Ourworld:Dwarves

The Dwarves of the World Spine Mountains.

The first, last and most important fact about the Dwarves: they have no soul. All other things flow from this fact. A Dwarf is an animated Dwarven body, to speak otherwise is to lie. What then animates a dwarven body? His name. An unnamed Dwarf is a corpse, and that is really all there is to say on the matter.

This has some rather serious ramifications for the mountain folk. Most notably they canot be ressurected , for this involves finding a soul which has fled its earthly home and entreating it to take up residence once more, and since there is no resident to appeal to, no resurrection may be had. Of course powerful dwarven clerics can apeal to the ancestors for a name to be restored to a worthy, fallen dwarven hero, and this has much the same effect as a reserection does on a human. The proviso here is that if a new dwarven child has been given the same name, then the Dwarf in wuestion cannot be raised in any way. Also the table for the "reincarnate" spell if cast on a dwarf is as follows ; 00-99:Dwarf. There are also more subtle ramifications of the Dwarves' unity of mind and body, not least of which is a Dwarves' extreme difficulty dealing with anything other than the most literal interpretation of a statement. Many is the Keltoi Druid who has been reduced to tears trying to explain a counterfactual "If ...Then" statement to a Dwarf. Indead dwarves are on the whole a literal minded and straightfoward people, whith the average dwarf displaying the literal mindedness found only in the most small minded pedant amongst humans.

Dwarven Trade

The dwarves are mercantile in the extreem, some would say mercenary. They operate large "Banks" , though these too show the dwarven tendancy towards concrete realities, namely, the concept of "interest" or even "credit" have little impact on dwarves, instead they refuse to deal with someone who can not pay on delivery, and merely charge fees to look after your money/items based on the size of the item and the time it is to be stored for. It should also be noted that dwarves are master artisans, and they quality of their goods commands a high price. In addition the giants who live in the mountains have on more than one occaision kidnapped dwarves and forced them to create giant sized weapons. The dwarves have in their usual manner turned tragady into cash by using the expertise in making such weapons and selling the products to the nearby plains dwellers, charging an aceptably high price for such rarities of course.

See Also

Ourworld
Societies	Keltoi, Laideann, Ailokim, Teleri, Goliaths, Goblinoids_and_surrounds, Dwarves, Orcs, Ashlands