THE DWARVEN FORGE
The Dwarven Forge
above. This has very little game effect other than to prevent any kind of burning or explosion when the lantern is damaged in a cave-in, just as it was designed to do. Dwarves have created specialty items of this type to make working in their caverns safer. Cave-in Lantern: 50 gp, 3 lb.
D
Friendbelt
warves lead challenging lives and their inventions reflect the unique needs of a life below the surface. For a dwarf, every tool is a thing of beauty and a treasure to be maintained and repaired. Where other races see their equipment as just another way to get a job done, a dwarf sees his hammers and picks and axes as a piece of him, a link to his culture and its past. This attitude leads dwarves to hone their abilities, each hoping to create a new tool or weapon, something to serve his clan well in the future.
A friendbelt is a heavy leather belt equipped with an iron eyelet on the back and front. Each friendbelt comes equipped with a twenty foot long coil of steel cable attached to an opening metal link. Friendbelts are used during mining operations to link one worker to another. That way, if a cavern floor collapses, enough dwarves are hopefully on solid footing that those who would fall are kept from doing so. In cave-ins, these belts do not directly save lives, but the cable can be used to find trapped workers and facilitate a speedy rescue.
All dwarven characters travelling in their homelands may freely choose the equipment listed in the chapter, as it is part of their birthright. Characters of other races and those dwarves adventuring far from home may also chance upon such items, at the Games Master’s discretion. Large cities with a substantial dwarven population will likely have most of the equipment detailed here but smaller settlements are unlikely to have very much and will chance exorbitant prices for them.
Friendbelt: 45 gp with one steel cable. Cables are 20 gp per twenty foot length, 8 lb.
Herald Drums Very few musical instruments travel in the tunnels beneath the earth. When dwarven clans wish to
Beard Trimmer
Dwarves are justly proud of their beards as a general rule, and the better maintained it is, the higher a dwarf’s likely status among his clan and with his family. This comes from the pressures of a mining life and the fact that only successful dwarves tend to have the free time required to groom themselves meticulously. This tool can help perform that function and does so quickly enough that a dwarf can appear as more highly placed than he really is. This translates to a +1 circumstance bonus when making skill checks based on Charisma with other dwarves of the user’s own subrace.
communicate, they use these massive steel drums to send vibrations through the rock itself, generating tones that can carry for miles underground. Heralds trained to use these instruments (which require a rank of Perform to be dedicated to Herald Drums) can send basic messages to each other, making herald drums a valuable link between dwarven communities. Herald Drums: 400 gp per set of two drums, 250 lb.
Beard Trimmer: 40 gp, 2 lb.
Ignistone
Cave-in Lantern
A variant form of flint found in some of the deepest tunnels of the dwarves, ignistone is formed under tremendous pressure and contains
These lanterns are heavily reinforced and crafted to split open along its bottom with a special lid that extinguishes the wick instantly if it is crushed from
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