I actually been working on a graphic novel about dwarves in whichtheir main city was overtaken and instead of letting it be taken by the invaders they destroyed it. This in turn caused the populace to scatter so in essence I have a similar take on nature vs nurture.

I have a group almost exactly like your Savage Dwarves since they were forced out in the wild for much the same reasons they needed to adapt so they have smaller villages and formed Tribes and adapted by making equipment out of the beasts they kill even (my armor is more Bone then leather) they even adapted the runes so they work on the bones.

The 2nd Dwarves fled into the big above ground cities which are populated by several races. They aren’t “normal” dwarves either they learned to adapt real quick to deception and politics but still with that dwarven drive to be exceptional at something. Most running their own businesses or more unsavory ventures.

And lastly the “tradition ” underground dwarves

Yeah your detail and reasoning is spot on I love them. Well written sir .. well indeed

[…] had the idea for Savage Dwarfs a while ago and I think it will fit quite well into this setting. Basically, I want to get rid of […]

@ Matt`:

Well, you could make an argument that this sort of mindset became advantageous under certain conditions:

– Living in very harsh environment with limited resources
– Primary outside enemy they compete with are the uber-social goblins and say hive-mind type insectoids from the depths forcing Dwarfs to adopt social counter-measures to survive
– The evolutionary advantage hinging not on preventing lies, but on facilitating clear communication and the loss of ability to lie being just a side effect.

You would assume that natural selection would favor dwarfs who can quickly and efficiently communicate with the group, and swiftly react to communications from others. Individual advantage one can gain by lying might be insignificant if a failure in communication may result in massive cave in, or complete collapse of a settlement due to starvation or coordinated enemy attack.

@ FX:

Oh! Nice. Adding that book to my reading list. My truth-telling Dwarves were actually inspired by the aliens from Embasytown who had a similar issue. I highly recommend checking that one out for a detailed explanation how this sort of thing could work.

I really like how detailed this is and how much it deviates from the classic dwarf. There have been so few attempts are redefining the existing models that it just strikes me as interesting when someone actually does.

Obviously your Dwarf’s mind is not fully deterministic as they can learn new languages, but I suspect you can still learn a lot more about what behaviors to expect if you gather a lot of data, since their mind is not as black a box as ours is. Big Brother-style Dwarf monitoring and behavioral prediction would probably get frighteningly accurate, to the point that manipulation would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it? Thinking about inter-racial diplomatic relationships within this framework makes my mind spin ;)

You might be interested in looking at Limit of Vision, by Linda Nagata. It also features a species with “visible” thought processes in the form of light-based thought transmission. I read that book a few weeks ago, and these really were entertaining ideas to play with!

The idea of a social species being incapable of any kind of deception rings a little hollow to me because it wouldn’t be evolutionarily stable – however advantageous it is to the group to have thoughts broadcast, there’s always going to be further advantage to an individual to be the one who can get ahead by lying. Maybe if you added a tendency to kill/exile any dwarf found to be deceitful, then that might bar the door to invasion by liars, but otherwise I can’t see it working.

Clockwork dwarves appeal to my computer-guy soul, and the savage dwarves are cool, although quite a step away from the standard model if you take them awy from the mountains, the mines and the metalwork.

I think the Tolkien version of dwarves might just be a bit too strong for something else to feel quite like a “real” dwarf… tis a shame if true.