#eastern dwarves

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Stiffbeard dwarves laughing at something (or someone)

[ironfoot-mothafocka]

Dwarrowtober: Ancient & Candle

“Would he have wanted all this?” King Fara tentatively asked his wife. “Not really,” she replied, “but what are we to do? It’s tradition.”

They stopped talking as one of the masked zalal passed them carrying a tray of incense to the room in which the king’s father-in-law had died. In the ancient funeral customs of the Eastern dwarves, the windows of the small house had been thrown open wide, and anything with a silver reflecting surface had been covered over with heavy cloth.

Everyone was here now, and the mass of people, some of whom spilled out onto the street, was overwhelming in the cramped space. There were four shamurmarâd, priests who would guard and watch over Idul’s body where it lay in bed, and who afterwards would bring the corpse to the Temple for washing and tending once the night was out. He, ‘Rera, and her brother Hafar were here of course, with their sons and grandchildren. So many people, and so much to do. So much ceremony, which they both knew Idul would have griped about. Fara inhaled deeply and took in a lungful of the burning minerals— fragrant ombre powders which the zalal had lit to burn in clouds of dense smoke. He quickly stifled a cough against his sleeve; it was a potent mixture, and he’d smelled it on only a couple of occasions before.

The queen took his hand gently and led him back into the kitchen. Their youngest grandchildren were busy being amused by their grand-uncle Hafar, who balanced Akil and Sandar’s one year old on his lap. He looked up at them as they entered, his eyes ringed with dark circles. “It’s so strange, being in the house without him,” he said forlornly as Fara took a seat next to him. “Where’s ‘amad?” asked ‘Rera, sitting on his other side. “In the garden, picking some herbs. She has a headache. All the smells, and all the stress…” Hafar replied with a long exhale.

The last week had been difficult for all of them, but especially Fara’s mother-in-law, Iknar. At first, the illness that had killed her husband had started as a slight fever and aching muscles, and though Idul hadn’t been sick a day in his life, he was confined to bed. A bed which he would never leave.

Fara knew how much Idul had hated that. The elderly dwarf had been a dockworker for two hundred years, managing the loading and unloading of cargo from the hundreds of ships that entered Port Nazbukhrin each day. A staunch union leader, he’d mistrusted Fara as soon as ‘Rera had told him who she was secretly courting, but Fara didn’t blame him for it. When Fara had become king, working regulations were non-existent and the economy was in free-fall. Wages hit rock-bottom and hunger and restlessness grew, and the dwarven kingdom was on the brink of societal upheaval. “I won’t stand for you,” Idul had told Fara point-blank. “Not when you enter a room. You’re a king, aye, but don’t expect any special treatment from me. You are my son-in-law, first and foremost.” Fara wouldn’t have had it any other way. He’d often joked with his Council that he would rather walk naked into a rock-worm den than ask ‘Rera’s parents to rise on ceremony.

Even when Fara had told them they could have the best living quarters in the palace, they chose to remain in their portside apartment, where they had lived all of their lives and raised their children. The old paint on the walls was peeling off in patches, exposing white stone beneath, and the shutters on the windows were bent and dusty. Dog-eared books were stacked on high shelves, for Idul, even when their family was poor, was a militant advocate of education. Assorted pots and pans hung from iron racks amid dried meats; the washing-up in the small basin hadn’t been done for several days. A grandchild’s painting was lovingly posted on the front of the larder door, but it was now covered with a fine layer of dust — it had been almost twenty years since it was made by small hands. And in the corner, perhaps visited once or twice a year to light ceremonial candles, was a small altar. It was now awash with glimmering lights, incense smouldering softly and crumbling into ashes on the floor.

Like Idul, Fara’s attitude to religion was ‘aware it’s important to keep up appearances’. He was content to go through the motions: turning up for the relevant Temple ceremonies, holding festival meals in the palace (more of an excuse to gather together the disparate members of their extended family), half-heartedly keeping the major days of fasting. But in a private conversation, when Idul was keenly mindful of his impending death, he’d told Fara that he’d be just as happy to be interred without any ceremony. “Let people drink and eat — not be dour about the whole thing. And I don’t want any of those finicky priests taking up too much of your time. Just put me in the grave and get on with life,” he had groused. He had been acutely uncomfortable in those last hours, but he had never lost his dry humour. “And,” he had added with a disgruntled glance towards his royal son-in-law, “if you make it a state funeral, I’ll come back and haunt you.”

There was something youthfully rebellious about rejecting the old customs and disparaging the ancient ways which Idul had held onto into his three-hundredth year. Fara knew, though, that even many younger dwarves would balk at such irreverence, but the older Fara got himself, the more he sympathised. Dwarven ritual with deep roots helped the process of grief and elevated joyous occasions, but little about the rites had ever fully clicked with him. Sitting in shared contemplation with his family as they kept close to one another in their eight days of mourning, recalling a favourite saying as he lit his own candle and sparked a stick of incense, and reminiscing about the many insults he had been lambasted with throughout the years: those were the ways that Fara would remember his stubborn, infuriating, wonderful father-in-law.

There was a different kind of ancientness in the quietness of grief, and how the emptiness and loss gnawed at the insides of Fara’s stomach. The king found himself standing in the corner, watching as slowly, one by one, the candles that cluttered the altar slowly winked themselves out. He knew they would be replenished by visitors and by the family — mirroring the never-ending flow of life. Birth and death. You’re thinking too much, Fara. Fara smiled. “You’re right, Idul,” he muttered to himself, as he rubbed a circle in a small ash pile, “as always, you’re right.”

[mrkida-art]

Based on this A Stiffbeard dwarf and their companion.

Certain parts of the Stiffbeard clan breed giant cats. The mother cats sometimes take it upon themselves to help out with the dwarflings.

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A Stiffbeard dwarf and their companion. Which is a cat! Big one too. These cats are commonly used by this clan for pulling sleds and hunting (and in rarer cases, warfare).

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Sketches of Stiffbeard dwarves from the north eastern parts of Middle Earth

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My first Dwarrowtober piece where I have combined Day 1: Kingdom, Day 2: East, and Day 3: Gown. Pretty straight forward, this is a dwarf from one of the eastern kingdoms wearing a gown :D Prompt list in case you wanna join! :

[mrkida-art]

Some first exploration sketches of my version of Stiffbeard dwarves! These dwarves thrive in colder temperature and they are far more resistant to cold than their kin in the other dwarven clans. They also domesticated the biggest creatures of all the dwarves: The mammoth. This allows them to export mammoth ivory and fur, as well as utilize these creatures in transporation of goods and dwarves. The mammoths also aid in the defense of their lands against the darker forces in the east. But even discounting their mammoths these dwarves are frightening foes. Especially when they are fighting in their homeland,  as they utilizing white armour and weaponry that allows them to blend into their snowy surroundings and stay unseen. 

[ironfoot-mothafocka]

Dwarrowtober: Warrior

Again, taken from something pre-written (but now unreleased!). Yes, out of sync with the daily schedule, but still procrastinating on writing.

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Eyes. Khalei had a thing about eyes. Dwarves who had limbs so mangled that their bones had been splintered into tinderwood by orcish war machinery? Khalei didn’t even blink, sedating them in the hospital tent until they ceased to writhe and scream, and carefully removing the arm or leg with clean cuts of their surgeon’s knife. Intestines bulging out out of a soldier’s abdominal cavity from a deadly greatsword swing — the price of war.

Khalei could handle anything as long as it wasn’t an eyeball.

The battle north of the Iron Hills had been short lived, but ferocious. The newly crowned King Dáin had ordered a hundred dwarves to follow a warband of orcs that had circumvented Erebor, either a remnant of one of the scouting parties at the Battle of Five Armies that had regrouped its strength, or a new pack that was travelling to Ered Mithrin. Whatever their business, they had none in being so close to the re-founded kingdom. With so many of their own wounded and Esgaroth in tatters, any attack could prove too much for the Men who still lingered, preparing to rebuild Dale as the winter closed in.

Cries for ‘medic’ reached Khalei’s ears while they were in the middle of wrapping bandages around an archer’s leg. It was broken but there was little to reset the bone with, and the tent that they had set up to house the dead and the wounded was already too close to the enclosing enemy line. The healer gritted his teeth, glancing around. Badrur was desperately tending to a soldier whose ribs had been smashed inwards — a discarded chestplate lay caved-in nearby and blood dribbled down his chin. Rild was nowhere in sight, and the head surgeon Alvis was steadily cauterising a large head-wound that had almost cloven Estri’s skull.

“WE NEED A HEALER!”

There wasn’t any more time to think about it. Khalei tied the tourniquet as tightly as they could and jumped to their feet, grabbing a pack that carried the supplies they needed for field-medicine and pulling on their iron-helmet. If Khalei admitted it, they had been woefully unprepared for the ambush, and the terrain had given the orcs the better hand at the start of the fight. But, unlike the dwarves who were fighting, it wasn’t Khalei’s place or position to worry about these things. They were there to care for the wounded — and that was it.

“Where?!” Khalei called to the dwarf who had poked his head into the tent. “General Baranul — someone last saw him on the ground, about fifteen paces west of the riverbed there, but he wasn’t moving…” the dwarf exclaimed breathlessly. He was limping badly, and a smear of blood was streaked across his cheek, but he was alert and talking, and that would do. Khalei set off, his pack bouncing across his back with every step. In the distance, the orcs seemed to be retreating to form a line once more, a horizon of ugly shapes, blackened armour and the the hunkering outline of wargs. Here and there, Khalei ducked around swinging axes, but the remaining orcs were either being quickly dispatched or were already taking their last breaths on the battlefield. A sliver of hope that this would be the end of it rose inside his chest. Please let this be it.

After only a moment of scanning the dried-out river for the dwarf, Khalei found him laying in a pool of blood. General Âr Baranul was alive, but he was gravely wounded, and for a moment Khalei backed away, grimacing. There was an arrow jutting straight out of his face. Mustering himself, he kneeled down and peered over the prone body. The General’s eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell and he was still gripping the haft of his axe. “It’s medic Khalei Iskbanal, General. Put your arm around me if you can, and I shall carry you.” The General let out a throaty laugh. His black beard and moustache were matted with congealing blood and his chest was rising feebly, perhaps, Khalei imagined, from unseen internal bleeding. “You couldn’t carry me. Leave me.” “I wouldn’t have suggested that, General, if I could not do it,” Khalei said, gritting their teeth at the slight. It was General Âr’s way, but he didn’t need the dismissal when the dwarf was so close to death. He leaned forwards, placing his fingertips on either side of the dwarf’s neck and working his way down to assess the extent of his injuries. “But before I move you, I need to check that you can still feel your legs—”

The sky went dark. For a moment, Khalei assumed that it was a cloud blotting the sun, or that twilight had fallen unexpectedly early. But then, he heard it. The incoming whistling far above them, getting louder and louder by each passing second. Khalei glanced up, and saw the volley of arrows arching upwards, and then, as if time had slowed, falling steadily towards them. Well, that’s that, then. Khalei threw himself onto of the General, avoiding the eye with the arrow in it, and covering as much of the dwarf’s body with his own as he could. He felt Âr try to push him off, a stout leg finding the strength to hook itself over his body and roll on top of him instead, but Khalei held fast, pinning the larger dwarf to the ground. He was a medic — a healer. He did not leave dwarves to die if he could help it.

To this day, Khalei didn’t know how they both survived. The next thing Khalei remembered was raising his head and noticing that the Gates of Mahal’s Halls looked very much like the same stretch of riverbed. The pain in his calf made it all the more real. In a daze, the army medic broke off the stems of two arrows that had embedded themselves in his calf, before laying down to check for Âr’s breathing. “Go,” the General whispered, his face pale. “Get. Out. Of. Here.” “No,” Khalei grunted through the pain ripping through his leg. It took all his strength to carry Âr back to the camp, even after Khalei had stripped him of his armour. At some points he was just dragging Âr across the field, before two dwarves rushed over to help support their General’s body. Alvis met them at the tentflap, her brows creased in worry. Khalei thought he heard her mutter something about his leg, but his eyes were fixed on the nearest cot.

Âr’s eye was the only one Khalei had ever touched. He had steadfastly avoided anything to do with them throughout his medical training, but now wasn’t the time to balk. Leaning over the General, he trimmed down the arrow and set about carefully removing the entrenched tip of it. It was a miracle that it hadn’t passed straight through Âr’s skull, but there was no saving his vision. “Khalei — Prince Iskbanal — your leg—” Khalei twitched in irritation, holding the General’s head still for cleaning as the General’s jaw worked, stifling a cry of agony. “I’m working,” he said flatly, brushing off the concern of his fellow healer. “And I’m Healer Iskbanal.” The General’s one good eye opened. It was bloodshot, but it held a steady gaze. “You’re King Varhi’s wayward younger brother?” he asked. Khalei shushed him, pressing the tincture soaked cotton pad underneath his nose, the calming fumes suffusing the air. “If I had known that before, I would have cleaned up a little.”

—

“And that,” Khalei took a draught of wine, setting the glass neatly back on the table, “is how I met your father.” General Âr looked over proudly, the golden rim of his eyepatch glimmering. “Though I was afraid that you wouldn’t look twice at an old, one-eyed dwarf when you had so many others trying to woo you,” he remarked. Khalei smirked. “Less eyes the better for me. Still hate the things.”