"Uh, that you can do neat tricks with it? I guess it wasn't really what you'd call a, um, pedagogical focus."
The dwarves in your immediate vicinity have at this point pretty much all picked up on the conversation and are staring at you more-or-less slack-jawed. On the bright side, you seem to have moved their attention from "protect secrets" to "teach the idiot".
"Well...", continues Dael, "...do you at least know the
sources of magic?"
"You mean like artefacts, magic beasts, those wizard guys, that kind of thing?", you reply tentatively.
"Uh... No. There are three sources of all magic; the earth, the sky, and living things —"
"What about water?", someone interrupts.
"— and some say water is a fourth source, but if it is, we don't know how to use it. Those are the things into which the gods placed their power for us to find, and all artefacts draw from those sources. We take things from those places to provide the raw power, then we use rituals to bend that power to our will. Even the shape of an artefact is an important part of the ritual, and helps to define what it does. Take, ummm..." — Dael opens up a pack and looks through it, then asks Estfer for help before finally pulling out and showing you a small silver egg. "This'll do. Estfer gave me this as a present when we were courting, it's an old heirloom of her family. It looks solid, but the yolk is iron. It makes things more fertile; you can bury it in the ground to make crops grow, or put it where your livestock sleep, or, well, give it to your lover if you're hoping to have a lot of children..." (Dael is visibly reddening) "but the point is that the fact that it is an
egg is why it does that, because eggs symbolise fertility. The material itself draws in the magic from all around it, but the shape gives it a purpose."
You smile blankly and try to look like you understand.
"Now, the silver in the egg itself holds magic naturally, and it's alloyed with some... stuff you don't need to know about. That provides magic from the earth. It... also has magic from living things, but magic from the sky is pretty hard to come by. Um, we get some from doing rituals in starlight or certain kinds of weather, but the only way I know about to get a lot of sky magic is from these bits of metal that fall from the sky in some places. But that's not really important, two sources are enough to make it work." For a few sentences now, Dael has had that look of running on conversational fumes, like he's not really sure where he's going with this train of thought, so it's probably a good idea to provide some feedback now. In fact, the next thing he says after giving you a somewhat beseeching look is: "Er, where was I going with this?"
A) So how would you get magic from water if you could?
B) What about the iron yolk, is there a reason for that?
C) Wait, where does the magic from living things come in? Is there something alive in there?
D) Did you say it takes magic from stuff around it? Is that thing draining my life force right now?!
E) Are there any side effects to all of this?
F) Can I get you to make me one of those eggs?
G) This is all way above my pay grade, let's talk about something else. (Choose a topic from the last set of options.)
Edit:
[so do dwarves in this universe live up to 200 if so wouldn’t 100 be the equivalent to the mid 20 of a human?]
Yes, but no. A dwarf's life isn't just a human's life scaled linearly; for example, while they're children for longer than humans are, they spend comparatively less of their overall lives as children than humans. A dwarf at 100 is considered a fully settled adult who ought already be married and raising kids. In fact, the fact that Queen Graszdat, who is around that age, doesn't have an heir yet is one of the many (many) reasons the Hehrcogese nobility dislike her.
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Topic: SpamDwarves: Low King Golian Duskbrow of Abystok! (Read 24980 times)