Every version of dwarves has them being almost constantly armoured, and living in huge fortresses and underground tunnels, usually with some super-dramatic main gate that’s twenty feet high and about three feet thick.
What if there’s a reason for that? Like, they weren’t always a race of warriors and miners who almost never showed themselves above ground?
What if they’re the fantasy equivalent of those survivalists who turn their basement into a bomb shelter and fill the place with guns and canned food because they’re totally convinced The End Is Nigh?
What about a setting where the dwarves used to be perfectly happy above ground, growing flowers and getting a tan, until some huge disaster happened, and they all went Fuck This. So they dug down and hid away until the zombie horde or magical plague or the horde of rabid squirrels or whatever had passed, but they never forgot, and now their entire species is like “Constant Vigilance!”
There might even be some dwarf cities buried so deep they never heard the disaster ended. A whole city-fortress of paranoid, armed to the teeth dwarves, ready to kick the shit out of anything that isn’t a dwarf.
are you telling me that all this time, dwarves have been doomsday preppers
“Five Reasons to Hoard Gold and Jewels For When SHTF”
The next long awaited post in the Fantasy Biology series, finally looking at the popular pegasus thanks to popular opinion on my Patreon.
Long time followers of this blog have been waiting for this one for a while. You all seem very keen for my take on how to make a six-limbed creature work, get airborne, and ideally be ridden.
There is a lot to talk about with these flying horses. In the interest of narrowing the topic, I’m only going to discuss pegasus with bird wings, not with bat/dragon wings or any other magical flying horses.
Key features of a pegasus:
Horse body
Bird wings
Can fly
Ridden by heroes
The biggest difficulty with making a pegasus ‘work’ is that you have two different types of forelimbs, that both use very different shoulder joints to function. A horse shoulder moves forward to back when running….
But a bird shoulder moves up and down with some rotation when flapping…
I kind of want to see a story about an elf; tall, beautiful, clumsy as fuck, and an industrial worker who can’t do archery to save themselves and swears all the time.
And I kind of want to see a story about a dwarf; short, robust, hairy, elegant, sweet, very refined and a lover of poetry who’s never said a rude word in their life.
I just think it would be an interesting change of pace.
they’re girlfriends
they’re super fucking cute and i need more of this.
Mumbling, the King looked away from his knight and muttered, “I need you to save the dragon… from my princess.”
Sir Rian looked at the King blankly. “Is this a jest, your majesty?”
“I do not jest,” King Harold says, looming in his throne. He, all at once, deflates, burying his face in his hands. “Word has begun to spread of Maria’s…peculiar pastime. I was supposed to have a meeting with King John next week, discussing the possibility of his son marrying my daughter.” The King points to one of the scrolls littering the ground. “I just received that cancellation this morning.”
Sir Rian looks at the floor and winces. He recognizes the royal crests from a half dozen neighboring countries and surmises that this isn’t the first cancellation.
“Oh dear,” Sir Rian says before he can stop himself. “Your majesty, the line of succession–”
“–will see Lord Calloway on the throne,” King Harold says, face still buries in his hands. He raises his head just enough so that Sir Rian can see the unhealthy bags under his eyes. “Unless my daughter, my dragon-enslaving daughter, can be brought around.”
If Lord Calloway sits on the throne, Sir Rian thinks, the people will set it on fire. Having just come back from patrolling the southern reaches of the kingdom, fending off pirates, that’s not a scenario he’s fond of. “Surely there’s some diversion you can offer her, your majesty? I hear the princess is rather fond of swordplay. A new tutor–”
“Good god, man,” King Harold says, “does no news reach our borders? Maria has already mastered swordplay. Then archery, then hand to hand, then some infernal thing called an ahlspiess. I didn’t even know what an ahlspiess was and my daughter used it to win last year’s knight’s tournament!”
“It’s a type of spear–”
“I know that now!” The King takes several deep, calming breaths.
concept: space pirates who sound exactly like regular pirates, except replace all references to “the sea” with “the void”
“aye, the void is a harsh mistress,” the captain said, gazing out the window of her ship into the vast starry expanse. “she’ll take more than she gives, in the end. but those who are called to life in the void don’t know any other way.”
So imagine that this dude is a seventh son and he has six sons. Everyone is excited when his wife gets pregnant but it’s a girl. Thing is that the kid is trans and no one knows why they’re so powerful
His name is Kaleb though no one knows it but him. His name sits high in his throat, ready at any moment to burst out, but it…doesn’t. It’s too big, too powerful, too personal when he doesn’t know what they’ll do with it. Or, rather, when he suspects what they’d do with it and is afraid.
“Kristine,” his mother shouts up the stairs, “you’re going to make us late!” There’s a smattering of laughter at her words, mocking and derisive, from his brothers.
Kaleb’s always the one to blame in these situations. A seventh son was supposed to bring the family luck, status and power. Instead, Kaleb was born with a vagina and the family’s six son streak came to a tragic end. The tragic part, they all seem to agree, is that Kaleb exists at all.
Kaleb looks into the polished bit of metal in his hands and takes a slow, calming breath. He watches his reflection breathe with him and pretends his hair is short in the blurry surface. “I’m a boy. My name is Kaleb. They can call me a girl, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. I’m a boy. My name is Kaleb.”
It’s a spell he casts every day, pretending as hard as he can that he has magic, that this will work. It’s more effective on some days than others, but the day he doesn’t cast it are the worst, hands down. Those days every time they look at him, every time he feels his dress brush his ankles, every time they call him she grates and sets his teeth on edge. Panic will well up in his chest and he’ll have to run to the forest behind their house where they can’t look at him, where can’t look at himself, and strip down so he can’t feel their perception on his skin.
He tucks the polished metal under his bed and rushes to the stairs, long strides eating up the ground quickly. It feels good to walk this way, without his hips swaying, and he does it as often as he can. “As often as he can” often means “where mother can’t see.”
Today they’re going into town for a marriage talk with the Mayor. Kaleb’s oldest brother, Jacob, is of marrying age and has his eye set on the mayor’s daughter. Kaleb’s already been told that the only reason they have to refuse Jacob’s suit is Kaleb himself. He’s supposed to be on his best behavior today and he intends to be.
Kaleb ignores his brothers as they yank at his hair, his skirt, as they blame him for everything from the mud on the road to the late hour. If he fights back, he knows he’ll be the one scrubbing pots and floors, not them. He knows there’ll be much worse waiting for him should the meeting not go well.
“Just behave,” Samuel, the second brother, tells Kaleb. He’s never actively hurt Kaleb before, but as the biggest of his brothers, Samuel is still a threat. “Or else.”
Steel Phoenix Studios 