"Now we call over the mountains cold
Come back unto the caverns old!"
Thanks to Clamavi de Profundis for the excellent compilation / rendition
To my shame, by trying Gwent recently (long story short, don't bother, it's a bad joke like all CCGs) I fell prey to cross-promotion and reinstalled Witcher 2 after having used it as an uninstalled negative example no less than three times over the past couple of years... and ended up enjoying some of it. Chapter 2 was at least less interrupted (though it's mostly grinding through harpy swarms) but as I close in on the transition to the last chapter the endless cutscenes and over-scripting have reasserted themselves, not to mention perfunctory crafting, bugs, crashes, minigame timesinks, useless maps, misdirecting markers, obtuse quest design prompting trial and error reloads for more timesinks, etc. So, feeling like I at least got my three bucks' worth, I likely won't bother finishing. Despite some obvious talent behind it, it's still a deliberately bad game. Definitely staying filed under the "Bozo" tag. However, I must confess a guilty love for Vergen.
As a mixed dwarf / human town, it gets its chthonic aesthetic across without simply being transposed into some giant cave, instead carved into the mountainside and connected by an infernal (yet navigable once you learn a couple of landmarks) tangle of ramps, stairs, short tunnels, ledges and bridges. Aesthetically, everything about it just... works, from the rough, massive, sparsely decorated facades, to the weatherbeaten patina and geometric interiors. It all just screams dwarf - especially the dwarves!
Aside from crassly humorous and randier than other depictions, their dialogue (and surprisingly apt voice acting) nails that trenchant utilitarianism we've grown to expect from fantasy's designated working class heroes.
It reminds me of a specific town in LotRO.
The game has presented several examples of megalithic dwarven construction (Thorin's Hall, Moria, The Hall Under the Mountain) as well as tiny/isolated/abandoned outposts, but Jarnfast is a mining colony. While technically it does possess a music track, logging directly into an "indoor" space prevents it from loading (maybe intentional, maybe just a good bug) leaving you with sparse, distinct ambient sounds: a clatter of machinery, silence, a hiss or shriek of escaping steam, silence, and most beautifully a slow but insistent clang of hammer on anvil... answered a couple of seconds later by a more certain, repeated, concatenated hammer echo from elsewhere. Work, speaking to work.
The ambience may or may not be reused from elsewhere. Can't remember. But here? Ringing off the claustrophobic walls, half-carved, along the mine rails, under the overhanging natural rock?
Just beautiful.
While Tolkien's dwarves usually get defined by belligerence, greed or technological prowess, I'd say nobody bothers altering the winning formula much due more to their steadfastness.
My latest Dwarf Fortress broke into a narrow, tangled cave system, and I decided I'd like to move at least part of my goat herd down here in case of aboveground attacks. Enclosing the pasture is slow going, the year being only 37 and forgotten beasts not nearly forgotten enough, but workers are ever so gradually building floor and wall tiles to cover access from the north or east. I'll have them close off the southwest entrance as well, favoring the southeast tunnel's length to line with traps while still maintaining spidersilk gathering access. The entire process complete with polishing and trapmaking is taking years, just a side project to establishing my main living, working, and most importantly graveyard quarters.
But that's okay.
They'll keep working and fending off acid-spitting giant slugs until it's done.
With their bare hands if need be.
In another playthrough a giantess attacked a group of unarmed (with one exception) civilians. They lucked out in the first round and knocked her unconscious, and proceeded to kill her. Gradually. Very, very gradually. Dwarves. Killing a giant. With their bare hands. How gradually, you ask? That shit eventually went on for nineteen pages of text.
Damn, I love elves, I'm still in the Noldorin camp... but can you imagine my hero Elrond sitting there pimp-slapping a giant to death for a solid week just because... well, it gets the job done, don't it?
'Putcher backs inta it boys, ah think shae's startin' ta breiwse!'
In fact, is there any fantasy race that would fit that scenario better than dwarves?
Fantasy tends toward grandiloquence by its very nature, and dwarves fill an easily neglected niche for dogged perseverance. Neither graceful, eternal guardians of creation nor plucky upstarts promised dominon of same, literally carving out their own space in the world, Aule's misconceived yet grudgingly accepted progeny bow to no-one. (Mostly because they're busy craning their necks instead.) They're the ones fantasy authors (or game designers) can turn to for hollowing out a mountain scrape by scrape, century by century, fighting on even if fate itself will deny you ultimate glory, even if you're stuck as the middle children of creation.
"And dark things silent crept beneath"
Given it's impossible to join any team game where you won't be griefed by spineless, degenerate, troglodytic vermin refusing to fight, spamming surrender votes, quitting at the first sign of difficulty, maybe that steadfast refusal to quit while you're in any position, brutal honesty even if it doesn't make you look good, a willingness to keep plugging away at an act of construction or destruction for sheer pigheadedness, should be brought to the forefront of our escapist fantasies. Though the proud, noble mindset of the elf is clearly superior, at this very moment we desperately need that of the dwarf.
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