Dwarves and Duergar

Tags: canon = the author decided it, proposed = a suggestion awaiting a yes, open = undecided.

Origin

• [proposed] The same being who made the elves ran this experiment. The proto-race is presumably the same Australopithecus stock; the species is still open.
• [canon] Exposure vector: stone. The dwarves are the stone-handed people.
• [canon] He trapped them in a volcano he had made artificially dormant, to see how they would manage.
• [proposed] Method presumed to be time acceleration, as with the elves. How many years is open.
• [canon] He never put them back. The experiment was still running when the Fae Feds caught him.
• [canon] A population crisis followed: too many ants in the hill.
• [canon] Recompense: an Arch Fae emissary translocated the primary clans to high-yield ranges across the planet, and helped them build communication structures between Kords.
• [canon] A Kord is a beard: one founding clan, with around fifty related sub-families tracing back to it.
• [proposed] The crowding pushed the overflow two ways: out onto the cold slopes (the hill dwarves) and down into the hot dark (the duergar). The comfortable middle became the Kord halls.

One people, three habits

• [canon] Dwarven peoples are more social than different. Mountain, hill and duergar are castes and habits of one species.
• [canon] Mountain dwarves are the proper Kodas. They live in the mountain.
• [canon] Hill dwarves are septs. They live on the mountain itself, outside, and are better adapted to exterior living.
• [canon] Duergar are more insular than the mountain dwarves, and live deeper.
• [proposed] The body follows the zone a dwarf is raised in, the way altitude or cave life shapes other animals. The 2024 rules already merge hill and mountain into a single Dwarf.
• [proposed] The 5e traits suit the roles: Mountain Strength and armor training for hall guards and smiths, Hill Wisdom and toughness for scouts and herders.

Tiers of belonging

Language

• [canon] One base language for every people. A Semitic consonant skeleton carries the meaning.
• [canon] Elves take their affixes from Nahuatl and other Mesoamerican languages. Dwarves take theirs from Latvian, Lithuanian and Finnic.
• [canon] Dwarven, halfling and gnome speech differ only in the vowel shaping. For dwarves the vowels come from Estonian letter and word shaping.
• [canon] Koda, the hall ending, is Estonian for a chamber or hall, used as a suffix.
• [canon] Kord name recipe: the first closed syllable of the root, plus dza, plus koda. Pah-dza-ko-da is the model.
• [canon] Dza comes from zaqan, the Hebrew word for beard. The same root gives zaqen, an elder.
• [proposed] Sound mapping: z becomes s in a root clip (zahav gives Sah), q becomes k, b becomes p, ch becomes h, ayin drops, and sh is written with a hacek (Š) so it stays apart from s. The beard marker keeps the Latvian affricate dz.
• [proposed] Stress falls on the first and third syllables: SAH-dza-KO-da.
• [proposed] Dza means blood. Kin keep it, and attached families drop it. A sept settlement takes the Kord stem plus -la, the Finnic place ending.

Glossary

The five Kords

Gold: Sahdzakoda (SAH-dza-KO-da)

• [canon] Root: zahav (Z-H-V). Clip: Sah + dza + koda. Say: SAH-dza-KO-da
• Working name before the metals: Sahsa.
• [proposed] Seat: the Cripple Creek analog, the highest ground, near 51.0N 37.3E (3,963 m). The Black Hills analog, near 45.5N 34.6E, would be its lesser neighbor.

Platinum: Pahdzakoda (PAH-dza-KO-da)

• [canon] Root: no native word; bahir (B-H-R), "bright", as the epithet. Clip: Pah + dza + koda. Say: PAH-dza-KO-da
• Working name before the metals: Pahir.
• [proposed] Seat: the Stillwater and Beartooth analog, near 43.7N 40.3E (3,002 m).

Copper: Nehdzakoda (NEH-dza-KO-da)

• [proposed] Root: nechoshet (N-H-SH-T). Clip: Neh + dza + koda. Say: NEH-dza-KO-da
• The root is shared with nachash, "serpent". The Bible calls the bronze serpent the Nehushtan, so this is the snake-metal house.
• [proposed] Seat: the Butte analog, near 42.6N 42.5E (2,983 m).

Slate: Luhdzakoda (LUH-dza-KO-da)

• [proposed] Root: luach (L-W-H), "tablet", coined; alternative sela, "cliff rock", which gives Seldzakoda. Clip: Luh + dza + koda. Say: LUH-dza-KO-da
• No native Hebrew word for slate that I know of, so this is built from the tablet meaning.
• [proposed] Seat: unplaced. Slate is an ordinary rock, so put it where the metamorphic ground is.

Onyx: Šohdzakoda (SHOH-dza-KO-da)

• [proposed] Root: shoham (SH-H-M). Clip: Šoh + dza + koda. Say: SHOH-dza-KO-da
• Shoham is the traditional Hebrew onyx.
• [proposed] Seat: unplaced. Banded chalcedony forms in volcanic and cave settings.

The Mountainholms

• [canon] Five Kords share one range, the Mountainholms.
• [canon] The range needs big mountains with ore that matters at a fantasy tech level. Lithium and uranium do not count.
• [canon] Probably no Koda halls in the Kedantlan area, though related hill dwarf settlements are possible.
• [proposed] Best fit: the Rockies analog. Platinum is the deciding metal, since gold and copper turn up in most big ranges and platinum almost never sits in high mountains beside them. This is the only candidate with all three.
• [proposed] It sits about 2,300 km from Naharapan, nearer than any other candidate.
• [proposed] Method: about 152 real ore districts, placed from memory to roughly half a degree, rotated into the new frame with the map rotation. Slate and onyx were treated as common rocks and weighted low. Elevations are the highest ground within about one degree, above the new sea level (-62 m).

Candidates

Rockies analog districts

Duergar and the Underking

What they can do

• [canon] Custom rule: heat and fire resistance, and an affinity for cold magic.
• [canon] They went deep, grew used to the heat, and began cooling tunnels out of the lava.
• [proposed] Cooled lava crusts over and drains into a tube, the way real lava tubes form (Kazumura on Hawaii runs about 65 km). The walkable Underdark is therefore made by the duergar, not found, and exists only where there is volcanic rock to chill.
• [proposed] Underground roads are regional networks, not one global realm. The planet-wide link is the Kords' signal, felt through stone, not a road.
• [proposed] Magma heat plus a cold-magic quench makes a hard steel: duergar steel, a plausible trade good.
• [proposed] Mechanics: fire resistance, ray of frost, and one scaling cold feature that grows into something like Wall of Ice. The stock duergar psionics are replaced, so the flayers stay a threat and not a source of power.

The Underking

• [canon] The Underking is a duergar king, a level 18 warlock whose patron is an ice devil.
• [canon] The title is positional. He is the king below the Kord chiefs, from core to surface.
• [canon] He pledged the hold. The reason is the hook: there is something worse than a pact with a devil, and it is a mind flayer.
• [proposed] A devil takes the soul after death under written terms. A mind flayer takes the mind now. The pledge buys a hold that keeps its own will.
• [proposed] Level 18 warlock: four 5th-level pact slots, and one use each of a 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th level spell. Fiendish Resilience (level 10) lets him pick a damage resistance. Reskin the Fiend spell list to cold: Armor of Agathys, Ice Knife, Snilloc's Snowball Swarm, Sleet Storm, Ice Storm, Cone of Cold.

The Closing

Sequence

• [canon] The mind flayers advanced from below. The pre-invasion Underking, Renault, raised the doors: ice plugs, harder than stone, across the deepest mines of every Koda, to protect the surface dwellers.
• [canon] He gave the duergar up. They sacrificed themselves as miners and warriors to protect the Kord. Next to no duergar escaped to the upper realms.
• [canon] Renault's council cast a communal memory ritual on everyone who knew the power to do it. The memory of the plugs' power and purpose was erased.
• [canon] The plugs read as natural. The flayers do not know our world. The deep is the population center, and the surface is barren.
• [canon] The few survivors who reached the Kords were met with suspicion. Koda inquisitors heard "an army is on the march below" as convenient loyalty to their king and the Kodas, and it did not ring true.
• [canon] Renault is down there too, and fell to thrall at some point. Then came the duergar dark ages.
• [canon] The current Underking found himself freed. He started a refugee claim by taking duergar thralls from the periphery of the host, and grew as numbers improved.
• [canon] Today the refugee kingdom holds the mind flayers and their controlled duergar in place, and uses its abilities to spirit combatants away and free them.
• [canon] General dwarves do not know the duergar's plight. They know them as the ones who closed the deepest mines to their kind.

What the deep believes

• [canon] The underthralls have no memory of the Kords or their brethren. They know only that they are here, and that here is all that is livable on this planet.
• [canon] The mind flayers are from another dimension. Their thralls cannot lie to them.
• [canon] The Underking has the books but not the old songs of the Kords, which he needs to read the glyphs, because thralls do not pass culture.
• [proposed] The thralls believe the false picture sincerely, so telepathic questioning confirms it. The flayers think they have found a sealed world with nowhere else to go.
• [proposed] The seal works by being uninteresting. The real danger is attention: Kord digging at the plugs, or careless raids.
• [proposed] The flayers have a clock. A closed pocket fills, and a search for more room is what finds the plugs.
• [proposed] The memory ritual means a dominated Renault cannot be ordered to undo his own work, because nobody remembers how.
• [proposed] A freed thrall who learns the surface exists is a liability if recaptured, since a flayer can read it out of them. The refugees have a reason to tell the newly freed little.
• [proposed] The script is an abjad: glyphs hold the consonants and the vowels came from song. The Underking can read topics but not statements. Real parallels: Egyptian, reconstructed from Coptic, and Hebrew, whose vowels the Masoretes recorded.
• [proposed] The Kords may still sing the key as work chants or lullabies without knowing what it unlocks. One people holds the text, the other the music.
• [proposed] The current Underking is a successor to Renault, not the same man.

Ways to play it

• [proposed] A dwarf PC with the 2014 Stonecunning treats History checks about the origin of stonework as proficient, with double proficiency. Carved glyphs qualify.
• [proposed] Use a gradient, not pass or fail. A low roll reads the roots but not the sentences. A good roll reconstructs the vowels by pattern. A failure with a catch gives a plausible wrong reading, such as one that says to open the plugs.
• [proposed] Kord singers can confirm a reading by ear, and remove the roll.
• [proposed] A Koda inquisitor who finds proof must contradict the order's own history. A conflicted NPC.
• [proposed] First contact between the Kords and the deep is a reunion of one people who each believe the other does not exist.
• [proposed] Every extraction is someone's family coming home.

The Rainbow-beard

• [canon] The Rainbow-beard is a religious order that spans every Kord. Its mark is a beard of many colors, every beard at once, so no single Kord owns it.
• [canon] It is a founding-era institution. The Koda inquisition is one of its offices, and it held primacy behind the Kords from the anthill period on.
• [canon] In the anthill period it adjudicated the hard choices the people faced, reading the will of the Dwarven Lord, Korb, from what the talismans said.
• [canon] It had input into the translocation of the primary clans.
• [canon] The first Kordlords were clerics and paladins who headed clans, and the order picked them.
• [canon] The office is now inherited. Heirs are schooled in where their power came from.
• [canon] Casting power comes from faith, as for any cleric or paladin. Being a cleric or paladin is not required to be Kordlord.
• [canon] Doctrine: the lords are servants of the Dwarven Lord. It is not their place to divine on their own. The Rainbow is his horn and mouthpiece.
• [canon] Dwarves are wary of clerics and paladins who are not of the Dwarven Lord. A demonstrable follower of another god, with real powers, is tolerated begrudgingly, because Korb moves with mysterious purpose.
• [canon] From the Kords' point of view, the duergar worship a devil.
• [proposed] The order's emblem is a horn. The mouthpiece image fits, and a horn carries only the breath put into it.
• [proposed] The heresy line is divination without leave: Augury, Divination, Commune and Contact Other Plane cast by a Kordlord on his own initiative. Power is allowed. Asking for answers is not.
• [proposed] A caster Kordlord who prays and gets an answer that contradicts a founding ruling is a heretic or a prophet, depending on who wins. This is the system's most dangerous case.
• [proposed] The Naddzarah suit the order as itinerant servants, since they owe no Kord and no bloodline.
• [proposed] Procedure follows the Spanish model: an edict of grace that invites voluntary confession, a panel that rules whether a reported claim is heresy, and accusers kept secret from the accused.
• [proposed] Heirs are taught the sealed deep mines as a sacred ruling, without the reason. The instruction survived and the explanation did not.
• [proposed] A Kordlord raised on "the order made the hard choices and they were right" has a built-in reason to treat a duergar refugee's claim as heresy and not evidence.
• [proposed] Fiends fall outside the tolerance clause. A god's servant can be permitted, but a devil's warlock gets no mysterious purpose to hide behind.

Open questions

• [open] How was the current Underking freed? One candidate: the devil outbid the flayer for his soul, so the pact is both his price and his cure.
• [open] Does anyone in the refugee kingdom know the Kords exist?
• [open] Do the Kords still have the old songs?
• [open] Are the Kedantlan hill dwarves linked far-flung septs, or severed ones?
• [open] Do the plugs need tending, or are they permanent? "Natural" was said of them: do they read as natural to the flayers, or are they enchanted natural ice?
• [open] Does the dormancy spell on the original volcano still hold, and where is the volcano?
• [open] Does the Rockies analog stand as the Mountainholms, and where do the Slate and Onyx Kords sit?
• [open] How many Kords per range, and where do the diaspora Kords go?
• [open] Where did the hill septs come from? Possibly the non-primary families who traveled with the primary clans.
• [open] Does prestige run toward the hall, toward the deep, or toward neither?
• [open] Which donor languages do halflings and gnomes get?
• [open] Is the successor assumption right, and what is the current Underking's name?
• [open] What is Renault's in-language name? Renault is Germanic through French, roughly "counsel-ruler".
• [open] Do the talismans still speak, and what does a Kordlord do when they do not?
• [open] Does the tolerance clause reach converts to Korb, or is the Dwarven Lord only for dwarves?
• [open] Where is the line on divination without leave? The four spells are only a proposal.
• [open] Is the nad distinction (no blood claim) wanted, or is Naddzarah the only wanderer term?