Dwarves and Calibans

[Tobias Blackburn]

Here's an in-character justification as to why dwarves get a bonus when attacking calibans. In my campaign, the bonus also applies to mongrelmen and broken ones. I turned the +4 AC against giants to a +1 Dodge bonus against medium and larger creatures.

Why do you not want to train, child? Does the practise dummy frighten you? Yes, it is malformed, but so are the minions of the Pale Queen.

You don't know the story of the Pale Queen, do you? Come closer then, and listen well.

Long ago, before my great-great-great-great-grandfather was so much as a twinkle in his mother's eye, we were a prosperous people. We lived in the valley's and plains of this land, kings of an empire that stretched out as far as the eye could see. No one went hungry and everyone worked for the good of the Clan. We were happy, content, and at peace. We had allowed our swords to rust and our axes to hang over the hearth, for we saw nothing that warrented our fear.

Then they came, carried in boats from across the sea. Hideous beings dressed in rags. They were misshapen souls, lost and hungry. Cautiously, we took them in, and gave them food and comfort. We asked where they had come from, and they sent to us their queen.

Unlike her subjects, she was possessed of an unnatural beauty, with skin as pale as the feather of a dove and movement as graceful as a bird in flight. She went to the council of the seven lords, and with her words she did ask for succor for her people. Her plea touched the heart of the lords, and they granted her people their boon.

Within a few short years, there were many of the beasts. They breed like vermin, each generation more repulsive than the last. Like locusts, they devoured our crops and pushed us from our lands. Yet the seven lords did nothing, bewtiched as they were by the Pale Queen.

Finally, famine struck the land, and the Pale Queen's subjects turned on us for food. Dying of hunger, pushed back to the mountains and away from our fields, we refused to be slaughtered as sheep. As those we had helped turned on us as a ravening hoarde, we did prepare to fight. The mountains became our fortress and home. We reforged our swords and sharpened our axes, and there on mountain did we make our stand!

For a full generation did we fight, all ready to fight the beast-like men. As their strength began to fall, the Pale Queen saw that we would not weaken and she called the retreat. As her people boarded their ships, she turned and proclaimed in a voice that all heard,

'You have won the day, noble dwarves, but we shall return. We are patience born of suffering, and will watch you from the darkness. When you have forgotten the lessons of this day, you will find us waiting, and not even the stones of the earth will save you from our wrath.'

Since that day, we have lived in the mountains and trained since birth, ever prepared for the Pale Queen's return. So attack the dummy with all of your rage, and remember it well. Her minions wait and watch, even now, and you must be ready to prove to her servants that the dwarves will always remember."

Also, as a treat:

The Pale Queen
Symbol: A broken mask
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Domains: Destruction, Protection, Trickery, War
Prefered Weapon: Dagger (Clerics with the War domain use scimitars)
Portfolio: Outcasts, the Deformed


The Pale Queen is a legendary figure among calibans and other outcasts. According to the stories, she was horrifically beautiful caliban who was left to die in the forest by her parents (a King and Queen). Years later, she came back and destroyed the kingdom with an army made of the deformed them all. In the years that followed, the Pale Queen's army ravaged the land, destroying the societies that had cast them out and those that did not give them acceptance. No one knows what happened to the army, only that they passed away across the sea.

Years later, calibans began to appear proclaiming the message of The Pale Queen. Some of them claimed that She had come to them personally. Others insisted that they had been part of her unstoppable army and had seen her ascend to godhood. No matter the source, the message is always the same.

The Pale Queen protects and lends aid to those that are shunned by the shame known as society. She encourages her followers to repay their oppressors with violence and to undermine them and their position. When the time is right, she will lead another holy war and retake the world for her flock.

[Jester of the FoS]

An interesting idea, a caliban religion. Might steal that someday...

As for why dwarves and calibans hate each other, do they really need a reason? Sometimes races just don't get along.

Coincidently I'm currently doing the finishing touches on Races of the Mists I, a series of netbooks detailing the demihumans of Ravenloft with this focusing on Dwarves. And, like you, the attack bonus against orcs is transfered so appropriately to those races...

[Tobias Blackburn]

An interesting idea, a caliban religion. Might steal that someday...

Thanks. It goes along with the Twisting Form. Now I just need to think of a "good" outcast religion...

You'll get the bill in the mail.

As for why dwarves and calibans hate each other, do they really need a reason? Sometimes races just don't get along.

Except that calibans spring from humans, seemingly at random (or if touched by the correct outside catalysts). They don't have a parent that deserved any specific ire from the dwarves.

Dwarves of other setting get their orc bonus because they have been fighting against the orcs for ages. How the heck do you translate that to Ravenloft? They don't hate humans, they just hate really ugly humans? I think that there should be a better reason than that, otherwise dwarves should also get attack bonuses against all humans, or anything with an OR rating above three.

And I have difficulty picturing dwarves spending time musing on the standards of beauty.

[Manofevil]

Or perhaps another backhanded twist on the origin of Ezra? I noticed a few parallels.

[Tobias Blackburn]

Or perhaps another backhanded twist on the origin of Ezra? I noticed a few parallels.

Really? What sort or paralells? I was actually shooting for Snow White when I wrote this.

[Faust]

Why dont we just change the bonuc dwarves get against orc to bonus against abberation? I mean mining the mountains of ravenloft is running after meeting abberation.

[cure]

Different dwarves in different places face different primary threats. A bonus common to an entire clan in the Sleeping Beast Mountains, abberations or golems, should be different from a bonus common to an entire clan in the Mountains of Misery, undead.

[Tobias Blackburn]

Why dont we just change the bonuc dwarves get against orc to bonus against abberation? I mean mining the mountains of ravenloft is running after meeting abberation.

Mostly because of designer feedback, specifically from Mangrum.

While a bonus against aberrations is a good idea, aberrations fit more into the Lovecraft style horror than gothic. While they could definitely bump into some while digging, they're probably more likely to encounter monstrous humanoids and elementals as their main threats.

I hope that next years line-up has the Van Richten's guide to aberrations.

[alhoon]

I agree that dwarves should get the +1 bonus against either abberations or broken-ones, callibans and other deformed humanoids, depending where they come from.
However, since giants are very few in Ravenloft (while a +1 dodge bonus against everything seems interesting) I would give them a +2 dodge bonus against both large abberations and deformed humanoids.

Anyway, I would say that I find this topic on dwarves a very interesting one. Also while I have never thought of it before, I would welcome a book about the demihumans of the Dread Realms.

[Jasper]

I personaly give all the dwaves in ravenloft a +2 attack and defence bonus against Skeletons and Zombies. I rationalized it with the way ravenloft dwarves are said to follow a mostly norse religon. In the norse religons there was no worse descicration to a person then to bring the soul back from Valhala and force them to fight in unhonorable battles.

Dwarves IMC take great pains to see that all such creatures are especialy taken care of and the bodies are burned or blessed before they feel comfortable.

[Jester of the FoS]

uh huh, uh huh...
*scribbles furiously*

What else would you like to see in a book about dwarves?

[Morrigan's Claw]

Mostly because of designer feedback, specifically from Mangrum.

While a bonus against aberrations is a good idea, aberrations fit more into the Lovecraft style horror than gothic. While they could definitely bump into some while digging, they're probably more likely to encounter monstrous humanoids and elementals as their main threats.

But then again, isn't the decidedly unnatural also common in gothic tales?
I mean, take Bluetspur. What are Aberrations like Illithids, beholders etc. other than an affront to the natural order of things?

[Faust]

Why dont we just change the bonuc dwarves get against orc to bonus against abberation? I mean mining the mountains of ravenloft is running after meeting abberation.

Mostly because of designer feedback, specifically from Mangrum.

While a bonus against aberrations is a good idea, aberrations fit more into the Lovecraft style horror than gothic. While they could definitely bump into some while digging, they're probably more likely to encounter monstrous humanoids and elementals as their main threats.

I hope that next years line-up has the Van Richten's guide to aberrations.

Yeah and lovecraftian horor as no place in ravenloft ahumm... illithids... ahum... gwydion... I think adding a bit of a lovecraft feeling tot he dwarves would make ravenloft even more enjoyable: allow for more kinds of horror.

[Tobias Blackburn]

I think I was misunderdstood. I have no problem with Lovecraftian horror in Ravenloft. Love using it myself, especially with the Blutspur illithids.

At the same time, I'm somewhat wary about making it so common that an entire race has trained itself against it. One of the major things about Lovecraft is that the creatures are so hideous and "wrong" that the mere sight of them blasts the mind. An entire race that has trained from birth to be ready to fight them... it suggests that they would know what they face and be able to prepare themselves. If that were the case, perhaps the +4 to AC against giant should be shifted to +4 on fear/horror/madness against aberrations.

That said, I connecting the hideous looking calibans and the rest to aberrations through their myths, and allow their bonus to affect aberrations as well (assuming them to be minions of the Pale Queen). I just don't like the idea of "Oh, it had tentacles. Let's go ask a dwarf what it was."

[Igor the Henchman]

How about transferring that bonus from giants/orcs to creatures that simply have the 'Earth' subtype?