Wicked Fantasy: Uvandir: The Pride of Craftsmen

Why did the haffuns go to meet humanity first? To sweeten us up for the uvandir.

-- common human joke

If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. They stand four feet tall, just up to your waist, but they’re just as wide. Like square bricks. They have big, thick beards and eyes as wide as saucers. And their hands... hands big enough to hold your head. Hands that can squeeze stone until it shatters. Just one of them is strong enough to lift three men on his shoulders and carry them ten miles before breaking a sweat.

And they always smell like work. No matter how much you wash them, no matter how you perfume them, no matter what oils and soaps you use, an uvandir always smells like work.

Like their haffun cousins, the uvandir have found a place in human society. A curmudgeonly place. The haffuns brought service, the gnomes brought their gardens and the uvandir brought invention and innovation. Their skills with mechanics and mathematics amazed human scholars, leaping human knowledge ahead by generations. Of course, the uvandir did not give up such knowledge easily. While there are human clockmakers in the cities, none can deny the craftsmanship and artistry of a dwarven—I mean, uvandir— masterpiece.

It was this innovation that brought the underfolk to humanity in the first place and without the uvandir, they would have never escaped. The cunning of dwarven mining opened up veins of iron, gold and other metals that humanity never dreamed existed. Metalworking unknown to humans. Craftsmanship unknown to humans. Skills undreamed of by humans.

The uvandir never miss an opportunity to remind humans of this.

Ever.

* * *

Wicked Fantasy began as a series of articles in Kobold Quarterly Magazine reinventing the "standard races" in fantasy roleplaying. Now, those same articles have been expanded and revised (five times their
original size!) and fit with the PATHFINDER Roleplaying Game.

The next in the series--the Pride of Craftsmen--reveals the story of the uvandir (don't dare call them dwarves) and their unrelenting pride.

Wicked Fantasy: Guardians of the Wood includes:

• FULL COLOR AND FULLY ILLUSTRATED!
• New uvandir Racial Traits including stone made, sleepless and obsessions!
• The secrets of gemstone magic (hinted in The Scourge of the City)!
• New Archetypes including the gemstone wizard, the woodcutter and the gunslinging watchmaker!
• New Feats including Grand Master Craftsman, Hands of Stone, and Stand My Ground!
• And More!