Dwarven cities?
Duncan Rice
working on a role playing game with a Tolkien flavour. Unfortunately
I've never read anything specific to the lifestyles of Dwarves, just
snippits from The Hobbit and LOTR. So what are thier cities(?) like?
Michael Martinez
Well, you might want to look at THE HOBBIT to get an idea of what Tolkien
envisioned.
The "basics" of any Dwarven city should probably include:
1) sleeping quarters
2) at least one "meeting hall"
3) smithies (more than one type)
4) a quarry (although I'm not sure how an underground
quarry should look, or even if it needs to be
underground)
5) guard-rooms at critical points (and there were
*outside* guardrooms for both Erebor and
Khazad-dum)
6) at least one treasury
7) mines (and there may be more than one, and they
need not be directly connected to the main city,
although probably they were)
8) armories (i.e., rooms were weapons and armor are
stored, repaired, etc.)
9) store-rooms (for food and other types of supplies)
10) at least one kitchen (but keep in mind that a
kitchen of size X can only serve Y people)
11) a records room (there was a Chamber of Mazarbul
in Khazad-dum)
Bear in mind also that mining a mountain probably had a big impact on how the
Dwarven city grew, but that the great chambers were also probably built from
modified caves (if anything, a smart Dwarf will take advantage of nature's
work).
Dwarf-mines in Tolkien apparently produced coal, copper, gold, iron, silver,
mithril (only in khazad-dum), tin, and various jewels. You don't normally get
all the same things from one mine, and it's not common for any one region to
have all these types of resources.
Gloin told Frodo that the Dwarves of Erebor engaged in a fair amount of
road-building, construction of fountains, and other stone-work.
The halls of Khazad-dum were lit via a myriad of lamps, but also by long
shafts dug through the mountainside to let light flow in.
Airflow is also something you need to allow for.
There would be plenty of water in the caverns and mines, too. Dwarves dug
wells, but they'd also have to channel the excess water they encountered into
some other regions (and thus probably create new streams and lakes on
occasion, some underground, some above ground). The Celduin, for instance,
starts inside Erebor and flows out of the mountain.
The Dwarves would have to have smelting chambers for processing their ores,
forges, workrooms for their great smiths, common rooms for gathering places,
and workshops for all the mundane things that would help make a city work.
You'd probably have to have a fair number of leather-workers, carpenters,
wheel- and wagon-wrights, miners, blacksmiths, armorers, weaponsmiths,
overseers for the various shops and mines, soldiers, merchants, scholars, etc.
to make the society work, not to mention cooks, porters, meesengers, and other
"non-Dwarfly" Dwarves.
The Dwarves also made (and used) musical instruments, so you'll need shops for
making harps, flutes, and other things, as well as (probably) at least one
"practice hall" since the musicians wouldn't be able to dominate the main
hall. There would have to be store-rooms for the raw materials to make these
instruments, too.
I can't think of anything else off the top of my head, but I hope that helps.
--
++ ++ "Well Samwise: What do you think of the elves now?"
||\ /|| --fbag...@mid.earth.com
|| v ||ichael Martinez (mma...@basis.com)
++ ++------------------------------------------------------
Michael Richard SIMINSKI
> Can anyone fill me in on what type of cities Dwarves live in? I'm
>working on a role playing game with a Tolkien flavour. Unfortunately
>I've never read anything specific to the lifestyles of Dwarves, just
>snippits from The Hobbit and LOTR. So what are thier cities(?) like?
They like to live in large underground cities carved out of the living stone
under mountains. There they tend to have large mines, and are among the most
skilled metal workers. I recommend you read about Moria, formerly the greatest
of all dwarf dwellings in the chapters "A Journey in the Dark" and "The Bridge
of Khazad-dum" of the LoTR.
+-------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| MICHAEL SIMINSKI | "We may sail West, as far |
| rm...@wumpus.cc.uow.edu.au | as we will, yet come no |
| Dept of Mechanical Engineering | nearer to our dreams. |
| University of Wollongong | For these are far away, |
| New South Wales | and that is why they are |
| Australia | so beautiful." |
+-------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
John Harper
> Dwarf-mines in Tolkien apparently produced coal, copper, gold, iron, silver,
> mithril (only in khazad-dum), tin, and various jewels. You don't normally get
> all the same things from one mine, and it's not common for any one region to
> have all these types of resources.
>
> Gloin told Frodo that the Dwarves of Erebor engaged in a fair amount of
> road-building, construction of fountains, and other stone-work.
One thing that seems to be missing (this occurred to me a couple of
weeks ago) is a very large pile of "tailings" - the waste material
from mining - especially near Khazad Dum. At that location the Misty
Mountains are about 40miles wide, and the Dwarves dug a *very* large
city through it. Where is all the rock they removed? Seems like it
ought to make quite a feature on the landscape, but Tolkien never
mentions it (but he does mention similar things in regard to the Dark
Lord's operations).
You'd think the Dwarves could have filled in the Chasm spanned by
Durin's Bridge (but then the Balrog would have chased the Company
right out the doors).
-----------------------------
John Harper "There's someone in my head, but it's not me" -- Pink Floyd
Dept. of Astronomy, U. of Toronto, Scarborough Campus
har...@manitou.astro.utoronto.ca
<http://www.scar.utoronto.ca>
Michael Martinez
har...@manitou.utoronto.ca (John Harper) wrote:
>One thing that seems to be missing (this occurred to me a couple of
>weeks ago) is a very large pile of "tailings" - the waste material
>from mining - especially near Khazad Dum. At that location the Misty
>Mountains are about 40miles wide, and the Dwarves dug a *very* large
>city through it. Where is all the rock they removed? Seems like it
>ought to make quite a feature on the landscape, but Tolkien never
>mentions it (but he does mention similar things in regard to the Dark
>Lord's operations).
That's a good point.
One could always assume, I suppose, that the Dwarves were tidy with their
refuse, and somehow recycled it or something.
Maybe they built some foot hills and the Elves planted trees and stuff on them
to pretty them up (that's what the Berliners did after WWII with all the
ruined bricks from destroyed buildings, I've heard -- maybe someone from that
area can confirm/deny this).
Charles J. Jones
sanitation. What did they do with their trash and wastes? It would
seem a little difficult to bore little tiny tubes through the stone to
create Dwarven plumbing so pipes of some sort were needed. You'd have
to flush the wastes out somehow or the noxious gasses would get
unbearable and deadly.
CharlesJ
Charles J. Jones <Charle...@hp-loveland-om10.om.hp.com>
PGP Key ID = ABC80435
Loveland, Colorado, USA
"Not representing Aitch Pee in any way"
Klaus Ole Kristiansen
>You'd think the Dwarves could have filled in the Chasm spanned by
>Durin's Bridge (but then the Balrog would have chased the Company
>right out the doors).
Why would they want to? That moat was a very difficult obstacle
to invaders.
Klaus O K
Michael Richard SIMINSKI
(SNIP)
>Maybe they built some foot hills and the Elves planted trees and stuff on them
>to pretty them up (that's what the Berliners did after WWII with all the
>ruined bricks from destroyed buildings, I've heard -- maybe someone from that
>area can confirm/deny this).
They probably did, because the same thing happened in Warsaw after the war.
In fact the resulting parks are among the most beautiful, and one of the
artificial hills is so large that a ski-lift was built on it.