Dwarf

Dwarf

(Creature)

Common

Medium

Dwarf

Humanoid

Level

Varies

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

Dwarven, dwarvish

Images of dwarves

Source: Player Core, pg(s). 42–45

Type

Humanoid
(dwarf)

CR

By class level

Environment

Any land

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

Dwarven, dwarvish

Images of dwarves

Source: Core Rulebook, pg(s). 21

Ⅰ

Ⅱ

The dwarves of Golarion are a humanoid ancestry of warriors and craftspeople. They excel at jobs other ancestries find tedious, but also have a great love of exploration and discovery and are renowned for close familial relationships that often extend millennia into the past.

Appearance

Akina Fairingot, a dwarven warrior.

A dwarf is a stout humanoid, usually standing a foot shorter than their human counterparts but with a much broader frame. They have thick, heavy bones, tightly packed muscular sinew, and a stability unmatched by other ancestries. This bulk also causes dwarves to weigh as much, if not more than, humans. Height and coloration varies widely, both within and between ethnicities. For example, among surface dwarves, those of Garund are deeply tanned and weather-beaten, while those of Avistan tend to be paler, and those of Garund have dark skin. Mountain dwarves tend to be a few inches taller than other dwarves, while underground dwarves tend to be shorter.

Dwarves have a wide range of eye colors, with brown and grey being the most common, though some possess shocking blue irises. Kulenett dwarves are also known for their reddish-orange eyes.

Many dwarves wear their hair long, and many spend considerable effort growing, maintaining, and embellishing their long beards, which are viewed by many dwarven clans as a symbol of honor.

Beards are more common among underground dwarven women, while Vahird dwarves shave their beards. Dwarves of the Five Kings Mountains of Avistan take particular pride in their facial hair and tie decorative glory ribbon around the ends of their beards. Other popular beard decorations among traditional dwarves include complicated braids, small trophies of battle, or other objects associated with significant life events.✝

Dwarves attain physical maturity by their 25th year but are culturally considered adults upon the completion of a coming-of-age ritual specific to their clan. A typical dwarf's natural lifespan is approximately 350 years.

Sexual dimorphism

Male dwarves tend to be noticeably broader, though not as much taller comparatively, than female dwarves, and have slab-like torsos and heavy eyebrows. Dwarves of all genders can grow facial hair.✝

Fashion

Dwarven fashion often mirrors the items they so carefully craft, elevating function over style, but they are never plain. Most decorations also serve a practical purpose, such as special fasteners, reinforced seams, useful padding, or loops for holding weapons or tools. Kulenett dwarves, for example, wear light armor and goggles that keep the sands of the surface out of their eyes. Mountain dwarves wear more muted garments with a single brightly colored item, such as a scarf or bandanna in hues that match their clan gemstone, that they bear as their glory ribbon.

Personality

Krohan Veldollow sheathes a dwarven clan dagger.

Dwarves have a broad reputation for stubbornness, sensibility, and fierceness, and an affinity for fine craftmanship and working with stone and metal. They keep powerful familial ties and rarely forgive a wrongdoing done to them or their families. While friendship with a dwarf can be hard-won, they are capable of seeing through ancient prejudices to value a battle-tested friend. True friendship to a dwarf is worth more than all the gold and gemstones that one could acquire.

Adventurers

Dwarven adventurers are often treasure hunters or mercenaries, though not typically for selfish profit. Many seek dwarven treasures lost to history, to recover land stolen by the enemies of dwarvenkind, or simply to find a fortune that can help them improve their citadels. Many dwarves choose a martial role as a barbarian, fighter, monk, or ranger, while others take a higher calling as clerics and druids. Dwarven adventurers of all stripes are known for pushing themselves to improve and forging strong bonds with allies.

Clans of underground dwarves consider the few who take up adventuring to be blessings who follow in the traditions of dwarves pushing their boundaries to achieve greater glory. Those who return home are welcomed as heroes; others are remembered fondly and with pride as embodiments of the same drive that propelled ancient clans to leave the Darklands. Surface dwarves have as diverse a set of reasons for adventuring as their many cultures, and mountain dwarves adventure to seek glory through combat and readily travel widely.

History

A dwarven merchant.

According to their own myths, dwarves were forged by Torag in ancient times and are to this day sometimes referred to as "Torag's Children". They lived and worked in their forges and cities in Nar-Voth, fighting against orcs and goblinoid ancestries as well as among themselves, for eons.

Quest for Sky

Update needed This section should be updated to reflect canon changes noted in Highhelm. Please help improve it if you can; the talk page might contain suggestions.

Late in the Age of Darkness (ca. -5133 AR) they followed the dictates of a prophet of Torag to leave their Darklands home and migrate to the surface, an event that would later be termed the Quest for Sky. This massive societal upheaval caused a terrible civil war between the clans that ground the migration to a halt, until they were united under General Taargick. With the Quest for Sky renewed, the dwarves inadvertently herded their ancient enemies, the orcs, before them, and finally emerged onto the surface around -4987 AR. Once they established themselves, they built vast and magnificent fortified cities called Sky Citadels, and crowned Taargick the king of the newly established kingdom of Tar Taargadth.

Society

A dwarven noblewoman.

Dwarves are great lovers of tradition, but with their culture waning and nations of other races rising around the world, dwarven society is becoming more heavily influenced by human, gnomish, and even elven culture. This makes older dwarves quite nervous, as they see the more porous nature of dwarven society today as a prelude to its extinction. Despite these changes, dwarves still spend most of their time crafting, fighting, or building fortifications, mainstays that have not changed since Torag breathed life into the first dwarf.

Dwarven society is traditionally divided into numerous clans. Each clan is associated with a particular gemstone cut into a specific shape; the stone is usually one common in the clan's lands but rare enough to be valuable. These stones are often set in clan members' armor or the hilts of weapons. Due to the dwarves' extensive record-keeping, it is rare for any two clans to have the same stone and cut.

Language

Unthal Rumblegut, a dwarven duelist.

Most dwarves primarily speak the Dwarven language, although many are also fluent in Common tongues such as Taldane. Dwarven shares its runic alphabet with Petran. Dwarven names are full of harsh-sounding consonants, and rarely include soft or sibilant sounds. Honorifics are common in given names, such as "-sun" ("-son"), "-dam" ("-daughter"), and "-hild" ("-wife"). Family names sometimes contain words in Common, such as "gold" or "hammer". Also, the letters Q and X do not appear in Dwarven.

Religion

A priestess of Torag.

Many dwarven cultures are renowned for their deep spirituality and their perspectives on faith that intertwine personal beliefs with ancestral and clan traditions. Dwarven cultures place significant importance on honoring their ancestors, including founding figures of their clans and builders of their grand cities, as well as esteemed heroes and skilled artisans. Core virtues such as craftsmanship, mining, smithing, determination, honor, friendship, exploration, and the preservation of family traditions are paramount to dwarves, who seek to prove themselves worthy of their ancestors' esteemed legacy and the divine protection bestowed by their gods.

Dwarven religious practices are characterized by many ceremonial rites that can often go beyond the edicts or requirements of the deities they worship. These rituals are often group activities, particularly during significant events that commemorate major achievements or the passing of revered heroes, and feature the prominent use of relics expertly crafted from precious metals and lavishly adorned with gemstones. Smaller communities and traveling dwarves more commonly observe condensed and pragmatic rituals, attesting to the adaptability of dwarven faith.

Most dwarves venerate Torag, the God of the Forge, above all others, although among the dwarves of the Inner Sea region, Cayden Cailean, Gorum, and Abadar are also given great respect. Torag's teachings still guide most of dwarven culture and thought, as many believe he will abandon them should they ever slack in their duties.

The Vahird

A Vahird dwarf.

Vahird dwarves of Rahadoum hold similarly strong beliefs that no being is superior to any other being, including deities. This vegetarian sect of dwarves welcomes any who share their beliefs that no person or deity could rule over another being.

Gladdringgar

Gladdringgar is the dwarven tradition of carving one's personal rune in stone on the deepest cave or tunnel one has explored. It literally translates as the "ritual of toil", although younger dwarves have begun to refer to it as kangreddin, or "wall-making". Many dwarves are obsessed with leaving a mark and being remembered, and respect those who risk their lives to delve into their people's ancestral home in the Darklands.

Attitudes toward other ancestries

Dwarves are hard-working, dedicated, and tough, and view other races who do not share these traits as being frivolous at best, and weak and degenerate at worst. Some dwarves consider elves to be the ultimate examples of this, in addition to labeling them as cowards and weaklings for abandoning Golarion for thousands of years following Earthfall. Dromaars were historically regarded little better than their full-blooded orc relatives and regarded with suspicion.

Taller ancestries sometimes refer to dwarves as runts, although they find this extremely offensive.

Dwarves are stalwart defenders of their homes.

Cultural groups

A Pahmet monk.

Dwarven civilization is traditionally divided into three groups: the Grondaksen, or underground dwarves, who live in cities beneath the earth; the Holtaksen, or mountain dwarves, who live in cities high in the mountains; and the Ergaksen, or surface dwarves, who live scattered on the surface lands.

Grondaksen dwarves are usually somewhat shorter than other dwarves, and are known for extensive beards that are present even in their women. They believe that the Quest for Sky was completed just below the world's surface, and rely on contact with surface-dwelling dwarf cultures for news of the world. Grondaksen cultures include the Kulenett, who live in a complex tunnel system beneath the mountains of Geb.

Holtaksen dwarves live in fortresses built among the peaks of the world's mountains. They are the most militant dwarven culture, and frequently war against orcs and giants. They possess a strong cultural desire to relive the glory days of the Quest for Sky, and are the likeliest dwarves to become adventurers.

Ergaksen are thought of as a homogenous group by mountain and underground dwarves, but do not consider themselves a single culture and only refer to themselves as Ergaksen or surface dwarves when dealing with the other two groups. They descend from those dwarves who scattered across Golarion's surface and intermingled with other cultures, and are defined as a group by their differences from the other two kinds than by any strong links between their various subdivisions. Ergaksen cultures include the Pahmet of Osirion, the mercantile Paraheen of Qadira, the dragon-worshipping Mbe'ke and Taralu of the Mwangi Expanse, and the monastic and atheist Vahird of the Eternal Oasis of Rahadoum.

On Golarion

Dwarves can be found throughout Avistan and Garund, although the vast majority inhabit the Five Kings Mountains on the borders of Druma. Of particular note are the city of Highhelm in the Five Kings Mountains, whose inhabitants consider themselves the heart of dwarven culture and life; the Sky Citadel of Janderhoff in Varisia; the Ouat monks of Osirion; the Sky Citadel of Kraggodan in Nirmathas; and the wild warriors of Kalsgard in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings.

Among the southern peaks of the Shattered Range in Garund are the less-known desert dwarves, who are hardy nomadic warriors who dwell in rough caverns by day and travel above ground by night. In southwest Osirion are the Pahmet, or sand dwarves, who are proud but xenophobic warriors that believe they once protected the greatest secrets of the ancient pharaohs. Kulenett dwarves live nomadic lives in intricate tunnels below the mountains of Geb.

Equipment

Clan daggers are forged by a dwarf's clanmates and bear a type of gemstone on the pommel specific to their clan. These daggers are used to sever the umbilical cord of a newborn dwarf, and they typically take possession of their clan dagger upon reaching adolescence. Selling a clan dagger is considered a taboo among their kin.

Most dwarven clans share an affinity for straightforward weaponry, such as battle axes, picks, and warhammers.

The dwarven maulaxe is a weapon that features both a sledgehammer head and a sharp blade. Dwarves also have their own adapted variants of the waraxe and spear-hafted urgrosh.

Stoneplate is armor crafted from alchemically strengthened pieces of shale and basalt rock.

References

For additional as-yet unincorporated sources about this subject, see the Meta page.