"And where did all that optimism get him? Six foot underground! Less than a stone's throw from the surface, while the real dwarves in charge are living the high life some thousand feet lower. I've been down there. They've got central heating. I mean, right from the center of the earth. It just comes right up, keeps their houses warm as a baby's napsack. Nobody's walking around down there freezing their toes off. And him? Well, last I heard he can only count to 13 before running out of digits."

Okay, so these are the results as I see them based on everyone's comments. If anyone disagrees, just let me know!


This one is more or less split, an Luna would take it with a caveat, so I would say "no" for now, but maybe something that ties into a story later? Are people alright putting this one on the back burner for the time?


Four to one "no" on this one, it seems.


Unless I missed someone, this was a unanimous "yes."


If we're talking Dwarven Blood, this one seems to edge out in favor of "no." However, expanding it to other types of blood, perhaps Dragon, Hydra, Basilisk and so forth, the opinion seems to be yes. I'm inclined to say "Yes, he probably has, but it's not a major facet of the character." Or something along those lines.


"Yes" carries the day on this one.


This one came out as unanimous in favor for those who mentioned it, so "yes."


Everyone who had a yes/no vote voted "yes," so this one is in, too.

Thanks, everyone!

* * * * *

On a completely separate note, I just want to mention that it's been a very trying and exhausting week. One of my best friends lost his father , a man I've known for over 20 years, and much of my week that hasn't been tied up at work has been spent trying to comfort/distract my friend and to be their for the family.

So I haven't forgotten about this thread, and I think we are nearing completion, but I wanted everyone to know why I haven't been as active trying to move this forward.

If anyone has an idea of where they would like to go next with this build, by all means, say so. If not, I'm sure I'll come up with something in the next few days, time allowing.

I know I didn't communicate myself properly on this one, as I was kind of being purposefully obtuse with things like putting smilies instead of yes/no, but I didn't want him to be against sunlight.

Now, for the record, I'm okay with being outvoted on this and recognize that a majority here seem to have ideas for this character aspect, but also for the record, I think it would have been more interesting for him being an oddity in his culture for working with sunlight.



I'm sorry to hear that, and I hope you get some much-needed rest, refreshment, and rejuvenation.

I think the next step is to put things in order.
We have the cogs of his history, but not the clock of his life.
I feel though we have facts, we lack experiences to fill in his background.

Okay, this works for me. So, let's start putting together a sense of this guy's live chronologically. Part of this, I suspect, will require fleshing out his plane and/or society a bit, but I want to avoid a full world build, at least for now, as I feel that would pull us in too many different directions.

I guess one general question we should ask is "Do we want him to be from an established plane or a new one?"

Personally, I think the most pertinent questions are of age:

How old is he now?

What is his races expected lifespan?

Has he taken anything to extend his life/youth?

When did he ascend?

How long has he been planeswalking?

Has he settled down somewhere? For how long?

Does he still visit home?

I vote new.
Because nothing feels very appropriate from him.


Dwarven life spans have always been weird to me. There's wildly inconsistent lore in just about all property.
But I think an interesting thing to do with his kinda dwarf be that they slowly petrify with age.
That said, better side of middle age?
And described as 'experienced' as a walker, but not an oldwalker.

I've always liked dwarves to have longer lives than humans, but still limited. Topping out at maybe 300 or so. I like the idea of slowly petrifying.

I agree with Barinellos and Aaarrrgh that we're looking at somebody a bit above middle-aged. I would say whatever the dwarven equivalent on his plane is to, say, Human age on Earth 55 or so? Not yet at retirement, but definitely over the hill.


I like Aaarrrgh's idea of around 300, but it does pose a few logistical problems, because like Barinellos, I'm definitely thinking non-oldwalker for this guy. According to some quick Google "research," the life expectancy of a human male is 76 years, give or take. At 55, therefore, a human male has lived approximately 72 percent of his life. At a 300 year life expectancy, that would put our dwarf right around 216 years old. Therefore, to make him a neo-walker, he would have needed to be older than what, 116 or so, when he ascended? That can work, but we'll need to spend some time thinking about what would trigger the ignition of his Spark after nearly a century and a half of it NOT igniting. Doable, of course, but something to think about.


I suspect not. Personally, I like the idea of a naturally aging, older Neo-walker who has never known oldwalker godhood. We don't have a ton of that going on.


As per my calculations earlier, sometime in the last century, between the age of 116 and 216. I think we are going to need something very significant for his ascension story to justify the Spark never having ignited before, but then again, ascension triggers SHOULD be significant anyway, so I think we're fine. According to my calculations, if we have him ascend at the earliest possibly moment, which I don't think we should, he would have been the equivalent of about 30.


I'd say several decades at least. I don't get the sense that he travels all that much, though I could certainly be wrong about that.


I've sort of been assuming that he's one of those 'walkers who uses his original home plane as a base of operations, particularly with the talk of his extended family. I think he basically has the same workshop he did before his Spark ignited.

@New Plane vs Established:
I agree with Barinellos that a new plane seems to be the way to go.

@Petrification Aging:
I like it. Getting stiff with age has never been so literal.

The more I think about it, the more I like that idea. It even gives me a few visuals, like him using an extreme version of those Deep Heat topical medicines, essentially turning the stone in his body to magma in order to keep himself flexible.

I don't really have any objections or input on the actual age. Besides not knowing my Mending history all that well, I've never been a huge fan of similarly-sized and seemingly-similar-in-biology races like elves and dwarves get huge lifespans just because. I accept that it's the "normal" thing, but it's never endeared me to them.

But, as I've become more attached to the idea that these longer-lived races take life extremely slowly in comparison to humans (and that's why humans always have a technological advantage, because they work themselves to death trying to improve their lots in life), how's this for an ascension trigger: wife of 100+ years dies suddenly? Or even not-so-suddenly. Just the grief of having his partner for so long be taken from him finally ignites his spark. If the rest of the family (including any children we cook up, which I imagine would all be grown and such) survived just fine, then that would give him plenty of ties to his home plane to keep a home base there.

Ooh! What if the wife was the typical dwarven smelter/metalworker/etc., and that's why his little alchemy venture was always looked down upon? Like, "it's woman's work" to do that kind of stuff? Would that be too charged a concept to incorporate?

I like the petrification aging.

Wild thought for ascension in light of long lived and experienced as a planeswalker. Technically, we now know the mending was 60 years ago (I wrote the Illarion arc assuming 100, but whatever). That's within the ascension window if he ascended as a relatively young adult.

The wild thought: what if, as a young and somewhat reckless alchemist, he was high on fumes when the fabric of the cosmos was violently twisted all around him? Caused to ascend by the Mending.

I honestly think I favor something relatively mundane to have ignited his spark.
Something akin to being out collecting materials and having a tragic slip off a mountain face.

Sounds like we have another mini writing contest brewing.

I propose we do something similar to what we did for this character's physical description. Anyone who wants to should do a brief write-up of the dwarf's ascension. It can be a little microfic or just a description, but we don't need to go full-on story at this point. Just hash out a few of the key details and get the general shape of the event. Then, when we have a few, we'll vote on the ones we like best, and we can then shape that one into something we're all happy with.

What would people think of a soft deadline of, let's say, next Monday?

Had this weird idea. It came to me in a dream.
Because of the petrification aging, hot springs and public bathing are very popular in his culture, which further has an impact on society .
The idea that women bathe in the morning and men bathe at night, which further dictates what kind of schedules are kept and has a larger implication for gender roles by merit of when things need to be done during the day.

I, for the record, intend to submit something, but it's been a bad run at work and likely won't calm down until at least... March. Ugh...

I was thinking of submitting, but would need a little more time myself for reasons of being totally scatterbrained.

@Submissions: No problem. We're really not in any hurry. I'll tell you what. Why don't we just switch it to PMing me with your submission, and once I get three or four, then I'll just post them all? That way, nobody feels rushed to do it. Let's say, try to get them to me by, I don't know, March 9? That's two weeks for anyone interested.

In the meantime, we'll table the ascension story until I post what I'm sent, and we can focus elsewhere for a bit. Let's work on getting some aesthetics of his immediate area. I'm not talking full world-building here, but rather his home, his workshop, maybe the city/town/hamlet/whatever he lives in.

Dwarven tropes suggests stone and hollowed-out mountains. Do we want to play to tropes in this case, play against them, or fall somewhere in the middle?

This is just a reminder that this is a thing we're doing.

No worries, it hasn't escaped me of yet.
It won't be anything too complicated, but I've got something in the rock tumbler getting polished.

I lost a lot of steam in general over the last month, and while I initially wanted to write something up for this project, I doubt I will get to it anymore. Writing just isn't what I do in my spare time anymore, and I've got a lot of other things to worry about right this moment.