r/AoSLore • u/sageking14 Lord Audacious • 3d ago
Question Mutt Asks: Since we are in a Renaissance of Duardin-mania. What is there to know about Duardin?
No but really for ages untold this mogrel has languished as discussions on Duardin and Dwarves are few and far between. Then the Chaos Duardin show up, and suddenly everything dwarf is sterling silver or premium gold!
So let's get down to the brass tacks. I want to strike while the iron is hot. To steel myself in case the wells of excitement dry. So tell me my dear Realmwalkers.
What is there to know about Duardin and Dwarves of the Worldsl-That-Was? What can we expect from Valaya and Gazul both suddenly getting limelight after millennia dead? What is a Reckoner? What is a Loremaster?
How do Grudgs and Kharadron Grudgments work outside of memes more interested in jokes? In the World-That-Was the friendship between The Empire and Dwarves lasted several thousand years, then went on to survive the universe's destruction, and then last untold millennia up to the dawning of the Age of Sigmar where Stormcast Eternals, embodiments of what humans and duardin gods can craft to together, showed up. Is it not fascinating that the Dawi-Umgi friendship has outlived empires, apocalypses, worlds, and everything that tried to rend them apart?
Did you know Karaz Ankor had a lot of choirs? Did you know the Dispossessed of Greywater Fastness have both Council of the Forge clans who are powerful industrialists and Labour-Clans who are laborer families who fight for workers' rights?
What do we know of the Galaxy? The Shadow Duardin? The Root-Kings? The Wuttenfolk? The Dispossessed? The Fyreslayers? And even the Zharrdron who awoke this craze?
Tell me and all else who will listen Realmwalkers. What do you think is useful to know about Dawi?
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u/Fyraltari Helsmiths of Hashut 3d ago
The book Orcslayer gives us a good view of dwarfen grudges from the inside. In particular that Dwarfs do find having to deal with other Dwarfs' irrelevant century-spanning grudges just as tedious as humans do, but it's a sacred duty. We also learn that a grudge that came about from a dispute over ownership of an object can in fact be settled by a third party destroying the object in question... But the third party should expect both disputants to immediately declare a grudge against them.
Dwarfs (and I'm guessing duardins) have an innate sense of how deep underground they are and can almost never lose their way inside tunnels or caves. Likewise they have better sense of smell, hearing and vision in the dark than humans do. But they might have a worse sight in daylight.
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u/MrS0bek Idoneth Deepkin 3d ago
Also gurdges can be settle without bloodsheed by paying essentially were-geld. I forgot how the dawi name for this was. And IIRC beacuse grudges and oaths are so important, there are essentially lawyers who discuss under which condition a grudge should be declared or under which priority an oath must be followed. Such as with Ungrim Ironfist and his family, whose oaths of being a slayer and oath of being a king highly contradicted each other.
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u/Mantonization 3d ago
Also IIRC Grombrindal is really fed up with grudge culture and is trying his damndest behind the scenes to try and tamp it down a little
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u/MrS0bek Idoneth Deepkin 3d ago
Do you mean AoS or WFB? Because overall it seems much less important in AoS. Eveb the oldschool dwarfs of the CoS seem not to be that keen on Grudges.
And in WFB it was Thorgrim who was the first dwarf to basicly admit that Grudges are ultimatly a self destructive chasing and it being among the strongest reasons for dwarfs to be on a downward spiral since the Age of Woes.
But I do not recall Grombrindals perspective on them in either setting
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u/Mantonization 3d ago
In AoS. It's from that one book that's basically Grombrindal recruiting a team to explore a haunted, abandoned hold
(Sorry for being so vague but I'm out and about right now)
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u/Illustrious-Wrap-776 2d ago
The CoS Duardin aren't actually the oldschool ones, at least lore-wise. That would be the Dispossessed, and while they don't have any rules, they are working to reclaim their lost holds and resstablish their kingdoms in the lore.
CoS Duardin may be the last remaining oldschool Dwarf models and have the Dispossessed keyword, culturally and aesthetically, they have diverged significantly and assimilated into the CoS, similar to Imperial Dwarfs back in WHFB.
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u/TioMorteLoko Flesh-Eater Courts 2d ago
Was thinking back and forth on what I could share here and what could be transformed into a full blown post, so decided to share a bit of a sad little fact
Dwarfs who are experiencing deep grief tend to chew on their own beards as a coping mechanism. "Chewing on his beard" ended up becoming an expression/euphemism for "they are grieving the loss of a loved one."
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u/OrganizationSingle15 13h ago
Funniest thing they could add for dawi in Cities of Sigmar is dwarf knights on ponies.
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u/sageking14 Lord Audacious 13h ago
That would be a lot of fun. Or rams or lizards. Lots of big lizards mounts in lore, would love those getting more attention. Lizards would be great for Dawi as they can scuttled up walls and hang on roofs.
Great for caverns, Karaks, and tunnel roads as well as the underworkings of the Free Cities. Why risk the Skaven and Grots sneaking up on you when you and your faithful lizard steed can jump on them from the ceiling.
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u/MrS0bek Idoneth Deepkin 3d ago edited 3d ago
@Sageking14 you forgot that next to the Heldmiths we are also getting teased with a rework of the fyreslayers (with more clothes).
For some reason 4th edition isn't about skaven but dwarfs/dwarves/duardin, after GW ignored them for so long. Plus the 2nd wave of space dwarfs for 40k.
Now I like dwarfs like the next person. But I always found dwarfs in fantasy in general very boring. Because unlike trolls, orcs, elves and giants who could show up in tons of different varieties, dwarfs were all very similiar accross settings. WFB is no real exception to this even uf they tried more than others to emphasize their unique psychology as a non-human species.
This is why I really liked the KO and the FS in AoS lorewise as they brought some very new perspectives.
E.g. fyreslayers may be modelled after slayers but they are essentially anti-slayers. Because they are comrades of magmadroths, the offspring of the creature which killed their god. Indeed all fyreslayers have respect for Vulcatrix as far as I am aware, and some like the Lofnir worship her next to Grimnir and want to resurect both. By stereotypical dwarf clichees this shouldn't happen. Instead one would think Vulcatrix being demonized and all of her kin being hunted for vengance.
Indeed Fyreslayers are the first dwarfs I know of who cooperate with dragons. A cooperation I wanted to see for a longtime, as I think it makes a lot of sense, given how many traits dwarfs and dragons share and how much they could benefit from one another. Her status is similar to how vulcanic eruptions destroy large swaths of land but also create new things. And indeed I dare say that fyreslayers are also children of Vulcatrix as her essence is in Urgold too, meaning each FS is drawing upon her essence when fighting. Which is also the reason why they can cast magic.
So instead of regular dwarfs you have religious dwarfs fighting as mercenaries to resurrect their god and to whom a dragon-god is essentially a mother goddess of their culture.
Meanwhile the Kharadon Overlords are more than steanpunk sky dwarfs. Because they are the anti-thesis to WFB chaos dwarfs. Chaos Dwarfs were left abandondend by the ancestor gods and were in greatest danger and dying. So in desperation they abandondend core dawi traits and joined Hashut. KO were in a similar situation and they too abandondend core dawi traits (grudges, kingship, tradition above all, gods, living underground). But instead of falling to chaos they instead went for a third option, reinventing their society and rising up in the sky with new technology.
Even the minor dwarfen factions in AoS are creative. Such as the Root Kings in Ghyran, who are naturalistic dwarfs living in Halls under trees and are great wood workers. Does this make sense? Yes and such aspects should have been included much earlier into dwarfen cultures.
Mining and smithing takes a lot of wood. And before steam, water and wind and manual labour (animal or human) were the only power sources. For this reason around mining areas you would have had foresters planting huge forests as wood plantations. And they would erect awesome systems of deiks, canals and artifical lakes to power water mills all throughout the year. Not to mention how certain plants indicate which ressources can be found in the soil abd prospectors looked for such plants. Or how charcoalers were essential too an extend that it became a common family name. E.g. Black in english or Kohl/Köhler in german.
So dwarfs being close to nature, planting forests etc. is something which should have been explored much earlier too IMO.
In this I am thankful for AoS to give us more creative dawi factions, even in minor fluff.