I've wrote the first part of a dwarven bible, if you will. I'm planning to cover pretty much everything - anatomy, culture, weaponry, social structure - you name it.
Now, this is the first part only, the unfinished biological part. If it's appreciated, I'll make more!
The Dwarven Bible.
The attempt of assembling all dwarven knowledge.
Note that this 'knowledge' derives from the game and my fantasy.
In no way do I claim the canonity of these informations.
First: The Dwarven Anatomy.
Muscles, Stature, Bones.
The advantages:
Dwarves have often been mistaken for children, which, judging by their size, is possible when seen from a distance or with weak light. When a closer look is taken, one immediately realizes that the stature of the dwarven race is vastly different from a child's one. For one, a mature dwarf has proportions similar to an adult human, in contrast to the relatively short extremities of a child. Also, and more importantly, a dwarf is built very sturdily. By volume, an average 90 centimetre dwarf has about as many muscles as a well-built adult man. However, the muscles of the dwarven race are grown much denser than human ones. Thus, 1 ccm of dwarven muscle mass has about 150 % of the force of human muscles. When taken in account that the average dwarf – known as a so-called Urist McDwarf in dwarven tongue – has 150 % the force of a well-built man, it is easily imaginable that muscular warriors and heavy-working dwarves have over two times the force of a human.
The bone structure of a dwarf is quite similar to the human one. There are a few differences though: First, the dwarven bones are proportionally thicker and heavier. Second, they are much stronger. At first, it was thought that such an disproportional increase of stability was the result of magic inherent to the dwarven body. When humans finally managed to take a close look at a slain mountain dweller, the solution was as obvious as it was simple: Because the dwarves would live hundreds of years in their halls of stone and their large exposure to metals, these elements would gather in their bodies. Over the years, the dwarven physiology has found a constructive ways of dumping excess metal: Before calcium is used to construct bones, it bonds with very small iron particles in the blood. The bone is composed up to 12 % out of iron and other metals. Depending on the job, this metal may even be steel or the legendary Adamantine, hardening the bones to truly fearsome strength.
The disadvantages:
Even if the dwarven body is superior to the human one in many aspects, there are a few important drawbacks: First, the dwarven body needs great amounts of energy. The average dwarf requires 18'000 kJ, a hard working smith or miner can require 22'000 kJ. This is a huge amount of food, and thus dwarves fare badly in famines. Even worse, the dwarven body does store excess energy only in small quantities, which is why there are virtually no fat dwarves. Instead, excess energy is mostly stored as food itself and gradually digested into glucose. Dwarves starve in up to two weeks. As a second drawback, dwarves grow only slowly. This is the price they pay for their denser bones and muscles. As an example: A human boy is grown out at 20 years. For a dwarf, this can take up to sixty years – human age times three is a good rule of thumb. This also reflects in reproduction. Dwarven carriage time is approximately two years, and dwarves tend not to be very 'productive'.
Organs, Blood Circulation.
The advantages:
Because alcohol is the basic beverage for a dwarf, water only consumed when sick or wounded, the liver is vastly more effective and active than a human one. Dwarfs can survive as much as 35 % (not promille!) of blood alcohol before facing serious consequences. Notably, the type of alcohol is irrelevant, they can digest methanol or even propanol, which are very damaging to the human body. The fact that methanol burns with an almost invisible white flame means that many fires go unnoticed for quite some time.*
Actually, a dwarf has two livers, the second being a small and rudimentary organ located behind the larger one. A mountain dweller has three litres of blood with a half litre pure alcohol, which is actually a part of the dwarven blood circulation. In the stomach, the so-called 'Dwarven Filter' digests a part of the alcohol directly into the blood. Other than that the dwarven organs are very similar to the human one. Remarkably, dwarven genitals tend to be larger than their human counterparts. (YES, DWARVES HAVE BIG DICKS. C'MON, YOU KNEW IT, tits too)
The dwarven beard, besides being the veritable pride of any dwarf, have an important function as filtering the dust and fine powdered metal and stone often met in their caves, and are thus very, very dense, around 2500/square centimeter. Similar to their bones, a dwarf's exposure to metal affects a dwarfs beard, they can change hair colour through their work, with entire hanks growing in this particular metal. Dwarfs with adamantine or steel beards are often more respected than many a noble.
Concerning the respiratory system, the Lifemage Rowanantkhazan theorized:
It is my personal belief that Dwarves do not actually process any of this themselves. They are in fact a part of a symbiotic relationship with gut bacteria. They provide the vast amounts of carbon dioxide and hydrogen (in place of water) and the internal bacteria create energy from it, reproduce, and are then killed by the body to release the precious energy created. This means that dwarves have to keep breathing to dispense of that useless oxygen (then used by the humans, usually in much greater quantities). This symbiotic relationship means that Dwarves allow organisms far more suited to the task, to gather energy, while dwarves merely take in the required substances.
The disadvantages:
These are less extreme than those of the bones and muscles. However, dwarves can simply not survive without alcohol, the half litre 'blood alcohol' must be renewed with digesting a part of the drunken alcohol directly into the blood. As the alcohol gets too old, it can no longer function as electrolyte. Also, if a dwarves liver is seriously wounded, this dwarf is usually doomed to death even if the wound itself is not immediately fatal. Then it is not usual for a dwarf to commit suicide.
All this lets us conclude that dwarves are very adapted to cave life, and are probably living in them for tens of thousands of years, making them the oldest race known.
*The Alchemists Sensurist und Rowanantkhazan were very helpful in composing this work.
With this, the biology part is finished, and thus vol. 1, Anatomy, is complete. What should vol. 2 be? I thought of the social structure...
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Topic: The Dwarven Bible, Biology part finished. (Read 13129 times)