William Morris, Arts and Crafts Dwarves, and the Pfiflitriggi

I recently had occasion to watch over a few clips from the Peter Jackson film adaptation of The Hobbit from these last few days. They were not films I rated highly - however influential I found the Lord of the Rings flicks in my youth. However, they continued the visual style of those films (for better or worse) and one way or another this got me thinking on the Dwarves and how they are portrayed, especially in regard to industry.

This is the point where I talk about William Morris.

Pictured.

There are some very clear connections between the early-to-mid twentieth century work of Tolkien and the mid-to-late nineteenth century work of designer, novelist and activist William Morris. Most obviously, perhaps, his fantasy novels  such as The House of the Wolflings and his translation of several Icelandic Sagas in 1896-1870. Beyond that, the Arts and Crafts movement (another major proponent of which being John Ruskin, of whom more here) which Morris was such a big part of has a likeness with Tolkien in a concern with the effects of industry upon the British country and people. The battle of the Ents against the factories of Isengard being perhaps the clearest example in Tolkien's mythos.

Of course, one would most likely call neither Morris nor Tolkien an Anarcho-Primitivist. Both make a place for the work of the smith and the machine. The crafted sword of Aragorn may fight off numerous manufactured orc blades - something which has echoed in named weapons throughout post-Tolkien fantasy, even into the often deconstructionist A Song of Ice and Fire. Such swords provide material for the cynical or satiric fantasist; I paraphrase Tom Holt in referring to a King suffering a blow from "not a battle-axe with runes all over the blade- just something run up by the local blacksmith."  Morris seems willing to have embraced elements of mechanisation in the production of his textiles, even as he criticised the omnipresence of industry and its effects.

Dwarves are not the only craftsmen in Tolkien, of course, but they have the most association as a race with that notion - from their creation by the Valar smith Aule, to their lives within a crafted environment in the mines. Such notions go back to the Poetic Edda, but this deserves spelling out.
All this goes doubly so for Post-Tolkien work, which can ramp this up quite considerably (see, for instance, the black powder, gyrocopters, steam tanks, and blimps of the Warhammer and Warcraft franchises).

A Warhammer Fantasy Dwarf Gyrocopter minature. From 8th Edition

Let us reframe Dwarf-dom, then, away from the actively industrial. Let us have dwarves just as craftsmen (and women), not machinists. Dwarves who must forge their own weapons and armour from scratch; dwarves working for themselves, upon their own creations, to their own designs. I am reminded of  the taboo mentioned in Sir Terry Pratchett's Men At Arms of one dwarf touching another's tools. Doubtless there would be some communal activity - in wartime, in carving out mountain homes for themselves. But the mass production of goods seems unlikely, however prolific such dwarves would be to produce a horde large enough for any prospective Smaug to take a nap upon. Likewise, perhaps we might say that it is only the fully mature dwarf who works so. The child is educated in basic techniques until they are grown and qualified to work for themselves.   The superhuman hardiness and resolve of dwarves may be called upon the plug any gaps in this scheme.

This might have an angle of the Victorian socialism of Morris, but it would be a mistake to have non-human society when worldbuilding imitate precisely the ways of any given political system or culture from human history. Moreover, to quote from Tolkien's friend and colleague C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, "There will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us us to buy them*....We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, 'advanced' but that its family life and its code of manners were very old-fashioned - perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic." This is not perhaps an entirely pertinent quote in itself, but elements of it might reflect upon an optimistic view of this Arts and Crafts Dwarven polity.

Pivoting on this awkward quote, I should like to suggest that these dwarves already, after a fashion exist: in the work of C.S.Lewis. Not, as might be obvious, the dwarves of Narnia, but some of the denizens of Malacandra in Out of the Silent Planet from The Cosmic Trilogy. I speak of the Pfiflitriggi.

How to describe them? The face is "long and pointed, like a shrew's, yellow and shabby-looking, and so low in the forehead that....much more insectlike or reptilian...Its build was distinctly like that of a frog...that part of its forelimbs on which it was supported was in human terms, rather an elbow than a hand. It was broad and padded and clearly made to be walked upon, but upwards from it, at an angle of forty-five degrees, went the true forearms - thin, strong forearms, ending in enormous, sensitive many-fingered hands." About their bodies, they carry a number of small instruments. One that the protagonist, Dr Ransom, meets is dressed "in some bright scaly substance which appeared richly decorated...It had folds of furry clothing about its throat...dark bulging goggles...Rings and chains of a bright metal ...adorned its limbs and neck."

By Nathan J. Anderson. 

The Pfiflitriggi are suited to be craftsmen; the one met in Out of the Silent Planet is a sculptor. When asked about their position with the other races of Malacandra, he says "No one learns the speech of my people, for what we have to say is said in stone and sun's blood and stars' milk." Their homes are in "The true forests, the green shadows, the deep mines," with "houses with a hundred pillars, one of sun's blood ,and the next of stars' milk all the way...and all the world painted on the walls."

These mines are worked by all, though "each digs for himself the thing he wants to work"; if a pfifltrigg does not work the mines, how is he to "understand working in sun's blood unless he went into the home of sun's blood himself and knew one kind from another and lived with it for days out of the light of the sky." There are hints of matriarchy - confirmed in Lewis's Postscript, along with the fact that they are short-lived among the races of Malacandra and oviparous. They bear names such as Kanakaberaka, Kalakaperi, Parakataru and Tafalakeruf. Such humour as they possess is said to be sharp and excel in abuse.

This is not perhaps very typically Dwarven. But the crafting and mining - and the semi-Utopian air in which it occurs - fit in very nicely with the 'Morrisian Dwarf', if such a thing can be. However, I believe that the humble pfifltrigg deserves a chance at adventure on the tabletop. Therefore, I propose to create a homebrew class for one for The Fifty-Two Pages.

THE PFIFLTRIGG

HP - d6+1+ CON +/-.

Attack Modifiers - +1 Melee/+1 Missile.
Mind Save 7 + WIS +/-
Speed Save 9 + DEX+/- [They are shown to jump quite far]
Body Save  5 + CON +/-

Knowledge    Notice Detail   Hear Noise   Handiwork   Stealth   Athletics
      [XX]               [X]                [X]                [X][X]             [  ]             [X]

Starts with Background Words: Underground, Language: Old Solar and Two Pfifltriggi Tools (see below).

Level Advancement: +1 Melee/ +1 Missile every Fourth Level
                                    +1 to all Saves every Odd Level
                                    +1 Pfifltriggi Tool every Level (see below)

A Pfifltrigg may carry a great number of tools that may perform some physical function similar to Energy/Creation/Change spells or an otherwise bulky item of equipment. These have the same limitations as such spells (only so much fireball juice in the fireball machine). They gain such items once per level and must manufacture them personally, providing time and money for raw materials, parts and testing.

By Nathan J. Anderson. He plays a mean harpsichord.

*There seems something curiously resonant with the 'murderhobo' stereotype about this: either a piece of jewellery is enchanted, and useful; and thus worth keeping - or it is treasure, to be sold when the adventurer reaches the nearest large town. It would be interesting to see what would happen it was made clear that an amulet of strength (or what have you) was terribly beautiful, but mechanically inferior next to its counterpart.

Majipoor and OSR Aesthetics of Ruin

I recently decided to re-read some of Robert Silverberg's Majipoor stories. The series starts with Lord Valentine's Castle (1980), which won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 1981. There are a handful of other books and short stories, but I'm going to pick on this one for a lot of my points - firstly because this was the book to set my thoughts in motion; secondly because this is the first in a series (even if they are all, by and large, self-contained) and has to do the heavy lifting, worldbuilding -wise.

The 1981 British Edition, by Pan Books. Cover art by Josh Kirby; this photograph from Abe Books.

Majipoor, for the uninitiated, is a planet many times larger than Earth, if less dense. It has been settled by mankind and by various aliens for many thousands of years, though it is also occupied by the Metamorphs, the natives of the planet. Science Fiction? Not quite; however many far-future devices might be employed by denizens of Majipoor, (hovering floaters, energythrowers), an agricultural career seems more likely than not. Moreover, forms of magic appear to exist and the story of Lord Valentine's Castle is about a deposed prince reclaiming his throne. (This article from Tor places it firmly in the Science Fantasy camp).

This extends to the system of government; however laissez-faire day to day or local governance may get, the world of Majipoor operates something like 'an adoptive divine-right duumvirate buttressed by two dream-manipulating spiritual powers'. This is never really questioned, even by the rare absolute outsider we see. The fact that criminals can be pursued by the Long Arm of the Law into their dreams is taken as completely natural. (I might stake money on there being a  Young Adult dystopia based on this very premise; that Silverberg has an entire world just take it as read is interesting.) The system, incidentally, seems to work: war is virtually unknown on Majipoor, though other ills are not. This gentleman describes it as somewhat utopian; I am not so sure - however pleasant it may be I suspect it has quite enough worldly cares, obsessions and woes to disqualify it.

(This site has a great deal more on the details of Majipoor).

What has this largely vital, if slow-changing world to do with Aesthetics of Ruin? I shall draw on this article from Manola's Against the Wicked City - which is well worth reading.

From Lord Valentine's Castle: 'The mount was comfortable, as well it might be, for they had been bred for comfort for thousands of years, these artificial animals, these witchcraft creatures out of the old days, strong and tireless and patient, able to convert any sort of trash into food. The skill of making them was long forgotten, but now they bred of themselves, like natural animals, and it would be a slow business of Majipoor getting around without them.'

'The new road...and was paved in smooth blue-grey stuff of light resiliency, a springy, flawless roadbed that probably was of great antiquity, as were many of the best things of this world.'

'They said this Lord Valentine the Coronal lived in a castle eight thousand years old, with five rooms for every year of its existence, and that the castle sat on a mountain so tall it pierced the sky, a colossal peak thirty miles high, on whose slopes were fifty cities as big as Pidruid...The world was too big, too old, too populous for one man's mind.'

Let us set this against the aesthetics of ruin, as expressed in the above article. Players are 'tiny figures wandering a world of dead and dying titans, stumbling amidst the wreckage of mighty forces they do not understand'. These ruin-settings are 'likely to be inhabited by clans of mad and degenerate morlocks practicing weird semi-functional cargo-cult sorcery based on badly-misunderstood fragments of ancient knowledge'. 

Art by Jim Burns, used as the cover for The Majipoor Chronicles.

To compare with a near-contemporary of Lord Valentine's Castle, in Majipoor, however dwarfed by the accomplishments of the past, people do not live in the grounded spaceships of Nessus of Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. Though the titular castle is vast, it is still added to by each Coronal in turn. Silverberg makes clear fairly early the tone of the novel: '...for what was the use of being alive and healthy on a world as full of wonders as Majipoor if you did not journey hither and thither on it?' 
Indeed, journeying - as a travelling performer, as the Coronal on a grand procession, as a soldier on campaign - would seem to be the preferred existence of the characters. The series is never uniformly light-hearted or whimsical, but always has an eye on such moments. 

If Majipoor is a world of ancient devices and societies, they have aged gracefully. The wilder portions of the landscape provide wonders for the settled lands. The loss of knowledge is not a festering sore or an absent limb, but a distant memory. The vast age of Majipoor can be daunting,m but not overpowering. If you will permit the poetry, on Majipoor the titans are not dead or dying - they may, appropriately enough, be dreaming.

None of this is to hold up Majipoor as the diametric opposite to the Aesthetics of Ruin, just as a meaningful contrast, or as a different usage of some of the same elements. I have not been able to find much in the way of RPG materials for Majipoor - which is a shame. It would be interesting to hold it up to more scrutiny and comment; perhaps opening up the setting for other authors, something like the short story collection Songs of the Dying Earth, would be a valuable project.