Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I'm thinking about how dwarves lived at TL0, and what drove or drew them underground. What was the original asymmetry that got them to specialise in a way of life that seems to want for a deep past?

Are they basically handy men who made first better tools and then specialised in tool-making, and delved first for flint?

Or are they basically short men who could spelunk better than others, and were drawn into crafts because they went into caves?

Which came first, which is the more fundamental: the subterranean habits or the mastery of craft?

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I guess that your trolls/ogres/orcs are a bit like Neanderthals: large, very robust, extremely strong, and probably co-operative ambush hunters of large game such as buffalo, elk, and reindeer. Their stength is startling, but their endurance is probably poor. They're not quite obligate carnivores, but they are probably prone to diabetes etc. on a high-carbohydrate diet, and they probably prefer to get their ascorbates from raw fresh meat than from fruit. Living in the cloudy north they are most likely pale-skinned, blond or red-haired, and blue or grey eyed. And as an adaptation to the cold they have large noses and frontal and maxillary sinuses, which gives them midfacial prognathism and an illusion of a low brown and weak chin.

They don't walk long distances well, and they are too heavy to ride, so their only niche as nomads is on sleighs drawn by reindeer and perhaps dogs: they are most mobile in the winter. You probably have them hunting seals and walrus on the sea-ice: a highly specialised way of life. And in temperate mountain climes they might be transhumantic herders of cows, goats, yaks etc. Otherwise they are mostly confined to rugged or close terrain, where there is enough cover for them to get close to, or set ambushes for, large game.

They make poor farmers, and there aren't a lot of occupations in which individual strength makes up for poor endurance and large appetite. A prominent exception is as ultra-heavy infantry. I see ogre aristocracies in castles and heavy armour, except where human light cavalry have freedom of strategic and tactical manoeuvre.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

You have halflings living on rivers and lakes, and in marshes and swamps. That suggests that unlike Tolkien's hobbits they are probably very fond of boats. You might name them by starting with the Mercian for "boat people" or "boat makers" and "wearing it down" like "hobbit" beside "holbyltan".

They are rivals of elves where the rivers flow through forests as in Northern Europe, and of humans where the rivers flow through grasslands. Probably originally fisherfolk, they are naturally in the correct position to develop wet rice and taro agriculture. And I'm not clear whether you want them or the humans to have developed wheat and barley in the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates. The halflings look good for the Nile, because it doesn't exactly flow through grasslands. Perhaps they are the original pioneers and perhaps chief exponents of agriculture. And of the things that go with it, such as temple-states and divine kings. I direct your attention to the chapters in Parkinson's The Evolution of Political Thought about the differences between early government among agricultural and pastoral peoples.

There was some sort of semi-aquatic farming practiced by Aztecs in lakes such as Lake Texcoco, with significant water-works. But I can't remember the term.

Halflings might build dams as beavers do, or artificial swamps for rice and taro. I can see them living on rafts, in houses on pilings in lakes, and in houses built of reeds and sedges like those that were traditional in the ****-al-Arab. As well as burrowing into riverbanks in the Tolkien style. I have an image of burrows and "beaver-lodges" with underwater entrances in areas of high threat, but I guess that you won't care for it.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Well, that can be answered as several levels.

If we're envisioning an evolutionary partial equilibrium, the sequence is irrelevant. Both traits are there, they function together, and it doesn't matter which came first, or if they were evolved or created or what. A state of equilibrium has no history.

However, if you want history, as a notional evolutionary reconstruction—my guess is that when acquiring good quality stone for specialized tools became important enough to justify the labor of Paleolithic mining, the race that was already a bit smaller, and perhaps had burrowing habits, had major advantages as proto-miners. So they specialized, and became better adapted for digging, and probably came under selective pressure in favor of being small, for reasons discussed in George Orwell's essay about the brutally hard labor of traditional British coal mining. And being able to trade obsidian or other stone, and later metal, for food and fuel, initially perhaps through silent barter, let them increase their numbers in proportion to their skill at mining.

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I don't have one, I just remember reading it in a book of science essays. The fungi are rare and the mineral exotic that's all I know. On the other hand, their are bacteria that are eating the Iron of the Titanic as we speak. Or rather they are useing the chemical reactions of iron and salt to feed themselves somehow.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

The Dwarves could be the bat-shepheards and their beast forms could be bats. The Dwarves could be skilled users of the powers of darkness and decay because those are necessary to the fungi farms. Necromancy lets the dwarves animate corpses so they can come and rot in their fungi farms. The Ghouls hate this! And proper godly churchmen hate it too!

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Yes, I know about chemoautotrophy. But it doesn't occur in eucaryotes, as far as I know.

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Okay, if dwarves are in God's first thought burrowers then we can suppose that they are adapted to be gatherers rather than hunters, specialising in buried food such as roots and perhaps animals in burrows. Plants with large storage roots suggests a climate with seasonal rainfall for their home, and without a closed canopy. I'm thinking about potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, cassava. They are physiologically adapted for a diet high in starch. They don't grow large, and they are avid for fat and protein. They don't get type II diabetes, but a high-fat or high-protein diet might give them problems. Not hunting they don't run well, nor stalk well, and such games as football and hockey probably don't appeal to them. They might be dangerous when cornered, but their fighting instincts are defensive, and they are not howling horrors in close combat like the aurochs-slaying orcneas. Dwarves are strong and have stamina for long hours of burrowing, but their small stature and short limbs make them inept at running or long marches, and at throwing and using bows.

Specialisation into mining, then adding metallurgy, then manufacturing has allowed the dwarves population growth way beyond any expansion in their food supply. What food production we do expect to see is fields of potatoes, sweet potatoes, manioc and the like, perhaps augmented by the growing of fungi on agricultural trash, in disused tunnels.

As metallurgists, dwarves need a lot of fuel. They probably use coal, perhaps even coke, where coal is available. Otherwise they need charcoal, which means either felling forests, or cultivating woods, or trading (probably with elves). They probably need pit-props too.

As masons dwarves produce a product that is not transportable. Some dwarvish masons are doubtless itinerant, others perhaps find a fairly steady stream of work in larger cities. Some dwarvish smiths doubtless ship finished weapons, tools, and armour from dwarvish homelands. Others perhaps set up enclaves in rich and large cities where customers are plentiful. Living among larger and more aggressive neighbours whose hunting antecedents make them more apt with weapons, dwarves probably cluster for mutual defence and build defensible homes. Escape tunnels and underground refuges would be in keeping with their psychological predispositions.

Dwarvish livelihood is dependent on the possession of a body of ore, and for those who have one keeping it is a matter of individual, family, clan, perhaps even tribal prosperity or death. Dwarves fight over disputed claims, and there is most likely conflict in dwarvish settlements between the owners of the mines and unrelated employees. Exhausting their body of ore is a national or family disaster: the tragedy of the dwarves is that it comes to all, sooner or later.

For all that a dwarvish king and community with a good mine might be extremely defensive and conservative, all communities and dynasties now extant have been founded by daring or desperate and lucky prospectors.

Dwarves who own no mineral resources must work for wages in others' mines, or as craftsmen. The better craftsmen face the same incentives to form guilds, conceal trade secrets, and restrict the practice of crafts that mediaeval craftsmen did.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

No, actually, that's very much along the lines I was envisioning, though more elaborated. Though I think it would take sturdier material than I envision being used for beaver lodges to stand off a military threat from men or trolls. But halflings might very well develop brickmaking early on.

I definitely would like the halflings to be the pioneers of grain agriculture. On the other hand, the deliberate manufacture of fertile soil by plowing, irrigating, and fertilizing, in areas further away from river valleys, may be a pursuit that attracts both some men and some halflings; the need for draft animals will tend to favor men. Elves might cultivate root crops but I don't see them as having the right kind of habitat for grains.

I thought of borrowing your idea about raising fungus cultures underground as something for halflings to do in their burrows, to supplement their aboveground farming. It seems less obviously workable for dwarves, who are going to tunnel mainly through stone, though I could imagine dwarves learning the technique of fungiculture from halflings.

While the hobbits of the Shire may have abandoned most boating, their kindred among whom Smeagol was born seem to have been comfortable with it, and Deagol was a good swimmer when he found the One Ring and was murdered for it.

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

This may be too earth-sciencey, but you can't do smelting with straight coal: too many of the wrong gasses come off it when it burns. Until coke was invented, smelting and forge-work were all done with charcoal. Having coke be a dwarven secret is a very reasonable idea.