A Sneak Preview of BY THIS AXE

An Excerpt from Chapter 2: Dwarven Lore

Jun 29, 2022

The Kickstarter campaign for By This Axe: The Cyclopedia of Dwarven Civilization is advancing successfully, with two stretch goals already unlocked and a third likely to be reached this week. If you’ve already backed the book, please accept my thanks! If you haven’t, I hope you’ll check it out.

Today I wanted to share an excerpt from By This Axe Chapter 2: Dwarven Lore. This section is written in-character by my foil, Sürcaneus of Cyfaraun, and represents his in-world knowledge of dwarves. This is just a small fraction of the enormous gold vein of lore in the book.

As you read this lore, you can evaluate it in light of my prior essay, Why This Axe, to see how I justified the existing tropes relating to dwarves. For instance, the trope that dwarven women are rarely seen is explained in Reproduction, while the trope that dwarven art is Art Deco is explained in the section on Aesthetics. Enjoy!

History

The dwarves believe that they were forged by the hand of Istreus when the world was young, and were first taught the secrets of metal-work and machinery by the god himself. In the centuries after the Day Without Night, they delved vast vaults in the Meniri and Jutting Mountains, gathering rich ores and creating enduring works of stone and iron. Eventually they came into contact with the expanding elven peoples of Aurëpos. These meetings were not peaceful, and the dwarven annalists still recite tales of ancient battles that the elves and humans have long forgotten. Of these, the centuries-long Bitter War (circa 2600 – 2100 BE) was the hardest fought and most tragic. Azen Khador, capital of the dwarves, was sacked and the dwarves forced to retreat deep into the mountains.

Over the next millennium, the dwarves regained some of what they had lost. When the Aurans launched the Empyrean War against Zahar in 660 BE, the dwarves took no part. The mighty automatons and war machines of the dwarves would have greatly aided in securing victory over the Zaharans, but the dwarves saw little cause in joining one faction of men in fighting another faction of men. History has shown the dwarves’ decision not to intervene to be a terrible error in judgment, however.

When the Aurans defeated Zahar, they were too exhausted to fully cleanse the land of the beastmen. In the absence of constant warfare to reduce their numbers, the beastmen population exploded. The beastmen were largely kept out of the north by elven and human garrisons, and so migrated into the mountains in great numbers. Bloodthirsty, fast-breeding, and subterranean, the beastmen became the sworn foes of the dwarves. The dwarves soon found themselves in a never-ending war for their own tunnels and vaults It is said that no dwarf has truly slept in peace since the first goblin clambered into the underdark. The dwarves avow that had Azen Khador never fallen, the beastmen would already have been defeated.

The dwarven worldview is shaped by this history of conflict. “Every dwarven soul is a battlefield where traditionalism and pragmatism wage war,” explained Skyrin Talore, Lord Documentarian of Azen Radokh. By traditionalism, the dwarves seek to remember what they have lost, preserve what they have left, and honor those who kept their race and culture alive. By pragmatism, the dwarves seek to do what is necessary to survive in the face of terrible odds.

Physiology

Dwarves are very short-statured (men averaging 4’) but exceptionally stout, weighing as much as adult humans, with broad shoulders and hips, thick-boned limbs, and sturdy digits.

These robust frames are matched with equally robust circulations of the humors. With their bile, blood, and phlegm in steady flux, dwarves are rarely afflicted by the poxes and poisons that bedevil humankind. However, this humorous circulation also gives the dwarves their characteristic moodiness, ever shifting from choleric to melancholic to phlegmatic to sanguine in temperament.

Relative to humans, dwarves have big, round heads with prominent brows and strong chins. Their eyes are large, round and very deep set, while their ears are protuberant and fleshy. Perhaps because of their protuberant pinna, dwarves have excellent hearing, twice as good as our own.

Both the men and women have heavy beard and body hair (although, as discussed later, some Meniran women have taken to the novel custom of shaving). And not just in hirsuteness do the dwarven sexes resemble each other. In general, dwarves show much less sexual dimorphism than humans, with both males and females seemingly built for hard labor. Absent fashion and grooming signals, the sexes are essentially indistinguishable to the eye – to the human eye, at any rate.

Some measure of sexual dimorphism can be detected in the vocal range, although all dwarven voices are quite deep compared to ours. The average dwarven man has a bass voice, while the average dwarven woman sounds to our ears like a human baritone. Dwarves have very thick vestibular folds (“false vocal cords”) which they employ when chanting or singing, creating the growling undertone that is characteristic of their music (q.v.).

The robust appearance of the race can cause the ignorant to overlook the dwarves’ gracile minds. Having spent time tutoring Lord Radokh’s youngest son, it is clear to me that dwarven children are able to learn more quickly than our own young. Dwarven adults retain more of what they have learned over time. A talented human might become a master of masonry or of theology, but is not likely to become a master of both. Among the dwarves, every priest is a master of a craft. The notion that dwarves have long memories is not mere folklore, but factually evident in the education of their upper castes.

Lifespan and Aging

Dwarves live about twice as long as humans. A dwarf is considered an adult at 26 years, and middle-aged at 50. Dwarves become senescent after 75 years – but remain that way for many decades. Lifespans of more than 150 years are common.

Like men, and unlike elves, dwarves grow decrepit with age, though the aging process visibly differs. Dwarves tend to gain, rather than lose, hair as they age, particularly around their ears, eyebrows, nostrils, and cheeks. The hair begins to grey at around 75 years and may become white as ice within a few decades. As they grow older, dwarves develop rhinophyma or “mushroom nose,” which causes their noses to become large and lumpy. It is considered a sign of distinction within their culture. A dwarf’s age can be reliably determined by evaluating the magnitude of his facial hair relative to his nose volume.

At their most venerable, dwarves begin to suffer bone sclerosis and muscular rigidity. The combination of thickened bones and stiffened muscles enfeebles the aged dwarf, and may be the basis for the folklore that dwarves turn to stone when they die. (That this belief is so widespread can be attributed to the popularity of the works of Malizeuscius, the famed dungeoneering archivist, who ascribed many strange traits to the demi-human races).

Marvel as we might at dwarven longevity, we must not overlook the fact that dwarves are elderly for half their lives. Much of the conservatism of dwarven culture rises from the fact that it is a culture by, of, and for the old.

Reproduction

A dwarven woman becomes fertile at age 15 and remains capable of childbirth until around age 75. Pregnancy lasts 10 months while nursing lasting for another 2 years. Unlike human women, the hardy dwarven women rarely die in childbirth. However, gestating and birthing a dwarven baby exhausts the woman’s womb. A dwarven woman who attempts to give birth as soon as she finishes lactating, as human women are wont to do, will see her pregnancies fail and might even render herself barren. Most dwarven women wait a full 12 years after weening before becoming pregnant again. Even with this lengthy recovery period, 10% of their young are still stillborn. Of those born breathing, only one of every three are girls.

With 10% of their births stillborn, and only one girl born in every three live births, the dwarven race cannot easily multiply, nor swiftly replenish its numbers when attritted by war. Merely to sustain the population, each dwarven woman must give birth to 3.5 young dwarves; to actually grow it, each must birth at least 4 young. Since a dwarven woman can safely birth just one child per 15 years over 60 years, growth is possible only with heroic effort on the part of their womankind.

To overcome these challenges, some vaults have turned to divine magic and others to mycocultural science, but there are risks to both. Some vaults have even interbred their people with other races in the hopes of multiplying their numbers. Crossbreeding has, allegedly, birthed new races but it has not been able to replenish the dwarves. Dwarven men who mate with women of other races produce fertile children, but the child is of the mother’s race. Dwarven women who mate with men of other races can produce dwarven offspring, but the offspring is never fertile females. “Only dwarven mothers can birth dwarven men,” Lady Radokh explained. “And only dwarven men can sire dwarven mothers.”

In a typical vault only a third of the population will be women, and less than half of those women will be of childbearing age. With pregnancies separated by a decade or more, each woman will typically be caring for only one child at a time. As a result, a dwarven vault will have twice as many men as it has women, and four times as many elderly as it has young!

Such is the dire demographic dilemma of the dwarves. Because of this dismal situation, every vault is fiercely protective of its fertile families. Dwarves have a reputation for being jealous guardians of gold and jewels, but the true treasures of any dwarven vault are its women and children.

Aesthetics and Art

According to the histories I reviewed at Azen Radokh, the dwarves dwelled in isolation for many centuries following the Day Without Night. Their first contact came, not with mankind, but with elvenkind, in the latter part of the 35th C. BE. The contact led to turmoil between the two peoples, and then eventually to a terrible conflict. This war, which Imperial historians know almost nothing of, the dwarves call the Bitter War; and it is both the cosmogenic and apocalyptic center of their history. After two centuries of intermittent fighting, the Bitter War culminated in the destruction of Azen Khador in the 21st C. BE. Two thousand years later, Azen Khador is still remembered as the greatest of the vaults of Aurëpos, and its destruction heralded a fall from grandeur from which the dwarves have never recovered.

So terrible were the scars of the Bitter War that even today some aspects of dwarven culture can only be understood in reaction to elven culture. Nowhere is this truth more evident than in dwarven aesthetics.

Elves marvel at the beauty of ephemeral things: the bright blossom of a flower in spring, glorious and then gone; the fluttering wings of a butterfly searching for a mate in its brief weeks of life; the flush of youthful joy in a puppy at play. Elves cherish the pinnacle of beauty and sublimity even when those pinnacles fade in an instant.

Dwarves marvel at the grandeur of permanent things: the tall mountain, still standing despite a thousand years of wind and rain; the golden ornament, forever free of rust and tarnish; the glittering diamond, unbreakable and hard; the ancient epic, unchanged in utterance in a hundred generations.

Elves can take pleasure in momentary beauty because they are ageless. In fading beauty, the elf enjoys the reminder that he does not fade. Each elf lives a life of eternal ephemerality, each is the bright blossom that does not die, the butterfly who flies for centuries, the puppy who never tires into an old dog.

Dwarves live long lives, but not ageless ones. At 15 years, a dwarf and a human are both adolescents; at 50 years, they are both middle aged; at 75 they are both old and wearied with time. But the 75-year old human will soon die, while the 75-year-old dwarf can expect to live another 75 years! Dwarves spend an entire human lifespan as old men. Lord Norden has been decrepit for longer than I have been alive. Dwarves do not enjoy the passage of time – they endure it. And so they cherish that which endures.

Lord Documentarian Skyrin Talore explained it to me thusly: “Elves cherish singers; dwarves cherish songwriters. Elves cherish plays; dwarves cherish playwrights. Elves cherish the moment. Dwarves cherish the monument to the moment.”

That is, among dwarves, the longer-lasting the medium, the more respected its artform. The cutting of diamonds, sculpting of stone, and working of gold is held in highest regard. Drawing, painting, and weaving are acknowledged as arts but held in less esteem. Composing, playwriting, rhapsodizing, and songwriting are also considered arts because they create works that last. Acting, performing, and singing, however, are seen as mere crafts, to be performed in obedience to the true artist. A singer is seen as merely the bricklayer to the songwriter’s architect. (If by some miracle of dwarven science a means were developed by which a singer’s voice or player’s soliloquy could be recorded as easily as a writer’s words can be scribed, it would hurl a thousand years of dwarven aesthetics into turmoil!)

Even the motifs used in their art favor the eternal and enduring. For instance, dwarven artists frown on the sort of flowery organic patterns or impressionistic styles of the elves. They believe that only perfect geometric shapes such as circles, chevrons, triangles, and squares are eternal and hence suitable as the basis for enduring works of art.

Just as a mountain endures longer than a pebble, a grandly-sized work of art is seen as more enduring than a small piece. Thus, though they are a diminutive people, the dwarves are extravagant in the size of their statutes and other works. I quipped once that the beauty of dwarven art could be mathematically evaluated by multiplying together its height, weight, depth, and longevity. No one laughed, and Lord Documentarian Skyrin nodded as if I had spoken wisely.

The archetypical dwarven artform is rock-cut architecture, graven from granite, solidly built to last, with steel doors gilt with gold and engraved with ancient symbols formed of perfectly precise geometric shapes. This important topic receives its own section.

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