Dwarves

The dwarves are the dwellers of the deep reaches of mountains throughout the known world, and are known for their memory, their craftsmanship, and their racial pathology. In nearly every mountain range, there exists an Infradom, a community of dwarves and gnomes under the surface. The Infradoms are ruled by a dwarven king, typically the most revered craftsman in the Infradom, and can range in size from a handful of vaults under a single monadnock to a loose empire of thousands of vaults under a continent-long range.

Dwarves worship Mora-diin, the All-Father, the God of Time who shapes the land through his very existence, and revere the Hands of the Law. Because of this, they hold deeply onto the slow majesty of meditative craftsmanship, sometimes spending centuries devoted to a single item of great significance. This craftsmanship can appear clumsy or heavy-handed to humans, and quite grotesques to elves, but the natural state of an element and how it takes the shape it is planned to take are deeply-related concepts to the dwarves. A fissure in the stone can make a particular column in a vault an object of intense fascination for a builder, and that column may contort compared to its sister columns to emphasize the character of the stone; a dwarven axe, stronger and more capable than one crafted by the humans, will often appear rough or dirty, if only to emphasize a particularly nice patina.

This reverence for time also means a dwarf will often never forgive a sleight without agreeing to a repayment. This gives them the appearance of often being petty, or sometimes misers when gold changes hands, but a dwarf-friend will understand the importance of such things. This driving force means that to befriend a dwarf takes a long time, and to short-change one or spurn one can destroy a relationship, but by that same token, a true dwarf-friend will have a companion for life.

Another strange compulsion for a dwarf is the innate fear of the surface. A dwarf understands, due to the massive collective memory of their Infradom, that the surface is a place of time in flux, of slow decay and fast-paced change. It is too chaotic for most, and besides, the depths of the sky above makes most dwarves nervous. Dwarves that do leave their Infradom typically cling to their memories of the ordered world of the Infradom, despite the fact that most who leave are inherently chaotic in nature. A dwarf on the surface will be most likely to trust a gnome, because of their racial connection, then a human for their capacity to be lawful and construct in stone and metal, and will trust an elf the least, because they are seen as too chaotic and full of Wild Magic, despite their bond of working Deep Magic.