Dwarves

Second only to the humans in terms of trade, mostly due to their refusal to deal with lesser races and the elves. They are a people who are content to sit in their traditional ways and spend decades doing the same task, happy to be of use. To other races they often come off as gruff and unwelcoming, but this is more due to the dwarves having a comparatively odd mindset of liking things to go slowly and stubbornly refusing instant gratification. In reality most dwarves are disinterested in other races at worst, aside from the elves which they generally hate.

Dwarves have some odd appearances by other race’s standards. Most importantly in that they have no sexual dimorphism. All dwarves are stocky, broadly build, and grow thick wiry hair with impressive beards. The colors vary from region to region, most commonly greys and browns for all attributes. To tell each other apart better dwarves use their beards, odd ties or braids means a male dwarf, even a female. Even going further a single or double braid means a dwarf is ‘on the market’ so to say, adding more to denote if they have children, grandchildren, and so on. They also use decorations to show family history, using light beads for daughters, darker for sons, and metal discs to denote things like nieces and nephews distance. Due to this the punishment of shaving a dwarf is a very literal way of removing them from their family, a dwarf without a beard is one lacking any heritage or identity among dwarven culture.

Dwarves who leave their tunnel homes are usually doing so for family reasons. Be it to fulfill an ancestor’s request, a traditional quest, reclaim an heirloom, or because they’ve been shaven. Most tend towards the physical arts too, very few dwarves have the knack for magic and what little there is are those who use rune magic or divine magic. In fact dwarven aging can prevent a dwarf from using arcane magic as the Arcane Sickness is counteracted by their age. As a dwarf ages their bones grow thicker and denser, so even if a dwarf did learn arcane magic eventually their bones would become too stiff for them to do most the somatic gestures required for it. As such most enjoy melee weapons such as the hammer and spear, ranged options being heavy rifles and blunderbusses. Though particularly old dwarves can get by just fine with their heavy bones alone.

Their currency are thick square coins with a square hole in the middle, stored on rods and made of very pure metals.

Rules changes:
All dwarves gain the following racial trait:

Bone Growth

As you age your bones harden. Age penalties to dexterity are doubled. At middle aged you gain +1 natural armor, at old it increases to +2, at venerable it increases to +3. Age can lower your dexterity to 0, at which point you are paralyzed, if you reach your maximum age you die and leave behind a bone statue of yourself.

Alternate racial traits:
Depth Sense, Replaces Greed

You are always aware of your depth in relation to sea level within approximately 100ft.