"What was Karak Vlag eating all that time?" she asks suddenly one day, and you look up from your own reading to see her frowning curiously out at you through the gap between her book and the blanket she's currently draped in.
"Stonebread and mushrooms, I gather. Dwarves don't like to grow crops underground, but they can if they must."
"Why don't they like it? It seems like it would be right up their alley."
"The Farmers and Herders Guild used to have strains of crops that could grow underground, but most of the Guild and their crops were wiped out in the Time of Woes. So nowadays growing underground requires either a series of mirrors and a new entrance to defend to bring in sunlight, or a Runesmith spending time on illuminating Runes, which is something that isn't directly defending the Karak. Growing and herding on the mountainsides can be kept entirely in-guild for the Karaks that still have Clans dedicated to it, or done by Brewers and Rangers for those that don't. Or they can trade. A big part of the Silver Age was the alliance with Sigmar proving that humans were reliable enough to depend upon to supply foods."
She frowns. "We are?"
"Well, when they're buying it with Dwarven gold and goods, we are."
"What about the one down south? Kazrik's hold?"
"Karak Azul? They're the exception. They took in most of the survivors from here and Karak Drazh and Karak Izril and they didn't have anyone nearby to trade with, so they've got Clans dedicated to both the old ways and the new, which is enough to be self-sufficient."
"Will the other Holds be learning from them, now that they have access to them?"
You shake your head. "Probably not."
"Why not? They're Dwarves. I thought being self-sufficient is their thing."
You shake your head again. "Most Dwarves would rather master a highly-respected craft than be forced by necessity to learn a less-respected one. And farming is one of those. Even those from Clans dedicated to farming prefer to grow for the Brewers and only make bread from imported grains - brewing is one of Valaya's spheres, after all, so that's seen as 'better'."
Her frown deepens. "They don't respect farmers? I've never gotten that impression from them."
"They don't respect Dwarven farmers. There's no Ancestor God of Farming, so if you are farming, you're doing something their Ancestor Gods didn't consider important. Humans have Rhya and the Halflings have Esmerelda-"
"No, she's for cooking and feeding. Agriculture is Josias."
"Right, so humans and Halflings are following the example put down by what the Dwarves see as our own Ancestor Gods. Just as the Elves were with Isha, back when the Dwarves were trading with them - which was right from the start, Grimnir and Caledor Dragontamer set the foundations for that alliance during the Coming of Chaos. Then after the War of the Beard, they start trading with humans instead - Nehekhara and early Tilea and Mourkhain and, eventually, the Empire. So subsistence farming became associated with their dark age, and they prefer to trade for food and farm for brewing feedstock. They see that as the ideal, and consider turning Dwarf-grown grain into food instead of beer wasteful."
. Pardon the rambling, seeing people getting into miniatures is taking me back.
