Funny running into this again in Suledin Keep days after kvetching about that post where the OP said the devs should have made it so that your choice in leadership in Orzammar should have affected the dwarf quests in Kal-Sharok.
To be clear, I think it would have made zero sense for a decision made 20 years prior by another character to have any bearing on Rook. This inability to understand that your main characters are not all linked and don't have all the information you do is hamstringing this fandom.
But even if you hadn't played the prior games (or simply hadn't paid attention), the fraught relationship between Kal-Sharok and Orzammar is described in the dialogue you can listen in on simply by walking slowly around the outpost during Lace's quests.
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Hello ! I was just wondering about certain monster related things. Now this may seem a strange topic to ask but do different monsters have different currency? I'm a big collector of coins and would love some info from DoMA about it if possible!
Thank you for contacting the Department of Monster Affairs. There are many interesting concepts of currency found in the magical realm.
To start, the humans that have lived in the magical realm since the Division have continually used precious metals (e.g., gold, silver, copper, aluminum) as their typical coinage. While each country creates its own coins, most have agreed on a set standard weight and size for these coins, allowing for easier trade across countries. Much rarer are platinum coins. These coins rarely leave their homelands because the mixture of platinum metals used is different for each country, making them unable to be standardized. The rarest "coin" is mercury. As mercury is liquid at room temperature, these coins are actually magically reinforced glass balls. They are used only when trading among the wealthiest for large purchases or Mages. The Mages, of all species, tend to use these mercury balls as arcane currency among themselves.
Regarding the monsters, many have adopted human currency in their dealings to help facilitate trade. However, there are still cultural norms surrounding debt and currency that do not align with human values. For example, Orcs were a barter-based society when they were not raiding for supplies. However, in their bartering, they represented debt through notches on iron rods called "favor iron." Favor iron represented someone's debt, and when that debt was cleared, the iron was smelted down. This favor iron could be considered a type of currency for collectors, as the debt was occasionally traded around within a tribe.
Some monsters do still maintain their own cultural currencies even if they trade with humans, using only human coins for these trades. One example is elves that facilitate trade with other elves through seeds, tree cuttings, young trees, eggs, and occasionally live animals. This helps to promote genetic diversity in their forests (or other biome type) but also adds to the beauty. The rarer the flora or fauna is, the more valuable it is to the elves. Another example is dwarves, who use gem currency, where raw or polished gems are used as currency, with their value based on clarity and rarity. A final example is merfolk who use driftwood as their currency. Since wood in the ocean is scarce, it represents a relatively finite source, with new driftwood needing to be found or processed. Merfolk carve this driftwood into rings to more easily carry them underwater as currency. Interestingly, this makes old wooden shipwrecks a treasure trove similar to ore mines for humans.
Hopefully, this satisfied your curiosity. If you wish to collect currency from the magical realm, there are many monster cultural organizations that may be able to facilitate your interests. Thank you once again for reaching out to the Department of Monster Affairs.
Dwarves are almost completely magically inert. While there are few exceptions (esp wrt multiracial ppl), they largely evolved in a planetary magical dead zone. No full blooded dwarf is born with natural magic ability.
(Above example farthest right in front is half elemental and has power over fire.)
HOWEVER, this doesn't mean they can't use ANY magic.
Dwarves can use enchanted items and even harness natural energies of the world with their technology. A dwarven mage is very different from an elven mage, as they really a lot more on science, physics, and engineering for just about everything in their societies.
Through all history, dwarves were at the forefront of engineering and trade, learning to use the resources of their lands and strength of their hands to create large scale trade empires, exchanging their labor and expertise for enchantments and other foreign goods.
They aren't at all insular peoples and make up a very large portion of all big time world traders and business leaders.
Trade Common, the most universally used language in-world, relies heavily on Dwarvish Trade, with some human and elvish trade language mixed in.
Dwarvish technology is the most advanced non-magical tech known across the entire planet. While magictech is abundant on Treias, dwarven tech is regarded as very high end and impressive due to its LACK of magic use. Dwarves have made great strides in providing for those who are magically inert, and enjoy pushing the envelope as far as possible to match or exceed the possibilities of magictech.
They're very open to information and hardware trade, though some traditionalists get overly proud and stubborn if one tries to "improve" their work with magic.
They originate from mountainous and ore rich lands and are known as the people of the stone, or stone speakers. Gems, ores, metals, minerals of most any kind are ever present in their history, society, and iconography through all of recorded history. Dwarves are typically great at discovering resource heavy mining areas all over the world and are heavily relied on for gathering and shipping construction materials in just about every society.
They are typically short and extremely hardy, normally growing lots of facial and body hair no matter their gender. Treatment of said hair and what it says about a dwarf differs among different societies, but typically a great beard is well appreciated.
Common belief about dwarvish people is that they aren't very fashionable and stick much more to practical clothing over anything else, which is wildly untrue. Dwarven fashion is taken very seriously and typically tries to merge durability and practicality with a sort of art deco beauty. Maybe a hint of brutalism. And when access to pure unrefined minerals of all kind, there's no shortage of sparkly stones for expertly crafted jewelry. Like the people themselves, everything they produce is sturdy and long lasting.
Spiritually, not many dwarves pray to gods. Maternal ancestry is the strongest bond in most dwarven cultures. The mothers, grandmothers, eldest sisters, etc. of dwarven families are often seen as the matriarchs, strong and unyielding, kind and caring. Passing traits and lessons through one's maternal line is very important to dwarves. It's more lax in modern times with the understanding that not everyone has a mother or other matronly family in their life.
Dwarves, on average, live to around 500-600 years. They can have rather large families with siblings born MANY years apart, and most planned families do space their children some 10, 20, even 40 years or more apart. They're in no rush. They also have no legally established marriage system, and just one family can have several mothers that guide them.
Notes:
Initially inspired by the dwarves of Dragon Age, I wanted at least one society or lineage that could thrive without magic. I love highly magical worlds but having peoples that are non reliant on that magic is also extremely interesting to me! However, I also wanted my version of dwarves to also be much more sociable and important to the world at large instead of being confined to caves and mines and not knowing much about the world outside.
dwarves, magic resistant, not children of the maker! nobody cares!
mages, connected to the Fade, first realm Maker created, are obviously to be feared, as they would turn away from the Maker at the first inconvenience.
dwarves, who literally cannot dream, are away from His light too
I do not know what I am trying to say with this it is just interesting.
RIGHT??
in an ideal world there would be dwarven andrastian sects who consider themselves further from demons and pure of the corruption of the black city, not to mention elite branches of templars purely composed of dwarves, which should really go without saying. and also the tevinter chantry would preach that mages are closer to the maker via their connection to the fade. come on bioware itâs not rocket science
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To those who wonder why the Rings of Power turned the nine kings of men into the Ringwraiths but nothing happened to the elves or the dwarves, the Rings did actually affect the other races. Â Itâs just that the elves caught on and were able to counter Sauronâs power. Â As for the dwarves, the power of the Rings worked a little too well and Sauron was unable to control the greedy, little shits heâd unleashed on the world.
Because back in the dawn of time, when the smith god AulĂŤ created the dwarves, he made them more resilient to the darkness because he feared what Morgoth, essentially the root of all evil, would do to them.
just wanted to say I love your dwarf meta and your mike pence joke gives me life. playing through dao for the first time and I'm siding with Bhelen, but now I have to see if I can get Harrowmont and Alistair in the same room. mind blown, that joke literally rescued a shitty day from the gutter.
It was actually my friend @raiyningâ who originally came up with it! We were at lunch and she was trying to explain the conflict to a friend, and thatâs how she described it and it just STUCK.
I do find the whole Orzammar conflict one of the better written parts in DAO, because Bhelen does some awful things to other nobles in the name of progress, but ultimately is the better âlong termâ choice for the dwarves. I also think itâs no mistake that playing as a Brosca heavily biases the player towards Bhelen in a way other origins donât. That being said, I also think itâs really easy to make a character who misses all of these nuances because theyâre not familiar to the society. Or, theyâre an Aeducan, and theyâre going to get revenge regardless of the bigger picture.
Orcs, a race in fantasy often seen as brutish, and violent. They typically are depicted similar to Viking raiders without the behind the scenes culture or an evil army of superhuman warriors. To me, orcs can be so much more.
Let's stick with their typical appearance for this: green skin, relatively large build, muscular, intimidating face, and jagged teeth. This works well for the idea I had. Orcs are not warlike by choice, but by necessity. Their outward appearance causes traders to fear them and flee when the orcs just want to barter. "What are they bartering for?" You may ask. They barter, not for food as they can produce that just fine, but for natural resources not found in their territory that are useful for luxury technology. An example of these would be things like various plants that can make dyes, or even copper if it's not available. Yes, the orcs can outwardly be Napoleon's France but inwardly be modern Japan.
Where dwarves are the masters of military technology, and humans are the masters of practical tech, orcs are the masters of luxury tech. (Change around how you wish, any race can be whatever) They do of course have military engineers (or artificers in high fantasy) but their luxury engineering is much more advanced. Make them as advanced as you want, or not. It would be an interesting dichotomy between the 2 "faces" of the orcs.
They could have a culture similar to the Vikings where strength is valued, as well as the finer things and ancestry. Or they could be very chill and have a culture based around comfort while maintaining their bodies.
These are just ideas. Feel free to use them if you want.
