
Khazak, HQ of the Stonewardens
mines, surface-subterranean division, elaborate machinery, high overhead costs
"The question we're askin' ourselves is, 'Is it better to die as a dwarf, or live as somethin' else?' The answer we came up with was 'Lalalala! I cannae hear ye or yer soul crushin' question.' When the cognitive dissonance of it all gets to be too much, that's when ye know yer sober, which is why we've all taken to drinkin'... a lot. Now shut yer gob and pour me another."
- A senior Stonewarden, during a rare moment of lucidity
It is said there is no naturally level surface in Khazak. The region is a series of hills, bluffs, slopes and rises, all crammed alongside several fast, narrow rivers. A constant wind blows from the north, and varies in intensity between a steady breeze to a howling current of air. All of the upper class housing is built on the south side of a rise whereas all the unsheltered land on the northside is given over to the poor. The rugged terrain and wind make agriculture hard, though the Stonewardens have carved terraces and windbreaks into the hills to maximize what potential there is.
Atop each hill is an array of windmills of various sizes, including at least one massive fan whose blades turn an axle which extends hundreds of feet into the ground. Along each of the rivers are numerous watermills, including several large ones from whom extend mechanisms reaching into the Underhome. The dwarves use these machines to power a plethora of labor saving devices below the earth. Metals are sifted, bellows are pumped, trip hammers rise and fall to the rhythm of the wind and water above.
In theory, everyone is free to do as they please in Khazak, however you have to elect to adhere to the rules of the Stonewardens if you are going to have business dealings with the Stonewardens and the Stonewardens ARE the economy of Khazak for every non-dwarf. Everything costs money in Khazak; this would be problematic because the metals typically used to mint coinage (gold, silver, copper, nickle, etc.) are all horded by the dwarves. However, a form of credit has arisen which is backed by the Clan's wealth and is managed by the accountants of the Stonewardens. The Stonewardens have a set price for almost all goods and services and it is a crime to charge more than that; price gouging, fraud, and "cooking the books" are all harshly punished in Khazak.
The dwarves of the OreDelver clan are suffering from an identity crisis. Life for a dwarf is supposed to be hard, structured and containing precisely three kinds of people: people trying to kill you, people you ignore, and other dwarves. Dwarven society has some very specific things to say about outsiders; specifically that they should be kept on the other side of a bartering table or an ax. Isolationism and self-sufficiency are the edicts literally carved in stone that the Ollami espouse. Howevewr, the OreDelver clan lack the numbers to survive unaided and they lack the supplies to increase their numbers. Caught in this bind, the clan has been forced to heavily rely on non-dwarves.
Reconciling that with established dwarven tradition requires some very liberal reinterpretations of said traditions. And so, the Stonewardens were created. They existed primarily to liaise between the dwarves and the surface races. They were an organization independent of the clan but it's senior members were dwarves so the separation existed only on paper. Or at least, that's how it used to be. The oasis of Khazak has a population of over 10,000 but a dwarven population of roughly 400. That small a minority could not maintain influence over that large a majority without loosening the reigns, so to speak. Over time, more and more non-dwarves were inducted into the Stonewardens and the responsibilities of the organization grew and grew until the original dwarven leaders were only really in charge of a fraction of the whole.
The dwarves have been forced to rely on the Stonewardens to provide most of their menial labor, who in turn hire workers from the general population. This bottom rung of the Stonewarden hierarchy is collectively called "the gravel". Humans and orcs work shoulder to shoulder in mines to earn the wage they need to afford their rent, their food and a few amenities here and there. Halflings and the like tend herds of goats, work in gardens and terraced fields, and even toil in a few underground farms. While the wages are fair, there is very little upward mobility possible for the gravel. The area boasts many, many clerics and even a few druids who devote considerable energy producing food outright or improving crop yields. Magical foodstuff forms the bulk of the regions food; a fact which is problematic for the dwarves.
The original gnomes were dwarves who broke from the orthodox dwarven lifestyle by having their clerics feed them. This ended their dependence on communal labor and a subterranean home; two of the defining characteristics of what it is to be "dwarven". As such, relying on summoned foodstuff is very taboo and borderline heretical to the dwarves. However, it is fully permissible to barter for that which a clan can not produce itself, so the dwarves can accept magicked food provided it comes from non-dwarves; dwarven merchants are allowed a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to how their trading partners got their trade goods. To further complicate matters, the dwarves must maintain a balance between the value of how much they import and how much they export; this is another ingrained bit of dwarven culture which is really quite maladaptive in this situation. To compensate, almost the entire dwarven population of Khazak has been forced into skilled labor positions. Weaponry, armor, tools, machinery; where once the underhome was filled with miners and farmers, now it is brimming with smiths, craftsmen... and landlords. Firstly, this means that expertly crafted dwarven wares are common as mud in Khazak: only there can you trade a cart of cabbages for a masterwork set of armor, and you might not even want to since your entire family already has a separate suit of armor for every social occasion, and you've taken to using the chainmail as a door mat since "it gets the dirt off so well". Secondly, despite the aforementioned crisis of over-production, there is still a trade deficit that needs to be accounted for, so a portion of all the transactions made in the oasis are paid to the dwarves in the form of a land/ownership tax (since the entirety of the Oasis is technically theirs). But all of that credit is then paid back out when the clan imports the next batch of food, mined ore, textiles, manufactured goods, etc., etc., and so on. The dwarves have had to use the Stonewardens as a means of obscuring the fact that they are heavily relying on others to survive, that the line separating the dwarven economy from the non-dwarven economy is so fine as to be non-existent. Without this deception the OreDelver clan would suffer a cultural crisis they are NOT prepared to face.
As mentioned before, the Stonewardens have become more than a trading organization and now seek to make the Wildlands a place of community, honesty and pragmatism... starting with Khazak. The oasis is heavily influenced by dwarven themes but no one would confuse the surface society with that of a dwarven clan. People are free to act individually, though all significant purchases must be officiated by a Stonewarden. There is no central work docket, however seniority means everything which discourages job changes. No taxes are levied against anyone but ALL services have an associated cost (including both access to the roads and bridges that criss-cross the area as well as police/military protection).
In accordance with the Compact, runners and converts from other organizations are allowed to reside and travel within Khazak, but those organizations must pay like everyone else. To this end, most organizations, even those opposed to the Stonewardens, have to fund "recovery missions" (missions to dig up and return lost OreDelver stuff from the Wildlands) to meet their expenses. The dwarves have a great deal of resources still locked away beneath the Wildlands; resources that could spell their salvation. Runners of all stripes are very well payed when they return with a couple of tablets of clan history from an abandoned city or (best of all) heartstones salvaged from the bodies of those dwarves who died in the cataclysm. In this way the Stonewardens, like Khazak itself, is two organizations in one: the dominant portion seeks to organize and expand while the overlooked core simply wants to restore itself and maintain the status quo... both halves are fully willing to achieve those goals one bribe/paycheck at a time.
A brief history of the OreDelver Clan.
Once upon a time the OreDelver clan owned four cities and numerous exploratory mining operations beneath the Wildlands. When the Celestial Host went all portal-happy, the dwarves mostly stayed out of things (isolationism being the dwarves default foreign policy) until the Druids convinced them to open their underground passageways to druidic agents. Initially the Druids used the routes logistically but once their war grew desperate, they used them to deliver their anti-magic payloads.
The clan was aware of the need for severing the Wildlands from the Astral (and the dwarven mindset takes a grim sort of satisfaction in suffering for a greater necessity) so they did not fault the Druids for what they planned. However, most of their infrastructure was near ground-zero of the Prime-Astral decoupling and the situation was too dire to allow the dwarves a full evacuation. Some dwarves were able to hastily relocate to Khazak, a hitherto unimportant mining operation located below the future site of an oasis, but a heck of a lot of people and stuff had to be left behind. Once the anti-magic rite was completed, a millennium of dwarven labor was lost or destroyed; tunnels collapsed, structures were abandoned due to soul drain, mineral wealth worth millions of GP was left sealed away and sites of profound significance to the clan, sites that represented the spiritual and material heart of the OreDelvers, had to be locked away and left untended.
The clan was crippled by its loss of assets. Extracting mineral wealth from the underground is time-consuming and labor-intensive, yet that is the core of the dwarven diet; a shortage of miners would result in a famine. The dwarves require a core of priests to charge their heartstones; a shortage of ollami (dwarven clerics) would result in a mass die off. The dwarves require records to guide their society; a loss of their written histories would leave the clan aimless and despondent. The dwarves require the heartstones of those lost; without body reclamation, the dwarves can not effectively sire children, dooming the dwarves to a slow decline beneath the earth. Those that made it to the oasis had to vote on whether to live on as an incomplete and possibly unviable clan or to take their own lives and have the Druids return the most significant of the OreDelvers' assets (heartstones, histories and a few relics) to another clan outside the Wildlands.
The Druids wanted the dwarves to remain within the Wildlands as allies and as a stabilizing force in the region. A vote was taken and, by a narrow margin, the dwarves decided to stay. To assist, druidic agents had led thousands of non-dwarven survivors to the oasis. The OreDelvers were able to trade their wealth and expertise to the surface dwellers in exchange for laborers, foodstuff and... loopholes (more on that below). Now the dwarves are oh-so-slowly regaining their footing within the wildlands but they have been forced to adopt new modes of living to survive. This illustrates that, given the choice between death or change, the dwarves will take change... but only barely and they won't be happy about it.
Khazak, HQ of the Stonewardens
mines, surface-subterranean division, elaborate machinery, high overhead costs
"The question we're askin' ourselves is, 'Is it better to die as a dwarf, or live as somethin' else?' The answer we came up with was 'Lalalala! I cannae hear ye or yer soul crushin' question.' When the cognitive dissonance of it all gets to be too much, that's when ye know yer sober, which is why we've all taken to drinkin'... a lot. Now shut yer gob and pour me another."
- A senior Stonewarden, during a rare moment of lucidity
It is said there is no naturally level surface in Khazak. The region is a series of hills, bluffs, slopes and rises, all crammed alongside several fast, narrow rivers. A constant wind blows from the north, and varies in intensity between a steady breeze to a howling current of air. All of the upper class housing is built on the south side of a rise whereas all the unsheltered land on the northside is given over to the poor. The rugged terrain and wind make agriculture hard, though the Stonewardens have carved terraces and windbreaks into the hills to maximize what potential there is.
Atop each hill is an array of windmills of various sizes, including at least one massive fan whose blades turn an axle which extends hundreds of feet into the ground. Along each of the rivers are numerous watermills, including several large ones from whom extend mechanisms reaching into the Underhome. The dwarves use these machines to power a plethora of labor saving devices below the earth. Metals are sifted, bellows are pumped, trip hammers rise and fall to the rhythm of the wind and water above.
In theory, everyone is free to do as they please in Khazak, however you have to elect to adhere to the rules of the Stonewardens if you are going to have business dealings with the Stonewardens and the Stonewardens ARE the economy of Khazak for every non-dwarf. Everything costs money in Khazak; this would be problematic because the metals typically used to mint coinage (gold, silver, copper, nickle, etc.) are all horded by the dwarves. However, a form of credit has arisen which is backed by the Clan's wealth and is managed by the accountants of the Stonewardens. The Stonewardens have a set price for almost all goods and services and it is a crime to charge more than that; price gouging, fraud, and "cooking the books" are all harshly punished in Khazak.
The dwarves of the OreDelver clan are suffering from an identity crisis. Life for a dwarf is supposed to be hard, structured and containing precisely three kinds of people: people trying to kill you, people you ignore, and other dwarves. Dwarven society has some very specific things to say about outsiders; specifically that they should be kept on the other side of a bartering table or an ax. Isolationism and self-sufficiency are the edicts literally carved in stone that the Ollami espouse. Howevewr, the OreDelver clan lack the numbers to survive unaided and they lack the supplies to increase their numbers. Caught in this bind, the clan has been forced to heavily rely on non-dwarves.
Reconciling that with established dwarven tradition requires some very liberal reinterpretations of said traditions. And so, the Stonewardens were created. They existed primarily to liaise between the dwarves and the surface races. They were an organization independent of the clan but it's senior members were dwarves so the separation existed only on paper. Or at least, that's how it used to be. The oasis of Khazak has a population of over 10,000 but a dwarven population of roughly 400. That small a minority could not maintain influence over that large a majority without loosening the reigns, so to speak. Over time, more and more non-dwarves were inducted into the Stonewardens and the responsibilities of the organization grew and grew until the original dwarven leaders were only really in charge of a fraction of the whole.
The dwarves have been forced to rely on the Stonewardens to provide most of their menial labor, who in turn hire workers from the general population. This bottom rung of the Stonewarden hierarchy is collectively called "the gravel". Humans and orcs work shoulder to shoulder in mines to earn the wage they need to afford their rent, their food and a few amenities here and there. Halflings and the like tend herds of goats, work in gardens and terraced fields, and even toil in a few underground farms. While the wages are fair, there is very little upward mobility possible for the gravel. The area boasts many, many clerics and even a few druids who devote considerable energy producing food outright or improving crop yields. Magical foodstuff forms the bulk of the regions food; a fact which is problematic for the dwarves.
The original gnomes were dwarves who broke from the orthodox dwarven lifestyle by having their clerics feed them. This ended their dependence on communal labor and a subterranean home; two of the defining characteristics of what it is to be "dwarven". As such, relying on summoned foodstuff is very taboo and borderline heretical to the dwarves. However, it is fully permissible to barter for that which a clan can not produce itself, so the dwarves can accept magicked food provided it comes from non-dwarves; dwarven merchants are allowed a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to how their trading partners got their trade goods. To further complicate matters, the dwarves must maintain a balance between the value of how much they import and how much they export; this is another ingrained bit of dwarven culture which is really quite maladaptive in this situation. To compensate, almost the entire dwarven population of Khazak has been forced into skilled labor positions. Weaponry, armor, tools, machinery; where once the underhome was filled with miners and farmers, now it is brimming with smiths, craftsmen... and landlords. Firstly, this means that expertly crafted dwarven wares are common as mud in Khazak: only there can you trade a cart of cabbages for a masterwork set of armor, and you might not even want to since your entire family already has a separate suit of armor for every social occasion, and you've taken to using the chainmail as a door mat since "it gets the dirt off so well". Secondly, despite the aforementioned crisis of over-production, there is still a trade deficit that needs to be accounted for, so a portion of all the transactions made in the oasis are paid to the dwarves in the form of a land/ownership tax (since the entirety of the Oasis is technically theirs). But all of that credit is then paid back out when the clan imports the next batch of food, mined ore, textiles, manufactured goods, etc., etc., and so on. The dwarves have had to use the Stonewardens as a means of obscuring the fact that they are heavily relying on others to survive, that the line separating the dwarven economy from the non-dwarven economy is so fine as to be non-existent. Without this deception the OreDelver clan would suffer a cultural crisis they are NOT prepared to face.
As mentioned before, the Stonewardens have become more than a trading organization and now seek to make the Wildlands a place of community, honesty and pragmatism... starting with Khazak. The oasis is heavily influenced by dwarven themes but no one would confuse the surface society with that of a dwarven clan. People are free to act individually, though all significant purchases must be officiated by a Stonewarden. There is no central work docket, however seniority means everything which discourages job changes. No taxes are levied against anyone but ALL services have an associated cost (including both access to the roads and bridges that criss-cross the area as well as police/military protection).
In accordance with the Compact, runners and converts from other organizations are allowed to reside and travel within Khazak, but those organizations must pay like everyone else. To this end, most organizations, even those opposed to the Stonewardens, have to fund "recovery missions" (missions to dig up and return lost OreDelver stuff from the Wildlands) to meet their expenses. The dwarves have a great deal of resources still locked away beneath the Wildlands; resources that could spell their salvation. Runners of all stripes are very well payed when they return with a couple of tablets of clan history from an abandoned city or (best of all) heartstones salvaged from the bodies of those dwarves who died in the cataclysm. In this way the Stonewardens, like Khazak itself, is two organizations in one: the dominant portion seeks to organize and expand while the overlooked core simply wants to restore itself and maintain the status quo... both halves are fully willing to achieve those goals one bribe/paycheck at a time.
Last edited by Shatner on Thu Dec 27, 2012 6:20 pm, edited 6 times in total.
Elves are snooty and unpleasant to deal with. That's nothing new.
Elves. Are very proud of their past, and tell their (long, numerous, and frequently mundane) myths at any excuse is not really a stretch. Actually telling those myths makes your players really hate dealing with elves, which makes for great verisimilitude. Make up any old thing, just keep talking. Tell another story about every new actor. Think Arabian Nights, but boring.
- How Elanthenier, hero of the seventeen pennants lost his second-best hairbrush, and spent the afternoon looking for it.
- The Forty-nine tales of the Morninglord's hat rack.
- Glory in anonimity: the exemplary life of Stevenseledir, the Perfectly Ordinary Radish Farmer
Mix in heroic stuff, but think Quantity, not Quality.
Elves. Are very proud of their past, and tell their (long, numerous, and frequently mundane) myths at any excuse is not really a stretch. Actually telling those myths makes your players really hate dealing with elves, which makes for great verisimilitude. Make up any old thing, just keep talking. Tell another story about every new actor. Think Arabian Nights, but boring.
- How Elanthenier, hero of the seventeen pennants lost his second-best hairbrush, and spent the afternoon looking for it.
- The Forty-nine tales of the Morninglord's hat rack.
- Glory in anonimity: the exemplary life of Stevenseledir, the Perfectly Ordinary Radish Farmer
Mix in heroic stuff, but think Quantity, not Quality.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
Wrote this specifically to mess with alignments. It's a lawful good culture:
======The Darkiron Clan======
==Darkiron bears the burden!==
For countless generations, through unnumbered centuries, Clan Darkiron has worked diligently to preserve the autonomy of all beings burdened with sentience. Their cavalier attitude towards the rights of those who do not meet their exacting standards for sentience has led to certain embarrassments in the past, and Darkiron today enjoys a somewhat unsavory reputation.
==== Philosophy =====
Ultimately, Darkiron seeks to guide the world towards a new golden age of virtue and true equality. By whatever means neccesary, societies must be molded, tempured and honed until the entire world has reached the pinacle of autonomy.
However, such change cannot come from anyone. The collective action of the masses is an house designed by two architects, and an unenlightened individual carves transient caverns from sandstone. Lasting change comes only from the efforts of exceptional individuals. Without an enlightened self-awareness and a true knowledge of the cost of one's actions, a Dwarf is as an ant: possibly effective in the immediate sense, but ultimately an insignificant insect without discernment, direction, or drive. Such a person may be well intentioned, but ultimately will be unable to effect lasting change.
Conversely, a dwarf sometimes rises above this state. He has the clarity of vision to discern the costs of his actions and the insight to understand . His direction is set by his own well founded convictions, and is not swayed by others. He is driven to follow his own path to the end, no matter the cost to himself or others. Such a dwarf is hailed as a Paragon by Darkiron, and only after this enlightenment are they regarded as truely sentient and self-aware. Much of the clan's resources are are devoted to ensuring that he is freed of all ties which might prevent him from working diligently to achieve his own particular vision. Each sees a path to a perfect world, but only a Paragon with the correct vision will succeed. So far, no vision has been correct.
By nurturing and protecting these enlightened beings, Darkiron strives to advance their vision. Indeed, Clan members may not take a family name unless they are able to achieve this recognition. Their early education in philosophy and training in trade grants most the necessary discernment, and cultural factors encourage drive, but finding a direction must come from within. Nonetheless, fully an eighth become Paragons, and the training of the rest of the clan (known as the Nameless pending adoption into one of Darkiron's families.) grants them a privleged status in the eyes of Darkiron's Paragons.
Although Darkiron's advanced training guarantees that most Paragons will be Dwarven, they make no distinction when one arises from a different race.
==== The Burden ====
Realizing that Paragons shape the world, Darkiron Clan assumes a threefold burden:
- Remove obstacles to Paragons pursuit of their own destiny
- Nurture the growth of everyone into Paragons
- Remove those Paragons who fall to evil
Although each Paragon's vision must rise or fail on its own merits, and on the Paragon's ability to propogate it, it is an abomination for the unenlightened to claim dominion over a Paragon. So, while there is no obligation to directly aid a Paragon, any Darkiron is expected to refuse submission to any institutionalized authority. Nothing requires open defiance, but Darkiron Dwarves individually submit to worthy individuals, never to institutions.
Recognizing that anyone could independently become a Paragon at any time, Darkiron assumes the role of shepherds for the masses. Each crime committed is committed against a potential Paragon. As such, Darkiron can be a strong force for order. However, as most beings in the world have not yet achieved that degree of self awareness, there is no moral obligation to them as there is to Paragons.
Finally, although Paragons can be powerful forces for good, they are primarily forces for //change//. When it becomes obvious that a Paragon has become a force for evil, it is Darkiron's solemn responsibility to prevent that evil. This is not lightly done, as it is extremely rare that a Paragon can be swayed from his chosen path. In almost all cases, stopping a Paragon means killing him. This is always an act of murder, for which the perpetrator must bear the costs.
==== Notable Figures ====
=== Remus Orus Darkiron & Rolo Precis Darkiron ===
Seventeen generations ago, Remus became an advisor to the human king Thaddues Pendraq. Remus's supreme diplomatic talent combined with Thaddues gift for martial strategy to spread the borders at an unprecedented rate. At Remus's advice, Thaddeus implemented a progressive taxation strategy, increased educational opportunities and increased the average citizen's quality of life immensely.
Fifteen years later, Remus was assasinated by Rolo, a nameless Dwarf of Clan Darkiron for the evil of institutionalizing a stultifying authority over so many, and hindering their exercise of free will. Without Remus's influence, an alliance of nearby nations assembled sufficient numbers to overwhelm Thaddeus's, and the kingdom fell into ruin.
On Rolo's return to Clan Darkiron, he was adopted by family Precis for his discernment, direction, and drive in recognizing the issue and taking steps to correct it. Immediately afterwards Precis' elders sorrowfully senanced him to death for the murder of Remus.
Both Remus and Rolo are remembered with honor as Paragons, though only Rolo is regarded as successful.
=== Sacha Arcus Darkiron ===
Tewnty-three generations ago, Sacha Arcus Darkiron led a ravening horde of the undead across three hundred miles of fertile cropland, levelling everything in his path. Some disagreement exists to his motives. The more moderate view holds that realizing that Paragons' ambitions were usually thwarted by the mundane, he determined to remove all such obstacles. A smaller group disagrees, suggesting instead that Sacha was attempting to force a large number of unenlightened along the path to Paragonhood. Either goal being laudible, the ethics of his attempt are still discussed today. Unfortunately, Sacha had convinced Bors Darkiron, a younger dwarf, to follow him. Bors became disgusted with Sacha's methods, betraying and killing him.
For his weakness of purpose, Bors was publicly censured, and for his crime of murder he was put to death. Sacha is honored as a Paragon, though an unsuccessful one.
======The Darkiron Clan======
==Darkiron bears the burden!==
For countless generations, through unnumbered centuries, Clan Darkiron has worked diligently to preserve the autonomy of all beings burdened with sentience. Their cavalier attitude towards the rights of those who do not meet their exacting standards for sentience has led to certain embarrassments in the past, and Darkiron today enjoys a somewhat unsavory reputation.
==== Philosophy =====
Ultimately, Darkiron seeks to guide the world towards a new golden age of virtue and true equality. By whatever means neccesary, societies must be molded, tempured and honed until the entire world has reached the pinacle of autonomy.
However, such change cannot come from anyone. The collective action of the masses is an house designed by two architects, and an unenlightened individual carves transient caverns from sandstone. Lasting change comes only from the efforts of exceptional individuals. Without an enlightened self-awareness and a true knowledge of the cost of one's actions, a Dwarf is as an ant: possibly effective in the immediate sense, but ultimately an insignificant insect without discernment, direction, or drive. Such a person may be well intentioned, but ultimately will be unable to effect lasting change.
Conversely, a dwarf sometimes rises above this state. He has the clarity of vision to discern the costs of his actions and the insight to understand . His direction is set by his own well founded convictions, and is not swayed by others. He is driven to follow his own path to the end, no matter the cost to himself or others. Such a dwarf is hailed as a Paragon by Darkiron, and only after this enlightenment are they regarded as truely sentient and self-aware. Much of the clan's resources are are devoted to ensuring that he is freed of all ties which might prevent him from working diligently to achieve his own particular vision. Each sees a path to a perfect world, but only a Paragon with the correct vision will succeed. So far, no vision has been correct.
By nurturing and protecting these enlightened beings, Darkiron strives to advance their vision. Indeed, Clan members may not take a family name unless they are able to achieve this recognition. Their early education in philosophy and training in trade grants most the necessary discernment, and cultural factors encourage drive, but finding a direction must come from within. Nonetheless, fully an eighth become Paragons, and the training of the rest of the clan (known as the Nameless pending adoption into one of Darkiron's families.) grants them a privleged status in the eyes of Darkiron's Paragons.
Although Darkiron's advanced training guarantees that most Paragons will be Dwarven, they make no distinction when one arises from a different race.
==== The Burden ====
Realizing that Paragons shape the world, Darkiron Clan assumes a threefold burden:
- Remove obstacles to Paragons pursuit of their own destiny
- Nurture the growth of everyone into Paragons
- Remove those Paragons who fall to evil
Although each Paragon's vision must rise or fail on its own merits, and on the Paragon's ability to propogate it, it is an abomination for the unenlightened to claim dominion over a Paragon. So, while there is no obligation to directly aid a Paragon, any Darkiron is expected to refuse submission to any institutionalized authority. Nothing requires open defiance, but Darkiron Dwarves individually submit to worthy individuals, never to institutions.
Recognizing that anyone could independently become a Paragon at any time, Darkiron assumes the role of shepherds for the masses. Each crime committed is committed against a potential Paragon. As such, Darkiron can be a strong force for order. However, as most beings in the world have not yet achieved that degree of self awareness, there is no moral obligation to them as there is to Paragons.
Finally, although Paragons can be powerful forces for good, they are primarily forces for //change//. When it becomes obvious that a Paragon has become a force for evil, it is Darkiron's solemn responsibility to prevent that evil. This is not lightly done, as it is extremely rare that a Paragon can be swayed from his chosen path. In almost all cases, stopping a Paragon means killing him. This is always an act of murder, for which the perpetrator must bear the costs.
==== Notable Figures ====
=== Remus Orus Darkiron & Rolo Precis Darkiron ===
Seventeen generations ago, Remus became an advisor to the human king Thaddues Pendraq. Remus's supreme diplomatic talent combined with Thaddues gift for martial strategy to spread the borders at an unprecedented rate. At Remus's advice, Thaddeus implemented a progressive taxation strategy, increased educational opportunities and increased the average citizen's quality of life immensely.
Fifteen years later, Remus was assasinated by Rolo, a nameless Dwarf of Clan Darkiron for the evil of institutionalizing a stultifying authority over so many, and hindering their exercise of free will. Without Remus's influence, an alliance of nearby nations assembled sufficient numbers to overwhelm Thaddeus's, and the kingdom fell into ruin.
On Rolo's return to Clan Darkiron, he was adopted by family Precis for his discernment, direction, and drive in recognizing the issue and taking steps to correct it. Immediately afterwards Precis' elders sorrowfully senanced him to death for the murder of Remus.
Both Remus and Rolo are remembered with honor as Paragons, though only Rolo is regarded as successful.
=== Sacha Arcus Darkiron ===
Tewnty-three generations ago, Sacha Arcus Darkiron led a ravening horde of the undead across three hundred miles of fertile cropland, levelling everything in his path. Some disagreement exists to his motives. The more moderate view holds that realizing that Paragons' ambitions were usually thwarted by the mundane, he determined to remove all such obstacles. A smaller group disagrees, suggesting instead that Sacha was attempting to force a large number of unenlightened along the path to Paragonhood. Either goal being laudible, the ethics of his attempt are still discussed today. Unfortunately, Sacha had convinced Bors Darkiron, a younger dwarf, to follow him. Bors became disgusted with Sacha's methods, betraying and killing him.
For his weakness of purpose, Bors was publicly censured, and for his crime of murder he was put to death. Sacha is honored as a Paragon, though an unsuccessful one.
Last edited by fectin on Fri Dec 28, 2012 12:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
So, Kantian Categorical Imperatives meet what... Nietzche's Übermensch? Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness? Regardless, it clearly makes for a caustic combination. Out of morbid curiosity, how do the Darkiron dwarves envision the world after the realization of their ideals? Some sort of libertarian utopia? Additionally, how would said world be distinguishable from a Mad Max-esque hellscape or a pre-Hobbesian free-for-all?fectin wrote:Wrote this specifically to mess with alignments. It's a lawful good culture:
======The Darkiron Clan======
...snip...
Last edited by Shatner on Fri Dec 28, 2012 3:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Darkieon don't (collectively) have a vision for what the world will look like. If they knew what to do already, they wouldn't need paragons to lead them, and they certainly wouldn't have paragons with differing views.
I guess they're sort of Objectivist groupies, but only for monomaniacal Objectivists.
Ultimately, they're embodiments of lawful good: they have super-strict traditions and customs, and are working hard both to preserve and improve both individual rights and everyone's quality of life.
I guess they're sort of Objectivist groupies, but only for monomaniacal Objectivists.
Ultimately, they're embodiments of lawful good: they have super-strict traditions and customs, and are working hard both to preserve and improve both individual rights and everyone's quality of life.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
Though it sounds like they suffer heavily in their methodologies, even if their ideology is pure. After all, it looks like they will suffer no compromises nor a series of half-steps, even if those half-steps lead to whatever end they intend; after all, the ideal solution wouldn't require half-steps. Sounds like they're so obsessed that Perfect is the enemy of good. Again, interesting and entertaining.fectin wrote:Ultimately, they're embodiments of lawful good: they have super-strict traditions and customs, and are working hard both to preserve and improve both individual rights and everyone's quality of life.
Elves - When Time meets Plenty the Result is... Less than You'd Think
First off, there is an interesting look at a culture that doesn't really need anything here. This issue of an economy depressed by a lack of organized labor, of a society that is not driven to extinction by their own inefficiency because all their core needs are met with trivial ease, is true both for Frank's Jarbah and DnD Elves. I'm just throwing that out there because it makes for interesting reading.
It's fun and easy to invent cultural quirks for orcs, halflings, isolated human populations, gnolls, etc. You can borrow from real-world anthropological examples, steal ideas from other works of fiction, and even toss in interesting physiological quirks (e.g. Orcs are strictly carnivorous) which can have far-reaching ramifications when you really think about them. And all of this is true for elves as well, but there is another issue you must address: age. According to 3rd ed. elves don't typically start adventuring until they're 114, which is older than the oldest human in DnD ever, a human who might have died having changed the world and attained super-human powers all before they saw their 20th birthday. So, what are these elves DOING with their time anyway?! You have to provide an answer to that, and since it's such an interesting issue, it should show up strongly in their culture.
Elves have it easy by iron age standards. They can eat just about anything green and growing, allowing them to bypass both agriculture (and the associated toil and social changes that go with it) and, for all but the most extreme ecological disasters, famine. In other words, food cultivation and food preparation for elves is a hobby, rather than the necessity it is for 'most everyone else. Elves live a long time provided nothing kills them, so elves like to live in places where escape is easy and greenery is plentiful, and the center of that particular Venn diagram is a forest; someone who is agile (like elves are) and knows the lay of their land (like elves do) will be exceptionally difficult to catch by an invading force. Now, imagine summer vacation for a grade-schooler. You have time, you have your needs provided for you and you have no real demands on you. Most will spend the summer goofing off doing a bunch of small things that serve as diversions. A few will spend the time on larger projects, learning new skills and/or honing old ones. Friends may be a regular part but not necessarily. This is similar to the life of an elf. As an elf you are raised by whoever happens to be interested in you at that time and you just sort of bum around taking up hobbies along the way. You have no real need to work and don't have The Grim Reaper to incite you to hurry, so most elves spend the first century of their life just sort of wandering across activities, territories and ideologies. Eventually the elf becomes an artisan of some sort and will dedicate the next couple of decades to their craft. Most elves never really stick with anything for more than fifty or sixty years but a few (the ones that generally go on to become adventurers) focus their considerable time on honing their art. An elven painter may decide to live in a particular glade for eight years so she can truly capture the beauty of the surroundings. An elven archer might spend a decade crafting arrows out of different types of wood just to see which flies the truest. Some of the greatest works of art and some of the finest craftsmanship comes from the elves. However, there isn't any organized production, just a handful of individuals who happen to be making intricate, mithril-weave armor or fantastically detailed rugs that are each beautiful and unique. Since every item of note is an individual masterpiece, it ensures that elven goods are high in demand and very, very low in supply. Basically, elves spend most of their time making things that are pretty but they do so in a patient, individual and inefficient way which keeps the amount of stuff available nearly as low as the population.
Elves call the members of the other races children. This is evidence of a major division between elves and non-elves. Children have attention spans which are short while adults can focus for hours at a time if the task is engaging or the situation is sufficiently important. Children are easily distracted (Look, a bug! That man has a big nose. I'm hungry. Why are there cows?) while adults filter out most things not attached to their routine. Children ask questions about everything while adults tend to accept the status quo. This makes the adults more attentive but also less adaptive in the long run; the children are learning, albeit inefficiently, while the adult is focusing on the task at hand to the exclusion of other things. Along those metrics, elves really are more "adult" than halflings, humans, gnomes and orcs. While a human will take up a hobby and pursue it for year or two, elves measure their hobbies in decades. A human has to hurry to make sense of their world before they die, elves can just sit back and watch it unfold before them. A human considers every natural disaster, war and personal accomplishment to be singular in nature and of great importance while an elf knows the same damn thing happened 50 years ago and it'll happen again in another 50, so there's no need to get excited about it. As such, an elf among humans or halflings will feel like a grad student sitting in on a high school class; surprised at the sheer amount of trivial drama, unruly behavior, and heavy restrictions on how one can act.
Since the woods are wide, the elves are few, and resources are plentiful, the elves take their pet projects and personal space seriously. An elf may not mind if someone is watching them unobtrusively because they aren't necessarily defensive of their privacy, but to interrupt an elf in what they're doing for anything other than an emergency is considered extremely rude. When you approach Joe the elf, you are supposed to announce to no one in particular that you would be interested in speaking with Joe. If Joe wants this conversation to happen, he'll stop his basket weaving and acknowledge you. If he keeps on doing what he's doing then you are expected to leave Joe the fuck alone; maybe he'll be interested in talking with you tomorrow. Or next week. Or next spring. Needless to say, touching an elf uninvited is considered exceptionally rude. Once a conversation is started, it is expected to go on for a while. You talk about what Joe is interested in, Joe talks about what you're interested in, and if either of you wants to take an hour getting to their point, so be it; no one is in any sort of hurry and pissing Joe off means pissing off the only accomplished basket weaver this village is going to have for another 150 years. Elves don't really ask questions so much as make statements that imply they'd like you to respond. Like initiating the conversation, if you want to shift the topic to the weather you are supposed to say "It would interest me to hear what Joe thinks of the weather." and then Joe is expected to do the polite thing and talk about the recent rains. Direct questions are considered rude unless it's an emergency or the questioner is a very young child. The fact that most non-elves ask direct questions all the time further cements them as children in the eyes of the elves.
Elven governance is really more of a club than a mandate. A charismatic elven couple can attract a group of interested followers, who all agree that the couple are "King and Queen". This clique can then hold elaborate, fancy dress parties, or hold court and weigh in on the grievances and gossip of others, but unless the "monarchs" are very influential or very well respected, their edicts are really no more than suggestions. The punishment for defying a monarch is the punishment for crossing a member of a club; now members of that club are encouraged to not like you or do business with you. This might mean nothing more than being excluded from some parties, or it might mean that the entire community shuns you and refuses to barter with you, depending on how much clout that monarch carries. With such loose ties on it's members, elven governance is very light to the point that many other races see the elves as disorganized squatters living in the woods. The elves would argue, but only a handful would bother to show up to do so because the others weren't really that interested in coming by to refute you in the first place.
Lastly, trading with the elves can be a trying affair. Other than a core of basic necessities, what goods are produced in an elven settlement is at the whims of the craftsmen within that particular settlement. And since there might only be a dozen such craftsmen, if no one is interested in weaving tapestries this year, there will be no tapestries available for trade. Furthermore, the act of bartering and negotiating with an elf can take hours, if not days. This is in part because of their slow-natured ways, and in part because the elves are typically bartering away a small handful of masterpiece items, so seeing to it that each one fetches a fair price is proportionately more important than if they were trading away goods by the pallet. And heaven help you if any of those goods have an "interesting" story surrounding them... It's not that the elves don't want your stuff -- they probably do -- they just aren't usually in a hurry to acquire it, nor are they usually in a hurry to alter their production based on the wants of others.
Time, the enemy of all, is really more of a distant annoyance for the elves. Combined with the fact that they need so little to get by and you can see how an elf has fewer shared experiences with another race than the other races share with each other. And that is why the elves are considered entitled, arrogant bastards and/or lazy, disorganized hippies by outsiders. But don't worry, the elves generally think just as little of your people, when they can be bothered to think about them at all.
Last edited by Shatner on Fri Dec 28, 2012 7:04 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Resplendent, HQ of the Celestial Host
light, manicured grounds, monasteries, temples, repentance, anti-druids
"What I don't get is why you people resist us. None of ours are sick, or hungry, or scared, or ugly. Just pray and serve; is that so great a price? Be worthy of your benefactors and all will be well. All will be Good. No worries, just light and beauty and divine, ineffable wisdom guiding it all. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Besides, if you don't repent, and I mean 'deep down recanting all this heathen nonsense', I'm gonna have to kill you, myself, right now; this isn't the sort of conflict that allows half-measures."
- Shamsiel Zakkai, a Samael of Resplendent
When approached from the west, Resplendent gives the illusion of a second sun preparing to rise over the horizon. This is because virtually every man-made object sheds light, making the oasis a beacon in the dark (blame the lantern archons). The whole of Resplendent is softly rolling hills covered in soft, manicured grass and flower gardens. The water is pure, the air is sweet and the weather, idyllic. The faithful toil of thousands of gardeners has turned the entirety of the oasis into a park, in which everything exists to please the senses and sooth the spirit. There are no cities; just a diffuse collection of structures and pleasant surroundings. The only buildings are temples, monasteries and the exotic domiciles of those celestials that want/need personal living space.
Virtually all material things are created through magic, mainly by summoners, clerics and celestials. Food, clothing, medicine, shelter and all manner of supplies are conjured and distributed freely. As such, the faithful have no need to hunt, farm or otherwise toil for their survival. Most spend their time as artists, musicians or gardeners, beautifying Resplendent in an effort to project the glory of the Heavens onto the Prime. Others exist in quiet contemplation, seeking to purify themselves and their fellows so that everyone is worthy of the salvation the celestials offer. Yet others hone their combat skills to better serve in the army of the righteous. Regardless of the form, all are encouraged (some would say "implicitly required") to serve the cause of Good.
Just as a fire elemental is the physical manifestation of flame, a celestial is an elemental of Good combined with (Law/Neutral/Chaos). As such, their very nature compels them to do Good things and offer Good council to others. So, all orders by the celestials are considered holy edicts and are to be pursued with single-minded devotion. In a way, its as though everyone's shoulder angel were real and capable of ratting you out to the authorities if you got too far out of line. And the angels have commanded everyone to be good and be pretty. While I won't belabor the point, one's status in Resplendent is partially limited by your looks; in fact, if you are ugly enough you may be deemed befouled by Evil and marginalized or outright exiled (effectively a death sentence for non-runners). For the victory of Good to be complete, everything must be sanctified, purified and prettyfied. No exceptions.
To outsiders, Resplendent is governed by a confusing and baroque code of conduct. The basic laws of the land are what you would expect when all the law makers have halos, but the social mores are less intuitive. For example, trampling a flower bed is an iniquity (their word for crime) worthy of penance, as is habitually failing to return compliments. However, it is perfectly acceptable to walk around naked and even get frisky in public... provided your physique doesn't offend the onlookers (otherwise it's penance in the gym). It is a crime of the highest order to unhallow an area (per the spell) but animating the dead is technically legal provided the bodies received last rites. The Celestial Host were the last to accept The Compact and are very passive aggressive towards rival runners and converts. Those are housed in "false temples" that are placed adjacent to their rivals along the edge of Resplendent's territory. People come by at all hours to spread "the good word" or beautify the structures with religious iconography; the eyes of the celestials are always upon the unfaithful. People are allowed to consort or even convert to other organizations, per The Compact, but even straying too near a heathen or heretic can require purification before one is allowed to return to sanctified ground.
By iron-age standards, Resplendent is heaven made manifest. The celestials are generally patient and the laws are well explained (if confusing for folks from out-of-town) so actual injustice is rare. Material wealth is either freely given OR owned either by a celestial or an organization (monastery, temple, art-gallery, etc.) so no mortal has any more wealth than any other mortal. There does exist a complicated economy of status, in which people vie for approval from the celestials and the truly devote. Being beautiful (not necessarily attractive, just aesthetically pleasing), being pious and being skilled are the traditional routes for advancement in the eyes of others. The entire oasis is effectively one big party/mass/boot-camp for Good, meaning that things are rarely boring though they can seem repetitive; there are hundreds of facets of Goodness that are celebrated in Resplendent, the differences of which are sometimes lost on the heathens and/or mortals in the audience. People are largely free to do what they want... provided what they want fits within a certain spectrum of behaviors. Also, thought-crime is a real crime, er, iniquity so think carefully around some of the celestials that can read thoughts.
Finally, Resplendent maintains what is probably the largest standing army of any oasis. Easily a third of the thirty thousand mortals are involved with the military, either as soldiers or some form of support role (weapon crafting, medic, etc.). Celestials maintain war footing at all times despite the current impossibility of any sort of large-scale military action; every day the strength of the anti-magic zones surrounding the oasis are tested to see if the grand crusade can commence. Numerous monasteries are actually dedicated to martial prowess rather than spiritual purification and mock battles are staged between hundreds or even thousands of combatants every month or so (in specially designated areas so as not to damage the gardens). The Celestial Host were violently thwarted centuries ago and they have never forgotten nor forgiven. Those may be virtues of good but the wise know that Good and good aren't always the same thing.
light, manicured grounds, monasteries, temples, repentance, anti-druids
"What I don't get is why you people resist us. None of ours are sick, or hungry, or scared, or ugly. Just pray and serve; is that so great a price? Be worthy of your benefactors and all will be well. All will be Good. No worries, just light and beauty and divine, ineffable wisdom guiding it all. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Besides, if you don't repent, and I mean 'deep down recanting all this heathen nonsense', I'm gonna have to kill you, myself, right now; this isn't the sort of conflict that allows half-measures."
- Shamsiel Zakkai, a Samael of Resplendent
When approached from the west, Resplendent gives the illusion of a second sun preparing to rise over the horizon. This is because virtually every man-made object sheds light, making the oasis a beacon in the dark (blame the lantern archons). The whole of Resplendent is softly rolling hills covered in soft, manicured grass and flower gardens. The water is pure, the air is sweet and the weather, idyllic. The faithful toil of thousands of gardeners has turned the entirety of the oasis into a park, in which everything exists to please the senses and sooth the spirit. There are no cities; just a diffuse collection of structures and pleasant surroundings. The only buildings are temples, monasteries and the exotic domiciles of those celestials that want/need personal living space.
Virtually all material things are created through magic, mainly by summoners, clerics and celestials. Food, clothing, medicine, shelter and all manner of supplies are conjured and distributed freely. As such, the faithful have no need to hunt, farm or otherwise toil for their survival. Most spend their time as artists, musicians or gardeners, beautifying Resplendent in an effort to project the glory of the Heavens onto the Prime. Others exist in quiet contemplation, seeking to purify themselves and their fellows so that everyone is worthy of the salvation the celestials offer. Yet others hone their combat skills to better serve in the army of the righteous. Regardless of the form, all are encouraged (some would say "implicitly required") to serve the cause of Good.
Just as a fire elemental is the physical manifestation of flame, a celestial is an elemental of Good combined with (Law/Neutral/Chaos). As such, their very nature compels them to do Good things and offer Good council to others. So, all orders by the celestials are considered holy edicts and are to be pursued with single-minded devotion. In a way, its as though everyone's shoulder angel were real and capable of ratting you out to the authorities if you got too far out of line. And the angels have commanded everyone to be good and be pretty. While I won't belabor the point, one's status in Resplendent is partially limited by your looks; in fact, if you are ugly enough you may be deemed befouled by Evil and marginalized or outright exiled (effectively a death sentence for non-runners). For the victory of Good to be complete, everything must be sanctified, purified and prettyfied. No exceptions.
To outsiders, Resplendent is governed by a confusing and baroque code of conduct. The basic laws of the land are what you would expect when all the law makers have halos, but the social mores are less intuitive. For example, trampling a flower bed is an iniquity (their word for crime) worthy of penance, as is habitually failing to return compliments. However, it is perfectly acceptable to walk around naked and even get frisky in public... provided your physique doesn't offend the onlookers (otherwise it's penance in the gym). It is a crime of the highest order to unhallow an area (per the spell) but animating the dead is technically legal provided the bodies received last rites. The Celestial Host were the last to accept The Compact and are very passive aggressive towards rival runners and converts. Those are housed in "false temples" that are placed adjacent to their rivals along the edge of Resplendent's territory. People come by at all hours to spread "the good word" or beautify the structures with religious iconography; the eyes of the celestials are always upon the unfaithful. People are allowed to consort or even convert to other organizations, per The Compact, but even straying too near a heathen or heretic can require purification before one is allowed to return to sanctified ground.
By iron-age standards, Resplendent is heaven made manifest. The celestials are generally patient and the laws are well explained (if confusing for folks from out-of-town) so actual injustice is rare. Material wealth is either freely given OR owned either by a celestial or an organization (monastery, temple, art-gallery, etc.) so no mortal has any more wealth than any other mortal. There does exist a complicated economy of status, in which people vie for approval from the celestials and the truly devote. Being beautiful (not necessarily attractive, just aesthetically pleasing), being pious and being skilled are the traditional routes for advancement in the eyes of others. The entire oasis is effectively one big party/mass/boot-camp for Good, meaning that things are rarely boring though they can seem repetitive; there are hundreds of facets of Goodness that are celebrated in Resplendent, the differences of which are sometimes lost on the heathens and/or mortals in the audience. People are largely free to do what they want... provided what they want fits within a certain spectrum of behaviors. Also, thought-crime is a real crime, er, iniquity so think carefully around some of the celestials that can read thoughts.
Finally, Resplendent maintains what is probably the largest standing army of any oasis. Easily a third of the thirty thousand mortals are involved with the military, either as soldiers or some form of support role (weapon crafting, medic, etc.). Celestials maintain war footing at all times despite the current impossibility of any sort of large-scale military action; every day the strength of the anti-magic zones surrounding the oasis are tested to see if the grand crusade can commence. Numerous monasteries are actually dedicated to martial prowess rather than spiritual purification and mock battles are staged between hundreds or even thousands of combatants every month or so (in specially designated areas so as not to damage the gardens). The Celestial Host were violently thwarted centuries ago and they have never forgotten nor forgiven. Those may be virtues of good but the wise know that Good and good aren't always the same thing.
Last edited by Shatner on Wed Jan 02, 2013 7:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I realized I should include the dwarf stuff I dropped in the Speaking Dwarf thread.
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.
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.
Shatner wrote:Yeah, the whole heartstone thing was heavily inspired by the Warhammer 40k geneseed mechanic that the Space Marines use.name_here wrote:Shatner wrote: 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.Captain Thule wrote:Recovery of Geneseed... Is worth any risk
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).Avoraciopoctules wrote:Pretty interesting.
Does the debt accrual for everything include the heartstone installation? About how expensive would that end up being?
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.Avoraciopoctules wrote:Does society subsidize certain goods or services?
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.
Shatner wrote:I quite like the idea of encouraging, if not outright requiring, manufactured goods to meet a minimum level of artistic quality. Dwarven halls are often depicted as overflowing with high quality crafts and artistry, and that law would certainly lead to that result.Emerald wrote:Or flip that around and make the intangibles the dwarven taxation system. Either you have to add a certain number of sculptures, stories, or other creative works to the canon every year (pseudo-income tax), or you have to add a certain amount of intangible quality to stuff you do or make (pseudo-consumption tax), or both. The reason that dwarves are known as master craftsmen, then, is that every hammer or sword they make has to have a certain degree of artistic quality--making a plain ol' wrench would be illegal like failing to pay tax on your goods.
Beer!
As an underground race, the dwarves have extensive knowledge of fungiculture. Furthermore, even a modest settlement of dwarves must engage in extensive mineral recycling and reclamation efforts so as not to exhaust the local supply. This task is largely achieved through the careful cultivation of various molds, slimes and mushrooms which are raised on the settlement's waste products and then cooked down into food or brewed into alcohol to reclaim the minerals in question. For as much as the dwarves know of subterranean flora, they often lack concerning surface plants.
Alcoholic drink of one sort or another is actually a food staple for most dwarven settlements, in the same way that grains are a common staple for most surface races that practice agriculture. The first benefit to the dwarves is that it renders a lot of otherwise tough or bland food palatable without resorting to expensive seasonings (like garlic or magnesium). Plump Helmet mushrooms are edible raw but they taste like moldy cardboard and are almost too tough to chew, but as a brew they are much more aesthetically pleasing. The next benefit is that it allows food to be stored for much longer than it would in its raw form. As the dwarves find themselves under siege quite a lot, having a warehouse full of beer means no one is likely to starve in the first few months. Furthermore, fermentation is one mechanism the dwarves can use to liberate the mineral content of their food; it is common for a thick, metallic sludge to settle on the bottom of kegs of dwarven beer which dwarves will save for other culinary or industrial uses.
Finally, beer is a trade good the dwarves can use which, depending on the brew, won't detract from the settlement's mineral supply. Dwarves by-weight need less raw biomass to sustain them than other races, which is great provided they have the minerals they need. So if the dwarves have food stuff which doesn't leech minerals out of the soil, that surplus biomass can be brewed and sold to humans or gnomes or hobgoblins or drow in exchange for stuff the settlement genuinely needs. It's a bigger net win for the dwarves to receive 50 pounds of tin in exchange for a keg of what is for them just empty calories than to trade a 5 pound iron tool (assuming comparable costs in labor and raw materials).
It should be noted that dwarven physiology is different enough from that of a human that drinking their meals won't cause them to die of liver failure. Dwarves can (and do) get drunk but it takes substantially more or stronger quantities of alcohol to do it, and their bodies process it with far fewer negative side effects than is the case for other races. However, this has not stopped the other races from assuming that all dwarves are unrepentant drunks and that their entire civilization is little more than a protracted drinking binge.
The Alloying
The dwarves know for a fact that they were created by Moradin (they've asked him) and they have a genealogical record that more-or-less stretches from that beginning to the present. There are gaps, some small, others large and conspicuous; some gaps the dwarves desperately want to fill by finding some corroborating evidence, others the Ollams seem determined to leave uninvestigated/striken from the record. They get evasive if asked about it.
The prevailing culture in the settlements exalts the past to what is probably unhealthy levels, and so considerable time and attention is spent creating or doing stuff that is somehow symbolic of better ages past. One such act is The Alloying. The first generation of dwarves forged the first tools from materials their creator had left them, and ate food that had likewise been divinely conjured, at least according to the prevailing Ollamic teachings. And since the dwarves reclaim so many of the minerals they use, to be consumed and forged and used time and time again endlessly, it is believed that every metallic object the dwarves possess contains some infinitesimally small amount of the divinely created ores that the first generation of dwarves first smelted. The Alloying is the process by which vulgar metals are made to carry that small trace of proper dwarven history. A smith takes a chunk of metal that is, for whatever reason, believed to have an unusually direct lineage back to that first forging, and melts it down along with the vulgar metal, thus allowing the mix to assimilate the dwarfy goodness. Since the iron consumed by a dwarf was almost certainly once the iron contained in an item of dwarven artifice, a dwarf engaging in prolonged exposure to non-Alloyed metals risks diluting their essential divine heritage, condemning them and their descendants to many terrible, if often ill-defined, symptoms (ranging from poor health to shoddy workmanship to moral degeneration and beyond). Conversely, being surrounded by Alloyed materials is supposed to bestow all manner of good things, such as long life, verility, and mental clarity.
In some settlements The Alloying is a solemn affair involving prayers and rituals and special tools and serious expressions. In other settlements it's a more perfunctory task carried out by a single smith and a single ollam at whatever smelter happens to be free. Regardless of the degree, the practice of this task is almost ubiquitous among the dwarves. This seemingly harmless bit of ritualism has some pretty serious effects on the dwarves, depending on the lengths they take it to. For most settlements it means that trade between them and non-dwarves is inherently limited because anything metallic a non-dwarf wants to trade them is only valuable as raw materials. For example, if a diplomat from the neighboring human kingdom offers the dwarves a finely wrought golden chalice which is heavy with symbolic meaning, the dwarves can't really use it as-is without risking their precious purity of essence. They'll have to melt it down and then re-forge it; if they are feeling tactful they'll turn the ensuing puddle of gold back into a chalice... and if they're feeling REALLY tactful they won't toss it to into the smelter until after the humans have left. And since the dwarves aren't the only race to take pride in their skill at metalworking, many a non-dwarven smith has been insulted when a dwarven merchant offers to buy their crafts at raw material prices.
For dwarves venturing abroad, those that adhere to the tradition more steadfastly find themselves in the awkward predicament of having to eat and touch and be surrounded by vulgar materials at all times. Many a dwarven traveler has refused to eat a meal until they can sprinkle a few shavings of copper from the stash they brought from home. If their journey is especially long, said dwarves have been known to pay handsomely for dwarven wrought tools or dwarf-minted coins so they can whittle these fetishes down to nothing, one meal at a time. The dwarven penalty to charisma is as much an emergent property of their culture as a racial predisposition. And for the more extreme observers, it is considered blasphemous to allow Alloyed metal to leave the possession of the dwarves, for such metals would be condemned to utter dilution, leaving yet more particles of the dwarven genesis irrevocably lost and scattered. Curiously, the dwarves don't see it as diluting when they bring new metals into the fold; to them, they're just sealing in the goodness so it can't leak out. That level of fundamentalism, though rare, can further sour diplomatic relations between dwarves and non-dwarves. It can even lead to situations where non-dwarves are accused of stealing Alloyed metals and purposefully debasing them; whether this is done out of spite or out of an attempt for personal gain on the outsiders part varies case-by-case, though both are considered dire transgressions. When this sort of fanaticism takes hold in a settlement, isolationism, xenophobia, war, and even genocide are likely to follow (think Europe's witch trials and host desecration and the fun times that followed from those).[/b]
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nockermensch
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I'm stealing everything you write about the dwarves, Shatner. Really good stuff. With the dwarves slowly consuming their own cultural items, it's not hard to justify Strange Moods. Some dwarves get possessed by the drive to create new expressions of Dwarfness, since the iron bits in their cat tallow biscuits could have come from an ancestral sword.
Dwarves believe things were much richer and meaningful for them in the past, and they also believe bits of those things live inside them. Glorious works of their civilization are lost to the ravages of time and war, making each dwarf have constant, diffuse dreams about restoring some of that beauty and power.
The strange mood happens when those diffuse dreams take a concrete shape in a dwarf's mind: A menacing pickaxe, or laboriously gem-studded sock, or whatever that dwarf believes better captures their old glories. Seeing that object in their mind's eye alienates the dwarf from everything else. Their only priority becomes realizing that vision.
Of course, during the game, a strange mood should ideally start when the player and the MC agree it should. Gygaxian minded groups could roll a 5% strange mood chance every time the dwarf went up in levels, but this is just silly.
The fun part of the mood should be acquiring the materials, and because this whatever is actually needed should be randomly decided. Making the artifact shouldn't actually take a roll. Once all the materials are collected and a workshop secured, the dwarf will take 20 in all the craft checks required, producing literally the best item they could make. The effects of producing an artifact should be mostly social: that dwarf is now greatly regarded in their own settlement. But I'd not be averse to giving them something like a permanent +4 Will save increase.
Failing to make an artifact should only be inflicted on a player if they want so, because it's not very fun: The dwarf becomes insane and dies shortly after (using Shatner's mythos, probably due heartstone failure).
Dwarves believe things were much richer and meaningful for them in the past, and they also believe bits of those things live inside them. Glorious works of their civilization are lost to the ravages of time and war, making each dwarf have constant, diffuse dreams about restoring some of that beauty and power.
The strange mood happens when those diffuse dreams take a concrete shape in a dwarf's mind: A menacing pickaxe, or laboriously gem-studded sock, or whatever that dwarf believes better captures their old glories. Seeing that object in their mind's eye alienates the dwarf from everything else. Their only priority becomes realizing that vision.
Of course, during the game, a strange mood should ideally start when the player and the MC agree it should. Gygaxian minded groups could roll a 5% strange mood chance every time the dwarf went up in levels, but this is just silly.
The fun part of the mood should be acquiring the materials, and because this whatever is actually needed should be randomly decided. Making the artifact shouldn't actually take a roll. Once all the materials are collected and a workshop secured, the dwarf will take 20 in all the craft checks required, producing literally the best item they could make. The effects of producing an artifact should be mostly social: that dwarf is now greatly regarded in their own settlement. But I'd not be averse to giving them something like a permanent +4 Will save increase.
Failing to make an artifact should only be inflicted on a player if they want so, because it's not very fun: The dwarf becomes insane and dies shortly after (using Shatner's mythos, probably due heartstone failure).
@ @ Nockermensch
Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.
Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.
While the heartstone is the most important bit of salvage from a dead dwarf, there are all sorts of useful elements and chemicals that can be liberated given sufficient time, skill, and a well-stocked alchemical laboratory. If you are going to introduce Dwarf Fortress elements, such as Strange Moods, into the mix, then this fact adds grisly verisimilitude to Fell Moods.
Case in point, I had a write up once where a fashion among the drow was dwarf jewelry, i.e. adornments made partly or wholly from bits reclaimed from dwarven bodies (minerals, bones, crystals, etc.). A particularly reviled (by the dwarves) drow noble had a set of blades, each forged from harvested metals, artfully decorated with more than a dozen heartstones. These ranged in size from the "gain of rice" that is the heartstone of an infant on one of his daggers, to the apple-sized heartstone of a great elder set into the pommel of a sword. Everyone knows that dwarves will pay handsomely to have their corpses returned, but few races are nasty enough to question why, and then turn that answer into a style of decoration.
Case in point, I had a write up once where a fashion among the drow was dwarf jewelry, i.e. adornments made partly or wholly from bits reclaimed from dwarven bodies (minerals, bones, crystals, etc.). A particularly reviled (by the dwarves) drow noble had a set of blades, each forged from harvested metals, artfully decorated with more than a dozen heartstones. These ranged in size from the "gain of rice" that is the heartstone of an infant on one of his daggers, to the apple-sized heartstone of a great elder set into the pommel of a sword. Everyone knows that dwarves will pay handsomely to have their corpses returned, but few races are nasty enough to question why, and then turn that answer into a style of decoration.
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nockermensch
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Good point about the fell moods, and drow-made "dwarven weapons" (made of real dwarves!) is drowish as fuck.Shatner wrote:While the heartstone is the most important bit of salvage from a dead dwarf, there are all sorts of useful elements and chemicals that can be liberated given sufficient time, skill, and a well-stocked alchemical laboratory. If you are going to introduce Dwarf Fortress elements, such as Strange Moods, into the mix, then this fact adds grisly verisimilitude to Fell Moods.
Case in point, I had a write up once where a fashion among the drow was dwarf jewelry, i.e. adornments made partly or wholly from bits reclaimed from dwarven bodies (minerals, bones, crystals, etc.). A particularly reviled (by the dwarves) drow noble had a set of blades, each forged from harvested metals, artfully decorated with more than a dozen heartstones. These ranged in size from the "gain of rice" that is the heartstone of an infant on one of his daggers, to the apple-sized heartstone of a great elder set into the pommel of a sword. Everyone knows that dwarves will pay handsomely to have their corpses returned, but few races are nasty enough to question why, and then turn that answer into a style of decoration.
A question about the heartstones: Creating a race with a naturally weak heart is a dick move for the involved deity. What's the story behind the heartstones origin? Did the original dwarves already have them? Is there some curse involved?
@ @ Nockermensch
Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.
Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.
Yes, Moradin is explicitly a dickish deity in this continuity. The origin story for the dwarves goes like this:nockermensch wrote:A question about the heartstones: Creating a race with a naturally weak heart is a dick move for the involved deity. What's the story behind the heartstones origin? Did the original dwarves already have them? Is there some curse involved?
The Prime was full of races that had evolved naturally (orcs, humans, goblins, sahagin, etc.), a few that had just sort of gotten loose from other realms of existence (Illithids, the fey that would eventually become elves, etc.), and at least one that was sentient by merit of eating others that were sentient (aboleths). This was all happening with pre-bronze age technology and the only magical traditions were sorcery and druidism. Around this time gods started taking an interest in the Prime. In part this was because the Prime represented yet another conquest between the eternal struggles of Good and Evil, Law and Chaos. In part it was that some of these gods had previously been mortals who had ascended to godhood by being serious bad asses. A sort of deific land rush erupted, where existing gods vied with new gods to fill the void as "patron deity of the [goblins/gnolls/kuo toa/etc.]". The reason some gods look like their followers is because that god USED TO BE a mortal of that race (see: Boccob, Yondalla, Vecna), while other gods adopted a form that would be more familiar to the race they were dominating (see: Gruumsh, Tiamat, Corellon). Only Moradin looks like his worshipers because he made them in HIS image.
One god, Moradin, looked over the worshipers on offer in the Prime and found them lacking. Being a deity of earth and artifice, he decided to craft for himself worshipers deserving of his legacy. Sickened by those gods whose divine aspect was changed in response to the fickle nature of their mortal worshipers, Moradin was resolved to make a race like himself so that he would be as the fulcrum: at the center of a powerful force but not moved by it. Unlike so many other deities, he would not command his followers to conquer, nor would he command them to convert, nor would he command them to praise him endlessly; they would be commanded to create and endure, endure and create, and through existing they would be a living testament to Moradin's skill.
Moradin fashioned the dwarves from stone, artfully interwoven with metal and crystal, so that when the stone was turned to flesh, the flesh and non-flesh all worked as one. As the minerals on the Prime were hidden away beneath countless tons of stone and earth, he made his followers require them so that they would know labor, and so mirror him in his industriousness. To ensure his followers were unified as one tribe, to toughen them through hardship, and make them wary of all other tribes on the Prime, Moradin exacted oaths of unending violence from the patron deities of several of the most populous races: the orcs and the goblinoids. Though none of the races know why exactly, there has never been a lasting peace between them; each war is but the prelude to another, and another, and another... To ensure that his followers would never alter their own society from that which Moradin had planned, he built in them a flaw: the heartstone. This flaw was fatal if left untreated and the only treatment was a temporary one. Moradin would only offer the means of administering this treatment to the orthodox members of his clergy. Should some dwarves stray too far from their creator's intended course, their priests would be struck impotent, and all the apostates would perish.
With a form that was built to his exact specifications, and with a biology that would compel his followers to remain true to his vision, Moradin waited until a rare planar event allowed him to transfer the first generation of his created race from the Elemental Plane of Earth over to the Prime. This first generation consisted of the 64 primarchs, each of whom were imbued with a different fraction of the knowledge they would need to survive, thrive and craft wonders in a manner worthy of their creator. The dwarven bronze age lasted all of a day, as the first dwarves took the ores provided them and crafted and smelted and forged the first tools of the race. Then came the working of iron. Then steel. Then adamantine. In this way the dwarves, in their infancy, had already exceeded the metallurgical skills of all the other races on the Prime. With these tools, the Primarchs fashioned for themselves families, each member crafted from stone and crystal and metal. In one last act of divine creation, Moradin made this second generation of dwarves live so that his race could grow, create, and above all else, endure. There are only 64 last names among the dwarves, and all of them can be traced to a Primarch, a dwarf fashioned by Moradin himself. Needless to say, those names NEVER go out of style.
Months ago I wrote up a brief history of the intervening ages between then and "modern day" DnD, but I'll reserve those for future posts. Needless to say, things have not gone 100% as Moradin had planned (like the gnomes; Moradin is still super pissed about the gnomes), but all-in-all the dwarves are still recognizable to their original state. In many respects, Moradin is one of the less involved deities, as he pretty much refuses to interfere directly with the race he reigns over. Furthermore, he doesn't demand that the dwarves do anything they aren't going to do anyway: live beneath the earth, work hard, create impressive and enduring works, and listen to their clerics. However, the reason they do all that is because they were designed to have to do all that, either explicitly (partial lithovores, heartstones, etc.) or implicitly (living underground for food and protection, strong community due to difficulty of surviving and need for protection against invaders who never permanently declare an end to hostilities). At this point, Moradin is kind of like the Deist Christian's god; he set everything in motion more-or-less as he wanted it to be so that it would all turn out more-or-less as he wanted it to, and now he doesn't butt in on what's going on.
So yeah, he's a dick, but a very, very precise one. And yes, every dwarf since the beginning of the race has needed a heartstone. There are loop-holes around it (ask the gnomes and the now-extinct dwarven necromancers) but they are few, far between and carefully guarded against by the dwarven clergy.
EDIT: re-worded and a few typos fixed.
Last edited by Shatner on Sat Jan 05, 2013 2:17 am, edited 5 times in total.
Let's hear how the gnomes do it.
FrankTrollman wrote:I think Grek already won the thread and we should pack it in.
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