Dwarves have become an "old standby"---a trope---in fantasy. Nowadays it's usually new authors imitating older authors who were imitating Tolkien, though they go back in one form or another to the fairy tales and the Germanic and Norse myths. In the Shine Cycle, I'm planning to follow this venerable tradition, but to turn the trope somewhat "on its head."

Traditionally, dwarves have almost always been miners or otherwise associated with "the deep places of the earth." In most stories, myths, and tales, including Tolkien's Middle-Earth, they mine for iron, silver, gold, gems, or (in Middle Earth) mithril, to amass wealth for themselves; greed, and in particular greed for material wealth (in short, gold), is their besetting sin. In my Shine Cycle, I'm keeping the notion of dwarves as great miners and builders, delving deep and building great cities under the earth. But what I’m changing is their motivation for these actions. Instead of greed for gold, my dwarves prize knowledge above all (or at least nearly all) else.

Because of the basic principles of economics, this causes some significant changes for dwarven society. Gems and precious metals are “rivalrous” goods, and hoarding them tends to be profitable; knowledge, by contrast, is not, but rather increases when shared. (The old, by now proverbial, way of putting this is that "if I have an apple, and you have an apple, and we trade apples, each of us still has an apple, while if I have an idea, and you have an idea, and we exchange them, we then each have two ideas.") Because of this, the desire for knowledge that is part of the dwarven culture is not a personal greed, wherein each individual seeks to accumulate all knowledge for himself and deny it to others; instead, they aim to bring knowledge into their culture and share it with others, and keeping knowledge to oneself is very frowned-upon, though keeping it within their own community for strategic advantage is permissible in some cases.

Given this motivation, dwarves specialize in mining and build their cities underground for four main reasons: First, they’re good at it, to a level few other individuals, let alone communities, can match. Second, a great deal of knowledge is buried over the course of centuries or millennia (though this is less relevant in the main world of the Shine Cycle, which at the end of its chronicled history is less than three centuries old.) Third, they can trade the metals, gems, and other commodities they mine for the knowledge that they find valuable. And fourth, while they are most comfortable living in solid stone buildings (and those are least likely to catch fire and burn libraries down!), it’s far cheaper to carve durable library-cities out of rock than to mine or import the rock and build above-ground, and underground they can expand more easily. They also specialize in smithcraft and related engineering, because (again) they’re very good at it, experimenting with it is a good way to increase their technical knowledge, and they can trade their (lesser) creations for knowledge or necessities.

My dwarves tend not to grow any taller than four feet; this, combined with their stocky but flexible build, may be part of why they are such great miners. In battle most serve as heavy infantry, bearing axes and hammers and clad in thick armor. And from their great experience in mining, they are not unaccustomed to the use of explosives and occasionally employ those in war. So far, on these points I've echoed the standard tropes---but here's where I diverge: dwarves are as a rule quite flexible; their infantry use large shields more for the protection of the lines behind them than for their own defense, because in any melee they are deft enough to avoid most attacks, especially from the front. (The second purpose of the shields is to help them hold their ground against a charging superior force.) Further, the truly elite dwarven soldiers are not infantry, but rather archers, using repeating crossbows of a model that only dwarven smiths can make—and which are, for any dwarven archer who has proved his worth, enhanced by their mages to expand their magazine even further, increase the number of shots between windings still farther, and even allow the power behind those enhancements (which is recharged by the energy of winding the strings back) to be released at need in the form of an (admittedly somewhat feeble) lightning bolt.

What do you think? Any questions? Does this make sense?

These sound awesome...I like how they prize knowledge and how that ties in to the ways that they are the same as other dwarves.
Do they have teaching services for younger dwarves, or do they tend to simply have huge libraries that they can use to learn what they want to? Do other people get to use these libraries? Do they do a good job of preserving the books? Is it common for lots of dwarves to have written information down, or are some relative few of them assigned to write and archive information while others gather it?

One thing I forgot to mention: There's a strong culture of "A place ofr everything, and everything in the right place." (And some significant effort in childhood education to make sure everyone has the same instincts on what the "right place" for things would be, to reduce wasted effort.) If a dwarf takes something and uses it, usually the next step is to put it back where it belongs---including going to some effort to make room where it belongs, if that wasn't where he got it and where it belongs is cluttered.


I think that education is at first mostly handled by the parents, and some of the first things that are taught (after the real basics) are the cultural value on knowledge and how to learn independently, but there are some professional teachers (entirely aside from apprenticeship).


To an extent. As I mentioned in the first post, there are some secrets that are kept within the community, so unsupervised access to the libraries is discouraged. But the dwarves routinely sell---and sometimes even give away---the knowledge contained in the libraries. And some foreign scholars who have proven themselves trustworthy can just come and browse.

Of course! Or, at least, the knowledge the books contain. Note that "books" are usually not written on paper or parchment in their culture (that's a sign of a book that they traded for), so the materials are probably more durable anyway.

There are some who make collecting, organizing, synthesizing, summarizing, etc., others' work their profession---as always those who make the discoveries aren't always the best at explaining them in layman's terms. But it's considered uncivilized behavior to do an experiment or try to build something new without documenting it in detail. To most dwarves, having the knowledge in the form of an accurate record is probably more important than having done the experiment or whatever to produce it.

It all made sense to me. I like the unique traits you gave the dwarves.

Cool.



Awesome...so they can learn things they want to, and if they want to really focus on something, they can be taught professionally, right?



Okay that makes sense.



Oh, okay. I guess I missed that part...what materials do they use again?



Right, that makes sense.

That's really cool, I'm liking the sound of these people and their culture.

What I had in mind was more that they can learn on their own, but if they run into trouble they can find a teacher.


When I say "note that" it's usually something I haven't said before
For materials, I'd imagine they do something with some sort of metal alloy most of the time.

Oh, okay, even better.



Oh okay, I'll try and make a note of that for future reference.
Oh cool! That does sound quite dwarf-like.

I love what you did with your dwarves, kingjon.

This is really neat I really like it. I just recently added Dwarves to SKa'Lah'Seh mind you mine are more trope Dwarves. However If you really want to accentuate their love of knowledge It might be neat f you give them all Eidetic Memories just a suggestion.

Mmm ... I think that would actually make them less likely to value stored knowledge. If a few scholars here and there had that gift, it (and they) would be highly valued, but if everyone could always remember everything they wouldn't have much incentive to write what they know down. I might make some race have eidetic memories by nature (perhaps one variety of dragons?), but I don't think it would fit with the "librarians of the world."