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[Gergination]

What is the community accepted lore for how engravers are able to smooth and engrave stone without any tools?

I was under the impression they just used their bare hands somehow, but I'm sure there's a more interesting/dwarfy explanation.

[billybobfred]

I was pretty sure they used their beards to do it, somehow.

But I don't remember where I read that... Oh. right. Here.

[NecroRebel]

To smooth stone, they use their rough and wiry beards. To engrave stone, they use their highly-acidic saliva.

...Actually, only the use of beards to smooth stone is widely-accepted. How they engrave is more questionable.

[Maklak]

Tools other than picks and axes are abstracted out. They use normal tools to engrave, they just don't show in inventory list or stockpiles.

[Cydonian Monk]

Tools other than picks and axes are abstracted out. They use normal tools to engrave, they just don't show in inventory list or stockpiles.

And yet teeth do....

[Gergination]

I'll go with the beard one.

[LilGunmanX]

They take a rock and bang it against another rock. It's so simple that you don't even need an inventory item for it.

[ElthMysterius]

Knowing Toady, he'll probably want to eventually add in more tools for those kinds of jobs. Without making it into a micromanagement nightmare that is.

I like to think that 'engraving' is known as 'polishing the stone' amongst dwarves. They just rub it. REALLY hard.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I am of the opinion that dwarven beards are just another limb, except one that can't grasp. The dwarves are punching images into the rock with their beards.

[Brandstone]

I think it's Dwarf magic. It also fits with my theory about Dwarf magic being in their constructive abilities. For example, one pillar of soap can support a steel fortress, water reactors defy the laws of energy exchange, bridges can destroy matter completely, levers can operate things remotely with just mechanisms, a workshop made from just a single glass block can create rock furniture, metal weapons, or silk clothing.

[UristMcDwarf]

I've always went with teeth. 

[Argonnek]

I thought that they use the many thousands of crumbs in their beards as a sort of grit that would help them smooth the stone. Engraving... They have fingernails, right? But carving fortifications... That's a mystery.

[slothen]

I am of the opinion that dwarven beards are just another limb, except one that can't grasp. The dwarves are punching images into the rock with their beards.

Yet they aren't body parts as far as the engine is concerned.  I'm of the opinion dwarves use tools.   Maybe I'm just unimaginative.

[Urist Imiknorris]

I am now going to mod in beards as a fifth limb, and give them [GRASP].

[Xenos]

Breads are abrasive enough to polish the walls down to optical flatness.  Beyond that, dwarves punch out the stone that will form the designs of the engraving, with precision down the atomic scale for masterwork engravings (hey if they reference themselves this is the only way that recursion makes sense)