After viewing the photo above, I had a sudden compulsion to map out the demesnes and citadels of the ice dwarves.
Let us take Gimli’s speech regarding the Glittering Caves and reshape it to our purposes:
“Strange are the ways of men! Here they have one of the marvels of the Northern World, and what do they say of it? Ice, they say! Ice! Glaciers to take water from in time of need! My good elf, do you know that the glaciers of the Frozen Sea are vast and beautiful? There would be an endless pilgrimage of dwarves, merely to gaze at them, if such things were known! Aye indeed, they would pay pure gold for a brief glance!
“Do think those halls are fair where your King dwells in his castle of ice mounded up from the snows? It is but a hovel compared with the wonders I have seen here: Immeasurable halls, filled with everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools as fair as the mirrored sea in moonlight!
“And when the torches are kindled and men walk upon the snowy floors, ah! Then the walls cast shadows that dance with all the puppeteer’s skill among rivulets and eddies of twisted frost! There are columns of hard white holding up roofs of endless, perfect blue — waves of an ocean which laps but once in a millennium! It is a glimmering world viewed through cerulean glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into dark recesses where no light can come. And plink! A silver drop falls, and round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea.”
Thus did the first dwarf fall in love with realms of ice and turn his purposes towards them.
But that was long ago, and the halls which those elder races wrought have been compressed and changed and turned by the tides of time. They are now perilous with the weight of the ice above them, but the slow, grinding pressures of those places have not wholly deformed the wonders which have been left behind.
In addition to whatever other treasures may lurk down there, there’s a fair market for the snow suns which once lit those halls. The art of their craft has been lost, but they burn with a cold light which can nonetheless light fires to keep the limbs of the living warm while leaving untouched the ice about them.
(You should also click thru; the original photographer has a lot of really great inspirational photos.)
Leads me to think what other ‘(element) (creature)’ combinations there could be. Volcanic dwarves, of course, who admire the flowing complexity of the lava chambers. Stone Elves, living only in entirely petrified forests, and having gained their hardness in themselves. Cave orcs, their seclusion from the others making them more civilised yet also more brutish.
The list goes on forever! Thanks for giving me this.
The idea of an ancient, dying race of elves — their skin pale to translucence; their hair turned the white of starlight — living amidst the gray, petrified remains of a forest which was once green and vibrant is terribly evocative.
A Lothlorien spun forward through the millennia; its preservation magicks stretched thin until the mallorn trees are but calcified husks of their once golden grandeur.
Good stuff.
I have had ice dwarves in my campaign setting for along time now, however they are born out of the ice.