Dead-Eyed Dwarves

Dvargir and Dvargir-alternatives development for VotE: ReDux

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves are bald and bearded, shorter and stronger than men. They value only work and blood.

Appearance

STOMP STOMP STOMP – the heavy iron-shod boots of Dwarves passing invisibly but for glaring lamps and lances of light.

For the Dead-Eyed Dwarves have many magics; cloaks which make the wearer invisible, clicking rings which make their owner large or small, strange insect-lenses which pick up every drop of light and ever stranger eye-wear; pearl-pale cyclopean masks which perceive the flow of ‘dark’ itself and twin-cone faces which turn rebounding clicks and whines into images in the air. Beneath these, often, grills or tubes, breathing apparatus or voice amplifiers, who knows. Beneath those; beards.

Their lamp are harsh, actinic and directional; itself a near-aggressive act within the Veins. The blinding sharp-edged light turns the Dwarves behind them into silhouettes. The tramping, trudging, armoured and indifferent Dwarves. Few cultures of the Veins dare to wear full-armour underground; none but the Dead-Eyes possess the craft to endlessly clean, amend and fix their metal shell, the brutal endurance to carry metal weight, nor the size-shifting techno-magic which lets them shrink and grow, giving them access to shafts and warrens which others attempt only in extremity.

They can pass invisibly, but they are loud. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Too big, too small. Disappearing in the blink of an eye. Hooded, armoured, masked, with wild prickling beards. Lights powered by crackling batteries which drip toxic alkali slime. Loaded with crossbow, axe and pick, careful maps and guidance dials, grappling hooks and superlight chains. Walking and moving in unison, grunting to each other in muttered subsonic; a guttural under-speech, as if they resented even, the need to speak, even to each other.

The most likely encounter is that you are simply ignored. The cost/benefit assessment of enslaving you simply doesn't move the dial.

The Dead Eyes

Things don’t get better when the masks come off. There is just something missing in there; the strange, deep-time, assessing gaze of a Dwarf, but with the humour, honour, boldness; gone, washed away, leaving what? Eyes pale as slate, empty as the letter O.

They eat, breathe, smell, move like living things, more than many in the Veins, yet a vampire, or a crazed patchwork Gilgamash, can have more 'anima', more individuality, vitality and humour than a Dead-Eye Dwarf.

They are not pleasant to deal with, but they are reliable, practical and rational, and they think long-term, which makes them an incredible stabilising force. Yet no-one, and nothing 'likes' the Dead-Eyed Dwarves.

Abilities

Powerful Lights

Bright white spheres, hanging lanterns and lances of burning white light. Used to blind or disorder seeing foes, or simply to pick out blind enemies.

Invisibility Cloaks

Heavy toxic things with pointed hoods, less useful in the Veins than you might think, these are used mainly in raiding other lands. When wrapped around and buttoned up, everything they cover turns translucent. Complex physical movements, like most forms of attack, will make the wearer visible, at least for a moment.

Size-Control Rings

Heavy click-clacking bracelets which turn like locks or rings of code. Rapid tactile codes are needed to make use of one, and once that code is known, each ring is still is different, tuned for a particular Dwarf. Worn, usually on the left arm. Move the right hand over and quickly, and loudly, click through the code before carefully carefully carefully clicking through the size-set sequence.

When a Dead-Eyed Dwarf shrinks or grows, its not a smooth transition. Its as if they were an image and each heavy CLACK spun some fresh lens in front of them so that they seemed smaller or larger by leaps. CLACK CLACK CLACK and big, big BIG, as if they were projections, with the ‘real’ dwarf somewhere else.

It takes time and training to accustom oneself to getting bigger and smaller on the regular.

Seeing Lenses

They like these, though its questionable how useful they are. Varied masks and lenses, the most common are Light-enhancing eyes, heat-trace Snake-Pit lenses and Sonic Lenses. More rare are the special ‘Dark Vision Lenses’ which literally treat darkness as a substance.

Each Dwarf will only have one set of Lenses, if they have any, and few groups will have more than one set of each kind. They are hard to make, maintain and repair and each Dwarf makes their own.

Mouth Masks

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves don’t even use gas that much, purchasing it from the RayMen occasionally, but they like to wear the masks. Some protect from gas, some change the voice to a harsh bark, others alter voices to simulate those heard, still others provide air should the Dwarf go underwater, or into airless spaces.

Again, each Dwarf only has one set and the whole group rarely has more than one of each. Its not a systematised technology.

Combat Encounters

Morale

Morale plays no part in the decisions of the Dead-Eyed Dwarves

Everything is based on their immediate objectives. If violence is required, and they think they will win, it starts at once, without warning.

If victory becomes impossible, or if the situation changes, so that violence no longer serves, they simply stop, again, without warning, usually turning invisible and simply walking away.

If there is no way out, they fight, bitterly, to the emotionless end

Combat Tactics

Armoured; the Dwarves can weather most projectiles, and most blows.

Bright Directional Lights; these can be used to blind many Veins inhabitants. Activating then turning off the lights can be more effective than actual invisibility.

Invisibility Cloaks; if out-ranged, bottled up or boxed in, a combat team can use their invisibility to close with the enemy, or to escape if needed.

Size-Change = BIG; The Dwarves can ‘click-click-click’ up to Ogre size. This always takes an action and is loud. All of their equipment changes with them, as if it, too was being projected from somewhere else. A Dwarf might turn huge and fire ballista-sized crossbow bolts, or get close before turning massive and laying into a party from behind its lines.

Size-Change = small; mainly used for escaping should a situation turn bad, especially by accessing crawl-spaces or similar. Combining this with Invisibility makes them near-impossible to catch.

The enormous power of their techno-magical abilities, combined with their utter ruthlessness and invincible will, means the Dead-Eyed Dwarves don't need fancy 'tricks', though like many Veins cultures, though they have an expertise in Poison (to which they have a meaningful resistance), and sometimes use various forms of Gas.

Chameleon/Tarantula Cavalry

Mainly used in and around their settlements, due to the enormous costs of keeping them fed, but the Dead-Eyed Dwarves do often use ‘Cavalry’ formations; their favourites are a very chunky form of huge Tarantula, and kind of sticky lizard with some Chameleonic abilities.

They will usually change size to something smaller in order to comfortably ride these things. The combination of activating their toxic invisibility cloaks, the giant animals, and the glaring lights they carry, creates a truly bizarre appearance.

Non-Combat Encounters

No Pride, No Shame

The Dead-Eyed Dwarves don’t carry resentments around, if they beat you before, or were beaten by you, their attitude will be what it always is - relentlessly practical.

This makes conflict with them a troubling experience; they will not try violence unless they believe they will win, and they are rarely wrong.

Non-Combat Encounters

the Dead-Eyed Dwarves will pass invisibly, except for their lanterns. They seem like trudging shadows passing underneath an actinic light which glows like a willow the whisp.

Did they just walk right past?

Whatever they are doing, they are doing it. They have a purpose and if the PCs cannot help

or impede them, what do they care?

Goals of the Dead-Eyed Dwarves

[THIS NEEDS WORK BUT HERE IS THE BASIC IDEA

A simple way to do this might be for there to be three goals;

One BIG THING that the whole of local Dead-Eye Dwarf culture is currently aiming towards. You roll for this when you are generating the Veins and it remains the same throughout the Campaign.

Two –a medium scale political or large structural goal that will help them towards the MAIN THING. This can change from session to session and can differ from settlement to settlement. (But it doesn’t have to change). You can roll for this on-encounter, or during the session or just keep it from previous sessions if that make sense.

Three - a current goal for *this particular group*, the mission or thing they are currently trying to fulfil, which will lead towards the second, which will lead towards the third. You roll for this when you encounter these guys.

Do, whenever you are dealing with Dead-Eyes, just look at this list; they are doing A, to achieve B, to finally achieve C. And all you need to think about, as it is all the Dead-Eyes are thinking about, is ‘how do I achieve the next goal and make sure it connects to the main goal’. ]

They must always be working.

Simple Behaviours For Encounters

Literal

They do not like metaphor. Things mean one thing. If a thing tries to mean two things then it becomes nothing.

LITERAL DOESN'T MEAN STUPID - they do not like metaphors, but they understand them. They know that you or other characters, are not being literal, and they can understand that, but they themselves will do everything they can to avoid it.

Taciturn, Concrete, Direct

Get to the point, get there now and be explicit about what it is.

Use the minimal number of words to make things clear.

Do not 'chat'. Every conversation has a clear and concise point towards which they are going.

Dead-Eye Culture

Long ago the first of them emerged from a distant primal core. He made himself. That work goes on. They believe they are improving. It is their mission to do so.

Their family trees spring up, not down. Each generation more focused and efficient than the last. This is the Ascent. Dead-Eye heredity. A machine of blood and bone, carrying them into the pre-remembered future. One of only two things in which they truly believe.

They have statistics, and the graphs all show a clear upward trend. Production, efficiency and development, all increase.

They imagine the future and the things they will build there. It belongs to them. They want it more. They understand it more. They will become what the future needs them to be. The future is a god to them. A god-above-gods. They know it to be true.

Even as the race slowly winds itself deeper and deeper into the earth, passing through fretted valves and carved abandoned chambers they have made, falling in its orbit of stone, they map their continual advance.

Each thing must be built upon another thing. A word, a deed, a thought, each must have its foundation. Arguments over the Ascent are arguments over reality itself. Without its sustaining foundation, the word becomes a gabble of sound, the deed an accident, the thought a dream, the existence a lie.

Dull

One of the most powerful, wide-ranging and transformative of all the cultures of the Veins, the Dead-Eyed Dwarves are dishwater-dull, to deal with. Utterly reliable and quite insane, they are a power second only to the Aelf-Adal, to whom they are almost immune, and with whom they enter irregular war.

Makers Of Ruin

The totality of their physical effect on the Veins of the Earth is enormous. Dead-Eyes never stop working, mining, carving, delving. They are always building, cutting, shaping, and thence always moving.

They cannot stop working, ever.

This makes a Dead-Eye city or settlement, more like the cast of a worm than a singular place. They mine and carve EVERYWHERE, continually, they do not stop to inhabit very long. A Dead-Eye settlement is like a time-worm; it’s not located in any particular place but is continually being delved, leaving the carved and developed volumes behind it, like the cast of a worm.

The Dead-Eyes therefore make the Veins more ‘ruined’ and more ‘empty’ than they would otherwise be, for an empty building can be empty in ways a cave cannot.

Dead-Eyes do still consider that they 'own' anything that they have worked on, (that they haven't formally agreed to sell or exchange), which means these vast Piranesi-ruins that plunge through the Veins are technically 'theirs'.

Neutral, Practical Evil

Dead-Eyes do not torture or psychologically destroy their slaves. Not deliberately at least. They simply kill them when they fail .

Skilled slaves can appear to rise far in Dead-Eye ownership, and will (any skill at work must be nurtured and sustained so that better work may be done). But it is not the individual that is respected. It is the work. The work passing through the alien flesh.

They do not really hate their slaves. They do not realise that they are beings at all. Only vectors for work.

They do not really hate anyone. Because they really don’t know there is anyone there to hate.

Neutral, ultra-reliable, non-bigoted, they may be the sanest (?) culture in the Veins.

They are honestly quite boring to encounter and maybe that's ok. Remember it’s not about offending them, it’s unlikely you even could offend them, it’s about getting in their way, and if you do get in their way, they will grind through you and over you with utter ruthless indifference. It’s almost like fighting golem.

Skill Is Meaning

They respect skill. But it is the skill itself they respect, which is work moving through the body, not the body or the person itself, which are just bearers of the skill.

Work Is Meaning

The only other thing they understand is work.

A body and a mind are only useful because of the work they can together do. The soul is the work passing through the flesh.

No other race grasps this. They might ask “What are the Dead-Eyes working towards? What is their plan?”

They are working to be working. Work is the plan. Work is the point.

They will never stop. They can never stop.

They will cut cities from bare stone, tear up every vein, embellish every surface, then, when there is no unworked spot or unplanned gap, when every single piece and thing has become a channel for planned creation, when even the pebbles stare up from the floor with idly-carved eyes, then they move on.

Gems mean nothing to them except that they can be cut, or have been cut.

If one loses the ability to work and if they cannot further the ascent, they simply walk into the dark. Or sit where they are, staring at nothing, waiting to starve.

if a Dead-Eye is crippled or otherwise prevented from working, they lose any will to live. They must work, they must proceed towards the goal. It is all they are. It is everything they are.

Jealous

Yes, ok, perhaps they can be a little irrational. They are still Dwarves after all. They can be jealous of craft and ownership, especially of unique objects and materials. The RayMen and their wonderous tech inspire some of this, but many ethnogroups have a little this or that which really, really, should that not truly belong to the Dwarves?

No Dreams

They do not dream, rather they experience a lucid ebony. Its possible they are not even really unconscious, just ‘shut down’. What are the Nightmare-Men going to do? Give them a spook?

Fidget Spinners

Since they literally can't stop working, they tend to have a lot of ... odd things they do when they can't physically work, like knitting. If they are waiting, they carve stones or rock where-ever they sit down, leaving tiny faces in pebbles or maps on flat slate. (Although you never actually see them 'waiting’.)