Editing Dwarf (section)

=Flaws=
The dwarves are not without their share of moral failings, no matter what their legions of fanboys may think. From the perspective of narrative this is a good thing.

One of the most prominent of these is avarice: dwarves '''love''' gold and gems and other valuable materials - it's why they're so obsessed with mining in the first place. The sight of gold make's a typical dwarf's palms get sweaty, and they are notorious for their greed. If a dwarf is motivated to do something dickish, at least 7 times out of 10, it'll be for the love of money. Even in the Complete Book of Dwarves, it was admitted that gold has an almost spell-like pull on the dwarven psyche. This mainly comes from the Nordic and Germanic myths, where the dwarven lust for gold is quite pronounced; they are greedy little bastards, most exemplified by the story of Sigurd, where the root of all the trouble comes from a dwarf named Fafnir, who murders his father to steal the weregild (treasure paid as restitution for murder) given to his father for the murder of his brother Otar, transforming into a dragon to better guard his wealth, only to be murdered by Sigurd, who was put up to the task by Fafnir's other brother Regin. Oh, and the gold was cursed because it was originally stolen from another dwarf, Andar. But, of course, like most "standard" dwarf traits, it was popularized in Tolkien's work, where the mental and cultural fixation dwarves have for gold is said to be the result of the corrupting influence of the seven rings of dark power that Sauron gave them.    

Another common dwarven flaw is being direct and orderly to a fault. Not in terms of tyranny (which does manifest on occasion, but is far from the norm) but in terms of rigidness and inflexibility. Dwarves like tradition, they like honest dealings, they like cultivating their skills and they like putting the raw chaotic mess of the world into order, which they have long ago mastered. The problem is that problems keep coming up which mar their efforts, from humans that don't make their payments to orcs raiding their mountain homes. The view they cultivate is not to adapt to the changing situation, but to dig in and stew in indignation.

One manifestation of that, and the one that /tg/ often has the hardest time admitting, is arrogance. Just like their fellow "Elder Race", the [[elf|elves]], dwarves take a huge amount of pride in their long history, their skills and their close ties to their patron god(s). They look down on many other races, and often demand respect and recognition - sometimes in far greater proportion than is actually warranted. This can make some dwarves quite braggadocios.

Dwarves are not conventionally attractive. They ''make'' beautiful things, are not hideous or monstrous, there are exceptions to the rule and there are people out there which are going to be into short, robust fellows with severe features and a beard you could lose a chicken in, but as a general rule your average Dwarf is pretty far removed from the classical ideals of beauty. Contrast them with elves which are either idealized humans or possess a etheric willowy grace to them.

Less universal failings include stubbornness, low self-esteem, hypocrisy and vindictiveness. Once a dwarf makes up his mind, he will rarely back down, sometimes well beyond the point of stupidity. Likewise, if a dwarf fails at something, it can often be hard for them to get over to it, leading to everything from maudlin self-pity to self-destructive behavior, or simply blaming everyone for it, especially other races that are close enough to blame). Finally, dwarves are associated with [[Book_of_Grudges|bearing grudges for a reason]].

Though most dwarf failings are mental, cultural failings aren't unheard of either. There are two major forms that this tends to take.

The first is strict social calcification. Dwarven culture can easily slip into a strict caste structure, where some or all of the population is treated like crap just because of how the dwarves view their culture. [[Mystara]]n dwarves are a good example of this; they used to treat any dwarf who wasn't involved in mining as little better than a criminal.

The second, somewhat more common form, is over-conservatism. Dwarves are pretty much universally depicted as proud of their traditions and cautious about changing, but in some dwarven cultures, this can go to almost suicidal lengths, to the point where dwarves practically consider "progress" and "change" to be dirty words.

It should bear mentioning that just how prominent these traits are, and how crippling they are, depends a lot on the setting. [[Dark Fantasy]] settings in particular tend to use this to make dwarves seem "appropriately flawed". The [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|Dawi]] of [[Warhammer Fantasy]] are perfect examples of just how these traits can turn a normally admirable race into a bunch of petty little assholes when cranked up. For example, in Warhammer  the [[High Elves (Warhammer)|High Elves]] - who have the standard elven arrogance - acknowledge the existence of the [[Dark Elves (Warhammer)|Dark Elves]] and the infighting they originated from, but the Dwarfs pretend [[Chaos Dwarfs]] don't exist and get very butthurt if they're even mentioned.