| abstract | - Because of many long years of persecution, Dwarves can be quite secretive. One of the most interesting facts about Dwarves is that J.R.R. Tolkien, a Catholic, wished he were a Dwarf and were born into the Dwarvish faith. In fact, when asked if he were 'arisch', he called those 14-year old Norwegian black metal kids "a bunch of schmucks" and told them to fuck off shortly before returning to studying the Mishnah. The god A-lë created the Dwarves as his Chosen Player Race, and they can boast advantages in skills such as Mathematics and Bartering, but Dwarves nonetheless regard A-lë as a fucking capricious prick because He rains fire, brimstone, and angry Ents on them for no apparent reason and reneges on all of His promises. However, A-lë argues that, in offering Moria to the Dwarves, he meant to say "Land of Balrogs and Despair" where the Dwarves (mis)heard "Land of Milk and Honey". For this reason, many intellectual Dwarves, such as Palerdos-Agkhizîm and Wudi-Âlan, have become cynical and view A-lë as something like a cosmic used-car salesman. To be fair, this Asshole won't even tell His Chosen Player Race His real name. Though wars and discrimination have spread the Dwarves all over the face of Middle-earth, a phenomenon Tolkien referred to through muffled laughter as "the scattering of the seed", Dwarves are nonetheless industrious and quite prosperous within their far-flung enclaves, as they are adept in trade, metalwork, accounting, computer science, 1337 hax, theoretical physics, lawyering, and mining the ores that produce bagels and lox. This is not to say that Dwarves are cheap by any means---only the faggy, bleeding-heart Rohirrim (see below) give more to charity. In addition to their great knowledge of craft and lore, Dwarves are also sturdy fighters with high Constitutions. Though reluctant to wage war, they totally kick ass when they do: not only did they engage in wars of attrition before even the sneaky Easterlings, they have developed a novel martial art, called Krâvimagarzh:wq!dammit, an eloquent Dwarvish idiom that means "running between the legs of tall people, head-butting them in the nuts in the process". The Dwarvish language is called Khuzdul, from the tri-consonantal root kh-z-d, referring to all things that involve Dwarves (Khuzdul: 'Khazad') or ass-kicking, terms that are considered synonymous by many unemployed linguists of Quenya and Lojban. Contrary to popular belief, the Dwarves are not at all secretive about Khuzdul, and some who fled on fishing boats to sanctuary in Helm's Deep during Orcish wars of persecution even spoke a hybrid of Khuzdul and the Germanic-flavored Old English called Yiddish. The real reason few goyim foreigners speak Khuzdul is because few other than Dwarves have a vocal tract manly enough to take it. If one examines their Cirth Angerthas writing system, one notices that Khuzdul lacks any kind of vowels, and really only has placeholders for vowels that A-lë forgot to add later. The word 'Khuzdul' itself is actually pronounced 'Khzdl', and spoken Khuzdul is said to sound like catting an MP3 directly to your DSP. A common Khuzdul expression is: "Baruk Khazad! Baruk Khazad adonai Eloheinu Melech ha'olam oseh ma'aseh vereshit ai-menu!", which Dwarves utter while playing Nethack to afford the advantage of the random number generator.
|
