The Traditional Races

[Luya Sevrein]

Yeah, worry less about what other people have and have not done with dwarves, would be my suggestion. (And what they've done with dwarves is considerably more varied than you're claiming.) Dwarves are your tool. They appeal to you in some way. They appeal to you as a dark force -- malevolent? What do they want? What's important to them? How are they going to serve your story? Are you going to replicate Norse myth or are you going to mix it with other myth? How do dwarves see? What do they eat? Reproduce?

What sort of character do you need among the dwarves? Are they just there to be monsters, opponents? Or will they have a more detailed role, will we go inside any of their pov's? Figure out what you need them for, and that will help you figure out what they are going to be.

Thank you, Kat. I think I went in quite under prepared, can you reccommend any varied sources?

Well, the Dwarves - though I'm interested in the Earth/Dark elf myths - are not going to be specific enemies. They do have their own Empire, at war with the contenant on which my story is set, so to some characters they appear to be enemies. However, my main nationality tend to pick fights with everyone so it's more likely they are.

I did not want to do that easy option of sending each race to a different conutry or contenant, so obviously they are explorers and colonies, groups - linked to the Empire or not, as well as humans and Mortals settled within their land, though the Dwarves have control.

The main Dwarves I focus on are a group who have defaulted from their Empire and took refuge in the foothills of the main contenant. When I say 'small', I do mean a thousand or so. A small town's worth, maybe. They have formed themselves a nice city over the past few hundred years and struck a deal with the ruling Human House, to keep their laws while outside of their city. I have a few ideas why they defected, and began anew, though the one I chose shall depend on what I decide is important to them as a culture. War/glory, honor/family, etc.

The story revolves around a travelling band of gypsies and mummers, one of the few groups who take no part in the Civil war, nor the overseas conflicts. So, one of my Dwarven characters - a female - has been travelling with them and is detached from her culture, so I need to explore it through her. The second dwarven character I am planning to be 'main' is a City Official and Witchhunter, exploring the different attitudes between dwarves and humans.

 

[KatG]

Dwarfs, and gnomes, pixies, kobolds, elves, giants, etc. all existed -- and were usually interchangable -- because humans had deformities and medical conditions. Dwarfism existed, and people who had it who survived usually had big heads and mishappened features or body parts, which clearly went into most concepts of dwarfs. Also, humans frequently died when they went up a mountain, or into a marsh, or anywhere really, and it was fun to scare people with the idea that they'd been snatched and/or killed by creatures, and to blame strange things, bad and good luck on those creatures.

The dwarf legends aren't consistent, but the main bulk come from Germany. On one hand, dwarfs were a type of fairy that were very skilled at metallurgy, but dwarf weapons were considered to be unlucky. On the other, they lived not underground precisely but in caves and would eat hikers. A main myth of dwarfs is that they were spirits of the dead or responsible for the dead, that they lived in burial mounds, and the alternate thread of this is that they were the same thing as wights, a ghoul born of maggots and likely to cause death to humans. In some legends, they were sly tricksters who could be tricked themselves (Loki is sometimes depicted as hunchbacked or as a dwarf,) and in others, they are warriors (see the Ring Cycle.) That dwarfs are sometimes shown liking beer is simply because all forms of fairy creatures and spirits supposedly like alcohol (there's a reason you pour rum in voodoo,) and the Germans drank beer.

Dwarfs seldom play a central role in fantasy fiction, and they are way more common in gaming than they are in fantasy fiction. It is the use of dwarfs in gaming that tends to give the impression that dwarfs are all the same, even though the depiction of them does vary in games too. Dwarfs sometimes pop up in horror fiction. Some works you can check out are:

Terry Pratchett's Discworld, which plays with preconceptions from all corners. Try the Watch novels Men at Arms and Feet of Clay.

Markus Heitz -- The Dwarves trilogy -- German bestsellers that Orbit has translated for the English market

Eoin Cofler's YA Artemis Fowl series where the dwarfs tunnel and eat dirt, and The Spiderwick Chronicles where they are closer to myths but used in different ways.

Katherine Kerr's A Time of Omens, part of her Westlands Cycle series

Jay Lake's Trial of Flowers series

Elizabeth Bear's Blood and Iron series -- that may be a useful one to you for other creatures as well

Some of your characters you've decided are going to be dwarfs. Rather than concentrate on what they aren't going to stand for, I'm suggesting you concentrate on what they are going to stand for in your story. Because it doesn't really matter if you have them drink vodka or be allergic to alcohol. What matters, as a writer, is what you want them for in the tale you're telling.

 

[N. E. White]

Coming late to the game but wanted to add my two cents worth (but listen to KatG, she's right).

First off - I like elves. And dwarfs. And just about any of the other fantasy species/races that are out there.

I can't stand poorly developed characters.

As long as you do a good job making us care about your characters, then it doesn't really matter what they look like on the outside.

KatG hit the nail on the head in regards to the origins of a lot of these "races" - the human 'mis'-condition. It's interesting to take a botanical toxicology class. There are an amazing amount of plants out there that when eaten in quantity won't kill you, but will develop consistent malformation in a growing fetus.

 

[malek77]

A little thought :

Imagine a child of the <trope> species, raised among Humans.
What do they do differently growing up, compared to the Human children?

You will be thinking through the 'nature vs nurture' debate in their case, and that should give you points of commonality and difference...and the peculiarities will be the base of social structural distinction between them and Humanity.

What if Dwarven obsession with gold was driven by having a different cornea - their cones seeing more lustre or complexity in the yellow part of the spectrum, in much the way Humans are notoriously manipulated by bright red?

Good luck!

 

[hippokrene]

It just so happens that dwarves are my favourite at the moment, I have been heavily inspired by their portrail in Dragon Age, for a start, and want to try to pull them away from the ale-guzzling, underground cretins they are usually shown as.

That's awesome. Though Oghren was an ale-guzzling, underground cretin. Rather glad Mary is handling Varric this time around.

I thought the infanticide, orgies, political maneuvering, castes, and the way Paragons could utterly use and manipulate their house (the Broodmother) was a great way to subvert the idea of them being honorable smiths and warriors.

 

[The Lord of all Things Inane]

Use "Traditional Fantasy Races" but give them non traditional roles. Seriously, check it out. If I were some kind of more than mortal being, I would be an un holy terror. Imagine Elves that are like those new guinea head hunters, little shrunken man heads hanging from flava flave type bling chains. Dwarves that form miners' unions, dragons practicing vegetarianism. I have several dozen cool ideas for that. Leprechauns in line at the soup kitchen, a troll picketing for equal rights.

 

[slashandburn]

Now, leaving out the unlikelihood of a world in which there are two or more dominant species and they haven't already fought endless wars until only one of them is left (this is fantasy after all), you have two (or more) sentient, civilized species, not races, competing for food, resources and territory. What are their chances of really understanding each other's motivations, thought processes, world view, religious ideas? Considering the endless wars these things have caused in our own history, where we at least are all the same species, I'm guessing Human-Elf (or whatever) relations are ever more difficult.

First time poster here weighing in.

A very interesting thread and one that has given me plenty of food for thought regarding my own work in progress novel.

The basic idea I had was what if the traditional roles of the Elves and the Orcs were reversed? What if all the cliched nonsense of fantasy was the product of centuries of Elven propaganda? So from that I have racist Elves, Orc missionaries and so on. Humans haven't even seen an Orc in generations.

I don't think it is the idea of species as such but rather they tend to be dumped down without any idea for how they fit into the natural order of a world, such as pasture or arable land for instance. Everyone has to eat after all.

Having studied medieval and environmental history at university I have a good grasp of how land usage affected every aspect of peoples lives way back when. Essentially I see the problem being one of world management (not world building).