this post does not start with the dwarfs please be patient with me i ghave had a revelation about my writing methods
BLATT
"They talk weird, they move weird and most'll hardly look at gold, let alone carry it. But ain't nobody more sensible and honest and willing to land a hand or four than one'a them roaches, if y'just ask."
-- Drelilah Korbes, human hashslinger
"Grandeur is folly. Glut is poison. Humility is strength and to survive is to share."
-- Tzzk, blattonoid elder
Blatts (formally called "blattonoids", colloquially known also as "roachlings" or occasionally among themselves as the reclaimed slur "vermen") are a diminutive species of quasi-humanoid insects. Resembling nothing so much as cockroaches standing at just under two feet tall, each of their six limbs ends in a four-fingered appendage that serves as both a foot and a prehensile grasper. In Laurentia,
According to legend, the blattonoids once ruled a vast subterranean empire until property disputes spiraled into a vicious internal war that ultimate saw its destruction -- but so hardy and resourceful were the blatts that, hiding underground, enough of them have survived to recoup their numbers. Whether or not this tale is literally true, many modern roachlings strive never to repeat the mistakes of their aristocratic forebears... though the occasional outlier yearns strongly enough for luxuries or glory or excitement to break away from the humble asceticism of blatt society.
yknow
i was originally writing this post about all the setting's playable species in the sorta psuedomythic
published & polished phb tone i'd written the blatts' entry in
beforehand but ive been fuckin wiped these couple weeks, man. i'm never
gonna write this blogpost at this rate so instead of all that lame shit i'll just explain dwarfs like i'm Talking to you. i'm writing a damn Poast for my blog with an audience of like two discord servers and my ex-wives, not a damn book. what's my fucking problem why am i acting like this.
DWARF
society if being goth was normal
dwarfs are dour little manlets and maamlets and etc. who sorta look like theyve been flattened or crushed if you compare one with a human, wide and squashed in face and build. i draw them with big ol' eyes underlined by that resemble perpetual eyeliner and wide, thin-lipped mouths. their skintones are exactly as varied as those of humans but always desaturated to a grayish tint.
my vision for their fashion hews kinda edwardian with 17th century baroque influence, especially among richer folk. canes are very on trend right now. im not a fashion history girlie but it is my hope, dream and belief that applying a laywoman's lens to white people history will produce something transformative and novel and not racist. among less bougie dwarfs, the look draws from, like, '60s british alt fashion with all the clannish enmity between youth subcultures that entails -- one such movement modernizes the aforementioned baroque influence into something resembling the shit teddyboys&girls were on.
i did not enjoy Variants Daphne, the dark fantasy gachaslop game-adjacent software that is the latest installment of the wizardry series, but its woefully bland setting contained exactly one aesthetic swing i was enamored with & yet have never once seen anybody else discuss. many of that game's dwarfs have hair covering most of their faces but for a single exposed eye. it's a fun, unique aesthetic twist, but this pearl is lost before the goonbrained slopswine who play this game, so lacking in any taste at all as to pog and point when the only one of the game's catgirls with any sauce at all gets an alt version that takes off her cool androgynizing mask and robs her of her angelically husky voice. absolute philistines, the lot of them. what was this post about.
right. i liked their dwarf hair gimmick enough to crib it lol. i could bullshit you some explanation about how, since the element of HOPE is found in the eyes and DOOM in the hair, shrouding an eye with one's hair is believed to balance one's humoral perception or something like that. but you and i both know i would be working backwards to build scaffolding around an idea that needs no justification beyond its own aesthetic merit. it fits my grim wee men, and that's all the damn reason i need! so it's fashionable and traditional for dwarfs to grow their hair out (all dwarfs are capable of growing beards, as an aside) and cover an eye; keeping one's hair short or eyes uncovered or, god forbid, both, is regarded as tastelessly immodest -- it simply isn't done, save by the occasional adventurer or surface dwarf.
their gloomy subterranean kingdom holds a reverence for death, and dwarfish faith holds that a dead dwarf's soul must journey to the
surface and the into the sky, where the terrible light of the sun will
peacefully obliterate it at last. their naturally crow-brained fascination with shinies fuels an acquisitive culture that sees the dwarfish nobility scheming and quarreling to amass hoards of riches worth entombing themselves with. while this is plainly and obviously unsustainable, the nobility maintain the charade, however flimsily, by hiring thieves and mercenaries from outside the family to raid their own ancestral tombs (always trapped and guarded by thanaturgic constructs) to "recycle" their grave goods. when such a crew of tomb raiders is eventually caught, the scandal is not that the family have fallen to desperation enough to dishonor their own dead -- this is true of so many of their houses that it is in all their best interests to turn a blind eye -- but that they were negligent when it came to safeguarding their tomb. it helps, too, that there always exists a steady supply of have-nots who, in their desperation, turn to independent graverobbing -- and upon whom the temporarily embarrassed nobles are only too happy to shift the blame. all the while, a growing minority of dwarfs disillusioned with the kingdom attempt a perilous anabasis in search of a better life on their surface, becoming "sun-scarred" pariahs in the eyes of dwarfish tradition.
dwarfs have old puritan-style virtue names. their middle names are usually the first name of a grandparent of the same gender, though some dwarfs drop them entirely. trans dwarfs will sometimes go to a grandparent (living or not) to ask for permission to take on their name; coming out and the consequent renaming is a celebrated though sober affair. (Humility Toil-Without-Tears Fendrel, Home-Kept-Clean Suffer-Scarcely Quimble, As-Below-So-Above Charity Trumble)
IRK: My Precious... You must save SHREWD to discard or give up anything shiny, unless you're in a safe place like camp.
PERK: Pack Filler. You have +1 Blunt Resist and +1 Sharp Resist for every 3 occupied inventory slots.
