Now that we’ve covered Virtues and Traumas, it’s time to start looking at how races work in Middens and Morals. Galatia has the same six base races as D&D: dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, halfling, human, and orc. All of these races can interbreed, leading to a vast array of magical characters, but how to represent that mechanically is a conundrum for another time; right now we will only focus on the primary races. Many more sentient and PC-worthy beings roam these lands, of course, not to mention all those elsewhere in the world, but these are where we will start.
Dwarfs
Although it seems unlikely, dwarfs are considered Fair Folk, cousin to the Fey, and one of the original races born in Galatia. They are very closed about their culture and their knowledge, couldn’t care less about any of the other races, and will nonetheless occasionally trade with the surface dwellers for food and magical services. They have little use for man-made objects, but are nonetheless far more technologically advanced than humans may ever hope to be. Because of their inherently magical nature, dwarfs often have trouble channeling spells and therefore require outsiders to do their enchantments.
According to dwarfin legend, dwarfs are the children of one of deep Kellide’s schemes. Wishing that fiery Soleh would spend more than one night at a time in her stone bed, Kellide trapped him underground by means of cunning and clever tricks. There, she luxuriated with him in the sweetness of their respective loins. Dwarfs spilled from her womb as a result, dwarfs who began to talk with and sympathize with their father. They set to work inventing things to free him, and after many failed (and oft humorous) attempts, one invention showed promise. On the drawing board, anyway ~ volcanoes are notoriously difficult to test. But work it did, and Soleh was freed, and anger overtook him such that he was wroth against any reminder of his time in captivity. As these things too often go, the very children of his that saved him bore much of the brunt of this temper tantrum. After enough attacks and petty vengeances from their father, the dwarfs retreated under the mountains, telling their children to avoid and fear the sun and to mourn their lost relationship with it.
Two centuries ago, the Empire came to Worth. The daughter of Emeritus who had forced the Dalmatian queen Aloranis to his bridegroom’s bed in order to lay claim to her lands by Fey law sought now to make her name. Eliesia the Half-Elfin, she was called, and a simple war of conquest she fought. Her armies echoed through the tunnels in the peaks of the dwarfin lands. Contingents of the short Fair Folk formed bands of guerillas that used all their engineering tricks to defeat, deter, and kill the human soldiers, but most remained at their work. These latter would, without shift of countenance or indeed attention, simply turn from that work when necessary and treat the human before them as just another ore-vein that yielded to their picks and axes, and then return to work without missing more than a beat. It was perhaps this lack of coordination, or this lack of concern over the bloody arts, that gave the dwarfin realm of Worth the loss, and gave Galatia its final province. Matthieu d’Holbach, of the line of Metontas, was given the task of settling Worth and crushing resistance; he would go on to succeed Queen Eliesia and serve his time as King of the Galatian Empire.
While king, d’Holbach enlisted a sizeable workforce of military engineers, civil architects, and serfs to work alongside scores of dwarfin tunnelers, building a network across the empire of subterranean arteries beneath all of its highways and byways. This was, in truth, rather a genius bit of statecraft, as it not only made it easier for the Worthese to travel and spread across his domain, but it actually pulled many of them out into the greater world. Moreso, in doing it so, it put them in close contact with the other races of Galatia, breaking down barriers and easing tensions borne of such quick expansion ~ Galatia gained Dalmatia and Worth within two or three human generations (seems a lot to us, but imagine how short that is to the other races, who live two to seven times as long as us!).
Physical Description: Quite naturally, dwarfs are noticeably shorter than humans or elfs. Their dense, thickly-corded muscles ripple unseen under a thick layer of fat, like mountain stone beneath dozens of feet of snow, while blazingly yellow-blond hair waves in fair flickers from their head. Braiding these hairs is not in fashion, but that doesn’t mean dwarfs aren’t vain about them ~ brushing it out to glistening is an extended ritual on both ends of the day, and it is often arranged in any number of coiffures that somehow catch even the slight breezes of the underground and float hauntingly. This hair, in the same range of shades and hues and tints, carpets their bodies and their limbs. And their chins. Let’s get it settled now: all genders of dwarfs proudly wear thick, luxuriant, flowing beards, and they’re just as vain about their chin-hairs as their head-hairs. Dwarfin eyes are a warm yellow flecked with white and (uncommonly) orange and (rarely) a brilliant red, all against a pale blue sclera. Their skin has a cold, ashen tone quite distinct from a humans’. Sometimes the hair gets darker or lighter, sometimes purpler or oranger or even the rare yellow, and the eyes can also range in shade and tint and hue, sometimes oranger, less commonly red, and most rarely edging just the tiniest bit into green.
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