Interesting Fantasy Cultures

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 6:59 pm

Something something undead?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 7:10 pm

Nice.

How does dwarves' Need for safety fit in with mining being fairly dangerous?

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 7:19 pm

Largely? By mitigating the risks. Mining in our world is dangerous in part because people make mistakes in ensuring mine shafts are stable or the people running the mines want to get things done as quickly as possible and so ignore various problems with blasting big holes in solid rock. Dwarves have neither problem, they naturally understand tunnels and go to great lengths to ensure stability and can afford to spend a very long time digging new shafts because they just live a long time and already had massive stockpiles of gold before anyone cared about it.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 7:22 pm

Cool.

That suggests that dwarves aren't especially resource-rich, despite having huge reserves. Probably that leads to even more focus on craftsmanship, because if you have fewer raw materials, you try to extract more value from them.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 7:26 pm

Quite, it certainly makes sense. Though they do have mining schedules to try and make their veins last as long as they can while slowly prospecting for new sources of the various ores they need.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:38 pm

fectin wrote:Cool.

That suggests that dwarves aren't especially resource-rich, despite having huge reserves. Probably that leads to even more focus on craftsmanship, because if you have fewer raw materials, you try to extract more value from them.

They might extract a mix of resources which isn't the mix they need, leading to surpluses in some areas.

For example, in real life one of the main ores of silver is tetrahedrite, which is a 12:1 blend of copper to silver. If the dwarves running the tetrahedrite mine need equal amounts of copper and silver (or even a predominantly copper mix but not as predominantly as that) then they're going to have lots of surplus copper. They aren't going to value it particularly highly, and might be happy to trade it away for things they do need, or even use it as a low-value good to make nonessential stuff out of in order to save the good metal for where it's needed.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:49 pm

That's a very good point, I hadn't thought of that, I'll have to add it to my notes.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:58 pm

If you want me to geology geek at you, I'm happy to do so.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:59 pm

Please, feel free, I'm sure a lot of it will be quite enlightening.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 10:36 pm

Here you go:

Tetrahedrite is a common ore of copper which also contains silver in approximately a 12:1 blend. It also contains iron pyrite, but unless your dwarves use elecrolysis then that's a useless rock to them. Sometimes you also get arsenic or zinc in your tetrahedrite. Look for this in hydrothermal areas and in metamorphic rocks.

Galena is the most common ore of silver; however, it produces about a hundred times as much lead as it does silver. Lead is generally considered a waste product of silver mining for this reason. It's found in the same rocks as zinc, meaning that dwarf mines which go for galena will generally produce zinc too.

Cinnabar is an ore of lead and mercury found near hot springs. It comes in large lumps, making it easy to extract. Unfortunately it's horribly toxic stuff: historically it was mined by slaves who regarded being sent to cinnabar mines as a death sentence. Aside from the metallic content, cinnabar makes a really good red pigment and was extensively used as a pottery glaze. Sulphur, chalcedony and some gems (especially opals) would be found near the same springs.

Gold is mostly found in IOCG (Iron oxide - copper - gold) discontinuities within very hard rock. As well as iron, copper and gold, these also produce small amounts of uranium. IOCG complexes are usually found in extremely hard rock but the ore is concentrated in fairly narrow productive seams that can run very deep.

If you're going to mine iron then you've got three main places to look, and one not very good place:

Banded iron deposits occur in otherwise extremely mineral poor sedimentary rocks like chert. They consist of distinctive thin layers of iron separated by chert, which when eroded or broken gives the rock a distinctive "banded" look, hence the name. Banded iron is common in very old weathered cherts like Australia, where it's widely mined. The bands are often only millimetres thick but occur in vast reefs (often hundreds of metres deep and extending for hundreds of kilometres.) Banded iron was almost all laid down between 2.4 and 1.8 billion years ago and no one knows why. You get small amounts of aluminium in this too but that needs electrolysis to extract.

DSO deposits are where iron-bearing rock has eroded away and the iron has been carried into an alluvial bed, which over time turns into a sedimentary rock. DSO deposits aren't very common. These are prized because the iron is generally in a very high purity that can be shipped directly to a steel mill rather than being refined on site, hence the name DSO (Direct Shipping Ore.) The other valuable thing about DSO is that since it's found in sedimentary rock, you often find coal nearby. Areas with coal and iron together are natural industrial heartlands. The downside of DSO is that the rock is often waterlogged, which can make mining a hassle.

Magnetite intrusion deposits are a thing you get from volcanic rock, where the iron ore is concentrated within the magma, then as it cools it produces very high-purity bubbles of iron within the igneous rock. In real life we only mine these in places where magma rises to the surface, like batholithic formations and volcanic regions. However, dwarves can dig far deeper than humans, so they may descend down to find these. Igneous rock is generally a good place to find gems, and is the only place you can find diamonds. Magnetite deposits in igneous rock are probably quite common, but digging into hard igneous rocks is such an expensive business that humans generally just make do with the surface deposits.

Iron sand is a thing which occurs when iron-rich rock gets eroded into sand. It's slightly magnetic which is awesome. It's a shitty source of iron, which we only exploit because we're surface dwellers and so basically suck when it comes to digging deep. Dwarves would, I assume, laugh at the stuff.

Nickel and manganese are usually found alongside iron.

Finally, tin is mainly found as casserite, which is available either from hard volcanic rocks like granite, or in alluvial beds where those volcanic rocks have been worn down into sand. Volcanic rocks which contain casserite often contain galena or wolfram (tungsten ore). As with other igneous rocks, you get gems there too.

Hope that helps!

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 10:56 pm

Very much thank you! That gives me a lot to think about.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 10:59 pm

Wow. In depth stuff, Laertes.

That actually reminds me of playing Dwarf Fortress because the developer of the game has incorporated semi-realistic geology into the game's design. When you smelt Tetrahedrite you get some amount of copper and silver, and when you're mining certain veins of certain minerals you'll find related materials along the way.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:08 pm

If it's useful to you then I can write up some other geological and geographical stuff which might be interesting in a fantasy world. I'm not a D&D player so I have no idea how relevant this stuff is, but it's always a shame when fictional world are less exotic than real ones.

I loved Dwarf Fortress but got bored of it fairly quickly. The reason they say that "losing is fun" is because it's the only thing that's fun: building a functional society is both really easy and really dull, and once it's done there's no challenge.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:23 pm

I certainly wouldn't be opposed to the idea.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:33 pm

A fantasy setting and the cultures thereof should make internal sense and be varied and exotic enough to be captivating. As you say, it's easy for a fantastic setting to be rather bland when you get down to it. And since the real world is a fantastically complicated, exotic, yet consistent place, using it to inform one's fictional setting makes a lot of sense.

This geology is interesting stuff and I'm sure I can poach a few elements from it to add some verisimilitude to what I'm working on. That said, don't put yourself out on this because most players lack the knowledge or give-a-damn to appreciate this degree of attention to detail.

The farthest out I've gone with real world workings effecting fantasy material was when I was DMing for a group composed mostly of PhD-track academics. I had a society of fire mages who used some super-materials to construct cities tethered to the bottom of giant tensegrity spheres. However, their math skills sucked and so they were using "three and a bit" as their definition of Pi. And when you are building spheres whose diameter is measured in football fields, their margin of error resulted in some enormous faults; the things worked, but required tremendous amounts of manpower (both magical and mundane) to stay aloft. Correcting these faults stopped the decline their society had entered, as well as ending the centuries-long ice age they'd inadvertently inflicted on the nations below. It was fun but only in that sort of group would I pull a detail like that.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:38 pm

Ideally (from my perspective), you could arrange that as a sort of cheat sheet. Say, as a tablecross referencing biome and desired material with the cells pointing to quick descriptions like above.

It doesn't even have to be exact or comprehensive; as long as it's close enough, it will be one fewer disbelief to suspend. it would also be fantastic if you can tuck in any major refinement notes (like the cinnabar mines being deadly).

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:51 pm

The reason I like using real-world stuff in games is because it allows players to be clever and to go off the rails without wrecking stuff. They can actually explore and improvise, and the stuff that they find will be consistent with everything else. That sort of verisimilitude is player-empowering, because it allows them to say "clearly there must be X here because there's Y and you always get X and Y together." It sucks people in and makes things memorable.

That dome story sounds awesome; that sounds immensely satisfying. I once ran a Dark Heresy game which required me to work out the demographics of a hive city. It was immensely satisfying in play and saved me a lot of heartbreak because when civilisation started to crumble and the PCs got involved with caste riots and sectarian violence, I knew what the knockon effects would be and I could present it to them in a meaningful way. People don't always have the attention to spot the tiny details, but they usually enjoy seeing the consequences of those tiny details play out in a plausible way.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Sun Jul 06, 2014 11:56 pm

Laertes wrote:Banded iron deposits occur in otherwise extremely mineral poor sedimentary rocks like chert. They consist of distinctive thin layers of iron separated by chert, which when eroded or broken gives the rock a distinctive "banded" look, hence the name. Banded iron is common in very old weathered cherts like Australia, where it's widely mined. The bands are often only millimetres thick but occur in vast reefs (often hundreds of metres deep and extending for hundreds of kilometres.) Banded iron was almost all laid down between 2.4 and 1.8 billion years ago and no one knows why. You get small amounts of aluminium in this too but that needs electrolysis to extract.

Given the time scale I think those iron deposits are remnants of the time when the Stromatolites tried to kill the planet by flooding the atmosphere with poisonous oxygen (they're still trying)

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 12:04 am

That's definitely a popular theory. Others include oceanic fallout from an asteroid impact and accretion during a snowball earth. In a fantasy world, of course, it may have a supernatural origin.

Edit: So now you've got me thinking about geology, and more specifically about how dwarves might see it. This is problematic, because as much as I love Tolkien I actually know basically shit about how modern fantasy dwarves would see the world. Therefore, I have a few questions which will inform what I come back to you with. Please don't answer these with "it depends on your campaign"; tell me about your campaign's answers for them.

- What is the average size of a dwarf city? What is the average age? Do they form immense clustered kingdoms or chains of scattered settlements? When the mines are exhausted, do they move on or remain there?

- Can dwarves grow underground crops? Can these underground crops feed them entirely, or only partially? Do they grow surface crops and keep surface animals when their settlements are near the surface?

- Do dwarves have any meaningful way to move vertically while carrying a heavy load? If so, is it a cheap and easy thing or is it a major piece of infrastructure?

- Do dwarves have any meaningful way to produce breathable air kilometres below the surface? Is this even a concern in D&D?

- Do dwarves have any way to see through rock? If so, how far?

- Do dwarves have any cheap and easy way to produce large amounts of heat without burning large quantities of coal? Magma doesn't count; much as we all love Dwarf Fortress magma is just too area-destructive to be useful industrially.

- Does the hardness of stone matter at all to dwarves? For reference, it matters tremendously to humans. Granitic stone can't really be mined without explosives, whereas mudstone and shale are so soft that cave ins are a real hazard. If they have magical means of avoiding it then this can all be circumvented.

- Do dwarves have any way of getting rid of spoil? If so, is it cheap and easily available, or is it a major piece of infrastructure?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 12:31 am

In fantasyland, the Iron Age was the period when FantasyEarth's magical fields were highly charged, and slowly transmuted exposed surfaces to iron. Periodic acute sublimation events and megastorms would lay down new layers of exposed silt, the surface of which would then ferrify.

Leading theories are that a wizard did it, because he needed a planet-sized capacitor.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 1:50 am

Laertes wrote: - What is the average size of a dwarf city? What is the average age? Do they form immense clustered kingdoms or chains of scattered settlements? When the mines are exhausted, do they move on or remain there?

Generally cities range in size from a few hundred to a thousand individuals. That's only considered a town to modern sensibilities, but in Medieval-land numbers are much smaller. By average age, do you mean of the individual dwarves or of the settlement? Assuming you mean the city... hard to say. In the generic "dwarves are in decline, and many holds have been lost" setting, the average age is pretty high since they're the fortresses that have withstood whatever it is that's been pushing out the dwarves (something on the order of 800 years old, but much, much older would exist too). In my setting, the dwarven cities are scattered because livable areas in the underground are rare and akin to oases in a vast, subterranean desert. The dwarves of my setting don't leave when the mines are exhausted. Minerals are an integral part of their metabolism, but most can be reclaimed and the loss is made up for via trade. A truly isolated dwarven hold would, eventually, have to leave once the minerals were exhausted beyond their ability to recycle them, but that'd take a looong time, assuming order is maintained.

Laertes wrote: - Can dwarves grow underground crops? Can these underground crops feed them entirely, or only partially? Do they grow surface crops and keep surface animals when their settlements are near the surface?

The dwarves can and do grow lots of underground crops, as these are integral for reclaiming the needed minerals from the settlement's waste. The dwarves actually have a much more efficient metabolism than equivalently large and active humanoids, but the cost of this efficiency is needing a wide range of minerals to act as catalysts (which are sooner or later liberated from the dwarf and can be reclaimed). Surface crops and animals are sometimes kept, but those are the exception rather than the norm. Most of what they need from the surface is acquired through trade, either directly from surface races or indirectly from other subterranean middlemen.

Laertes wrote: - Do dwarves have any meaningful way to move vertically while carrying a heavy load? If so, is it a cheap and easy thing or is it a major piece of infrastructure?

The dwarves harness a range of power sources when available to facilitate their labor. Water, wind, and beasts of burden are all used to power mechanisms for lifting and moving heavy loads. Archimedes Screws can be operated (manually or via mechanisms) to pump liquids or gravel (like in a grain elevator). These would, for the most part, constitute major pieces of architecture. In other words, if a settlement has a strong source of usable energy (a swift river or large waterfall, huge Minto Wheels suspended over magma, some magical perpetual motion device, etc.) it would be heavily harnessed as well as a major defining characteristic of that settlement.

Laertes wrote:- Do dwarves have any meaningful way to produce breathable air kilometres below the surface? Is this even a concern in D&D?

I would argue the dwarves of my setting are able to handle low oxygen environments better than your average human, however we're not talking supernatural levels... probably more on the level of what the naked mole rat can tolerate. Still, air of some variety is needed but given that most DnD settings presuppose a world riddled with continent-spanning cavern complexes, air of at least a minimum level of quality can be taken as a given. Of course, tunnels to, if not the surface than at least a shallower, more breathable cavern, would probably be common to ensure air quality.

Laertes wrote: - Do dwarves have any way to see through rock? If so, how far?

Not in my setting. The dwarves boast a large-ish number of clerics so divinations or summoning stone-swimming critters to scout about are available, but they'd be used sparingly; knowledge of geology would be the baseline tool.

Laertes wrote: - Do dwarves have any cheap and easy way to produce large amounts of heat without burning large quantities of coal? Magma doesn't count; much as we all love Dwarf Fortress magma is just too area-destructive to be useful industrially.

I'd probably allow for handwaving this with some sort of alchemy to produce coal-level heat without actually requiring coal or charcoal. I will admit that this is a cop out because thematically you need sweltering smithies full of heat and flame, but I don't want a high-magic setting where every smelter and forge contains a fire elemental or pools of salamander blood or what-have-you.

Laertes wrote: - Does the hardness of stone matter at all to dwarves? For reference, it matters tremendously to humans. Granitic stone can't really be mined without explosives, whereas mudstone and shale are so soft that cave ins are a real hazard. If they have magical means of avoiding it then this can all be circumvented.

DnD doesn't really differentiate between stone hardness (it's all hardness: 8 be it shale, limestone, or basalt) unless that stone is actually a metal (e.g. iron has a hardness of 10, adamantine has a hardness of 20). I'd be willing to allow for differences to keep the world from being too bizarre and then assuming that low-level magic or alchemy or something can provide tools which treat all stone as equally mine-able.

Laertes wrote:- Do dwarves have any way of getting rid of spoil? If so, is it cheap and easily available, or is it a major piece of infrastructure?

I don't understand this question? If you mean organic waste, then yes the dwarves have many organisms and substances available to break down and recycle waste. If I'm misinterpreting your question, please elaborate.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 3:29 am

Laertes wrote: - What is the average size of a dwarf city? What is the average age? Do they form immense clustered kingdoms or chains of scattered settlements? When the mines are exhausted, do they move on or remain there?

That's kind of a sticky question, the dwarves of Sarindor basically inhabit only the mountain range at the edge of the great desert and while they have distinct cities they don't really consider them separate and actively work to connect them through mine shafts. So if you were to ask them how large their cities are they would say there is only one dwarven city and it holds the entire dwarven race. In reality dwarven there are very few dwarven cities those hold a few hundred to a few thousand dwarves while other members of the race live in fortified mining outposts that double as seeds for new cities. The dwarves don't really have anywhere to go when their mines are exhausted, there's the densely populated peninsula or the seeming endless and impenetrable desert where it is not uncommon to see monsters the size of sky scrapers, so you only go there if you really, really, don't have a choice. The dwarves do to their best to conserve their mineral resources and they also seed spent shafts with new minerals which a dedicated corp of magicians slowly, slowly over several generations grow into new veins to help ensure they never get pushed to that point.

- Can dwarves grow underground crops? Can these underground crops feed them entirely, or only partially? Do they grow surface crops and keep surface animals when their settlements are near the surface?

Yes, they can there is an ecosystem based on thermal vents but dwarves also live on top of their mountains as well as under them and do produce agriculture there when possible. As for animals, they can't really support large herd animals, but sometimes they do farm smaller animals, and often you will see mighty herds of cats being driven from one city to another for trade.

- Do dwarves have any meaningful way to move vertically while carrying a heavy load? If so, is it a cheap and easy thing or is it a major piece of infrastructure?

They have carts, rocks, and gravity. If that isn't enough they add dwarf power to their pulley systems to supplement it.

- Do dwarves have any meaningful way to produce breathable air kilometres below the surface? Is this even a concern in D&D?

They can't create air, but they don't need as much, being like rocks, they pump the fresh air they do need in from above ground and stale air out with that same pressure.

- Do dwarves have any way to see through rock? If so, how far?

Not more than anyone else, diviners exist and the dwarves wouldn't pass up such a resource, but such mystics are limited to a few thousand feet so they're really more useful for figuring out if there are any new veins next to an existing shaft. For all else they rely on luck, gumption, and geological knowledge.

- Do dwarves have any cheap and easy way to produce large amounts of heat without burning large quantities of coal? Magma doesn't count; much as we all love Dwarf Fortress magma is just too area-destructive to be useful industrially.

Magma, now hear me out!

A very long time ago the gnomes figured out how to produce a crystalline substance that was too brittle to be of use to them, but had the peculiar ability to stand up to extremely intense heat without melting. You would, for all intents and purposes, have to throw it into the sun to melt a chunk of any real size. Now the Gnomes have a very simple philosophy, other people are just fine so long as those people are far away (gnomes have very sensitive hearing so being near other races often ends up being painful for them) but even if you have almost no contact with the outside eventually word gets out and the dwaves saw a use for this material. The gnomes have little use for gold or weapons but the dwarves have fair technicians and mages and together these specialists invented a specialized peice of head where which dampens surrounding noise. In exchange for these wonders of dwarven magiscience the gnomes agreed to help them create great pipelines and basins of this crystal through which dwarven mages can pump molten magma up into the forges.

- Does the hardness of stone matter at all to dwarves? For reference, it matters tremendously to humans. Granitic stone can't really be mined without explosives, whereas mudstone and shale are so soft that cave ins are a real hazard. If they have magical means of avoiding it then this can all be circumvented.

Not really, if it comes down to it dwarves can melt rocks if they really need to, but dwarven miners are fairly good at finding structural weaknesses in rock, allowing them to break sections of hard rock as for soft rocks dwarves simply work very slowly and carefully and to their best to avoid cave ins.

- Do dwarves have any way of getting rid of spoil? If so, is it cheap and easily available, or is it a major piece of infrastructure?

They have carts and mountain goats for pulling, though they usually use any organic material they have for compost to grow as much as they can.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:07 am

Spoil is the word for waste rock/earth/whatever from mining. Since not everything you pull out is worth refining, or worth anything at all, but it needs to be out of your way and there's not much space in a mineshaft, it has to go somewhere.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:08 am

Oh, so rocks and stuff, they use it to make the freight systems they use to transport heavy loads upwards. To get to the freight systems they use carts and goats.

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Mon Jul 07, 2014 4:17 am

If you'll allow me to put in some answers for my own earthdawn-like campaign setting and get a response as well...

Laertes wrote: - What is the average size of a dwarf city? What is the average age? Do they form immense clustered kingdoms or chains of scattered settlements? When the mines are exhausted, do they move on or remain there?

The dwarves (and everyone else) just recently (within the past 50 years) got through a major "demons invaded the mortal world from the hell planes" apocalypse. They were protected by underground bunkers that the demons could not simply teleport to the inside of. Their settlements are at this point usually only the underground bunker and a small settlement outside of it, though some larger locations have built larger cities up around the original core (like Minas Tirith perhaps). Many live in fear of demons returning suddenly, so they don't settle too far from their bunkers if their bunkers are still functional. More towards the scattered settlements side of things.

When a non-fortified mine is near exhausted they'd generally "move on to greener pastures" (so to speak). Most mining operations don't have the advanced resources to work a site to the actual limit, though many assume that as civilization rebuilds itself they can come back to these partly-worked mines later if they need to. Some crews might even be 10 dwarves or less attempting to find what they can, very individualistically. Larger mining operations of dozens to hundreds of dwarves do exist, but are very rare at the moment (perhaps no more than a handful of such sites across the entire "known world").

When a mine connected to a fortified location is exhausted then they'll naturally cease mining, but non-miners will continue to live there purely for the better protections it affords. In some ways this is perhaps the opposite of the ghost towns that form in the real world.

Populations on the whole are still towards the smaller side, but they've got a great amount of magical assistance in the more advanced areas.

Laertes wrote: - Can dwarves grow underground crops? Can these underground crops feed them entirely, or only partially? Do they grow surface crops and keep surface animals when their settlements are near the surface?

Yes, and they're actually very good at this. They survived entirely underground, sealed off from the surface and from other settlements for about 500 years. In modern times they're beginning to grow herds back to larger sizes, as well as surface crops, but most land is still scorched from demons, and it takes a lot of magical energy to get soil back into good enough shape for it to support any plant life larger than sagebrush and grasses (most of the surface looks like Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, etc).

Laertes wrote: - Do dwarves have any meaningful way to move vertically while carrying a heavy load? If so, is it a cheap and easy thing or is it a major piece of infrastructure?

Underground, Dwarves mostly just have elevator and pulley technology, but it's towards the "major infrastructure" sort if you want a proper large elevator. As an even more major installation, some sites can invest in magical levitation platforms, which can potentially hold more weight and cross larger distances while remaining more stable, but it's prohibitively expensive to build new ones at the moment and mostly only the old ones still exist.

Above ground, should it matter, there are airships (the "wooden boats enchanted to fly" kind, not really the blimp kind), but very few new ones have been built since returning to the surface, so most of them are over 500 years old and a little rickety. Also, race other than dwarves control most of the airships.

Laertes wrote: - Do dwarves have any meaningful way to produce breathable air kilometres below the surface? Is this even a concern in D&D?

Yes, they do. Elementalists can use magic to create clean air within a cavern, and filter away the old air. Considering that up until recently it was one of the most vital magical skills to have practiced, we'll say that it's as common as someone having a Doctorate in the United States (about 1.6% of the population).

Laertes wrote: - Do dwarves have any way to see through rock? If so, how far?

Dwarves can't personally see through rock, though they can occasionally summon Earth Elementals to scout into the surface. A summoned elemental would be able to "look around" within say 100 yards or so. Information from an Elemental isn't always the clearest, but they can generally at least identify the composition of an area at least (metal, gems, stone, dirt, open gaps, etc).

Laertes wrote: - Do dwarves have any cheap and easy way to produce large amounts of heat without burning large quantities of coal? Magma doesn't count; much as we all love Dwarf Fortress magma is just too area-destructive to be useful industrially.

A summoned Fire Elemental produces heat without burning fuel. Let's say that a human sized fire elemental is equivalent to a human sized bonfire of wood, and that they are summoned for a few hours each, and can generally be summoned again once they disappear (as long as the Elementalist stays awake). If a major mine had many Elementalists they could keep several fire elementals standing around all 24 hours of the day. More powerful fire elementals would be hotter fires (if that's needed), but would require more talented Elementalists to summon (naturally those would be less common).

Laertes wrote: - Does the hardness of stone matter at all to dwarves? For reference, it matters tremendously to humans. Granitic stone can't really be mined without explosives, whereas mudstone and shale are so soft that cave ins are a real hazard. If they have magical means of avoiding it then this can all be circumvented.

Elementalists can adjust the hardness of stone, either making it harder or softer, and this is considered a fairly easy task, though it can be draining. At a pace that could be sustained all day, perhaps a cubic yard of stone could be made twice as hard or half as hard as it's base material every few minutes. (I have no idea if this is the most insanely revolutionary rate ever or if it's totally insignificant on the industrial scale or what, so that's just my starting estimate for how fast such an ability would work; I know they'd have it at all, I just don't know how fast is a "good rate" to set).

Laertes wrote: - Do dwarves have any way of getting rid of spoil? If so, is it cheap and easily available, or is it a major piece of infrastructure?

This is one of the things they actually can't just magically do so easily. I'd imagine that spoiled material has to be diverted somewhere basically the same way that you would in the real world.