The Talamh

Racial Overview
Beneath seeping soil and weeping stone, there lay The Low Kingdom of the Talamh. The Low Kingdom, An Riocht Iseal, was a singular place. It united all the halls of the Talamh physically and culturally as a network of people and tunnels which, it is said, spanned the entire world. The Emergence broke through the heart of An Riocht Iseal and the tremors at the parting of the continents collapsed uncounted miles of tunnel and brought whole mountains down upon the folk below.

Little of An Riocht Iseal has been recovered in the millenia since. Instead the few surviving clan halls were remade into the Holds. Holds are fortress kingdoms, hidden or guarded within the mountains, they are home to most of the modern dwarvish population. Holds rarely trade with one another or outsiders, though dwarven - and in some Holds any - common folk travel to and from them freely for wealth, knowledge and pilgrimage.

Wherever they choose to live, dwarves are renowned chiefly as workers of stone and metal, such skills being irreplaceable in subterranean society. Dwarves who have settled outside the Holds and are not given to a life of craft, are often favoured as watchmen both within and without the law due to their easily overlooked stature and impressive night vision.The chief religion of the Dwarves is inescapably tied to their life and culture. The worship of Lassus the Weeper is expressed in the making and drinking of copious amounts of alcohol. The one part of the dwarven diet to have ever achieved favour with the other races.

The Dwarves typically follow real world Gaelic, Scottish, Norse, or Germanic naming conventions. They do not need to strictly adhere to these naming conventions.

Physical Attributes
Dwarves are short, hardy and dexterous. Dwarves are shorter than their human friends, most often between 3½ and 4 feet in height, with the tallest dwarf in living memory standing at 4’7”. A dwarf’s skin is tough and usually calloused in a dozen ways before they reach adulthood at the age of 20. Dwarven hair is coarse, thick and everywhere. The beard is the center of dwarven fashion in men and women, and is often styled and dyed in highly extravagant ways with all manner of accessories and mineral dyes. Their hair color is naturally similar to any range of Human colors.

On balance a dwarf’s eyesight is presumed to be as good as a human’s. Despite not seeing remarkably far (even when stood on a chair), dwarvish perception of colour even in darkness naturally exceeds the norm of all other races. Their eyes are also similar to that of all human colors, though a good amount of them tend to have lighter colored eyes.