Alternate Ecology of Dwarves 5: Wyrmborn
art from Pixabay
In part 1 of this series https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/an-alternate-ecology-of-dwarves-gnomes-and-halflings-part-1-dwarves ,we covered making dwarves more interesting and distinct by melding real world science ideas with ancient myth.
In part 2, we covered deep and mountain dwarves in more depth. Heh, depth. https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/an-alternate-ecology-of-dwarves-gnomes-and-halflings-part-2-more-dwarves
In part 3, we talked about how hill dwarves and gnomes became distinct ethnic groups or lineages. https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/alternate-ecology-of-dwarves-gnomes-and-halflingsalternate-ecology-of-dwarves-gnomes-and-halflings-part-3-gnomes
In part 4, we discussed halflings, and how they came to be, as part of the dwarven family tree.
This time, we’re going sideways, and back to the beginning as well. As detailed in part one, the Norse believed that dwarves were born as maggots in the flesh of the primordial giant Ymir, from whom the world was made. Let’s chase that concept for a bit. Buckle up, this is gonna get weird.
Maggots. They didn’t say worms, like earthworms. They didn’t say bugs. They said maggots. And maggots, specifically, are larvae, born from eggs left in dead flesh by flies. The important part is, they are larvae, not adults. They become something else.
Stay with me. In the famous saga of the Volsungs, and older poetry that predated it, we meet the great dragon Fafnir, who was cursed and transformed by his greed, and by the magical ring Advarinaut, into a mighty wyrm. A wyrm is the Norse conception of a dragon, long and serpent-like, sometimes winged and legged, sometimes not. Fafnir greatly inspired Tolkien’s depiction of Smaug, and thus how much of fantasy came to see dragons. The thing is, Fafnir was a dwarf before he transformed.
What if dwarves, ‘born as maggots from the flesh of Ymir’, are actually the larval form of wyrms? Not transformed by greed or curse, as such, but simply entering the next phase of their lifecycle when they have the resources to do so? As inherently magical beings, born of the earth itself, perhaps they need to accumulate rare minerals and magic to trigger their metamorphosis. So dwarven ‘greed’ is explained by biological impulse, and dragon hoards, at least for wyrms, by that same need. The lack of dwarven women in many sources is because there aren’t any . . . larvae needn’t be gendered or sexually dimorphic, they can develop that upon maturity.
This connects us, in a way, to my Alternate Ecology of Dragons. https://www.ofgodsandgamemasters.com/blog/an-alternate-ecology-of-dragons-revised-and-expanded
In that schema, kobolds and dragonborn are the workers and warriors, respectively, of dominant dragon queens. Here, the dwarves act as miners and workers gathering the resources they need to metamorphose into wyrms, whether they are aware of that or not, and would often be in direct competition with the dragon queens and their minions, who need the same resources for different reasons. This causes massive ongoing conflicts, without the need for an actual moral opposition, though each may consider the other evil, or characterize them as such to outsiders.
This would, I think, make for quite a different perspective on dwarves, with them as fully sapient larvae for wyrmlike dragons, possibly not even aware of the full nature of their lifecycle. They might be told they are born from the stone itself. After all, who remembers their birth? Born from eggs, they have no mothers but would be tended by older dwarves who might themselves never have been told the truth, especially if adult wyrms must compete for resources. They might try very hard to make sure that only a few dwarves ever metamorphose.
Let me what you think in the comments.
