Earth Elementals part 1: Dwarves

The average peasant probably knows this about Dwarves:

• They are short, bearded men. At least, they all have beards and deep voices, but they must have women too.
• They make jewelry, armour, weapons, buildings and tools very well, among other things. Dwarven craftsmanship is highly sought after.
• They like to drink a lot. Particularly a l c o h o l i c drinks. They are a rather rowdy folk.
• They live in mountains and hills and in other underground dark places.

Though the average peasant is, in many respects, below average, what they know about Dwarves is pretty accurate. But what they don't know is vast.

The average peasant probably does not know this about Dwarves:

• Dwarves are Earth Elementals.
• Dwarven beards can magically craft items when the raw materials for those items are placed inside the beard and allowed to gestate whilst the Dwarf concentrates on the finished product. If you hand a skillful Dwarven craftsman a lump of iron ore, some wood and some animal skill then, given time, he can produce for you a master-crafted iron dagger. Dwarves are also very skilled at hands-on crafting since not everything can fit inside their beards.
• Dwarves do not need to eat meat. Meat-eating is taboo in most Dwarven cultures. They get by perfectly well with some dirt, pebbles and a tuft of grass every now and then, thank you very much. Dwarves are cold-blooded so they do not expend much energy as their body does not need to maintain a consistent temperature. This serves them well in deep, dark recesses under the mountains.
• Dwarves don't have much access to alcoholic drinks when in their homes deep underground, so when they travel out into other lands they take the opportunity. Travelling to human lands is akin to a night out on the town.
• Dwarves have good vision in the dark and poorer vision in bright light, such as the overlands.
• Dwarves can self-petrify. They can do it rather quickly too. It's a defence mechanism, but it is also a last resort.
• Dwarves can also self-depetrify. That takes a little while to do. They are quite vunerable while depetrifying.
• They can also depetrify other petrified organisms by touch. That takes rather a long time to do.
• Dwarves can reproduce by magically crafting a statue of a dwarven boy within their beard, and then depetrifying it. It takes a little each of concentration, beard skill and will to do this successfully. It takes a lot of concentration, beard skill and will to do this well and make an excellent new Dwarf, but unfortunately the quality of the offspring is hard to measure. Perhaps the offspring will be unable to depetrify. Perhaps its beard skill will be poor. Perhaps The Change will come to it very early in its life.
• As a Dwarf gets old, which can take several hundred years, they begin to undergo The Change.

The average Dwarf probably knows this about The Change:

• When you change, you develop a taste for meat and precious things, such as gold and diamonds. Once you have changed, that desire becomes all-consuming, the single characteristic by which you now live your life. Your old personality is eradicated.
• As you change, your beard-craftsmanship declines, until your beard loses all its magical potency and your beard hairs begin to fall out. What a lamentable event.
• During The Change your limbs and digits become gangling and lanky.
• Your back becomes rough and stony, as you can no longer properly process the dirt and pebbles that were your staple, and they become part of your back. A changed Dwarf who consumes precious metals and stones will grow them onto their back.
• The Change can take only a few days to complete, but sometimes takes years. There is no way to tell in advance.
• Wizards, Elves and other bookworms often call changed Dwarves "Trolls".

Here is a variety of Dwarven cultural reactions to The Change.

• When a Dwarf suspects he has reached The Change, he should, with no fanfare or salutations, take himself to The Hall of the Yesteryear, find a suitable alcove and petrify himself. This is the only dignified response to The Change. If a Clan or Colony is ever in the direst of needs it will awaken its ancestors in the Hall of the Past to rally to its defense.
• The Change is the body's way of telling the mind that the time for life is over, and changing Dwarves should host a tremendous farewell feast for all their friends and family, followed by a ritual which ends their life and returns them to the dust from whence they came.
• A pox on all Elves, Men and Halflings! The Change is a sign that a Dwarf has not done enough to advance Dwarvenkind, and the only proper response is to crusade amongst the folk of the overlands, feasting on their flesh and haunting their forests until you are slain.
• The Change in no way devalues the life of a Dwarf, and the only true measure of a Dwarven society is how it cares for those who have undergone The Change.
• The Change is not a physiological development but a trial from on high. The longer a Dwarf lives without undergoing The Change, and the longer they can last withstand the full effects of The Change, the greater their afterlife will be. Once a Dwarf is fully changed they are no longer a Dwarf and the creature that remains should be thrown out into the wilderness. Their soul has ascended and their body is a shell.
  
  Continued in:
  https://kingbim.blogspot.com/2020/02/earth-elementals-part-2-trolls.html