MY
THING FOR DWARVES
by
D.P. Prior
(editor,
old school vaudeville strongman, and author of the new series,
Legends
of the Nameless Dwarf)
Dwarves in fantasy may be dour, beer-swilling, gold-digging
troglodytes, but there’s no doubt about their importance in myth and folklore.
In the Prose Edda, four dwarves
(Norori, Suori, Austri, and Vestri) hold up the sky, and there’s even some
scholarly speculation that the little folk may have had a hand in the creation
of the first humans, Ask and Embla.
The word “dwarf” (Old English dweorg, Old Norse dvergr)
has been linked to the Indo-European root dreugh,
which gives us the English “dream” and “trug” (deception), which has important
ramifications for the dwarves of my own fantasy world of Aethir.
Dwarves have been around in popular culture for as long as I
can remember (my longterm memory is significantly better than my short, which
probably has something to do with my dwarven love of anything that can be drunk
from a flagon). The Brothers Grimm recorded the folk tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as long
ago as 1812. Tolkien gave us an ensemble of silly-hat-wearing dwarves in The Hobbit (1937), and Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) had a band of
chronologically challenged, diminutive treasure-seekers doing battle with evil.
Dwarves are often associated with the deep places of the
earth. It’s a connection that goes back to the Eddas and is a characteristic of the dwarves of Tolkien’s Middle
Earth. In my own universe, the dwarves of Aethir are “created” by the scientist
Sektis Gandaw in order to mine the precious ore, scarolite. However, there are
darker and older secrets to their nature waiting to be discovered.
I was always quite ambivalent towards Thorin Oakenshield and
his companions in The Hobbit— they
are often avaricious to the point of foolhardiness, although it would be hard
to deny their bravery. Gimli, in The Lord
of the Rings, is perhaps more likable, particularly in his score-keeping
scene with Legolas at Helm’s Deep, and his hardiness in the epic battle in the
mines of Moria, the quintessential dwarven environment.
Something of a dwarf stereotype has developed over the
years. Some of it comes from mythology, some from Tolkien’s feasting and
drinking dwarves, and much from the development of the race in Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer. Despite their often bellicose
natures, dwarves tend to provide a touch of grouchy comedy to fantasy
tales—“Nobody tosses a dwarf,” says John Rhys-Davies’s Gimli in the Peter
Jackson film.
Various subtypes of dwarf have arisen, numerous clans, but
there is almost always an immediately identifiable quality of dwarfishness
about them. Generally it’s alcohol, although dwarves are also very much bound
up with axes, stoicism, and a love of shiny objects that have to be dug out of
rock.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but dwarves often have a
flavour of Scottishness about them, so much so that a RPG figure I once painted
for the Nameless Dwarf had tartan britches. Arguably, the trend was taken too
far in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit,
but it's been a staple of the Warhammer
universe, perhaps epitomized by the character Gotrek. Someone once stated they
felt the Nameless Dwarf was another Gotrek type. The funny thing is, the
Nameless Dwarf has been around since 1979 (when there was no Warhammer), which means he predates
Gotrek by nearly two decades.
Back in the days when I belonged to the legendary Wargaming
Society sequestered away at the back of the Archery recreation ground’s public
toilets, I was in the unsavoury habit of playing Dungeons and Dragons with a
crabby bunch of ne’er-do-wells. We had the back room of the club (the front was
for serious gamers in the Napoleonics tradition). We painted the walls and
ceiling black, let the cobwebs grow, and gathered around an enormous (black)
table with six-packs of Jacob’s Club biscuits for endless campaigns that took
us all the way to the Abyss and back.
There were a few memorable dwarves among the players. One
was particularly annoying (I forget his name). He was literally dripping with
artifacts, was as indestructible as the Hulk, and had the “my axe is bigger
than yours” personality type. The shogger had even been resurrected a couple of
times. He just refused to go away. He did go away, eventually, though, when he
took a pop at a certain dwarf with no name, who always had the luck of the gods
on his side. Chopped the bleeder’s head off, and that was an end to the matter.
Another player had a fat dwarf, aptly named Falstaff, but
all I can remember of him is that he was always lagging behind so he could hit
on the party’s only female (an elf of all things!)
I pretty much always played dwarves. I tried other races,
but the minute those characters were killed (and inevitably they were) I got
straight back into my comfort zone.
When my brother decided to DM a particular nasty orc-fest at
the club, a super-party was assembled, and I realized I was going to need a
pretty special dwarf to get the job done.
That’s when the original Nameless Dwarf was created. He was
nameless back then because he didn’t need any sort of personality. He was a
tank, a hack-and-slash superhero. He was the dwarven Terminator (even before
Arnold had first uttered “I’ll be back.”) Some time after his creation, I
bought a miniature figure called The Dwarf with No Name—a cigar-smoking,
gun-toting, poncho-wearing dwarf based on the Clint Eastwood character. It
wasn’t quite appropriate for Nameless, but it was a cool figure nonetheless.
Over the years, the character developed, but he also grew
more and more powerful, and that’s never a good thing in gaming. Eventually, I
retired him. Years later, I reinvented him, but that was when I learned the
hard truth that roleplaying games are for people less imaginatively and
cognitively challenged than an old codger like me. I shoved my polyhedral dice
in the attic and left Nameless to the Void.
Many years later, I gave him a cameo in my first fantasy
novel, The Resurrection of Deacon Shader.
Back then I was into being terribly, terribly literary and reducing all my characters
to two-dimensional talking heads. I did the same with Nameless, although a lot
of readers were impressed with his first appearance. With barely a word spoken,
he scares the crap out of the hero, Shader, displaying some of that elemental
violence he’d had as a D&D character.
When I was staying in Chicago a few years ago I found myself
at a loose end while my son was out catching frogs. I sat at a friend’s dining
room table and resolved to write a Nameless short story to sell to a magazine.
I wrote the 5000 word The Ant-Man of
Malfen in one sitting and liked where the character was going. He had
elements of Shakespeare’s Falstaff (Henry
IV 1&2), Hilaire Belloc’s drinking, singing, and camaraderie, a
crippling manic depression, and a smattering of David Gemmell’s Druss the
Legend.
Nameless has some of those stereotypical dwarven
characteristics—the axe and the grog, but he’s also a rather unique, complex
character who (importantly for me) has some surprising vulnerabilities.
The story was accepted by Pulp Empire, but then I went on to expand it into a novella. It
starts after the Nameless, under the influence of a malevolent black axe,
virtually commits genocide. The survivors of his massacre in the ravine city of
Arx Gravis flee across the mountains into the nightmare lands of Qlippoth. At
last free from the axe, Nameless desperately wants to find them before it’s too
late (no one comes back from Qlippoth). He hires Nils Fargin, son of a criminal
guildmaster, to lead him to some rather shady contacts who may be able to help.
That’s where the Chronicles
of the Nameless Dwarf start—a guilt-ridden Nameless trying to find the
survivors of his race, and knowing he’s the last person they’d want to run
into. The series spans five books that take him on a journey with modest Sword
and Sorcery beginnings to a truly epic conclusion.
The Nameless Dwarf books have benefited enormously from some
great artwork. The first cover was produced by C.S. Marks. Subsequent covers in
the first series were painted by Patrick Stacey. Russian artist Anton Kokarev
came up with the iconic image of Nameless for the cover of the Complete Chronicles, which has
consistently been my bestselling book, and has topped the fantasy charts on
several occasions. More recently, Mike Nash, a brilliant English artist,
accepted the challenge of producing covers for Carnifex (Legends of the
Nameless Dwarf Book 1) and Return of
the Dwarf Lords (Book 4).
The Nameless Dwarf books began as a fun spinoff from the
Shader series, which is much heavier epic fantasy. Something of Nameless’s old
D&D luck must still linger, though, as the Chronicles have easily outsold
all my other books put together. Either that, or it’s just a reminder that the
little guys, in spite of all their vices, remain as popular today as they were
in the days of yore.
In 2015, I began work on a follow up Nameless Dwarf story, Return of the Dwarf Lords. Based on
this, I was asked by my agent to put together a complete Nameless Dwarf story
arc, and so I sat down to write the tragic origins story, Carnifex, and then put together Geas
of the Black Axe from some material that originally featured in my Shader
series, massively revised and told from Nameless's perspective, along with
approximately 60,000 of new material. Next, The
Complete Chronicles were fully revised and became book 3: Revenge of the Lich.
The new books were released in January 2016. You can find
out all about them at:
CARNIFEX
LEGENDS OF THE NAMELESS DWARF BOOK
1
For more than a thousand years, the
dwarves have hidden away from the world in their ravine city of Arx Gravis.
Governed by an inflexible council
whose sole aim is to avoid the errors of the past, the defining virtue of their
society is that nothing should ever change.
But when the Scriptorium is broken
into, and Ravine Guard Carnifex Thane sees a homunculus fleeing the scene of
the crime, events are set in motion that will ensure nothing will ever be the
same again.
Deception and death are coming to
Arx Gravis.
The riddles that preceded
Carnifex’s birth crystalize into a horrifying fate that inexorably closes in.
But it is in blood that legends are
born, and redemption is sometimes seeded in the gravest of sins.
For Carnifex is destined to become
the Ravine Butcher, before even that grim appellation is forever lost, along
with everything that once defined him.
