Kogolor

Kogolors - also known as Kogolor Dwarves - are a demihuman race from the Mystara setting of Dungeons & Dragons. A gregarious and friendly people, Kogolors are the primeval ancestors of both the dwarf and the gnome races; rendered extinct due to the Great Rain of Fire on the surface of Mystara, they only survive to the present in the great sanctuary of the Hollow World.

Kogolors are a stocky, muscular, short race, averaging about four and a half feet tall, with ruddy complexions and coarse, bushy red or brown hair. They typically wear brightly colored tunics, lederhosen, suspenders and short, stout boots, as well as two-sided camouflage cloaks for protection in the wilderness. The typical kogolor wears a small hat decorated with a jaunty feather and carries a stout walking cane that doubles as a club if the kogolor gets into trouble. Unlike their dwarven descendants, a kogolor warrior is more likely to wield a broadsword, a longbow, or a polearm than an axe or a hammer.

Personality wise, kogolors are much more akin to the gnomes; a highly gregarious people, kogolors are cheerful, merry, outgoing and extroverted. Extremely sociable, a stranger is always welcomed warmly (unless they're an obvious threat), as kogolors love to make new friends, and they value their ability to put forth a happy hand of welcome. There's nothing a kogolor likes so much as having fun, and visitors are treated with great warmth, readily inducted into the kogolor's frequent bouts of dancing, drinking, music and merriment. A peaceful visitor to a kogolor house can look forward to being welcomed, entertained, feasted, grilled at length about themselves, invited to join their host in games or hunting or work, and generally made to feel like part of the family - behavior that would unthinkable to a modern dwarf.

Unlike dwarves or gnomes, kogolors prefer to live on mountains, rather than inside of them. Whilst they will adapt caves into homes where possible, most of them build strong but well-lit and airy stone homes on forested peaks. As a people, they are a race of loggers, wood-workers, trappers, furriers, goatherds, brewers, weaponsmiths and farmers; unlike their modern descendants, there is no stigma amongst the kogolors about working the land rather than mining. In fact, kogolors are comparatively uninterested in gold and jewels - oh, they like them, but only in so much as your average human would; the idea of spending your entire life doing nothing but hoard precious rocks and fondle them in a dark, dingy vault deep below the earth is one they'd generally find quite daft. The stereotypical dwarven greed was one of Kagyar's additions to the race, to keep them buried into the earth.

Incidentally, kogolors, similarly, lack the obsessive fixation on crafsmanship of their dwarven descendants. They're competent enough, but they lack the racial obsession with making things and the innate skill of modern dwarves - kogolor work is as good as human work, but not as great as dwarven work. The one area they are as skilled as modern dwarves? Brewing. Kogolors make the best damn mead, beer, schnapps and virtually any liquor you care to name. No other race in the Hollow World can brew liquor like a kogolor can.

The most unusual aspect of kogolor culture is the practice of yodelling, which they can use to communicate great distances over the mountains they call home. As their appearance suggests, they're a little bit Swiss, in contrast to the more Nordic dwarves of the modern era.

Mechanically, kogolors use the normal rules for dwarves and Dwarf-Clerics from the BECMI Rules Cyclopedia and Dwarves of Rockhome respectively. However, there are a few minor tweaks: firstly, like all Hollow World denizens, kogolors are restricted to their cultural weapons and armor, listed below. Secondly, kogolors must take the General Skills Signalling (Kogolor Yodeling Code) and Mountaineering. Finally, kogolor dwarf-clerics must worship one of the three Immortals of their culture; Frey, Freyja, and Garal Glitterlode, who is himself an ascended kogolor.

Cultural Melee Weapons: Axe/Battle, Dagger, Sword/Short, Sword/Normal (Broad), Sword/Bastard, Mace, Club, BLackjack, Staff, Polearm (Halberd, Pile, Poleaxe), Spear, Javelin

Cultural Missile Weapons: Bow/Short, Crossbow, Sling

Cultural Armor: Leather, Scale Male, Chain Mail, Banded Mail, Shield (Not Allowed: Horned Shield, Knife Shield, Sword Shield, Tusked Shield)

Dwarf-Clerics Can Use: Crossbow, Dagger, Sword/Normal, Polearm, All Cultural Armor