omg – Nonnie, I have no idea? Perhaps some Dwarves would absolutely swear by the practice, in order for their little pebble to have a luxurious head of hair later on in life? But others might be OUTRAGED – i don’t know, I can’t decide, but what a fascinating idea! Thank you so much for sharing it with me!
Tag: dwarves
You said that dwarves choose their One, right? And you’re very good at showing the gender/sexually spectrum, but given the whole concept of “one love,” I was wondering if it’s possible for dwarves to have multiple loves? Multiple “ones,” at once?
(I’ve answered this before, Nonnie. Try here, and here!)
And yes, as far as I’m concerned. To quote that last answer, “what Prof T says is: Dwarves fall in love once, and if it isn’t reciprocated they devote their lives to their crafts. What Prof T doesn’t say: Whether they fall in love with one person at a time. Fall in love once – okay, gotcha – but nothing says that love must be for one individual alone.”
Is there a plan for a lil drabble of the Dwarves in the Halls reacting/watching Thorin and Co. as they go to/reach Erebor? I just really really want to see that (even though it’d rip my hear put and roll it in ice shards) but like, Thror and Thrain and all celebrating as Smaug dies but that moment of dawning horror when they see Thorin succumb to dragon-sickness, and then the triumphant exaltation as they leave Erebor for the BoFA, and then… yikes. rushing to the sepulchers to welcome Thorin
sounds like you could write it, Nonnie!
I made myself sad with an idea – when Aule made the dwarfs, and Eru found out, he wanted to destroy them first, and the original dwarf prototypes huddled together in fear and pleading for mercy. What if dwarfs have an unconscious recolletction of that, deep in their bones and souls, and they are so stubborn in their ways and unbending because they have the utmost need to be just as mahal made them else he’ll be displeased and will want to throw them away again.
My interpretation on dwarvish axe dancing outfit.
This is my first fanart. I doodled now and than for my own entertainment but Sansûkh is the first to push me to do something.
When I first read of all the great and varied dwarrowdams and especially the axe dancing, the splendid jewel and vibrant colour of Mughal culture bumped into my mind. The great writings of determamfidd makes me wanna do something for this great writer that first made me fell in love with dwarrows.
I confess that before The Hobbit movie and reading Sansûkh I never did put too much thinking on dwarrows but Sansûkh shed new lights to my narrow mind.
I have great fun in drawing it and i like to think that I hear how the jewel cling when the dancer dances.
Sorry to determamfidd that I cannot draw better.
(Greatly referencing from Mughal badass dancer from deviant art Apsara-stock and the great and rich and marvellous jewels)
oh sweet MERCY
that is AMAZING – oh my god, you are truly awesome and skilled, WOW I am just so lost in this drawing and the scene you evoke in your description! THE DETAIL. ON HER OUTFIT. IS STAGGERING. I am gasping in awe here, this is so so beautiful
So while listening to Lady Gaga on repeat I drew my fave gal pals Barís Crystaltongue and Bani. I’m honestly pretty happy with how it turned out.
Both these lovely ladies are from Sansukh by @determamfidd
omg they are GORGEOUS
*shrieks softly* SO GORGEOUS
the BELLS on Baris’ beard are! SO! AWESOME! and Bani’s glasses, and her lovely nose and her topknot and AHHHH
I love baris in that blue, it is so effing lovely, and kjdsflsjkhd her expression, biting her lip, and omg those beautiful, beautiful brown eyes! I AM MADLY IN LOVE WITH HER EARRINGS AND CHAINS AAAAH
thank you thank you thank you thank you *shrieks somewhat louder* THANK YOU!
Dwarves out of the Mountains
A long-term friend of mine had been lamenting that while there seems to be a lot of push to diversify elves and ‘get them out of the forest’ but everybody seems content to leave the dwarves in their mountains. In my campaign world I do have dwarves still in the mountains, but I have a particular reason.
Dwarves, as a fantasy or rpg race typically have the following traits:
- Short, stocky or round with a low center of gravity
- Facial hair and plenty of it, sometimes on females as well
- The Axe. If there’s no axe, there will be a hammer
- Smiths, craftsmen and great builders
- Beer, mead, ale… it’s all good as long as it’s not wine
- Underground. Not just a little hole, but deep underground.
That’s a phenotype you can pick up and move anywhere, provided you can grow something you can then ferment and make into booze. So let’s see how they might fit in different environments.
- Desert. If you’re going to live in the desert you have to worry about water and maintaining your body temperature, as it can get both unreasonably hot and cold in the desert, often switching from one extreme to another from day to night. Lots of animals have figured out that the temperature is much more stable underground and burrow, and the trees that survive find the water table. There are two very good reasons to build your home underground, and from there you expand your home into a city with networks etc. You can ferment the cacti. Darkvision would be handy as you’re not going to come up in the day if you can avoid it. I imagine they’d build large ventilation columns, a bit like termite mounds, reaching above the dunes, the only evidence of the city below.
- Sea edge. I’m thinking cliffs, harsh and windswept towering above the churning waters. The windchill can be lethal, and the saltwater of the ocean is all but undrinkable without specialized processing. (Maybe they have that technology, maybe salt is a major export. Everybody needs salt before refrigeration.) Not much lives on sea cliffs aside from some agile birds that nest there, far out of reach of predators. Building your fortress into the side of the sea cliffs is a very defensible position, and there’s a huge amount of energy to be potentially harnessed in the wind and waves. Branching out into ships is difficult from cliffs, it may be easier to use underwater channels, if such a clever dwarf could devise a vessel to travel entirely beneath the waves. The lower tunnels of an sea cliff fortress are prone to flooding, so these dwarves are likely to be better at balancing and swimming than their inland brethren.
- Ice. Where do you expect to find a phenotype that has a reduced body surface area to volume ratio (approaching spherical), comfortable insulating body fat and extra hair? Somewhere very cold. You can dig down into solid ice, which will be relatively more comfortable out of the wind chill, but if you build up with the excavated ice it will likely end up with snow accumulating on at least one side, eventually looking like a hill. Fireballs obviously strongly discouraged, and layered furs prefered over open flame for heat to preserve structural integrity.
- Old forest. Nobody ever said anything about getting the dwarves out of the forest. I don’t mean your standard, idyllic, meadow filled forest. I mean the dark, overgrown, ancient, creaking forest with trees so old, massive and twisted that you can’t be certain they don’t have faces. The sort of forest where you can barely see the sky, and the hairs stand up on the back of your neck for no clear reason, but you can’t help but trust your instinct that something, somewhere is patiently waiting to eat you. Here it’s probably much safer underground, where you can at least establish a defensible position. I imagine large halls, edged with the passive roots of the still living trees, and probably a significant mushroom proportion in the diet. Elves above may not even know they’re there.
Really they can make themselves at home anywhere you need a defensible position. Break some stereotypes, throw some dwarves around.
(But you cannot toss them)
…Desert dwarves fermenting cacti for booze. So you’re saying… dwarves with tequila? XD
Hi Dets! I was wondering if you had any resources on dwarven culture? I am really fascinated by what you have done and since you had to do a humongous research I was wondering if I could point me in the right direction? I’d owe you so much! <3<3
Sure thing, Nonnie!
Okay, most of what we have, canonically-speaking, is from The Silmarillion, The Book of Lost Tales, The History of Middle-Earth (especially The Peoples of Middle Earth), or the appendices of LOTR, most especially the section entitled ‘Durin’s Folk’. Best to start with these!
There’s a decent summary of canonical information (as well as a resource list) at tolkiengateway.
The Dwarrow Scholar is an incredible fan-made project! The cultural aspects here are non-canonical, but they are a natural sort of extrapolation from canon. And Neo-Khuzdul is an epic achievement!
check out @askmiddlearth – really, CHECK THIS OUT, I cannot cannot cannot recommend it highly enough. There is information here on just about everything you ever dreamed of!
There’s more, but I hope that is enough to get you started, Nonnie! Happy researching!
You know, this is probably kind of morbid, but I can’t keep off thinking about scene in DoS where Thorin and Co run into a chamber full of dwarven corpses. And the bodies look like porcelain dolls. And I’ve been thinking ever since, what if dwarves do turn back into stone after their death? that’s why they have to be burried inside mountain, that’s why Burnings after Azanulbizar were such a tragedy – they couldn’t return back to stone Mahal made them from.
AHH NONNIE – you’ve put your finger on one of my own headcanons!
I use this idea in Sansukh! We know from the Silmarilion that the elves believe that the dwarves ‘return to the earth and stone of which they were made’ (though in context this is sorta derogatory and suggests that Elves believe dwarves have no souls)
anyway, when I read that phrase i sorta gasped a bit – and then went slightly worldbuildery bonkers.
So, the fic is peppered with phrases like ‘returned to the stone’ or ‘sleeps in stone’, and it’s not just figurative.
We see skeletons in Moria, so I though ‘BONES OF STONE, BODIES OF EARTH PERHAPS? Or maybe even dust?’ IDK, but it is such a great and slightly alien, nonhuman sort of concept aaaaaaaaaah
A neat potential side effect of Aule making dwarves independently: Dwarves with shark teeth? Like, their teeth just keep on growing back. They have extra ones in their jaws. This explains why the older dwarves in the hobbit have such nice teeth despite questionable Middle-Earth dental care.
okay, I gotta admit, my first mental image was just
but that is actually a truly awesome idea, i absolutely LOVE IT
Aw Yiss 