Dungeons and Dragons, "Coal Dwarves"

I have played Dungeons and Dragons for more than 15 years.  Lately, I have been playing regularly as a DM, but even when I can just keep zooming out on the map and slap down another one of my ideas, I still have things that I want to just throw out onto the internet to see how other people can make use of it.

This is going to be a reoccurring thing as I just keep hammering out things and not all of them can be turned into elements in my “random fantasy novel ideas” folder.

What Have I Got: A New Dwarf Civilization

            While I do write about Dungeons and Dragons a lot on here, the last time I did a blog like this one was all the way back in August with “Religion of Orcs” (though that one wasn’t in character), before that it was “Wild Elves”, and the first one was my take on “Kobolds”.

            Today I figured I would introduce you all to my take on the main Dwarf Civilization in my world, the Coal Dwarves.

 

This image is from the 3rd edition monster manual.
Can you tell I don't have photoshop and can't make a convincing image of a crowd?

Coal Dwarves: Mass Production

By Professor Farrowdel Malanar,

Vizier to the Marquis of the Southern Oasis

            On the continent of Lum, the mightiest and most economically flush of all the Dwarven civilizations is that of the Coal Dwarves.  Having centuries ago mastered the art of standardized parts and mass production after the inventor Ell the White created the first machine to mass produce screws, nails, and springs.

            The ability to create parts that could be easily replaced (should they break) created a civilization that fell away from the artistry that defines other Dwarven nations and instead embracing a philosophy of uniformity, disposability, and utility.

            Gone were the days of a Dwarf metalworker spending days to create the gold inlays on a sword that was meant to last 1,000 years, replaced with 100 swords all of uniform size and appearance, each to last a decade before being cast back into the metalworks to be remolded.  Gone was the Dwarven armbands of infinitely complex patterns and runes, replaced with jewelry that all glittered with the same images, the same runes, to be worn for a fashionable period and then cast back into the works to be melted down and recast.

            The Coal Dwarves have turned their keen minds from the age of fine artistry and instead harnessed it toward industry, they have moved past wood and pitch furnaces to harness the power of coal and steam, they create bellows that stoke the hottest fires in the mortal realm.  Creating metals harder than that of any other kingdom.

            And while the great stacks extending up from their mountains work tirelessly (some human communities believe that dwarves are the inventors of clouds now, for all the steam the stacks release) there are downsides their people have encountered.

            While they produce more shovels, picks, hammers, hoes, axes, and all other manner of tools faster than anyone else, they have little food.  They import everything, hundreds of tons of grains, meat, fruits, and vegetables, all to feed a population that is (humorously described by gnomes who have visited the urban core of the Coal Dwarves’ lands) packed shoulder to shoulder at all times with dwarves who look so similar in identical dress with identical equipment that they can’t be told apart from one another.

            They also have no wood, cotton, or leather, which requires another massive import business.  They can’t sleep on a pile of shovel heads, and so they export metal products in such volume that to the Dwarves these products are practically worthless, while the luxury of a goose down pillow might be treasured for a decade as a product of relatively great rarity.

            Beyond the constant need to ship in so much, a deeper concern has been noted by Elf allies.  Elves, being the only group that lives long enough to see first hand the sociological change occurring, believe that the soul of the Dwarf people is dying in the Halls of Coal (The non-Dwarf name for the capital of the Coal Dwarves).  Without the art and craftsmanship that used to serve as a creative outlet for the Dwarven spirit, the Dwarf’s natural sense of clan and community is overwhelming them.  The Coal Dwarves are moving away from a tightly bound group of individuals and instead becoming a horde of uniform parts.

Where once the Dwarves would see each member as a single person, an indispensable part of a community that saw each member as having a unique view and skill set to contribute, now each dwarf is like a nail.  Useful, but just like every other nail, replaceable.

Influences

            Much like how I took inspiration for my “Wild Elves” from the Sioux Indians of North Central America, the inspiration I started with for the Coal Dwarves was modern day China and Slave Era Southern United States.  And I know how racist that might sound.

            A civilization known for mass producing disposable products with little artistry or distinguishing features with a collectivist mindset that threatens to override what was once a culture know thru out the world as the greatest producer of fine manufactured goods.  That is not a glowing portrayal of modern China.  Let me step back a bit.

            China was once the single most powerful economic force in the world.  The term “Kowtow” comes from the practice of foreign nobles from all over the Indian Ocean sailing to China to offer up lavish devotion and praise to the Emperor of China so that they might be granted permission to trade for China’s untouchably great products.

            When European powers started trading with China the demand for their goods was so high (and the only thing they would trade for was Silver) the Western powers had to start selling the Chinese addictive drugs just to offset the trade imbalance.

            China is kind of awesome at various points in history for lots of reasons, but I also have to point out that Modern China has some REALLY BIG ISSUES related to being the workhouse of the world.  Pollution, inhumane working conditions, and a lack of worker protections that would make any communist scholar look on aghast at the whole process.  Having these issues of people being dehumanized and turned into replaceable parts, that is something worth exploring in a fantasy setting, and commenting on how harmful it is.

            The real issue is the “They all look alike” thing which is racist when applied to Chinese people, but that is kind of what drew in the inspiration and made it come together in my mind.  The “They all look alike” concept in relation to the mass production is an interesting metaphor.  And while I do think this is starting in an inherently racist place, that is kind of the point, you take the characterization and you move it to a fantasy setting, divorcing it from the harmful real-life implications to explore the concept of a civilization losing itself to industry.

            That is a lot of talk about how modern China inspired these dwarves, but what about he Slave Era Southern United States?  Well, let me start with the most obvious one (to me).  Ell the White is a reference to Eli Whitney, who invented the Cotton Gin and revolutionized (mechanized) the production of cotton.

Previously, the South had several bottlenecks on their ability to produce cotton.  The first was soil quality, growing cotton depletes soil at a fantastic rate, requiring more and more land to be cleared and set up to grow the plant.  The second is picking the plant, a labor-intensive activity that is hot and unpleasant.  The third is picking out the seeds that are in the cotton.

The acts of picking cotton and picking out the seeds were all done by slaves, but the seed extraction was so time intensive that it wasn’t all that economically viable.  Some predicted slavery’s decline due to this, and I recall my middle school history teacher explaining that Whitney was hoping to deal slavery a death blow by replacing the slaves with cotton gins, a machine that could remove the seeds just by cranking a handle.

Eli was an engineer, not an economist.  See, by making the most time intensive part of the product and making it a breeze it allowed the South to move slaves entirely into the picking stage of things.  Making the desire for slaves (the least expensive of all labor) to skyrocket.  Whitney’s grand answer to the textile industry’s reliance on slavery had just made slavery 100 times worse.

Slaves are people, but they were seen as disposable people.  They were worked or beaten to death and more were found.  The profit margins of slavery raising cotton were huge.  People, reduced to their most basic of functions were seen as interchangeable parts in the great machine of capitalism.

            My intention with this and all other explorations of things in a fantasy or science fiction setting is not to caricature a place or people by taking inspiration from the real world, but I sometimes worry that might happen.  I mean, I don’t want to use the same line of thinking they used in “Bright”.

Real creative name for the bad guy.  You know, Voldemort, Sauron, and Satan all have names.  They are not just Dark Lords.

            What do you all think?  Is this another instance of me over thinking things and sucking some of the fun out?  Is this something you might want to put in your own worlds?  Is this an interesting break from all of the Tolkien type Dwarves that define Dungeons and Dragons (to say nothing of fantasy as a genre)?

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