Dwarves.

One of the three original races of Aromathus. Originally included in the world, I will admit, because it was developed as a gaming world; a world where everything that had a place in D&D would have a home for my friends and I to play around with. And that was where it stopped for a long time.

Why is that? Well, as I said in my article on the elves, when my friend and I cooked up the world, we split the races up. At that time, I was new to fantasy, and found I liked elves. My friend, on the other hand, really liked dwarves. He tended to play dwarves in RPG campaigns, and went as far as to create several pages of background and history (which were lamentably lost at some point. Heh… The long lost history of the dwarves.) The split was natural, and so the dwarves were born.

In the beginning, he decided that, as in Dragonlance, there were two major “factions” of dwarves – the Togress (or mountain) dwarves, living in the vast and ancient clan holds of central Aromathus, and the Kragon (or hill) dwarves, living north of the plains of Grummish. They worshiped a noble god of the forge named Voluge, fought hard, and liked to drink ale. All in all, pretty typical fantasy fair.

Yet even as I became more involved with fantasy, my friend’s hobbies changed. He liked to build and tinker with wood, building furniture, a kayak, and eventually even starting on a catamaran. So as he left fantasy behind, Aromathus became more my own, by mutual consent. Yet the dwarves continued to linger incomplete. I never really cared much about them, and so they remained at the nebulous stage he’d left them – some work done, some history, but nothing like I’d done for the elves – let alone the humans.

Then I finally read Tolkien, shortly after the first Lord of the Rings movie came out, and I suddenly understood his love for dwarves.

Gimli has always been my favorite of Tolkiens hero’s. Irascible, gruff- even surly, yet an implacable for of evil, a stalwart ally, and a good friend. Here was a hero I could relate too very strongly. And so my own love affair of dwarves began.

I started playing more and more dwarves in the RPG campaigns that I’d started playing in again (With the death of TSR and the end of college, I had taken a few years off from RPG’s… but that’s another story). My first character after the pause - and still one of my favorite - was a dwarven priest of Clangaddin Silverbeard, set in Wizard’s of the Coast’s Forgotten Realms. He was a roving troubleshooter for his church, and that band of heroes – a noble half-orc barbarian, an elf wizard who liked to blow things up, and a human rogue who could never find a trap, are still some of the best characters I have ever played, or played with.

It was reading about the dwarves of the Realms (as well as watching John Rys Davies masterful performance as Gimli) that really started to shape the dwarves of Aromathus. Certainly, they will always have the flavor that my friend gave them (There is a reason that the dwarves greatest hero is called Grudging Granite Smasher. I’m just not sure what, since he’s not my hero!), and like the elves, some of that is coming from Dragonlance’s Krynn. Yet, unlike the elves, the dwarves are far more my creation, owing more to Tolkien than to anything else.

Consider the stereotypical dwarf, as we’ve already discussed. Lives under ground, and so is short. Also gruff - even surly. Greedy. Likes to drink and can really hold his liquor. On the other hand, brave and stalwart. Courageous. A fierce foe of evil.

When I began writing ADWD, I decided very early on that one of the characters would be a priest of Voluge, god of the dwarves. Yet he wouldn’t be a dwarf – he’d be human. This was my own little way of thumbing my nose at the stereotypical “game novel fantasy.” Yes, Aromathus is a Tolkien-esque world, based on an RPG world. But if it was ever going to be more than that (and I wanted it to be), I had to avoid those clichés even while honoring them.

And so two characters of ADWD were born – Logan, a human raised by dwarves (and more than a little clueless about how to interact with humans as a result), and Tordak Darkbeard, Shield Brother of Voluge. These two characters – ney, people – illustrate a great deal about the dwarves, and I’ll talk briefly about their history now.

The dwarves, as stated, are one of the three original races of the world. Created by Voluge, the soul forger, they represent his philosophy of order. This is why his people are tied so closely to the earth – for only from the earth can order come. Not like the elves, flitting from tree to tree as the spirits move them, or the orcs, who lust only for power and conquest – no, the dwarves like order.

This is why the dwarves are builders, makers, creators. To build is to leave behind. Just as Voluge made them, the dwarves are master craftsmen. Order lasts. Order is strong, and stable.

See where I’m going? I could beat this horse until it’s dead, but I think you get the point. Yes, I know it’s a standard of fantasy for dwarves to believe this, but it’s also a necessary starting point: The original three races of Aromathus have three very different philosophies: Elves are good, believing that they should always do what is right. It isn’t the how or the why of the right – simply that it is right. They have little use for law or structure, simply doing what their conscience tells them is good and pure. Orcs, as you know by now, are the opposite, believing in strength through chaos, change, and conquest.

Dwarves follow a middle road. Stability and order allow progress – slow and unchanging, yet inexorable, like a river, flowing to the future. Dwarves make the world around them better, but slowly – and then they step back to enjoy what they have made over a pint of ale.

This explains just about everything about dwarves. For example, their hatred of orcs becomes obvious – chaos is baaaaaaad. It also explains why they find elves flighty and just plain weird (at best), and often almost as bad as orcs – society needs structure, and most elves just don’t believe in that enough to satisfy your average dwarf.

It also explains why dwarves love to build and carve, and mine precious minerals. These things are permanent, unchanging. They provide order.

Yet the dwarves are not simply stoic builders. First of all, like any good builder, they know how to have fun after a hard day at work. So while a working dwarf may seem surly – after all, even when you enjoy your work, it’s still work – dwarves know how to have fun afterwards. This is why Voluge made sure that all dwarves like to feast and celebrate, and also can do so for a long time. What better way to relax and celebrate a job well done than with a few good, stout ales? And if it turns up the dainty noses of other races like elves? Well, that’s just an added bonus, even if the dwarves would never admit it.

See where I’m going? One basic concept, and everything about dwarven culture and life suddenly makes sense.

Moving beyond that, though, is their history. More than any other race, dwarves remember. Elves live longer, and so treasure history as well, but not like a dwarf. Dwarves carve things in stone. They treasure those memories, learning from them, yet allowing them to shape the way of things to come.

This is why the dwarves held men to the treaty that started the great wars, for example. Elves may have remembered the treaty, even having spoken to elders who were there, but the dwarves remember. Their elders and lore masters tell the tales to their children, so that they might tell their children in turn.

Now you can see why dwarves make such bitter foes as well as such wonderful allies, right? To this day, dwarves really don’t trust humans as a result of their oath breaking at the time of the great wars. Individually, a human may earn a dwarves’ trust, but that betrayal in the past is always there, at the back of their minds. On the other hand, when a human does earn a dwarf’s trust, he or she will be their ally to all nine hells and back.

A few other points from dwarven history are pertinent as well. The first of these was the split that occurred among the clans during the great wars. It is a testament to just how deeply the coming of men to Aromathus affected the dwarves that this split occurred. Consider: Several clans, giving up all the order and stability of the dwarves' ancient clan holds, simply packing up and leaving, venturing across the Togress mountains into lands unknown, simply to avoid the chaos caused by humans. The effects of this on the dwarves are still being felt now, almost 800 years later. As a result, the Togress dwarves resent the humans even more: trust is hard to come by.

Another point is just why dwarves dislike most magic. This also comes from their orderly nature. Think about it: What is magic, really? At its core, it’s a cheat of order, allowing a mortal to do that which he has no business doing. Divine magic – healing magic – builds and restores order. But the magic of a mage calls down fire, creates things that weren’t there – reshapes things into what Voluge never made them to be – and so a wizard’s magic is NEVER be trusted.

There is much more to the dwarves as well – some of it written down by me, some not yet. The reasons why dwarven priests speak a dead language called dwalish and have a language of runes, for example. Or why the strongest epithet a dwarf can call down relates to either the beard or gonads of Voluge. And why all dwarves speak with a Scottish accent. (Don’t ask. They just do. OK? THEY JUST DO!) Yet that is really beyond the scope of this article.

What I will say is that dwarves feature more prominently in book two of the Plains Knight trilogy than they do in ADWD, and some of the dwarves own “magic” will come through. Rest assured, the dwarves of Aromathus, while owing a lot to Tolkien, are different, as I hope you can see, and I also hope you’ll enjoy getting to know them more in the future along with me.

Just remember: No one tosses a dwarf.