Dwarves are a fantasy staple because Tolkien took the concept of mountain-spirit smiths and metallurgists from Norse mythology and other folktales and decided to turn them into a Kind Of Person in his homebrew loosely-European mythology, centering their brilliant craftsmanship and their affinity for the deep places of the world but making them less spiritual and more mortal, not so ethereally angelic as the Elves but a little tougher than Humans. Fantasy Dwarves are arguably more directly rooted in real-world mythology than any other Tolkien-ism.

Complications and smaller problems are a natural consequence of your characters being characters and not just plot-executing automatons. If your characters feel too married to the plot to have non-plot wants and needs, it might be worth going into your mind-palace and asking them a few questions:

What do you do when nothing needs doing? How do you relax? CAN you relax?

How do you handle peace? Do you enjoy it? Do you trust it? Do you look for distractions, or for threats?

What would you be doing if the plot wasn't in the way? Have you ever really thought about it?

Now that things have slowed down a little, how do you feel about the stuff that just happened? Do you need to talk about it?

I'm the writer, so I know what's coming next, but you don't. What uncertainties are currently preying on your mind? Do you want to do anything to resolve them? How do you handle it if you can't?

What goals do you personally have that aren't shared with the rest of your crew? Do you have an opportunity to pursue that right now? Do you think anyone else in the crew might want to help you with that?

The camera mostly focuses on the important plot beats, but what do you do when the camera's off? What's your morning routine? What do you do for dinner? What does a Normal Day look like when the plot's not intruding?

But i have a good memory for little details, right? So time passes. I read more discworld books. Mostly out of order but discworld is nice like that, it doesn't affect me much. And. And then, I read Carpe Jugulum.

It's a good book. It's fun. The new Agnes and general lancre antics and the soggy priest. But as I progress through the pages, I keep getting this niggling feeling in the back of my mind, this creeping sense of deja vu. I can't quite pin it down, but it's always there, like an echo of a rung bell. Hey, I've read this before.

And I just can't figure it out. Until. Until the scene at the end, where the priest says that we make our own holy symbols. And then it clicks: the axe.

Pastor Oats. PASTOR OATS. PASTOR FUCKING OATS.

That! Guy! Nutt's mentor!!! and he's been STARING ME IN THE FACE this WHOLE time and i didn't realise!!!!! Pastor Oats with his fucking axe and holy fucking shit I am SO enraged. What the fuck. I'm screaming internally and rocking back and forth because i didn't even REALISE until the end!!

Terry. Terry what the fuck. Why does he do this. It's infuriating. It's amazing. Can I not go one book without this sense of dawning realisation hammering into my brain? If not a pun it's some fucking character popping out of the woodwork to hit me over the head with a clown mallet. And I KNOW the order is the other way around but this genuinely blindsided me and I still haven't recovered

Yesss, you can def read most books standalone, but when that continuity hits, it hits.