-- Sartar proverb
The world of Glorantha, first seen in White Bear & Red Moon and subsequently in other publications, has attracted popularity in its own right. I, as Prime Mover of that world, am always pleased and gratified to find it so.
One irritant to me is that I have only so much time to devote to chronicling the endless details of Glorantha. This is as frustrating to me as it is to the numberless people who clamor for details on this, maps of that, and records for over there. I plod along as best I can, assembling my ancient notes into an intelligent order and then filling in the gaps I perceive. Despite massive impatience, most people seem to agree to the schedule I have chosen. Except for one portion of the world which seems absent: the Mostali, or Dwarfs.
The Gloranthan equivalent of dwarfs is still largely undescribed. After the attention lavished on those vegetable elves and hillbilly trolls, everyone expects equal time for the rocky dwarves. They seem much sought after, and a growing clamor has been raised to reveal the Gloranthan truth about them, no matter what.
The truth is, I don't like the Mostali very much. They have admirable characteristics, especially according to their own standards. But to me, a wild man of the Gloranthan wilderness, the admiration for dwarfs provokes little respect.
Dwarfs are too up-tight. The truth is, dwarfs who worship Mostal view themselves only as cogs in a great machine, immortal as long as they do not change themselves from their mechanical way of life. They take their belief to excess. To the dwarfs, Mostal is The Cosmic Machine. They are the descendants of the Maker, The One who created and wound up the Machine, and are also His heirs and repairmen, via the almost extinct race of Godtime Mostali. Dwarfs have inherited the vast ancient works which drive the Sun about the sky and regulate the movements of the stars and seasons. Their very existence is bound into that machine, philosophically if not actually.
The biggest advantage of their ironbound belief is that non-heretical dwarfs never die of old age or illness, as long as they never vary their lives from the strictest Mostal ways. Thus they are glad to embrace whatever life peddles them at birth, just to live forever.
The Mostal cult pervades the dwarf culture to make it both religious and social in nature. Mostal is everything to the Mostali, and each of them strives to fulfill a perfect life in imitation of their god.
The mechanical structure of the Mostali way of life imposes over structures in administrating the masses. This is an inherited bureaucracy, or caste, a very rigid social class structure. The rules, though, are welcomed by every dwarf in the cult. Their life is set for them in exactly the way their parents did it, and as long as they do not fail in their ancient way then they, too, can join the assembly line right there next to mom and dad, and grampa, and great-grandpa, and great great grandpa .... (I cannot go on.)
Dwarfs are born into castes named after each of the ancient Mostali races of metallic beings. Every metal has certain types of dwarfish jobs associated with it. For instance, the Stone Caste is associated with masonry, the Gold with jewelry making, the Quicksilver with alchemy, and so on. Thus they are called Gold Dwarfs, and so on. This is a job distinction and confers little real power or recognition to the individual.
However, some dwarfs who achieve notable perfection in their tasks may attain the status of Diamond Dwarf. This is the equivalent of rune lord or priest in other cults. Thus there are Diamond Gold Dwarfs, Diamond Silver Dwarfs, and so on.
Dwarf Food
Mostal, the ancient god, is usually titled Maker. This is in opposition to the Grower, a vague philosophical entity which was later identified with Aldrya, goddess of the woods. The contrast is important, and accounts for some of the marked obstinance between the dwarf and elf races. However, even without any elves the dwarfs are exultant in being the Makers of the world.
Dwarfs make things well. They prefer everything to be made rather than grown, and to remake any grown thing is to improve it. They scorn anything which is organic.
Food is an excellent example. The preferred dwarf food is a manufactured, super-processed, genuine imitation food-like product called Alpha Red, Beta Green, Gamma Yellow, and Monthly Stew. The process of making this is a sacred secret of an alchemical cult called the Food Processors. Dwarfs love their food and have hundreds of cookbooks to follow in preparing it.
Dwarf dietary habits do not stop here, and they get worse! The Alpha foods are the best for dwarfs, with the most return in calories and essential minerals per volume of food consumed. The Beta is second best, while the Gamma is considered a poor third. Monthly stew changes every forty-eight days, with no apparent order to its contents, and never with any contents listed.
All of these come out of machines and are canned (of course). They are processed organic and mineral matter. The Alpha is processed dwarf, the Beta is human, and the Gamma is elf. All else goes into the Monthly stew.
This fact is not known to anyone on all of Glorantha except the dwarf Quicksilver specialists, the Food Processors, and the worst gossip-mongers, of course. I provide it for education and enlightenment, but it is not something any player character would ever know.
Non-dwarfs all agree that dwarf food is nutritious and (usually) digestible. This agreement includes humans, elves, dragonewts, and even trolls. However, all the food tastes terrible, except to dwarfs.
Mostali worshipers all know how bad non-processed food is. In fact, many have been forced to eat organic foodstuffs in dire emergencies (although others preferred to starve rather than face such a humiliating experience). However, these creatures universally lack the slightest knowledge of anything about food choosing or preparation. Thus, whenever forced to fend for themselves they likely undergo a troubled meal similar to that described by an early Hendriki explorer who returned from Dragon Pass with this story, c. 1470:
When mealtime began their leader insisted that they could fend for themselves. I believe he mistrusted my food or intentions, despite the three weeks we had spent struggling together. He gruffly gave instructions to his followers who were seen to sigh deeply, but resigned themselves to their fate.They went about, gathering all types of plant leaves and insects. None seemed interested in trying to catch anything warm or meaty. Then they threw it all into a sack they carried, and each man reached in with his left hand and drew forth a mass of branches and crawling things. With his right he guzzled some potion, then stuffed the mess into his maw and mournfully began chewing like some bovine set to graze. Some of them ate it all, most spat much of it out, and some became quite ill from it despite their potions. None ate much. We nearly had a row when Jeems could not stop laughing at them, but our common cause held us together despite the youth's indiscretion.
The Iron Dwarfs worship, or claim descent from, that metal. Iron is not a natural mineral, but was invented by the Mostali race as a Bearer of Death in the Gods War. It was made specifically against their traditional foes, trolls and elves. Many people since then have heard ancient Mostali claim that they would have made it work against humans, too, if they had known what would happen.
Iron Dwarfs are of two types. The "priests" and their ilk are Makers of Iron. They are the blacksmiths and they once held the secret of working iron inviolate until robbed by the Third Eye Blue people of the land of Fronela many centuries ago. The "rune lords" are Makers of Death, and they avenged their priestly comrades years ago, so that people now have only a small part of the Iron God's secrets. For instance, mankind can make iron swords, but they did not learn the art of making iron firearms.
Iron was invented to serve as a weapon of the dwarfs, and as armor. The Iron Dwarfs are the armor of the dwarf face, shielding all the softer peoples deep in their subterranean world from the ravages of the wicked outer world. Dwarfs believe that their Cosmic Machine was broken in the Gods War, and they do not think their lot will improve until it is all fixed again. This will not occur soon, and the dwarfs are patient, believing that the Gods War is still on. Thus they stand fast, in their retreats, and leave the Iron Dwarfs to face the outer world.
If dwarfs are strict, Iron Dwarfs are even more stern and steadfast. They are usually quite paranoid about their safety, and rightly so. They go about clanking about in the most coveted metal in the world, iron, and their arrogance and unyielding way often provoke hostility where softer words would have been better. But only the best of their crop bother going above ground, and only in an emergency. The rest of the time they simply use their vast system of underground tunnels.
Dwarfs are perfectly suited for tunnel living, and their senses show a terrible deficiency in the open air. Thus, they try to never leave their fastnesses. This sometimes forces them to engage in terrible fights with other underground species, but most of those are driven back or else pose only a few occasional problems. Krarsht, for instance, was once a problem, but now the once-mighty Krarsht labyrinth in the Jord Mountains is occupied by a dwarf city.
With such a future for failure, is it any wonder that dwarfs have a reputation for determined conservatism, strict traditionalism, and iron-clad legalism? And, for that matter, a certain type of frenzied dwarfish fanaticism?
Dwarfs are quite fanatical about defending their sacred ways, and their long memories will never let them forget any slight which has thrown them off-schedule in repairing their wondrous machine. The Third Eye Blue people, for instance, were once rulers of Fronela (so they say), but were overthrown by dwarf-supported humans who resented the theft of iron-working secrets by the Third Eye Blue Founder hero in a previous age. Alchemical secrets have oft been stolen from them, so they despise and hate all human alchemists, even those who worship Mostal or his son, Quicksilver the Alchemist. Dwarfs consider those humans to be impious robbers, and will barely cooperate with them, if at all.
Despite these, working iron and alchemy are both quite common now, and it is possible that other dwarf secrets can be stolen and disseminated. Most people, though, are too wise to want the most powerful of the legendary dwarf artifacts, such as mastership of the Cannon Cult or the Alchemical Transformer. These artifacts are far, far beyond the ken of any normal Gloranthan, and their awesome devastating mystery is both frightening and alien. Not only that, but not even the dwarfs themselves can always maintain control over their wondrous workings.
Dwarfs have made another race, too, diminutive instead of gigantic. These are the nilmergs, subintelligent miniature creatures, which are capable of performing one task and little else in life. They do not reproduce, but are manufactured. Whenever humans are found to have made a machine from their own genius, or (more likely) from plans stolen from Mostal, the dwarfs will send destructive nilmergs (called gremlins) to inhabit it and make it function poorly, or not at all.
Dwarfs have other creatures to help them protect their possessions, too. One of the best known is the Gunpowder Gobbler. A horde of them appeared one time, and they ate much more than that arcane substance when they stampeded towards their prey. They have many hands and a great mouth, and they are very strong. Their appetite is enhanced by their eating the alchemical powder, and they get stronger from it as well. Thus, the more there is to eat, the hungrier and nastier one gets. Once it has eaten everything, it goes on a rampage. Many instances of Gobbler outbreaks are recorded, and most authorities are quite adamant about suppressing the development of, or even experimentation with, that alchemical powder in their districts.
This was the start of the Machine Wars, a widespread epic which is the best-known single story concerning the downfall of the rules-bending Jrusteli empire. The factory town was an ultimate statement of certain Jrusteli philosophies and was claimed to be "the Godtime returned to earth." Such an era proved to be no idyll for the natives, though, for the Elder Races of trolls, elves, and dwarfs temporarily united (as in Godtime) to destroy the blasphemers.
Many of the nations of that age immortalized their own parts in this epic. The dwarfs, as might be expected, did not expose the fact that they were behind it all until the very end when they marched in and seized the ruins, and with a small horde of slaves set to dismantling and marching the whole town away. What could not be moved was blown up, trapped, sown with phony devices and artifacts, and populated with monsters whose primary function was to destroy anyone who came with thoughts of rebuilding or researching this place. Then they put salts and acids on the ground and departed, the major victors of the fight where thousands of humans, elves, and trolls had laid down their lives for their own gods without reward.
Later on much of the equipment from the Machine City was seen to furnish the outfits for a pike and musket regiment which occasionally mustered out of Gemborg, a dwarf city in the Holy Country.
It is questionable if dwarfs even have souls, though they do have personal magical power which works in every way like that of other peoples. Most of the splinter dwarf groups I have encountered are also quite disagreeable peoples, bound to their own beliefs or hopes. Only individuals seem to have a chance of truly breaking away, and entering into the realm of accepting their roles in the world as free players.
Dwarf Tunnels
Dwarfs say they can get anywhere in the world through their tunnels. This might be so, for they have been known to tunnel under the floor of the Palace of the Winds, which floats in the air. (This would require mystical tunnels, quite rare except to heroquesters.) Most tunnels are through solid earth and rock, linking their mines and shops together for whatever small community interaction they need.Dwarf Religion
Dwarf religion does not believe in any afterlife worth mentioning. Death is unnatural and something to fear and hate. When a body is without its life energy for seven days, the soul force returns to Ty Kora Tek's empty, formless underground cavern where it is processed back into the raw energy of Mostal. The energy is used in many ways, and may again vitalize a manufactured dwarf body. The empty body is returned to the alchemists for return to the appropriate container and separated into its elements for other uses.Dwarf Constructs
The Jolanti races are a race of stone servants which were made by dwarfs to act as mass infantry for fighting chaos on the surface of the world. This race had an unusual aid from the true giants. Gonn Orta, a legendary figure now vanished from Gloranthan history, was instrumental in aiding in the revolt of the Jolanti, and the liberation of hundreds of them from the Nidan Mountains. This destruction opened the so-called High Llama Pass between Fronela and Ralios and ended dwarf/giant friendship forever. Neither dwarfs nor giants have ever told humans what it was really about. (Much to the discomfort of the dwarfs a band of Jolanti were later endowed with intelligence by a band of sympathetic, and cruel, elves.)The Machine Wars
The greatest single example of dwarfs defending their secrets was at the end of the Second Age, in the region now known as the Left Arm of the Holy Country. On an island in that archipelago was a band of rebellious, atheistic, genius scientists who had the protection of the Jrusteli God-learners. They developed a high technology for their era which was unsurpassed by any humans anywhere, and even threatened Mostali cosmic monopolies. The crowning insult was a factory which manufactured magical swords, the so-called Ibirios (brand) of swords, which had a permanently-activated Bladesharp 3 matrix on each one. This alarmed the Old Gods everywhere, and prophets across the world had simultaneous visions and instructions from their deities.Conclusion
Everything which the dwarfs do is rigid and mechanical, unwilling to bend even in the face of necessity. This sort of action would make any normal human into a twisted psychological wreck, but for dwarfs it is their very inner nature. I cannot find it easy to begrudge an entire race of intelligent beings simply because their inner nature makes them disagreeable, so I do it with difficulty. I find their obsession with the mundane world to be pathetic, as if they are more interested in the rules of the game than the roles of the world. Their iron-bound attitudes make them all act like NPCs, even if they seem to have the chance to do otherwise. The few real Mostali who seem happy and free are called 'outlaws', as in the case of Throndbal the trader, or 'whimsical' such as the ruler of Dwarf Mine in Dragon Pass, simply because he speaks to and aids humans.
See also:
Non-Human Races: Dwarfs
A Personal View of Dwarf Culture
The Foreman's Words
Mostal-Dwarfs: Mythos, Heresies, and Lore
Dwarf Senses
Creating Jolanti