Iron Dwarves
Iron Dwarves
On the arid desert world of Carnoom, often called the Blood Moon or the Rust Moon, the fire-aligned Iron Dwarves live as nomads who travel the red sands between oases and hidden villages built in the ruins of fallen fire giant city-states. Physically, they resemble most dwarves, but their skin has the color and luster of cast iron and their hair looks like steel wool or fine copper wire.
Merchant caravans carry trade goods among their clan's villages and visit trading posts to meet caravans from other clans. Sometimes they even visit a fire giant city to barter recovered giant relics found in the desert ruins and exchange news and rumors about the other cities ― and sometimes other moons or even the world of Tellus that dominates their sky.
Bands of herders drive their livestock on a circuit from one oasis to another, stopping to graze on patches of coarse vegetation encountered along the route.
- The dulap is a large lizard (stats as a camel with AC 5[14]) used as a riding animal as well as for its leather and meat.
- The rhinkeit is a massive rhinoceros beetle (stats as medium herd animal with AC 4[15]) used as a draft animal and a source of ferric chitin, a tough semimetallic material commonly known as black ivory used for armor plates, tool handles, or other applications that demand durability with some flexibility.
- The nodjul is a basketball sized pill bug (stats as giant rat minus the disease). Nodjuls are raised primarily for their meat (they are essentially the Carnoomian equivalent of the chicken) and their pearls. Nodjuls concentrate all the iron and trace metals they consume into a single nodule in the body segment just behind the head. The pearls from slaughtered nodjuls are saved until they can be smelted in a village foundry to produce the metal used by iron dwarf smiths. Nodjuls are also appreciated for their friendly demeanor and their willingness to be sporting equipment for impromptu ball games.
The iron dwarves of Carnoom typically follow the Church of Light, but with a more worldly focus. They are less concerned with the heavens or the afterlife and more concerned with the here and now. Their Saphyrans, for example, often serve as village architects who design large common spaces and row homes with shared walls. This saves building materials, but more importantly, it encourages a sense of community and interconnectedness with neighbors and the environment.
The ancient fire giant cities were built from massive blocks of basalt with many hexagonal columns. The iron dwarves fill the enormous halls of abandoned giant cities with their own multistory buildings of fired brick coated with mud plaster. They typically favor smooth curves and circular windows and doors which makes an iron dwarf structure resemble a mix of pueblo cliff dwelling, hobbit hole, and huge mud dauber nest. While their masonry skills are serviceable, they are nothing spectacular as one might expect from a people renowned for their stonework.
The iron dwarves' true expertise lies in materials science and metalwork. Every iron dwarf is expected to memorize the Stoichiomachy, an epic poem that uses flowery language to describe the interaction of elements in alchemical reactions in general followed by an intense focus on the quenching, annealing, and alloying of metals.
In game terms, Iron Dwarves are the standard B/X Dwarf without skills in construction tricks, traps, and listening at doors. Instead they have a 2-in-6 chance of being able to identify materials and alchemical reagents (including at least a rough idea of what a strange potion might do). They also know how to perform runic rites of Honing, Mending, and Balance that can repair or temporarily enhance equipment.