Dwarven Civilization

Dwarves are highly motivated, industrious creatures whose love of family and clan is only exceeded by their greed for treasure dug from the depths of the earth.

Draw caves of the Dwarven civilization in blue. Dwarves prefer to make square rooms and tunnel in straight horizontal or vertical segments. If you don’t have a gold vein or a good size mithral deposit, create a gold vein right now as described in the Primordial Age rules.

Pick a spot on the surface above a gold vein or mithral deposit. Draw a Dwarven shaft vertically from that point until you hit the mithral or gold. Draw a mine 1 bead in size and put a in it. Draw a Dwarven barracks on the shaft (that’s a room 1 bead in size), and place a in it.

A Dwarven barracks with a in it represents 1 unit of Dwarven population. Each represents some form of treasure.

Make up a name for your Dwarven tribe and write it somewhere on the map in pencil.

It is now year zero in the Dwarven Era.

The Dwarven Year
Here’s what the Dwarves do in the course of a year. If there are ever no Dwarves left, the Dwarven Age ends and the Age of Monsters begins.

Spring
In the spring Dwarves gather, mate, and pay to have their relatives move in with them. Gather up all that are connected to Dwarven tunnels and are not Dwarven Treasures. Draw a new room to store each gathered, or place them in existing rooms where there is space.

For each gathered, draw a Dwarven barracks connected to some other Dwarven construction and put a new  in it. Dwarves don’t like to be too near to the noise of mining, so try not to put it on a mining tunnel.

Summer
In the summer Dwarves mine. If possible, draw a tunnel a half finger long that connects to a source of ore. Draw a mine chamber 1 thumb in size and put 1 in it. If there’s no ore in reach, draw a tunnel 1 finger long towards the nearest source of ore. If there’s no un-mined ore left on the map, 1 immediately emigrates off the map looking for greener pastures.

Fall
In the fall, Dwarves build. Tally the current Dwarven population. Find the entry matching this population on the Dwarven Construction table. If that construction hasn’t been added yet, the Dwarves build it now.

Winter
In winter, the Dwarves mourn. If any Dwarves died this year, draw a Dwarven tomb. This is a room 1 bead in size with a skull and crossbones (or just an X) in it. Move one Dwarven to the tomb. If there are lots of unoccupied Dwarven barracks, you may convert one to a tomb instead.