Dwarves, Ladders and light

[Keltest]

This is so removed from actual reality of priestly jobs that I'll just agree to disagree with you.

GW

youre arguing reality in a discussion on whether or not clerics would be able to help sustain life underground using magic?

[King of Nowhere]

Clerics create light and food? Clerics create life itself. Nothing can grow in the dark zones without light - no one can be fed.

I suggested before that the dwarven civilization is built atop a mountain of guano, but maybe, following your idea, clerics and other magic are the source of life. The entire underground ecosystem is centered on the magic-users who can harness magical energy. Without them, all would perish.

So - another picture of dwarven civilization emerges. Because with the whole Underdark dependent on them for life itself, the clerics have power beyond imagination. Nothing can survive without them. They're not just clerics - they are the rulers of all dwarven-dom. They are gods. The temple clerics are not just clergy - they are the gatekeepers of life's very energy itself.

When they could switch off life for hundreds, or thousands, at a whim - what if they failed? What if they erred? And what if they corrupted? What if their great power gave way to great greed? Wars, famines, mass killings, disease, or - the worst fate of all - utter darkness, as an entire region of the underground loses their light and are plunged into the abyss.

Dwarves are religious - well, of course they are! The people must live in utter fear of those great temples and the magic-users within. This is no religion of faith - this is a religion of fear, of terror, of begging for your survival! Dwarves are warlike - their entire history is nothing but death and struggle!

Dwarves have no mages? They did once. Before the clerics wiped them all out. A challenge to their power - unacceptable. The mages resisted - they had magic. But the clerics had magic - and the power and resources of the temples at their disposal. The mages were slaughtered. And even now, all dwarven children who show arcane ability are expunged by the clerics.


But one day ... one day, there'll come a time, when we'll overthrow those temple-keepers. We'll cast down those despots and free all dwarf-kind. And we'll turn our backs on Thor, Odin, and the others, who failed to protect their people as long as their supplicants claimed their banner.

And then ... after the revolution ... we chain the clerics to the underfarms. We can't survive without them? Fine - that doesn't mean we'll worship them. We just need to harness them. Extract their powers from them.

Underfarms? Please. We're talking powerplants. Massive arrays of energy-harvesting pods, where each cleric will have their magic extracted and distributed for all dwarf-kind and all the Underdark to use, in peace and harmony. The once-masters will be nothing more ... than a battery.

And then maybe a giant virtual reality computer simulation, to keep them all occupied. Although that might be too much of a hassle.

there's a nice piece of worldbuilding here.
But, if one wanted to escape the tiranny of those clerics, wouldn't it be much simpler to just live on the surface?
No, I'm not claiming this is an inconsistency. culture, tradition and superstition have kept many people from doing the sensible thing for generations. I just can't help but laugh at the idea of all those dwarves fighting to live underground when they could just go out.

[Keltest]

there's a nice piece of worldbuilding here.
But, if one wanted to escape the tiranny of those clerics, wouldn't it be much simpler to just live on the surface?
No, I'm not claiming this is an inconsistency. culture, tradition and superstition have kept many people from doing the sensible thing for generations. I just can't help but laugh at the idea of all those dwarves fighting to live underground when they could just go out.

Trees live outside.

[CRtwenty]

Just addressing the original poster's question here, since things seem to have gotten a little silly.

Most likely there are groups of Dwarves who live on the surface in the Dwarven lands and are able to farm the land and raise livestock which can be traded to their underground brethern in exchange for things like ore and gems. They're probably regarded as suicidal by most of the Dwarves due to living so close to trees, but hey. Somebody has to grow the wheat and barley. Maybe they're not Dwarves at all, but Gnomes? Gnomes tend to prefer hills and more "hobbit hole" type dwellings over stone caves anyway, and we've never gotten any hints that the Gnomes have their own homeland.

Also most D&D settings have an Underdark, which has an entirely seperate magic based ecosystem filled with various lichen and fungi, and larger animals that feed on them that can be bred as livestock (Forgotten Realms has Rothe, which are basically Underground Yaks that the locals use for fur, milk, and meat). The Dwarves could just do their agriculture underground.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

I've never really paid much attention to the idea that dwarves don't have wizards. While I'm aware that in some previous editions of D&D the Dwarven people were not allowed to use Arcane Magic because Gimli wasn’t a spellcaster (the actual reasoning, I’m not even making that up), I prefer to refer to the Dwarven magicians in many source legends (the Ring Saga for one), and even the Dwarven Magic from the Lord of the Rings (Thorin demonstrated magic in one of the first chapters of the Hobbit, and Balin could talk to Ravens).

Dwarves should be slinging spells, scribing runes, and crafting magic items in their mountain halls as much as drinking beer and swinging axes, in the same way that orcs should be a deeply spiritual people when they are not forming hordes and rampaging across the countryside to raid and pillage and plunder. Otherwise your races become too one dimensional, and, dare I say it, boring.

Agreed - even if we take a typical mine in a D&D world, how useful would spells like Dig, Rock to Mud, Stone to Flesh (making it easier to cut through) and Flesh to Stone (preserving people who are trapped until they can be dug out, then the spell is reversed), Disintegrate, Passwall, Telekenisis, Phase Door, Wall of Force, Wall of Stone, Stoneshape and so on be for rescuing people after a cave-in? What about, say, Flame Arrow to safely deal with flammable gases in a tunnel?

[Keltest]

Agreed - even if we take a typical mine in a D&D world, how useful would spells like Dig, Rock to Mud, Stone to Flesh (making it easier to cut through) and Flesh to Stone (preserving people who are trapped until they can be dug out, then the spell is reversed), Disintegrate, Passwall, Telekenisis, Phase Door, Wall of Force, Wall of Stone, Stoneshape and so on be for rescuing people after a cave-in? What about, say, Flame Arrow to safely deal with flammable gases in a tunnel?

well, flame arrow would suck because you would have just detonated a bomb in your mine. But maybe air and wind based magic could work.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

well, flame arrow would suck because you would have just detonated a bomb in your mine. But maybe air and wind based magic could work.

Not really, it would depend on the concentration of gases - plus the arrow would ignite the edges first, which would likely have a poor fuel/air ratio, rather than a potentially ideal one with a spark in the middle.

You're also igniting it from range, so you can potentially hunker down behind something or have a second mage put up a shield (say a Wall of Ice) against any fire rolling back towards you.

You could even treat it like a natural blasting charge (or maybe use Fireballs etc) - detonate the gases, then shore up the walls (using anything from pit props to castings of stone shape) and carry the debris out.

Or as you say, you could have air magic - maybe a reversal of Stinking Cloud/ Cloudkill or creative usages of Gust Of Wind.

[Keltest]

Not really, it would depend on the concentration of gases - plus the arrow would ignite the edges first, which would likely have a poor fuel/air ratio, rather than a potentially ideal one with a spark in the middle.

You're also igniting it from range, so you can potentially hunker down behind something or have a second mage put up a shield (say a Wall of Ice) against any fire rolling back towards you.

You could even treat it like a natural blasting charge (or maybe use Fireballs etc) - detonate the gases, then shore up the walls (using anything from pit props to castings of stone shape) and carry the debris out.

Or as you say, you could have air magic - maybe a reversal of Stinking Cloud/ Cloudkill or creative usages of Gust Of Wind.

You misunderstand. Go ask anyone who knows anything about explosives about what happens to an enclosed space's structural integrity when you set off a bomb inside.

[Finn Solomon]

I love it when people try to apply scientific rules and real world logic to fantasy settings like D&D.

It's the same folly I've seen on this board when it comes to magic items and effects and abilities. People arguing about whether a forcefield is air permeable or a teleportation spell takes into account the rotation of the planet or something of that nature.

It's like what Pratchett says. Fantasy has a life of its own. It runs on narrativium, not logic. Whatever makes the best story is how it's going to happen. Quibbling over minute details in an attempt to shoehorn in your real world knowledge of physics and math and chemistry can sometimes make for a better story, but it often ends in a game of one upsmanship.

Leave it be and enjoy the ride.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

I love it when people try to apply scientific rules and real world logic to fantasy settings like D&D.

It's the same folly I've seen on this board when it comes to magic items and effects and abilities. People arguing about whether a forcefield is air permeable or a teleportation spell takes into account the rotation of the planet or something of that nature.

It's like what Pratchett says. Fantasy has a life of its own. It runs on narrativium, not logic. Whatever makes the best story is how it's going to happen. Quibbling over minute details in an attempt to shoehorn in your real world knowledge of physics and math and chemistry can sometimes make for a better story, but it often ends in a game of one upsmanship.

Leave it be and enjoy the ride.

Personally, I engage in these kinds of activities because I find them to be enjoyable thought exercises in trying to apply logic to a setting like this. People do things like this because they enjoy talking about how things like this work out in the real world, and how event and effects work in a non-plot run situation, because they have fun doing so, not because they want to shoehorn in their knowledge of our world. Calling it a folly perplexes me, because I see no folly.

[skim172]

there's a nice piece of worldbuilding here.
But, if one wanted to escape the tiranny of those clerics, wouldn't it be much simpler to just live on the surface?
No, I'm not claiming this is an inconsistency. culture, tradition and superstition have kept many people from doing the sensible thing for generations. I just can't help but laugh at the idea of all those dwarves fighting to live underground when they could just go out.

Of course - but they'd be exiled from dwarvenkind. A ruling tyranny would have to lock down access to the surface, in order to maintain their control - that's why every dwarf you meet in the surface world is invariably a cleric or a warrior, part of the ruling elite. Anyone else who manages to escape is exiled forever.

And I suppose if a sentient species did evolve underground, the surface would seem terrifying and strange to them. Agoraphobia is probably very common among dwarves.

I'd be honoured to create a setting with you some day.

I'm honored that you'd say so, but I did mostly just rip off The Matrix and replace robots with dwarves.

[Cracklord]

And the Matrix ripped off some scottish comic book author whose name escapes me. What's that got to do with anything? Originality isn't necessarily the best thing in a setting. What is awesome is how you took two very, very different ideas, and combined them in a way that create something entirely fresh and unexpected. It takes the dwarves from that unfortunate role they are so often shoe-horned into - self-referencing Tolkien rip-offs, and gives them a flavor like Jack Vance crossed with Ramsay Campbell's squabbling necromancers. So well done, that man.

As to this whole 'should we argue about how closely dungeons and dragons mimics our world', well if it makes people happy why not? It's just as irrelevant to bring Pratchett into the discussion as it is to argue over the finer points of photosynthesis. Pratchett is a storyteller, and a good one, but this doesn't give him some kind of authority over all fantasy. Fantasy was great long before he started making up arbitrary rules, and while it will notice and mourn his passing, it will be great when he is gone.

[Jaxzan Proditor]

As to this whole 'should we argue about how closely dungeons and dragons mimics our world', well if it makes people happy why not? It's just as irrelevant to bring Pratchett into the discussion as it is to argue over the finer points of photosynthesis. Pratchett is a storyteller, and a good one, but this doesn't give him some kind of authority over all fantasy. Fantasy was great long before he started making up arbitrary rules, and while it will notice and mourn his passing, it will be great when he is gone.

Yes, this 100%.

[Storm_Of_Snow]

You misunderstand. Go ask anyone who knows anything about explosives about what happens to an enclosed space's structural integrity when you set off a bomb inside.

Depends on the nature of the enclosed space:

A building? Well, the walls are heading out over the landscape because there's a less dense environment on the other side for the pressure wave to push them into.

A tunnel inside several thousand tonnes of solid rock? The explosion's coming back up the tunnel towards you because, unless you're into the very largest explosions, the pressure wave is insufficient to move the rock outwards against the rock behind it. Loose material will be dislodged, and any flaws in the geology will cause rockfalls etc, but the majority of the structure will stay intact.

Remember, miners have been using explosives to dig tunnels for centuries - not always without problems admittedly.

Or you could have a look at the Summit Tunnel fire in Yorkshire in 1984 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_Tunnel_fire, or the damage and injuries caused by the July 7th tube bombings.

[b_jonas]

And then ... after the revolution ... we chain the clerics to the underfarms. We can't survive without them? Fine - that doesn't mean we'll worship them. We just need to harness them. Extract their powers from them.

That reminds me to that SMBC (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) comic strip where Superman is coerced to use his power as a cheap energy source that becomes the basis of economy.

[b_jonas]

I have another proposal about how the caves could work.

In the webcomic The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, we learn that the cave of the bigfeet ​is canonically lit by shafts of solid diamond leading to the surface, pumping light down like a giant fiber optic cable. (See also the first appearance of those diamonds and a repeat of this statement later).

Perhaps the caverns of the dwarves could be lit the same way, which is why bacteria and plants can grow down there.