Dwarves are short, stocky people with an average adult height of 132cm (4’4″). Their skin tone has a wide range, typically coloured similarly to stone, with many dwarves having slate gray or brown skin and eyes the color of gemstones. Dwarves typically have hair in metallic colors such as silver, gold, or copper. Dwarven eyes have a faint glow to them, and no visible pupil.

The few Dwarves one might meet in Vaira are typically on their Ordraz (literally: ‘work hunt’), a hundred year journey young dwarves undertake to explore the world and determine what skill they wish to perfect. After completing their journey, a young dwarf returns home and will typically live there to hone their craft for the rest of their long lives.

Some dwarves choose to remain in the surface world, or to practice multiple crafts, but this is generally frowned upon by Dwarven culture as ‘indecisive’ or ‘flaky’. The Dwarves worship their ancestors and the works they leave behind, with every Dwarf’s life goal to create a masterwork, legend, or innovation that will be revered through the ages by their own descendants. As a result of this, the most masterfully crafted works of Dwarven hands have never left their home city of Orhim.

Dwarves reproduce extremely slowly, often only having one child every few centuries. A Dwarven child reaches sexual maturity at around one hundred years of age, however, Dwarven society considers them a child until they have been fully educated, which typically takes two hundred years. When a Dwarf has learned ‘the basics’, they begin their Ordraz and are considered a young adult.