Dwarves

Former smiths to the Gods

Profile

Average Lifespan	~350 - 400 years
Typical Size	Medium; 4'4" - 4'10"; stock
Homelands	Nav'golam and other areas of the Underworld
Languages	Dwarvish, Trade-tongue
Faiths	Not bound to any faith, though some still feel a connection to Jutus
Temperament	Stoic, stubborn, pragmatic

Overview

The Dwarves are among the oldest mortal peoples to walk the lands of Skazka, forged in the deep places where mountains root themselves in streams of molten metal. Once servants of the gods, they were metalsmiths, miners, and artisans of unparalleled skill, their craft so fine it shaped the very tools with which creation was reshaped. Yet, for all their glory and devotion, their early history is steeped in betrayal, servitude, and rebellion. From those trials arose a people whose spirit burns with the fire of freedom, whose loyalty is as unyielding as stone, and whose legacy is carved into the bones of the earth itself.

At the heart of the Dwarven spirit lies an unshakable desire for freedom and self-determination. Their lives are driven by the memory of betrayal, and every hammer strike, every vein of ore mined, and every work of art forged becomes a declaration of independence. They value loyalty above riches, for they know how costly betrayal can be, and they place friendship and honor higher than life itself. Wrath comes easily to them when faced with treachery, but so too does fierce devotion to those who earn their trust. Their contests of strength, love of gambling, and endless drive to create reflect a worldview shaped by hardship but not defeated by it. For the Dwarves, life is both a wager and a forge—each moment a chance to shape destiny anew.

In the world of Skazka, Dwarves stand as a people apart yet indispensable. Their cities, particularly Nav’Golam, are bastions of stability and strength in the perilous depths, attracting trade, alliances, and respect. Though mistrustful of gods and those who embody deceit, Dwarves are legendary allies to mortals and nations who prove themselves worthy. Their loyalty is enduring, their word ironclad, and their bonds stronger than steel. While their hatred for Lolth and her kind ensures eternal conflict in the Underworld, on the surface and beyond, their reputation as smiths, warriors, and steadfast companions makes them a cornerstone of wider civilization. Wherever they dwell, they integrate through labor, craft, and unflinching honor, carving their place not through conquest but through the enduring weight of their character.

Physiology & Traits

Dwarves are compact powerhouses—about four and a half feet tall, barrel-chested, iron-boned, with thick forearms and calves built for toil and battle. Faces run square and blunt, eyes set deep like coals; hair grows coarse and abundant, and beards are a point of pride for most adults (men certainly, many women too), braided with beads, clasps, and rings that declare lineage or guild. Dimorphism is a quiet seam rather than a cleft: males trend a thumb taller with heavier brows and gravel-deep voices; females carry a steadier fire and often outlast in cold tunnels. Their sight is made for dim spaces—reading texture and shadow, hairline cracks and tool marks, and the faint color shifts that tell good ore from bad.

Born with mountain in the marrow, dwarves keep a handful of quiet miracles. They “stone-bind,” reading load, fault, and age from a wall’s chill; their forge-hard constitutions shrug off poison, stale air, and fever like sparks off an anvil; and their oaths knot so tightly that even sorcery strains to pry them loose. Feet “hear” through timber and rock—the tremor of carts, the rhythm of pick and footfall—while their hands know true heat, judging temper and brittleness by touch alone. None of it is flashy; it’s the kind of steadiness that holds a roof, mends a breach, and gets a people home.

Culture & Society

Dwarven society measures worth by what endures: an oath kept, a tool that holds its edge, a shift finished without complaint. Law is literal—plain words carved in stone, few loopholes—yet enforced with a craftsperson’s pragmatism: fix what you broke, pay what you owe, and don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Markets are orderly and loud with hammers; ledgers sit beside altars, because contracts are half scripture, half shop-talk.

Their forges still feel like temples to the old god-bargains. Oath-steel must not fail, measures must be true, and no sworn pattern is sold without release; every workshop stamps a clan-mark beside a contract rune. Family is a tight braid of blood, clan, and guild: children are raised at the hearth-circle, apprenticed early to a craft aunt or uncle, and adoption by deed counts as birth. Life is tallied in rites—Hearth-Presentation (soot and a ledger entry), Beard-Binding or Ring-Braiding at coming of age, and a signed Craft-Oath that binds apprentice to guild—each vow another ring in the timber of a life meant to last.

Faith & Myth

Dwarven faith starts at the tomb-wall, not the altar. Halls honor ancestral masters—the smith who solved a stubborn alloy, the delver who mapped a deadly seam—by keeping their tools oiled, their maxims posted above the bench, and their names rung before first strike. In their oldest myth, when mountains still cooled, the high powers drafted a great Contract and raised a people from bedrock to be makers: dwarves, tempered from ore-veins and fault-lines to forge the tools of creation. They labored by clause and measure, learning star-iron and true temper, until the Contract’s gilding showed its teeth and service hardened into bondage—a lesson engraved in every ledger: know the terms you swear, and who they serve.

Rites are work-born. First Fire rekindles the coals each morning as the masters’ names are rung; Steel & Ink seals a pact with a tap on the anvil; Stonewake tolls nine slow strikes for the dead. They read omens like craftsmen: a hammer’s first blow that sings clear and long—good luck; a dull thud warns hidden flaw; a coal that brightens after the bellows stop—an ancestor’s approval. Festivals are loud with anvils and ledgers, reverent not to distant gods but to the craft that keeps halls standing and debts paid.

Subspecies

Dwarven kind is one people tempered by many stones, their clans diverging where work and mountain shaped them: Mountain halls keep the old law and weight of ancestry; Deep delvers prize caution and fault-reading where rock sweats; sun-browned Hill folk braid trade roads to the underhalls; soot-flecked Emberborn chase the perfect alloy at roaring forges; the stern Greybound (duergar) hold to hard bargains and deed-first honor; and airy Rift spanwrights string bridges across chasms, measuring worth by the steadiness of a step. All share the ledger and the anvil, but each reads the mountain in a different script.

Mountain Dwarves

The old standard of the clans: broad-shouldered, methodical, and tradition-forward. They keep the grand under-mountain halls, curate the tomb-walls, and enforce Steel & Ink to the letter; their tools are austere, overbuilt, and meant to outlast dynasties. Hall-kin

Deep delvers

Pale-eyed and quiet-voiced, they live near heat and pressure where stone “sweats.” Masters of ventilation, shoring, and fault-reading, they prize caution over glory and judge worth by how many lives a plan saves. Delvers

Hill Dwarves

Surface-facing farmers, quarrymen, and teamsters who stitch valleys to halls with roads and bridges. Sun-browned and gregarious, they handle most trade caravans and keep festivals loud, but their ledgers are as exact as any hall’s.Lowstone

Emberforged

Soot-marked, heat-hardy lines raised in great foundries; their skin freckled from sparks, their lungs trained to long shifts. They chase alloy problems like puzzles and stamp maker’s marks with proud notches naming the masters they “echo.”Forge-kin

Rift walkers

Bridge-builders and cable-men who live over chasms and along cliff roads. Balance and rhythm are their creed; they judge a leader by how steady their step is on a swaying catwalk and a clan by how silent its rivets sit in the wind.Rifters

Greybound

Once proud kin, the Greybound did not renounce Lolth—they cleaved to Her. Their oaths remain webbed to the Spider Queen, renewed in seasons of fear and ambition; many bear living silk sigils rather than scars. They do not call it bondage but contract. Lean, spare, and vigilant, they prize deed-before-display only insofar as it tightens the web, rebuilding stature through impeccable craft and binding terms layered with web-clauses. Their taboos invert the mountain’s: never break a clause once spun; never grant a gift without leverage; never leave an agreement without a catch. Trust is earned one precise snare at a time; mercy is measured, and their fairness is absolute to the letter, not the spirit.Duergar

Stonewake

Stonewake is the year’s grave-quiet rite: at dusk the hall banks its forges, names of the dead are read from the ledger, and the anvil is struck nine times so the mountain “remembers.” Each ancestor’s tool is brought from its wall-niche, oiled, and set briefly to work by the heir who bears their craft line—echoing the hand—then returned with a fresh scrap of cloth and a notch marked in the ledger. Quarrels pause, guest-right widens, and fines are forgiven if restitution is made before the ninth strike; only truth is spoken on Stonewake, and only the worthy are named, so that the living feel the weight they must carry without cracking.

Unbinding

Unbinding is the vow hammered into freedom: at Chainquench, red-hot links of old chain are plunged into snow troughs with a hiss like dying serpents, then drawn to the anvil and reforged into door-bands and oath-rings—iron that once held a dwarf now bars danger and binds only by consent. The rite recalls the loophole that broke the god-contract, so contracts today are sealed under Steel & Ink with the same care, and a notch is cut beside the clan mark to show the work serves the work, not the wielder. By taboo, no link quenched in Unbinding may ever be shaped back into fetter or collar; to do so would call the mountain’s memory against you.

Duergar

The duergar—Greybound to the halls above—still serve Lolth, their oaths knotted in living silk and signed in blood-ink clauses only spiders fully read. Lean, silent, and surgical in their craft, they prize results over reputation and weave web-clauses into every contract: leverage, favors, silence—nothing is free, everything is binding. Their forges burn low and cold to keep secrets; tools carry eight-point stamps and hair-thin barbs, beautiful and cruel. Ancestral niches hold reliquaries wrapped in spider silk; apprentices swear to “spin true” before a brazier of chitin and iron. Taboos invert the mountain’s: mercy without terms is folly, guest-right ends at the threshold, and a tool taken may be kept if the contract was weak. To outsiders they are impeccably polite and predatory; to Lolth they are the hammer-hand of the web, remaking dwarven craft into instruments of patience, entrapment, and exquisite inevitability.

Beards not compulsory

Not all female dwarves grow beards, and among those who do, not all choose to wear them. Beard growth varies by bloodline and region—common in mountain and emberborn clans, rarer among hill and rift folk—and hormones, age, and craft stresses (forge heat, ore dust) can thicken or thin growth over a lifetime. Culture makes the rest: some women keep full braids as a mark of lineage; others shave for visor fit, workshop safety, or simple preference; many who don’t beard at all ring-braid their head hair with the same clan tokens used in beards. Status isn’t tied to facial hair but to oath and workmanship: a clean-chinned master with a ledger of flawless proofs is honored as readily as a matriarch whose beard bears five generations of rings.