The Dwarven Imperium

[Jerynboe]

Hello Playground!

I am working on a culture for dwarves In my custom setting. They have started to interact with my party just a little bit, and one of the PCs is one. I wanted to fiddle with and flesh out the existing cultures and the dwarves caught my eye to an extent. System is pathfinder, but I am open to a bit of 3.5 material here and there.

First, the world at large:

• There is no known planar travel
• There are symbiotic creatures called Seru that can grant a wide variety of powers. They have two forms; one when bonded and one when not bonded.
• I'm adapting most magical beasts, outsiders, elementals, and the like into seru.
• There are 6 major countries, 4 above ground and two underground. The dwarves and the Drow are the two underground kingdoms.

My idea for the dwarves is that they are a theocracy which is based on the worship of their "divine" ruler... but they have no divine spell casters of any kind. Instead, dwarves are actually very naturally magical, and include the only psions in my setting. They disparage those who ask why their god would behave so differently than the few other gods of the setting. He incarnates in the world too; why should he be constrained to the same methods of blessing his people?

Psions are believed to hold fragments of the soul of the eternally reborn god-emperor and sacrificed so they can become one with the god emperor again. This is called reunion and is considered to be a natural, glorious process. It is not done publically, only the priests know it is a form of strongly resembles ritual sacrifice. When the child is killed in his presence, the God Emperor absorbs their power (which is usually negligible). When the god emperor dies, the psions are instead brought to live in the palace and all instructed in how to be the god emperor or empress. Ten years later, one is chosen who is the most similar in personality to the last one purest incarnation and declared the god emperor. The rest are killed unify with the chosen one to make the most perfect God Emperor possible.

Sorcerers, which are moderately more common than in most species, are known to be blessed by the god emperor to act as his priests. They are taken and trained to use their powers. And of course indoctrinated instructed in their duties as priests. Their training and preparation functionally changes whatever bloodline they have into the Empyreal bloodline. For those who don't know, this changes their primary casting stat to wisdom, sidestepping that whole penalty to charisma that dwarves tend to have while giving them a modest selection of normally exclusively divine abilities and spells.

So:

• What do you think?
• What needs more fleshing out?
• Any thoughts on what I might add or change?

[AceOfFools]

That's a lot of video game references.

Biggest question I have, who runs this conspiracy church? Who gets to decide which candidate is purist? Who gets to decide who gets to decide?

What happens when these king-makers and the God Emperor come into conflict? How is the kingdom ruled for those 10 years with no emperor?

WHO is the current God Emperor? What do they want? What happens to the emperor's family when he is raised to so lofty a station? Who does such a change upset?

There's some stuff there, but it's really not fleshed out. The meat of it tends to be an unpleasant combination of "religion is evil" and "hide what makes you special", two tropes that rub me the wrong way pretty hard.

One of the best pieces of worldbuilding advice I actually got from Rich's New World articles was thinking of history and culture as the sum of individual's choices. A God Emperor made decisions, and they became the root of traditions, which are what new decisions are based on.

Look at the founding of America via revolution from a colonial royal power and how it is now a democracy with some fairly radical views on freedom and censorship.

[Jerynboe]

That's a lot of video game references.

Biggest question I have, who runs this conspiracy church? Who gets to decide which candidate is purist? Who gets to decide who gets to decide?

What happens when these king-makers and the God Emperor come into conflict? How is the kingdom ruled for those 10 years with no emperor?

WHO is the current God Emperor? What do they want? What happens to the emperor's family when he is raised to so lofty a station? Who does such a change upset?

There's some stuff there, but it's really not fleshed out. The meat of it tends to be an unpleasant combination of "religion is evil" and "hide what makes you special", two tropes that rub me the wrong way pretty hard.

One of the best pieces of worldbuilding advice I actually got from Rich's New World articles was thinking of history and culture as the sum of individual's choices. A God Emperor made decisions, and they became the root of traditions, which are what new decisions are based on.

Look at the founding of America via revolution from a colonial royal power and how it is now a democracy with some fairly radical views on freedom and censorship.

The Church is at this point a self propagating cycle of propaganda and indoctrination. They truly believe this is the right way for the dwarves. There is a hierarchal system that is headed by the God Emperor.

The Emperor himself decides who will rule in the interim, and who will "find him" again. The 10 year period is a bit of a lame duck period; changes of policy can be overturned by the God Emperor quickly and easily. Usually the ones searching through the candidates are very high ranking dwarven priests, as they are the only ones who are supposed to know the process and what it entails. But the most important note is that they know him well. The criteria is "which one is most like the emperor we knew, because we know he was the true god emperor."

Dwarves are tested very early in life, and their family is rarely opposed to their child being taken away to serve as a priest. That is the official line, and is usually what the child is actually being taken away for. It is considered high treason and heresy to keep them secret or try to keep them home. 99% of the time, a god emperor doesn't remember much of their family and the family doesn't know that their child became the ruler.

The thing is, the religion itself is not particularly evil. The methods that it operates by are. The God Emperor is intended to be LG, and the religion's teaching stress cooperation and self sacrifice. The way it started was the first God Emperor needed a substantial amount of power to deal with a world shaking cataclysm that happened thousands of years ago. He found as many volunteers as he could, and used a ritual to combine their powers to deal with the situation as a champion for the dwarves. It required the deaths of most involved, including the one who developed the idea. After the situation was handled, the God Emperor of the time was declared their ruler.

The dwarves and Drow were locked in war fairly soon after. There was always a perceived need for the god emperor, and at one point the Drow were able to kill a mass number of dwarves before a defense could be mounted. It slowly became less and less about volunteers giving their lives for the greater good, and more about feeding the power of their god-like defender by any needs necessary. To make the "Necessary Evil" more palatable, they took interpretations of the texts detailing the process as "becoming one" and started using that line. Over time, the reality of the situation became more and more secret and more and more layers of theology were heaped on top. Nobody knows the truth anymore.

Also I will note there are a number of good aligned religions in my setting and one that takes the opposite stance of adamant atheism, the idea being belief in humanity's ability to function without gods being taken too far, as opposed to rejecting their existence. The current God Emperor? I have not yet concocted his full character and personality, but I intend to soon, before the dwarves have too great of a presence in the campaign.

[Solaris]

So it's dwarves playing Warhammer 40k in Legend of Legaia? Interesting.

Why are they still doing the child sacrifice thing? That speaks a lot about their culture - including a mindless adherence to tradition for the sake of tradition and regarding the individual as worthless before the group, far more so than can be jived with a Good society.