Todd Kenreck: Dwarves are often a very crucial and fundamental part of many fantasy settings, and that's why we're talking to Mike Mearls today about their place in the D&D multiverse.

Mike Mearls: Dwarves are ... I love dwarves, ever since 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' when I was a little kid and 'The Hobbit'. I've always found dwarves fascinating. So, when you look at dwarves what really defines them is this act of creation. But not just creation from making something cold cloth, but creation reflects skill. Dwarves love to craft things, because they are literally a folk that were crafted by a God. Moradin challenged himself to make the dwarves, he hammered them from metal, he forged them on his anvil and he breathed life into them and they became his children.

They reflect the absolute pinnacle of his ability to craft, to create things. He created life. Dwarves look at Moradin, and the other dwarven Gods who then eventually followed and filled out the Pantheon. They look at each of them as a challenge. Each dwarf picks a vocation, or potentially has one selected for them depending on what kind of childhood they have and maybe their dedication. But most dwarves eagerly seek out a vocation, they decide I will be a smith, I will be a miner, I want to be a stone carver. All of those crafts, those trades, these pursuits the dwarves favor, each of them has a home within their Pantheon. One God or perhaps a couple of Gods practices it and sets the example, that is essentially a challenge to the dwarves.

Moradin being a metal smith tells his children the dwarves, try your best to exceed my talents. Now obviously a mortal exceeding a God it's not probably going to happen, but then that really is something more for the dwarves to strive toward. Really what they're focused on is improving their own skills. Dwarves love to prove their mastery, they work and they toil and they see their Gods as examples to follow. That their Gods set the tone, they set the pace. You can imagine a dwarf holy text, it wouldn't be a collection of prayers or stories, it might be a manual that describes to you here's how to work Adamantine. Here's stone carving as taught to us by the Gods. A dwarf reading it would be challenged to how can I master these techniques, and spend a lifetime pursuing them.

The same applies to warfare and combat, Clangeddin's is the dwarven God of war, and for dwarf wars it's similar, they want to match his skill. But the important thing to remember about dwarves is, they're very lawful, because they're very much defined by the family. Because Moradin is their ... He's their creator, he's their father. They see the clan as the foundation of everything. So not only do individual dwarves pursue perfection in their art, but they also do it for the good of the clan. The dwarf miner knows that as she's toiling away deep within the earth, she's uncovering gold and iron and other ores, that are for the good of the clan. The clan can use these to make the weapons and armor that the warriors wear to protect the stronghold. The beautiful gold objects that proclaim the clan's mastery and skill.

A dwarfs actions reflect the clan, and the clan is the real identity for a dwarf. So you have this real fixation on work, but its joyous work, to dwarves the best feeling in the world is, what we think of as being in the zone, this idea of flow. Like when you're working and time ... You lose all sense of time, you just lose yourself in whatever it is your pursuing, dwarves love that feeling and they seek it by work. It's why they have such, much better constitutions than say a human, because they love working 10 hours at a time. 'Cause the dwarf would just get lost in it.

So you have this real emphasis on family and that's something that really in some ways give dwarves their strength. They come together in the face of a crisis, they understand the long term, like we will do this for the good of the next generation. Because at the end of the day being so focused on family the dwarves ultimate goal, their individual craft is important, the glory of the clan is very important and therefore ensuring that the next generation is also successful and builds on what has come before, that's critically important to them. So they very much value family, child rearing, things like that.

So the Duergar are the dwarves evil half, and their story is a bit of a tragedy, or at least that's what the Duergar would tell you. The dwarves would tell you it's a tragedy but for different reasons. What we know about the Duergar was that they were enslaved and transformed by the Mind Flayers, as the Mind Flayers are want to do. What we believe happened, and what the myth says, what the history says, is that the Mind Flayers lured a clan of dwarves deep within the earth by playing upon the dwarves natural tendency toward greed. Dwarves love creating beautiful objects, it's how they show off their skill, especially if they are an artisan.

So that has an upside of dwarves want to prove their skill by producing something beautiful, the dark side of that is sometimes dwarves not have greed in the sense like they want money. Dwarves have greed in the sense that they want to show off this is the beautiful statue I built. But sometimes a dwarf doesn't measure up and they steal a statue and claim it's their own. That might ... Its sort of a shortcut, and it's very much verboten in dwarf culture. The Duergar had that sort of innate desire to possess beautiful objects and claim them, played upon by the Mind Flayers. They use Psionics to influence an entire clan, to lure them into the Under Dark, trick them, turn their drive to work against them and bring them into enslavement.

So for untold numbers of years these dwarves were enslaved, they grew in numbers, the Mind Flayers brought them to different worlds, that's how they spread. But eventually the Duergar rose up, as often happens to the Mind Flayers, in revolt and cast them down. When the Duergar survives, who knew they were dwarves, sought to return to the remaining clans they were cast out. The surface dwarves, the dwarves that were not lured away, the good dwarves blame the Duergar for their downfall. As far as they say it greed is one of the biggest sins a dwarf can commit, because it is such a temptation, they all feel it so they know you must resist. So to see a clan abandon their stronghold, abandon their family because of the call of greed, to them, the dwarves would tell you the Duergar didn't fall they signed up. They joined with the Illithids in an alliance to gain power. The Duergar would tell you that they're victims.

Then as victims returning to their cousins in their transformed state, and then being cast out, they swore revenge not just against the dwarves but against Moradin. The Duergar want to slay Moradin, they want to destroy him. They see him as having abandoned them, and having turned against them, and in their hour of need ignoring their pleas for help. So they see him as he set an example that it's false, it's all lies. Moradin's only in it for himself. So they and their deities now live within the Under Dark and they find really no joy in work, they toil and work and work, and work. It's why they enslave other creatures, 'cause unlike the dwarves who take joy in work, for the Duergar is a suckers bet. You do it 'cause someone stronger than you is forcing you to do it. 'Cause there is no joy in work, that's what Moradin taught us, 'cause Moradin fooled us, but we've seen through it.

They tend toward very brutal, utilitarian materials, objects when they make them. Where dwarves seek beauty and to show off their talent. A Duergar measures success by just how many broad swords did we forge today. They don't care if they're high quality, they don't care if they're well made, they just make as many weapons as they can, as quickly as they can. So to them automation, servants, slavery, all this stuff is something that they believe is important because it saves them from having to do dull drudgery work. It's also a direct insult to what Moradin had taught them, before they were lured away by the Mind Flayers.

So they're very militaristic, they love to conquer other creatures, they're almost the ... On many ways the exact opposite of the dwarves. Now they are few in number because they are ... They've been spread across the world by the Mind Flayers. They were never in the great numbers of humans or even their kin, it was originally was just one clan that was claimed. But it's a very much a dark reflection of dwarf society. It's a society that's burning for vengeance, against what they see as an incredible betrayal. The dwarves hate the Duergar just as much, they see the Duergar as heretics, they see them as cowards who gave into greed. They see them as really giving into everything that they're taught to resist as dwarves, that they take no joy in work, their work has no beauty. So there is just complete and utter antagonism between the two. They just absolutely hate each other.

Duergar have gray skin, they have Psionics, they can turn invisible, they can grow ... Some of them can turn invisible, some of them can grow to immense size. What they've also started to do now too, in addition to taking slaves, they're developing their psionic power to even greater extent. They have some typical abilities the Mind Flayers gave them to make them useful as guards and warriors, and workers. Now the Duergar are starting to advance to the point where they're developing new psionic abilities. They're starting to combine that with their own ability, their natural talent to craft things. So some are starting to build like mechanical devices that are powered by psionic energy. Or even like replacing a limb with a metal claw, things like that, that they've forged.

The Duergar definitely, they're always on the war path but they're becoming even more aggressive and more creative in how to channel that aggression.

That's very much the dwarves are ... If you have a dwarf, if a young dwarf or Duergar was taken away and raised somewhere else, they'd be a very different person. It's very much guided by their culture, and that's something we really want to focus on. The dwarves are the way they are not because they're born that way, or they think, it's because they have a culture that's influenced by their religion, influenced by their environment. Influenced by their values, things like that. So the Duergar dwarves could find peace someday, but their cultures right see each other as completely antithetical.

Todd Kenreck: Thank you Mike Mearls for being on D&D Beyond, and talking to us about dwarves. I'm Todd Kenreck, thank you for watching.