War In The Shadows - The Dwergaz & Their Hidden Legacy

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my Godbound/Cha'alt rpg campaign over the last couple of days. A friend of mine asked me, 'Are there Dwarves on Cha'alt?'. This got me thinking about my notes from my Adventurer, Conqueror, King  campaign from a few years ago. The wiki entry on the mythology of the Dwarves has this to say; "Norse mythology provides different origins for the beings, as recorded in the Poetic Edda (compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources) and the Prose Edda (written by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century). The Poetic Edda poem Völuspá details that the dwarfs were the product of the primordial blood of the being Brimir and the bones of Bláinn (generally considered to be different names for the primordial being Ymir). The Prose Edda, however, describes dwarfs as beings similar to maggots that festered in the flesh of Ymir before being gifted with reason by the gods. The Poetic Edda and Prose Edda contain over 100 dwarf names, while the Prose Edda gives the four dwarfs Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri (Old Norse 'North, South, East, and West') a cosmological role: they hold up the sky.^[1] In addition, scholars have noted that the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') appear to be the same beings as dwarfs, given that both are described in the Prose Edda as the denizens of Svartálfaheimr"



In my mind the traditional Dungeons & Dragons style Dwarf or Dwergaz from the proto Germanic were originally a slave race that rose up against their inhuman masters  the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') & their original creators the Brimir. They formed their own kingdoms far away on other planes but there are still Dwarven kingdoms within Svartálfaheimr. The wars between Dwergaz & Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') are legendary. 


A dwarf, in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy roleplaying game, is a humanoid race. The idea for the D&D dwarf comes from European mythologies and J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), and has been used in D&D and its predecessor Chainmail since the early 1970s. Lady of Hats artwork is awesome.

The Dwarves are seemingly a dying people but in some sense their not going extinct. They continue to wander across the planes seeding new settlements & other fortifications. But what the Hell are the Dwarves of legend  doing on Cha'alt?!  The Dwarven communities on Cha'alt are there doing the same things that they always have been doing kicking ass & taking names. But they also have been heavily involved in the demonic worm trade, doing many of the heavy duty enchantments for many of the scavenger tribes,subbing mercenary work in the desert regions, working many of the desert caravans, and living the life of adventurers.

Desert Dwarf artwork by Eric Williams II for the Shadowrun rpg Dwarf Male but I thought the artwork was cool as Hell. 

But the Dwergaz clans & tribes  have secret agendas & reasons for being on Cha'alt. Their ancient enemies the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') have been selling millions of slaves for mass sacrifices to the Great Old Ones.  The  Dwergaz clans & tribal elders have been looking to the  alien control center known as Elysium. 


There are rumors that the ancient enemies of the  Dwergaz clans the Duergar evil & vile creatures who fell to the forces of chaos weilded by the the Svartálfar (Old Norse 'black elves') are now maintaing some of the alien machinery deep below the face of Elysium.
The Duergar from the Monster Manual II  are still evil as they come! 

The Dwergaz clans on Cha'alt know that the planet is in total peril & that there's a limited time frame on the planet. Many of the clan houses have gateways to other worlds already set up. The tremors caused by the California dimensional warp have been tearing bits & pieces of the fabric of the local space time continum. 


Artwork from Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise kickstarter.