well get them rocket artillery!

no idea on culture. besides well known shit like civil service exams, hatred of merchants, snobbiness to europeans

>>10258147

Basically, every noble and lord has a pair of monks who follow him around and take note of his actions. One wears white and takes note of his good, the other wears black and takes note of his evil. The Emperor's Accountants have this fucking huge brass set of scales that loom up behind his throne and each deed is placed on the scales in tokens of white marble or black slate. This is basically a big reminder that even an Emperor is bound by morality, but it also serves as a symbol of his right to rule. As long as the white side is heavier than the black, the ruler stays in power. If it ever reaches equilibrium, he stays in power - but he's in trouble. If the black ever - EVER - goes heavier than the black, the ruler is removed from power no questions asked.

As a result, a nobles time is often spent in these really ritualised and ceremonial forms of charity and philanthropy. For every criminal they sentence to death, a lord might have two spared in order to show his mercy and maintain his position in power.

But too much can also be seen as a bad sign - if the King is spending all his waking hours building up the White side of the scales, that could easily mean he's trying to offset some future evil, like declaring a war.

>>10258181

>rocket artillery

Actually, they are the only species in the setting to have blackpowder weaponry, now that you mention it. Dwarves don't do magic and evolved seperate from magically-capable races like humanity or the elves, so they developed along what we consider "normal" technological lines. They don't really have artillery of any sort though - they still live underground most of the time, so they don't need it.

>>10258256

Speaking of the interactions between Dwarves and the other races, since Dwarves broke the surface it has become common for Novices of the order of the Ethical Accountants (oh, yeah, they're a monastic order, forgot to mention) to leave and travel human lands to study their ways of thinking and other interpretations of good and evil. This is pretty much the main contact dwarves and humans have besides merchants and diplomats, which means that most humans think dwarves are dour, ascetic and very religiously devout.

>>10258334
but they're chinese!

can they at least have hand held rocket launchers? (aka spears with fireworks on the back)

You might just want to peruse this page: http://www.oldgloryminiatures.com/products.asp?cat=38

>>10258256
I love this concept.

Call them Observers of the Balance. A rather uncreative title, perhaps, but nonetheless fitting.

>>10258256

The Ethical Accountants also play a large role in the legal system, in that they commonly serve as advisors. Lords and nobles serve as actual judges, handing down the sentences, but prior to the trial the Accountants painstakingly go through the accused's life and weigh up his sins and virtues, counting his crime. Their findings are then presented to the Lord, who hands down a sentence appropriate to correct that person's balance. Dwarven sentences tend to take the form of community service and reparations far more often than actual punishments like jail time or executions. You have to be really, really bad for the judge to hand down the death penalty, but it happens. Alternatively, if someone really virtuous gets called up on a very minor sentence, they're likely to get off with it as long as their "good" remains higher than their "bad".

>>10258351

Very 40K Orkish. And they wouldn't all have rifles or pistols and so on; those are elite weapons. The average Dwarven trooper is still equipped with feudal melee weapons and armour to handle tunnel fighting; blackpowder mainly comes in for larger scale battles rather than personal fighting.

Lovin this stuff so far, OP.
I'd recommend emphasizing poison gas/greek fire type weapons over blackpowder, considering the cultural prominence of tunnelfights.

>>10258395

I like the term "Ethical Accountants" or "Ethical Auditors", the idea that they're quantifying morality in a quite utilitarian way. But that title is probably the equivalent human term and not a literal translation. They'd be called something in Dwarven (which is obviously going to be Chinese-y) which might well come out as "Scale Men" or somesuch. And it doesn't translate well to humans, so some bright spark points out the analogy, which caught on.

As a fan of both Dwarves and Confucianism, I am all for this.

>>10258429
>>10258429

One last detail on the trial front; because most trials have two Accountants (one good, one bad) going through every little detail of the accused's life, even a minor trial takes for-fucking-ever. Months for minor charges, years for major ones, with the accused's age being a considerable variable as well.

>>10258497

Good point; like I said earlier, blackpowder is not something used on a personal level but for blasting through walls, undermining forts etc. Anti-infantry weapons... I don't think poison gas would work given the limited airspace the tunnels would involve, and it would take a really long time to dissipate down there. Some form of boiling oil/napalm style liquid weapon might work though, as it washes away much easier.

>>10258572
Like the flamethrowers/giant burning wicker balls from the Discworld books (Fifth Elephant and Thud, mostly)

As far as religion goes, are you keeping the concept of an overarching and inviolate Divine Bureaucracy? Confucianism tends to fall apart without rituals to observe and an established order to maintain.

>>10258654

Too much flame would generate smoke which would be a problem in closed quarters for both sides. I like the idea of corrosives - vats of acid poured down tunnels to scour them clean of opposition. And if you position that well, you can direct the flow towards some porous rock, where it seeps away harmlessly.

Legalism was here, Confucianism is for faggots.

>>10258715

I am using Confucianism as a base, but only that; one of the main differences Dwarves are going to encounter to conventional Confucianism is that they're atheistic. There are gods in this setting, but the god that made them (the same god as made the humans) is a god of innovation and experimentation - think a benevolent Tzeentch. So this god sees all the other gods crafting Orcs and Elves and Gnomes and so on, and they're all doing the whole "YOU ARE MY PEOPLE, HERE IS FIRE AND THE WRITTEN WORD, HERES HOW TO BUILD TEMPLES TO ME BLAH BLAH BLAH" schtick.

"What if," the Automator thinks, "I made a people, but didn't act as divine patron? Didn't appear to them at all. Didn't help out. Would they be able to survive? Would they worship me? Would they make up their own god to worship?"

So he makes the Dwarves, sticks them underground to keep them out of sight from the other gods - because he was only supposed to make one race and he'd already made humans - and left them to it. In the absence of gods, Dwarves got on well enough, though.

>>10258809
Dwarfs being big on ancestors is a trope. Ancestor worship is a traditional Chinese belief that could fit, should you so desire.

>>10258834

Exactly what I'd been thinking. Though not taking it quite as far as Shintoism, obviously

What about the other fantasy races? Would gnomes, orcs, or elves get their own culture? Sorry to slightly derail the thread (loving it so far OP and I might steal the idea), but some Anon posted a really different culture idea a while back and if you're interested I would post it.

>>10258903

Not a problem - I've got some stuff on the other races too if you are interested. But since this is set with Humans being the British Empire, what you get is a lot of humans stamping on and subsequently sublimating other cultures.

For instance, gnomes. Gnomes have a slight parallel to Native Americans in their backstory; they got an absolutely bum deal from humans and ended up losing all their land in really one-sided deals because they didn't know any better. Huge tracts of lands for shiny baubles, candied treats and whiskey. Because the mother-goddess that made them though an entire species of infants would work, somehow. Now gnomes live in human cities, speak the human languages and basically do the jobs too shitty for humans to want to do. They've little culture of their own to speak of, really, in that no gnome is long-sighted enough to think in such abstract terms. The most you get is gnomish neighbourhoods and slums, where humans mostly go to pick up cheap labour or to hit up the gnomish underworld for a cheap thrill.

Maybe they'd use a lot of claw-like or katar-esque weapons, since tunnels would put them in such close quarters?

Other than that, randoms:

Guanliao Ren. Bureau of Ethics.

Maybe their magic is based on Daoist philosophies of Chi, and the Dwarves consider themselves 'spiritually heavier' than the races above ground? Given that they had no direct contact with their god, they may well be functioning athiests or they might have set up a spiritual bureaucracy similar to real life China's Celestial Bureaucracy: All the dead ancestors simply started running things, insofar as the Dwarves are concerned.

>>10258834
>Ancestor worship

Not really. More "ancestor veneration".

>>10259167

>Guanliao Ren, Bureau of Ethics

Not bad, I certainly like the sound of it - what would that make an individual member of it?

>claw/katar weapons

Makes sense, much less space needed; I think short dao (machete/sabres) would work as well. I remember hearing a saying that the shorter the dao, the deeper the cut or something along those lines.

>Magic

I'm of two minds about this. I think the closest thing they would get to "magic" is monks (since this is likely to run in D&D). Indeed, it might be that they're the only race that can take the Monk class.

On the one hand, their backstory really heavily pushes me towards "no magic for the dwarves" but the other hand, the high magic humans also tell me that they'll need SOMETHING to maintain an equilibrium and not get wiped out. I'll have to muse on this.

>>10259200
Depends how far back you go. Ancient Chinese literally worshiped their ancestors. Well, the elites did. It changed though.

>>10259013
Kay then, here it goes. Thieves and Assassins are both very common, but their uses differ from the classical sense. Thieves are tax collectors, ensuring that all taxes are paid in full. If you don't pay, they sneak in to your house and steal enough to pay what you owe, starting with your most expensive possessions and working their way down to the tools of your trade. Assassins work similar to lawyers or peacekeepers in this culture. When hired to kill somebody, they give their target one month's notice in order for them to talk things out with the one that hired them or flee. Also, during that month said assassin will investigate the claim made by the client, ensuring that the claim is not exaggerated or an outright fabrication (the claim must be serious in the first place for an assassin to even take the job). The assassin must tell the target who the client is and give the target the choice to pay off the assassin, either closing the contract or, rarely, opening a counter-contract.

These are just the official ones. Of course there are still "rob you in the alley" thieves and "kill anyone for cash" assassins, but the legitimate jobs pay much better and are safer.

Next post: Mythology and the culture's pantheon.

>>10259270
>Not bad, I certainly like the sound of it - what would that make an individual member of it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-rank_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_hat_knob

This lets you do things like "An Ethicist of the Fifth Pin, Upper Grade" and other such neat Chinoiserie.

>>10259430

So, the Emperor's personal ethical auditors would be First Pin (serving directly under the Emperor) whereas the ones scurrying around the court of a minor noble would be Ninth Pin. Novices and Initiatives probably would have no Pin at that point in their career.

As for the hat knobs, I like the idea that you can tell an ethicist's rank by how translucent or opaque his hat knob is. One that is solid white or black is high ranks, whereas one that is transluscent is low rank. They would still be white or black though, depending on the path the ethicist has taken.

>>10258809

If you're going for the "humans are innovative people" sort of shtick, that works even better. Just have the humans and dwarves sort of work both sides of the coin: humans are a lot more likely to modify and "improve" others technology and magic and hope it works, dwarves are technological innovators as well, but their isolation and different environment forced them to create all of their advances themselves, off their own work.

>>10258181
I think the hatred of merchants thing is only Japan, as china has a long history of trade, with merchants being rather wealthy.
Also, dwarves hating trade would be idiotic.

>>10259523
Right, or perhaps (since this is a fantasy setting) have the hat-knobs be adjustable. So, one might start his career with a period of apprenticeship to a black-button Ethicist, followed by a period of apprenticeship to a white-button Ethicist. During this time, the sub-Ethicist (11th Pin, lower division), would have a clear or swirled button, which would resolve to either a dark or light color as he came to his decision.

</possibly unworkable tangent>

>>10259737

You mean the knobs would actually literally change themselves? I'd been working on the assumption that a promotion meant being given a different knob to stick on your hat, actually. Swapping out to different levels of saturation as needed.

On the heirarchy of the monks, I did have it be typical that a monk will specialise in White or Black, but there's nothing stopping someone from not specialising. Indeed, the Grand Master of the order has to be someone who has fully climbed both white and black ladders; only he has the right to wear both colours.

>>10259406
For starters, the culture's pantheon has two gods of death. One is your typical Nerul-esque evil god of death: plagues, suffering, decay, yada yada yada. The other, his brother, is more out there. Originally the god of the harvest, he opposed his brother when the evil god released a flesh eating plague. Though successful, the harvest god was affected and all his skin was eaten away (that plus his farmer's sickle gives him the classic Grim Reaper look). Figuring that a skinless person is a bad logo for farmers, he ascended a nearby human to the status of demigod and became the good god of death. He hates his job but tries to claim the souls of mortals so his dick brother can't get a hold of them. His kindness, stoicism and sense of duty has one the heart of the goddess of compassion (more on her later). Also, his priests and paladin's are well studied in necromancy spells, summoning the spirits of the recently departed so they can say their final farewells before passing on. Also, if the person allows it, their body may be prepared to be risen as an undead warrior should their village come under assault. Occasionally, the good god of death may grant unlife upon one of his subjects if they have a great task left to do. The guy that originally wrote this told of a paladin that died fighting bandits who had kidnapped a child and his god had sent him back to finish the fight. He also let him stay long enough to get the girl back to her parents, lest she starve to death in the woods. He clung to unlife just long enough to make it back to the temple, bestow his weapons and armor to a paladin-in-training, dig himself a grave, and apologize for making someone else fill it. Hell yeah.

>>10259635
Hatred of merchants is too strong a word. Confucian-based worldviews generally just don't hold them in terribly high regard. They don't grow things (like farmers) or promote ren (like scholars), but you occasionally need to get goods exchanged, and that's why you have merchants. Just like you occasionally need to dispose of dead bodies, so you have grave diggers. Not pleasant or fancy, but necessary.

>>10259845
Yeah, it was just silly fluff. Maybe the promotion ceremony involves a magical or chemical transformation. It's not terribly important. I'm loving this thread, and now thinking about how to work Chinese history into my own game.

>>10259869

Indeed, the disdain for merchants comes from the fact that their service is not exactly necessary (you don't literally need money to live) nor does it cultivate moral growth; in fact, it can cultivate the opposite, greed.

One fact that amused me when I had the idea linking dwarves to Confucianism was that the anti-ideal, the opposite of Junzi (the ideal man), is Xiaoren; one who is greedy, self centred and materialistic. Literally translated, it means "small person".

Or dwarf, in other words.

I figure in this dwarven culture, they have it as "daren" instead, to mean big person.

>>10259912
This entire thread was a setup for this.

>>10259955

No, not really.

>>10260064
In that case, what other news do you have of these Confucian dwarves?

I recommend humanoid steppe-dwelling nomads, use your Gnolls/Orcs/Goblins something as a mongol-base-- hordes kept beyond the great northern borders by walls, or by some other impediment--

>>10260114

Their main contacts with the surface world are through the monks on pilgrimages, a few entrepenurial traders and token diplomatic envoys sent to the dominant nearby cultures. They find humans... interesting. Dwarves believe that morality can be determined through reasoned debate and enlightened learning. You don't need divine intervention for that. But humans turn to their god for guidance, which seems to work well for them of course, being that they're the dominant civilisation and all but.. well, it leaves a bad taste in the dwarves' mouth.

Not as bad as the Orcs do, though. Slavery is a huge taboo to the Dwarves, but the Orcs literally want to be slaves. Or at least for someone to do their thinking for them. As distasteful as humans are, at least they're not actively running away from their free will.

>>10260260
Have you given any thought to a pesudo-Matthew Ricci or pseudo-Jesuits? Humans who believe they can go native and create a synthesis between Human and Dwarven culture? Or a reverse version, with Dwarves going to human lands?

>>10259863
The temple of the goddess of compassion runs stuff like soup-kitchens, sanctuaries, shelters, etc., but the donations don't quite cover the expenses, so the priestesses offer "services" in exchange for gold. The holy prostitutes form the backbone of note only the church but the community as well, servicing lonely men at night and feeding the starving during the day.

The goddess of luck is also the goddess of fertility, though she is often at ends with the goddess of compassion. While the goddess of luck/fertility believes that sex is for procreation first and foremost, the goddess of compassion feels that sex is mainly a display of emotion and caring, though both goddesses are said to be quite beautiful so the antipathy may simply stem from the frequent catfights instead of any philosophical differences.

The god of war is also the god of invention. While he may occasionally argue with the good god of death, he vehemently opposes his brother, for the war god does not believe in combat for combat' sake, but instead for defenses sake. Creative yet stoic, the god is focussed on creating the perfect shield for those under his light. Unlike other gods of battle, ambushes and waiting out the attacker are preferred to crafty tactics or reckless charges and occasionally the god punishes his paladins for running INTO battle as harshly as classic war gods punishes their warriors for running FROM battle.

On the flip side, the god of the forge is not inventive at all and is in fact quite demented. He declares that all things made in a forge must be soaked in blood instead of water, lest they break. Because of this superstition/creed, blacksmiths pay a pretty penny for the blood of butchered farm animals, and less noble ones will hire killers to deliver fresh human blood.

>>10260368
Lastly, the new god of farming, the one that was ascended after the first one became the good god of death, is incredibly lazy and hates his job immensely. Originally from the city, he had no passion for farming and even less knowhow. It's believed that the old god of farming chose him either on accident or because he was the only human nearby, while others say that the evil god of death misdirected his brother's spell as a little extra "fuck you" to his brother. He may grow to be a passable god of farming, but it's quite unlikely. Many spells in his sphere of influence stem from his disdain of working outside for long periods, like Shear Sheep, which shears all wool in a 30 ft. radius.

Well that's all that I remember/copied down. Hope you can find a use for this OP.

>>10260257

I don't really see how that fits with, or is of benefit to, the setting. Bearing in mind that the time frame is meant to be post Industrial Revolution or Victorian era, I think the Mongol hordes are a little out of date.

>>10260311

Now that you mention it, there is a literal divine mandate in place forcing humans and dwarves to try and fuse together. Obviously neither is entirely happy with this.

Remember I mentioned the dwarves were made in secret and that each god was meant to have only one race? Yeah. See, back in Yon Dawn Of Time, the gods had the war that all gods seem to have in the dawn of time (because what the fuck else are deities going to do then) and one guy called The Arbitrator won and set himself up as the ultimate lawmaker and judge, governing even the gods themselves. He's the guy who said "one god, one race" to establish a power balance.

>>10260385

Now, the dwarves were initially placed underground because the Arbitrator is literally in the heavens, up in the sky. Under a few miles of rock, he couldn't see the dwarves as they burrowed away... until they broke the surface. Then he demanded answers for this bullshit. The Automator had violated the oldest laws; he'd made two races, two of the largest and most successful civilisations on the planet mind you, and had thrown the balance all out of whack.

The Arbitrator was all geared up to do his "fire and brimstone, smite the unclean" thing when the Automator, clever as always, pointed out that he hadn't actually created two races. Dwarves and humans can interbreed with zero problems as they were based off of the same basic celestial blueprint. They are, therefore, one race in the eyes of the god. And the Arbitrator couldn't find a flaw with this argument. This is literally the only thing that preserved the existence of both the Automator and the entire Dwarven race that day.

But the Arbitrator demanded that if they were one race, they would damn well act like it. They were to join together, breed and so on. The humans knew better than to risk the Arbitrator's wrath, but the Dwarves are a little less experienced in such matters and so are much more lax and laissez-faire in their relations with humans.

KICK. ASS. This is great OP.

>>10260487

Oh yeah. And since that day, both the Dwarves and the Automator have been on very thin ice with the Arbitrator. Arby hates the Dwarven people but has to permit them to exist unhampered due to the technicality their creator has exploited. But you can rely on the fact that the next time a Dwarf gets called before one of Arby's angel-judges, he's going to get the very harshest punishments the god can hand down.

>>10260702
Yeah, but they probably have a good deal of experience arguing their case, do they not?

>>10260791

Not really. The dwarven judicial system is less testimonial and more mathematical - see earlier in the thread re: the role of the Ethical Bureacrats in the legal system. And they've not been interacting with the gods long so they don't fully know the ins and outs of such matters. However, they do tend towards Lawful and the Arbitrator is lawful fucking incarnate, so they don't tend to need to be pulled up in front of an angel.

>>10260702
Does the fact that the Dwarves are atheists make this even trickier?

>>10260896

Atheists wouldn't quite be the right word, really - they have seen the surface and the gods, know they exiist. But have pretty much gone "okay, thanks for making us but we've gotten by this last six thousand years or so without so much as a burning bush to light our way. We don't need you."

So, yeah, the concept of divine authority doesn't sit entirely well with them. They see the gods as still-living ancestors and respect them as such.. but beyond that owe them no actual alleigance or obeisance.

>>10261000
Man, I can imagine filial piety rituals suck when not only is the subject watching, but he can also smite you if you mess up.

>>10260628
>>10258395
>>10258497
>>10258540
>>10258903

Glad to see this idea is being so well recieved, /tg/. Thanks.

I submitted this to the archive, because it is fun. That is all.

>>10261235

Thanks - I honestly hadn't expected that. I was just sticking this up to see if it held water because it's too late at night for me to ring up a friend to talk this over.

>>10261235

This reminds me of time someone posted a similar interpretation of the 40k universe.

That was awesome as well.

>>10261919
Did you happen to get that?

Bump for anyone who hasn't seen it

>Thread about making Dwarves like Victorian Era China
>CTRL-F
>OPIUM
>No Results Found

/tg/, I am disappoint.