Dungeons and Dragons Lore: Dwarves (part one)

Hey there everyone, AJ back again for the Mighty Gluestick channel, I make videos about Dungeons and Dragons lore full time and have a collection of hundreds of monster ecology and strategy videos on my channel, including a complete A to Z of the core monster manual, if you like what I do, please consider subscribing as I upload quite often. This week we are delving into one of the most iconic player character races of Dungeons and Dragons, the Dwarves, the Stout Folk, the Children of Moradin. Their story begins beyond the Astral Plane in the seven mountain heavens of Celestia, there, in his sacred soul forge in Celestia, the god Moradin created the first Dwarves, from there, he reached out across the multiverse and placed his creations made in his own image deep within many worlds. Nobody knows exactly when this occurred in the world of Toril, but we know that they appeared very deep in the Underdark, somewhere below the Yehamel mountain ranges. They were instructed and guided by Moradin, who had instilled within them the many virtues and strengths. They shared his animosity towards all orcs, towards the god Grumsh and the god Maglubiyet, as well as the archdevil Asmodeus. They shared his alliance with the gods Pelor and Bahamut. They were charged with the sacred task of removing the orcs from the world, destroying the followers of Grumsh, to never run from an honourable fight and never kill each other. Moradin taught them how to read the stone and craft items from it and from the metal inside it, accepting their efforts as gifts when they brought forth their first precious metals and gave him praise at their sacred forges, where he stood among them, teaching them how to instill magic into their tools and weapons. They became highly skilled, full of pride in their creations and worked tirelessly to try their best to match the perfection of Moradin's crafts. This became such a strong connection to their god that, to this day, working at a forge, crafting and refining their skills is as powerful as a form of prayer that can actually be harnessed as a divine force, it even powers some of their most impressive spelljamming space vessels. Legend has it that one dwarf sought to emulate Moradin's greatest work and attempted to create life itself, but this was not what Moradin had instructed them to do and he was furious with them, casting them out into the darkness for their arrogance, believing they could be the equal of a god, this was the origin of the demented and accursed Dero race, forever henceforth the enemies of all goodly dwarves. Even from the earliest days, the dwarves were given special instructions by Moradin on how to combat orcs, they were given tips from Bahamut on how best to fight evil dragons and Pelor instructed them on combating fiends from the lower planes. These elite holy warriors became known as the Hammers of Moradin and every clan across the world of Toril has members that received this training in some form or another, becoming crusaders, fighting clerics and commanders of dwarven armies. They, like the clerical orders and most ordinary dwarves, give praise in hearths and forges, sacrificing melted metals to Moradin on the holy days of the crescent moon. To them, it reminds them of the white-hot crucible of Moradin as he poured life into his children within the soulforge, it is not just the special qualities of mithril that makes them value it above all other metals, it is the brilliant white silver of it that reminds them of pure moonlight. They alone have actually managed to capture, distill and craft moonlight into items itself, and they can't do it without the perfection of a perfect mithril miller, so perhaps there is some deeper connection, who knows. The earliest days of the dwarves saw them migrate on a long and dangerous trek to the surface of the world, deep beneath the folded and outthrust granite of the tallest mountains on the planet. The Yehamel region comprises many ranges of mountains, it has mountains that range from 15,000 feet or 4580 meters to an incredible 30,000 or 9,140 meters which is actually higher than Mount Everest above 30,000 feet. This mighty group of mountain ranges are also known as the Mountains of Snow and forms the primary barrier between the three continents of Faerun, Karatua and Zakhara. Conditions on the surface are cold and quite often very dry in the Yehamel mountain ranges, the dwarves are a hardy folk though and tend to make the best of whatever resources they can find, they have famously sturdy digestive systems that are less reliant on fruits and vegetables in their diet as they metabolize their own vitamin C. Unlike many other humanoids, they can survive on a diet of mostly meats, fungus and tend to ferment things to provide sterile beverages to drink and things like vinegar, which not only helps them preserve food, it also helps combat fungal spores. Dwarven cuisine is often described as bland, hard, long-lasting, tooth-breaking, serviceable and very reliable but not enjoyable. They tend to keep good stocks of basic survival rations on hand at all times and gather any available food sources from the area, rather than relying on their emergency food stores, which is a trait that all dwarves tend to share. With a backpack full of iron-tinned rations, the dwarf will still hunt for fresh game and gather fruits and fresh water for a hearty stew, often cooked over a fire directly in their metal helmet. The dwarves took to agriculture and horticulture as soon as they reached the surface world, already well prepared for it, they had a fondness for root vegetables such as carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, kohlrabi, rutabaga, potatoes, yams and hearty greens like leeks and cabbage. The Ahamalkan region is poorly suited to growing grain crops such as wheat and corn, so dwarves' most ancient recipes do not feature any grains at all except for alpine flower seeds. Infamous dwarven trail bread is made from gluten free ingredients and is so rock hard that people legitimately mistake the loaves for some sort of light stone throwing weapons. Dwarves break up the loaf, often with a hammer, and throw the bits into their stews and boil it to soften it, thickening up the broth. They like the way it squeaks like chalk as they chew it and swear it keeps their teeth clean, plus there is no arguing that it is very filling. Dwarves make excellent sausages and salami, they have also mastered the art of making hard cheeses sealed with wax and eat dried mushroom caps like you would eat trail mix. Thanks to the many dangers of the Underdark, dwarves are naturally resistant to all poisons and have advantage on saving throws to resist poison effects. This also means they are resistant to toxins found in gathered foods, spoiled foods and more importantly, in alcoholic beverages. Dwarves have an inhuman tolerance for alcohol and tend to drink it in preference to water. They consider herbal hot water beverages to be medicine or something elves do, not dwarves. Water is an ingredient that is made into stew or ale or mead. They don't even have holy water, they have mead, blessed by clerics, that does exactly the same thing. Dwarven spirits have a justified reputation for their potency, they are easily recognizable by the distinct square-sided flasks that are sealed with a bung plug in one end, often ceramic rather than glass and they are very easy to transport and store as they can be stacked together flat and secure. Dwarves have their own breeds of livestock, they don't tend to keep house pets such as cats or travel with dogs, they do farm rothe, cattle underground which look a lot like yaks, they keep pigs and rabbits in forested areas and tend to keep goats and sturdy ponies in the mountains. When they first emerged in the Yehamel region, they were a fairly uniform appearance, though not many other races have ever heard of them, they quickly gained a reputation in the mountains as they set to work on mammoth construction projects that created the first dwarven strongholds, impregnable fortress city-states the likes of which the world had never seen before, in the distinctive, geometric and robust style that became synonymous with dwarven culture. Conditions in the region had always been very hard and tough and early on, the dwarven people began to explore beyond the mountains of snow into the outlying mountain ranges which branch off from there, where they discovered lush and green lands, plants and animals they had never seen before and many other intelligent races of the lowlands and waters. I would love to tell you about their first encounters with the races of the surface world, what I can tell you is that their arrival in the history scrolls of Toril is a lot more recent than most people think. Around 13,500 years ago, the dwarves began what became known as the Great Migration. From the Great Migration, one isolated bunch of dwarves settled amid the isolated peaks of Nuvolarond, eventually becoming known as the Arctic Dwarves, far to the north. The first dwarven settlements in the three great continents of Faerun, Karatura and Zakara spread out from there. This was thousands of years after the sundering of the supercontinent in the lands we know today, this was after the great war between the giants and dragons, this was after the decline of the Empire of Astoria, this was a time when elves were at the peak of their civilization and their own conflicts, known as the crown wars, were just about to kick off. The first great kingdom of the dwarves of Faerun at this time was centered in the great cavern of Berenden, deep beneath a region known as the Sha, this is the spiritual homeland of all dwarven people. The dwarven perspective of elves was heavily influenced by the crown wars, which pitted nearly four generations of elf against elf. The two greatest events of the realms were the Dark Disaster and the Descent of the Drow. The Dark Disaster utterly destroyed the forest realm of Miaratar, leaving the blasted plains that are now the Highmoors and the once dominant dark elves became corrupt, broke away from their brethren and after much warfare and cruelty, they descended beneath this planet's surface to become the deep elves, the Drow, the mortal enemies of dwarves. The dwarves watched the elves tear their own civilization apart, they basically witnessed a world collapse and saw firsthand how messed up the elves could be to each other and how completely self-centered and callous they really are, as their wars destroyed so much that it was not theirs to give or take. That displaced so many of the races, threatened to plunge the whole world into terrible disaster once again and again and again as other races and heroes raced desperately to put out the one fire after another that the elves had started, figuratively speaking. The elves have certainly had an incredible impact on the world of Toril and perhaps the lesson the dwarves took from all this is that it is better to leave other races to their own lands in their own troubles and keep the affairs of dwarves to themselves, to never unleash the full power they possess as the elves have done so rashly and never have so much blood on their hands. The dwarves will never forget that every elf that has descended is basically from a mass murderer, a fact that many of the shorter-lived races such as humans and halflings tend to conveniently ignore, dwarves don't shy away from teaching their children the true history of the world. The next two thousand years was a time of expansion and conflict, new realms and new civilizations for the dwarven race. Around minus eleven thousand in the Dale Reckoning, Tark Shanat the Crusader and his eight sons led a great exodus of dwarves out of Berenden to a new kingdom to the west. These immigrants eventually became known as the Shield Dwarves and established the great empire of Shanatar beneath the lands of Amr, Tethyr, Kalimshan and the Lake of Steam. Dwarven groups travelled widely over the entire continent of course, it was common for people to encounter trade caravans and dwarven merchant explorers establishing a trade route and reporting all they found back to their clans. Despite their impressive military might, the dwarves did not involve themselves with the wars of other races, having learned the lesson of the elves all too well, unless it was for mutual protection against a shared enemy. Most of the great conflicts for the dwarves were not on the surface world anyway, so they had few allies in the most important battles of their time, reinforcing their self-reliance. In around minus ten thousand eight hundred DR, the Cloca Wars occurred, with the mysterious inhabitants of Rlingor Norroth rising from the deep chasm and attacking the followers of Shanat in a bid to take control of the great caverns of Alatoran. A great dwarven hero named Tark slew no less than four blue dragons within the rift of Dalinar. From their remains he forged the Wormskull throne, within a former dragon lair he renamed Brightax Hall, which marked the beginning of the first great age of the civilization of Shanatar. Several hundred years later, the eight sons of Tark Shanat set forth out to find their kingdoms beneath the modern-day Tether and Arm. Each son claimed a different child of Moradin as his patron god, and so each kingdom was almost like a theocracy of a particular dwarven god or goddess. All the while, the crown wars raged on the surface still, so, of course, the dwarves preferred to expand beneath it, rather than build anything on the surface that would inevitably become embroiled in the hateful conflict of the elves. A thousand years pass, with countless tales of heroes and legends we have to skip over. At the end of the fifth crown war, with giants and dragons now long overthrown and the elven wars at an end, allowing the steady growth of the new realms of Evermeet and Evereska, the human realms of Antha and Koramshan, expanding along with the long-established dwarven high realm of Shanatar. There was also a large group of dwarves who travelled to the Chultan peninsula that was still connected to the mainland and then splintered into many small tribal groups which became known as the Wild Dwarves. Meanwhile, the eight northern realms of Shanatar fell into conflict with each other, some of the worst fighting involving armies of thousands of dwarves, which did not please Moradin one little bit. During this time, the drow seized the opportunity to take control of the halls of Fallen Berenden, where there was also a war with mineflayers, there were civil wars, the Sea of Fallen Starves became a churning aquatic war zone as the Seiros wars raged, the drow had two spider wars and the humans began to form their great Imaskeri empire. Sometime around minus 7600, under the shah, a massive disaster saw the huge cavern of Berenden collapse and form a great rift. The dwarves returned in droves to their ancestral homeland, further driving out the drow and from the dwarves who settled there, we get the distinctive culture of the gold dwarves. Meanwhile, under the central Faerun plain of Tun, the great realm of Oghran grew, a fairly vast nation, though not as well populated as it should have been, making it difficult for the dwarves to defend. At its height, Oghran surrounded the valley of the river Tun, extending into the Sunset Mountains to the west and underneath the Stormhorns in the east. It skirted Boraskai's forest and was referred to by the dwarves as Wormerywood or Uglywood. The lands to the northwest, known at that time as Helbrin, was also claimed by Oghran as a hunting reserve. Oghran's First Nations, most notably the legendary king named Thorbard Firebeard, had forbidden any dwarf from settling those lands. Sadly, Oghran eventually fell to continued attacks by Lizardfolk, Bugbears, Wemmix and more monstrous races, as well as a series of devastating diseases. A little after 3,770 DR, the remaining 7,000 survivors fled to the far hills to the west. And so, history marched on and with it, the slow rise and fall of civilizations, expansions, wars, times of prosperity and of hardship, the dwarves have gradually spread out and become divided into their own distinctive cultures, now represented in the current edition of the game by a fairly limited set of player character options. There is the Mountain Dwarf, who have a plus 2 bonus to their strength and are said to be a bit taller and lighter of skin, inhabiting mostly the rugged lands of the northern Faerun. The Southern Hill Dwarves have darker skin, but not so dark as the Gold Dwarves of the Great Rift. The Hill Dwarves are descendants of the mighty Southern Kingdoms and they have a deep intuition, a keen sense of their surroundings and a remarkable resilience, with a plus 2 to their wisdom attribute and a trait called Dwarven Toughness which increases their hitpoint maximum by one point for every level of their experience. The listing of the Eberron race of dwarves known as the House Kundarak actually works very well to depict the culture of the Gold Dwarves of Faerun, who are well-respected traders and have a rich legacy of nobility and fabulous wealth, as well as more of a penchant for arcane magic than many dwarves are entirely comfortable with. So, increase their dexterity and intelligence attributes by plus 1 and give them a master of locks and wards and seals traits by all means. All dwarves have a plus 2 bonus to their constitution score regardless of where they come from and they have a much longer lifespan than humans, living well past three centuries and they are considered adults at the age of 50 and old at the age of 350 and some live up to 400 years under ideal conditions. Don't forget, despite their rough lives, hard work and a fairly good chance of sustaining many critical wounds in battle throughout their long lives, dwarven culture has a very important, pervasive and integral connection to the faith of their gods, so dwarves are frequently restored to full health and even serious injuries are often tended to at no cost to them, unlike many human cities where religious orders fill their coffers at the expense of their faithful. Dwarves don't mind scars, but they feel a fully functional body with all of its bits in working order is important as it honors Moradin's creation in them. Their body is literally the handiwork of their god, given to their soul to carry them through life. It is their duty to enrich and improve their soul through the teachings and wisdom of their elders, passed on to the race by their creator. Learning how to work a forge, tend a crop, negotiate a trade, fight with an axe and shield are all both an educational activity and a religious duty. Dwarves have an intense work ethic that is integral to their character and their racial identity, they don't expect any other race to really dedicate their entire lives to the craft of blacksmithing, they know that individuals of other races can be gifted artisans, but to them, a dwarf doesn't know anything about blacksmithing and metallurgy is basically not a good dwarf, its kind of like, oh, you never spent any time at a forge growing up? What were your parents doing? Are you an orphan? Were you raised by merfolk? No, seriously, are you telling me you don't even know the 200 different true gemstones? Traditions are the backbone of dwarven identity, as a family, and both personal and collective honour, they are very lawful as a race, as a rule. I guess it would be a good point to talk about the personal appearance and the question of beards. As we all know, dwarves are based on Scandinavian mythology and from that, they are included in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings novels, where he clearly states that and its true, all dwarves are born with a little fuzz of facial hair, along with their thicker bones and more solid, stocky anatomy, its one of the most distinct traits that makes them immediately recognisable. However, not all dwarven adults have a beard, and much like human males, and many dwarven males are subject to a gradual loss of hair on top of their head, most dwarven females suffer from a similar sort of loss, but its from hair on their face. By the time they are adults of 50 years, a lot of them can't grow much more than some generous mutton chops, their hair having receded from their mouth on outwards, which is something they just accept as the way Morrigan made them. In the community tab for the channel, I asked people their views on the dwarven beards and the response was fantastic, so thank you to everyone for sharing your thoughts. The general consensus is that there is a possibility for dwarven women to have facial hair for sure, and there is no stigma in dwarven society against it at all, however, dwarves who spend a lot of time among other races where women tend to never have facial hair will tend to conform to the general standards of beauty for that culture and will remove their own facial hair, but don't need to bother shavings to do this, they can use clerical magic that is fairly commonplace to just remove the hair. While dwarves, arctic dwarves and deep dwarves who interact with other races still have a large number of women who do not have full beards than do have them, again, there is no stigma, so many dwarven males have a deeper appreciation for this very dwarven trait and find it quite attractive, but it is just one trait, they also deeply appreciate the strength and robust health of their own kind, the broad facial features and abundant character in those faces. Dwarves' love of fine craftsmanship and rich traditions are also reflected in their clothing and their personal grooming, with embroidery, knotwork, braids and tattoos and etchings are a common feature of their clothing, equipment and personal style. Usually there will be some relation between the clothing style and their clan, their hairstyle and braided patterns are typically a reflection of their status and accomplishments that other dwarves can recognize at a glance. There is a lot more to cover on the dwarven race and in my next video about them, we will be exploring the gods, religions, their language, martial arts and their arcane traditions with a look at what life in a dwarven city is like and some examples of what they sound like when they are speaking their own language. Please hit the like button if you learned anything new about dwarves in this video, subscribe if you like what I do, check out my patreon for some exclusive content for all the school scripts for these videos, buy some merchandise, wear your greek with geek with pride, check out patreon blades for a mighty smooth shave and as always, thanks for listening and I will be back with more for you, very soon.