Editing Mul

{{editwar}}[[File:Mul Battle Slave.png|300px|thumb|right|4th Edition art of a Mul. Despite being part-dwarf, when first encountering them you wouldn't identify them as such.'']]

Finally: [[Half-dwarves]]!

The '''Mul''' is a race of [[human]]/[[dwarf]] crossbreeds within [[Dungeons & Dragons]] that originated in the [[Dark Sun]] campaign setting, wherein dwarves are primarily a slave race. The idea was that forcing humans and dwarves to mate would produce a race that would hopefully have human flexibility and stature combined with dwarven strength and endurance, thus producing a superior slave race. The result worked more or less like a charm; muls are taller than normal humans and massively muscled, with absolutely incredible physical prowess. They are, however, usually completely hairless, sporting at most some hair on their head -- but then, Athasian dwarves were usually depicted as being completely bald as well, with forehead ridges somewhat reminescent of [[Star Trek|Klingons]] to boot, so that's not quite so weird.

Dark Sun, being the [[grimdark]] D&D setting of its time, stated that muls were very prone to dead mother syndrome (since a baby mul is so much bigger than a human or a dwarf baby, birthing is very difficult) and also sterility, despite the fact that [[half-elf|half-elves]] and [[half-orcs]] have never been described that way. The idea was likely to emphasize just how cruel and callous the setting is, in that rulers and nobles would force the creation of muls even knowing they were often costing women their lives for something that would live one generation and then be gone, all so they could have superior slave-laborers and gladiators.

4th edition, being the lighter & softer edition in many ways, abandoned both of these aspects. Grognards '''raged''' at this (as with [[Skub|everything else 4th Edition, naturally]]), and while the shift is indeed drastic and jarring, on the other hand they likely figured "why not allow the half-dwarves a possible non-grimdark interpretation like half-elves and half-orcs?"

In fact, 4th edition actually devoted an article in [[Dragon Magazine]] #391 to examining a more setting-neutral possible origin for muls, in this case tying them to a [[drow]] city-state that had a [[Lolth]]-inspired vision to breed super-slaves from their human and dwarven slave-stock, only to lose control of them when the fickle bitch lost interest. So basically, grimdark, but not to the extent of Dark Sun and in a sense that most players came to expect of anything drow-related ([[Grimdark#Grimderp|for better or worse]]). It was suggested that these muls are probably very staunchly anti-slavery and don't get on well with dwarves, due to many dwarves seeing their half-human origins as being abominable and muls have a strong anti-authoritarian streak. 

Incidentally, their name has long been a source of some minor debate; why ''are'' they called Muls instead of "half-dwarves"? And how do you pronounce it? During 2e, many ran with the idea that it was pronounced "mule" and was given as an insult, another way of highlighting their "born to slavery because of bastard overseers" origin, and so it stuck somewhat. It helps that it was likely intended as a simple bastardization of "mule" anyway, given the enormous timespans of the setting. In official novels and audiobooks, it is often pronounced as "mull".

In 4th Edition, the origin was retconned to being short for Mulzhennedar, the dwarven word for "strength", and it was noted that the two most common acceptable pronunciations were "Mull" (probably the "purest" pronunciation) and "Mool", with "Mule" being a good way to start a fight, likely due more to general disrespect of ancestry rather than anyone in-universe knowing what an actual mule is.

==Mul Crunch==
In [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]], muls had minimum Strength scores of 10 and Constitution scores of 8 (bumped up to min Con 10 in the Revised version) and maximums of 20 , paired with +2 Str, +1 Con, -1 Int and -2 Cha as racial modifiers. They also had a really weird focus for racially specific abilities, in the form of...work. No really, due to their mix of human and dwarf parentage that was one of their special gifts. The ability to work for literally days at a time before needing to stop and rest. Generally speaking, this had zero practical use campaign wise as there aren't many GMs who are going to feature a campaign where you have to dig a ditch in a hurry.

They make good tanks and in particular they made excellent choices for [[Gladiator]]s, otherwise known as "[[Fighter]]s better than all other fighters." The damage a Mul gladiator with a strength of 20 could inflict with cahulaks (a type of weaponized grappling hooks tied together by rope) was a beautiful thing to behold.

In 3rd edition, they appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]] #319, where they had +2 Strength, +4 Constitution, the "Hardy" racial trait (requires only half the normal amount of sleep to eliminate fatigue & exhaustion), the Faster Natural Healing racial trait (recover 2 hitpoints per day, gain Fast Healing 1 at 10th level, increase to Fast Healing 3 at 15th level), and an Inborn Power trait that gave them 3 psionic power points and the innate ability to use ''Offensive Prescience'' with them, which just got added to their class-based psionic power pool and powers if they took one of the psionic classes. They had a [[Favored Class]] of [[Fighter]] (although you could argue that [[Psychic Warrior]] was just as fitting) and a [[Level Adjustment]] of +1.

For the 3.5 rules revision, Mul Racial Traits were officially published by Athas.org, who were given the rights to create a conversion of all 2e Dark Sun materials. In Dark Sun 3 (revision 7), the stats given deviate heavily from the stats given by Dragon Magazine for 3e. Mul gain +4 Strength, +2 Constitution, -2 Charisma. They count as Medium-sized Humanoids with the Dwarf subtype, and have Darkvision. They have regained the 2e bonuses to hard work with "Tireless", granting a +4 racial bonus to checks for performing physical activity over an extended period of time and +4 saving throws against spells that cause any form of weakness (fatigue, exhaustion, enfeeblement, etc.), as well as "Extended Activity", allowing them to engage in up to 12 hours of hard labour without becoming fatigued. They also count as a dwarf for all effects related to race and have a Damage Resistence of 1 vs. Nonlethal damage. Their favored class is Gladiator, their automatic language is common, and they have a level-adjustment of +1.

4th edition, being somewhat more practical, instead gave them a static race bonus of +2 Con and then their choice of either +2 Str or +2 Wis (which is markedly odd at best, given the 'typical' Mul/dwarven stat build and fluff), a bonus healing surge, the ability to count 6 hours of sleep out of every 72 as a long rest, and the ability to automatically end any ongoing damage/dazed/slowed/stunned/weakened effect once per encounter due to being so goddamned tough they could just shrug it off.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:2e Mul.png
Image:2e Mul 2.gif
Image:2e Wild Mul.gif
Image:4e Muls.jpg
</gallery>

{{D&D2e-Races}}
{{D&D4e-Races}}

[[Category:Dark Sun]]