Setting the Setting - OD&D (3LBB) & AD&D2e - Part 4 - Cultures: Thunderan Dwarves of the Cobalt Bastion

 

In the previous post, I took a closer look at one of the 9 cultures generated for my Local Campaign Area.  That was the dominant culture of the area, the Eldorian humans, who despite not being native to the area, have given it their name. Today, I'll go over some rolls and choices I made to further define the first of our 3 major cultures, the Dwarves.

For the Cultural Archetype, I rolled and got European Renaissance, which I decided to roll with. The description of this Archetype focuses a lot on a mercantile class, and I feel like this makes perfect sense for Dwarves.

European, Renaissance: Art, literature, and technology all flower in this setting. A wealthy merchant class has risen to contest the landed nobility's hold on power. In many places, the increasing strength of towns and cities leads to a new age of mercantile city-states.

In going with European Renaissance as the Cultural Archetype, and considering these are Dwarves, that kind of made Technology Level a no-brainer, Renaissance.

Renaissance: With the appearance of firearms, heavy armor becomes less and less prominent, and weapons grow lighter again. The feudal system is badly broken by this point, and a new class of nobility whose wealth is derived from trade and mercantile interests becomes prominent. In some lands, rights of serfs and the peasantry are recognized, and the influx of people into towns and cities continues. Excellent sailing vessels permit ocean crossings and long-range trade and exploration. Devices such as the printing press and waterwheel drastically increase craftsman productivity as the first steps towards pre-steam industrialization take place. Advanced firearms may be available at your discretion.

Now, due to some of the World Hooks and some of the cultures yet to be described, I've decided firearms are going to exist in the world, but they are very tightly controlled and restricted. Our PCs will likely not even see one until and if we get to Name Level play. Another culture controls the firearms (or at least thinks they do - if you think dwarves are going to let a non-dwarven culture be the only one with a given technological advancement, you are sadly mistaken! They are keeping it under wraps, though... for now.)

In the last post, I selected Neutral for the Social Alignment of the Eldorians (as the dominant culture of the area, they often play host (often unwillingly) to other cultures and viewpoints.)  I also mentioned having been struck by the fact that I had 9 cultures, and there are nine Social Alignments in the book. I wanted my Dwarves to be one of the Good cultures, and already had plans where to put Lawful Good and Neutral Good, so that left the Chaotic Good. As I thought about, I decided that it fit the setting well, despite being somewhat against our typical image of Dwarves.

Chaotic Good: The people of the land are distrustful of big government and restrictive laws. Although there may be a strong central authority or monarch, most communities prefer to manage their own affairs, and may take the law into their own hands in times of danger. Furthermore, the existing laws tend to protect the rights of the individual over the social contract. Democracies, republics, and weak monarchies or oligarchies may be chaotic good.

So we have seafaring Dwarven merchant princes on an archipelagic world, each out for profit and exploration, but not maliciously or callously so.

For form of government, I rolled Republic, which fits perfectly. That is for this Culture specifically, though. As I detailed in the previous post, the overarching government of the area (and most others) is a form of religious satrapy. In fact, the Dwarves in our area likely think of themselves as foreign merchants and trade enclaves within the area, rather than intrinsic part of the area. There's probably a fair bit of Plutocracy mixed into their Republic, too.

Plutocracy: Government by the wealthy. The elite may form a ruling council, they may purchase representation at the court of a figurehead monarch, or the realm may be in such a state that money is the only power. 

Republic: Government by representatives of an established electorate who rule in behalf of the electors. A democracy in which only landowners or certain classes could vote could be considered a republic.

Hierarchy: A feudal or bureaucratic system which proceeds through different levels of a religious institution.

Satrapy: Conquerors and representatives of another government wield power over the region, ruling it as part of a larger empire. The satraps themselves might be bureaucrats and military officers, or they may be unusual characters or monsters of some kind, such as dragons, beholders, or vampires.

So our Dwarves view themselves as traveling merchants and trade enclaves, representatives of their distant Republic, ruled by a Senate of mercantile princes each wealthy enough to make Smaug jealous.

The Local Campaign Area Chapter proceeds from here to Subsistence Systems, culture/race relations, and Population Level, but I feel like these are best addressed when we get to detailing and mapping the land itself and plotting the settlements.

So, I put dwarven mercantile republic into the Culture Name Generator at Vondy.com to see what it came up with.  The dwarven republic is called the Cobalt Bastion, which I think is just perfect - cobalt is a mineral, it's also blue color, and 'bastion' definitely has a dwarven ring to it. I borrowed from one of the other options for their demonym and name of their language - Thunderan.

I also thought of migratory patterns, and through some ad hoc rolls and choices, decided on settlement waves for our 9 cultures. As has been hinted at a few times in this post, the Thunderan Dwarves are not native, and indeed are even more recent arrivals than the Eldorians, coming in the 3rd of three waves of migration, about 100 years ago.