How do dwarves that lives nuderground make their own book?

[Detective]

The question came with me thinking about giving a dwarf a book about masonry as a fluff, IC excuse for him to later have proficiency in mason tools as part of leveling up.

Then, I found myself facing an issue: How would they make papers for a book, without wood? Do they use something else as a substitute? Are they making pages with stones instead?

I honestly have no clue here!

[GooeyChewie]

You could have them harvest wood from roots that grow too near their homes.

[Seekergeek]

Mushroom paper is a thing in real life, so maybe that?

[Saelethil]

There could be a fungus that could be used to make a paper-like product.

[diplomancer]

Dwarves are at constant wars with forests near their homes, gotta look out for those trees!

[Garfunion]

They can use animal hides(creatures of underdark) or fungi.

Edit: you can even go as far as have them micro etch their books on gems, only to have the writing be revealed through torch light (shadows on the wall).

[nickl_2000]

Parchment is made from skin (animals, human, etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchment

[Naanomi]

Anything worth writing is worth carving onto a stone tablet to last for eternity

[Detective]

Well, what do you know, you can actually make paper out of mushrooms!

Parchment can work as well, but I won't deny that dwarves making papers from fungi that grows underground sounds more flavorful and unique for such a culture. Thanks for the answers!

[Psyren]

Roots, woody fungi, and animal-based parchment.

The bigger question is how they make decent beer :smallbiggrin:

[NomadActual]

They could use stone tablets if you really want the "rock and stone" life style.

EDIT: Also they could used etched metal sheets.

[JonBeowulf]

They get paper the same way they get everything else they can't manufacture on their own... they trade for it.

[JackPhoenix]

Why wouldn't they have access to wood? While dwarves like to build their homes under the mountains, unlike duergar, they do have access to the surface.

[SharkForce]

Why wouldn't they have access to wood? While dwarves like to build their homes under the mountains, unlike duergar, they do have access to the surface.

was gonna say. this is like asking "how do humans that live inside of houses not starve to death in spite of not having enough room to grow food inside their houses?"

the answer is that we can leave our houses, or have people deliver things to our houses, just like dwarves can go elsewhere to get wood or trade for wood to be brought to them.

[Blood of Gaea]

Roots, woody fungi, and animal-based parchment.

The bigger question is how they make decent beer :smallbiggrin:

Mushroom and root beer, of course.

[Lunali]

Metal foil also works as a form of paper, and feels appropriate for dwarves.

[Greywander]

I don't know if this is still the case, but it used to be in Dwarf Fortress you could only make beds out of wood, and you needed beds or your dwarves would get unhappy from sleeping on the ground. And an unhappy dwarf is a murderous dwarf. So you pretty much needed to maintain access to the surface and occasionally send dwarves out to chop and gather wood for new beds. Though I do feel like I heard that they implemented giant mushrooms that can grow underground and act as a type of wood; IIRC there was one kind of mushroom that's always at freezing temperatures, and it's the only type of wood that is lava-safe.

So yeah, nothing is actually stopping them from having a presence on the surface. They can go out and chop trees. Fungus paper and parchment have also already been mentioned.

I remember coming up with a concept for a setting where on a whim I decided that there were no trees or other plant life (reminder that fungus isn't a plant, so fungus was okay). To be fair, this same setting was a hellscape of lava rivers and poison gas, so it kind of makes sense that plants would have a hard time growing. Anyway, although nothing ever came of this setting, at the time I settled on mushroom paper as well.

[GreyBlack]

The question came with me thinking about giving a dwarf a book about masonry as a fluff, IC excuse for him to later have proficiency in mason tools as part of leveling up.

Then, I found myself facing an issue: How would they make papers for a book, without wood? Do they use something else as a substitute? Are they making pages with stones instead?

I honestly have no clue here!

Well, how do you know that dwarves make paper? Maybe they originally made stone tablets or clay a la ancient Sumer, but then when they came into contact with (for example) humans, they were introduced to this magical substance called "paper" which the dwarves can now import from outside their mountain homes.

Economics: The most boring answer to anything.

[Wintermoot]

The question came with me thinking about giving a dwarf a book about masonry as a fluff, IC excuse for him to later have proficiency in mason tools as part of leveling up.

Then, I found myself facing an issue: How would they make papers for a book, without wood? Do they use something else as a substitute? Are they making pages with stones instead?

I honestly have no clue here!

Alternate suggestion:

In real life, people rarely learn about things like Masonry from books. They learn from experience and apprenticeship to skilled craftsmen. People who try to learn a craft skill from reading about it without actual experience and guidance, rarely succeed. Instead of a book, give him a set of Mason tools. When he handles them, ghostly figures appear of masons past who go about their craft in phantom images. Perhaps he can only just watch them, but perhaps he can interact to get trained and taught by mason's long dead.

This could get you where you fundamentally want to go (proficiency in tools as he levels) but could also provide a lure for a future adventure. Perhaps he investigates the tools and learns they were found buried in an abandoned collapsed ruin and realizes that the mason's where buried there and their ghosts can't rest until he recovers their remains and gives them a proper burial or finishes their work and rebuilds the collapsed ruin.

[Catullus64]

Trade with nearby settlements for lumber or paper (good for books, but also tremendously important for fueling the forge-fires).

Large-scale forestry expeditions from the hold (can also double as elf-fighting holidays).

Some sort of subterranean lake-weed that can be made into papyrus paper (maybe it glows in the dark!)

Hill Dwarfs probably raise sheep and goats whose hides can be made into parchment. Elf skin also makes excellent parchment.

Fancy books can have pages of etched copper or some other soft metal. The clan's book of grudges (don't everyone's Dwarfs have those?) might be etched in silver or gold leaf.

Dwarfs don't make books, they have very old and venerable loremasters who weave stories and records into strands of their 10-foot beards.

Specially treated stone that can be carved into very thin sheets without becoming brittle.

Rather than record knowledge of crafts in books, each item or building is inscribed with runes that provide key knowledge of how to make it. Runes that can only be deciphered by the requisite guild masters, of course.

[f5anor]

Parchment is made from skin (animals, human, etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchment

Excellent point, also please consider that even creatures living underground would be forced to go outside on a regular basis for various biologically driven reasons.

Various types of food would not be possible to produce underground, beer for instance. I doubt that there would be fields underground to produce sufficient barley, not to mention sun.

Most humanoids would probably not be able to lead a healthy life without regular exposure to the sun.

I believe, that regardless of their fascination with underground environments, dwarves would spend a significant (if not the majority for many of them) portion of their time outside.

[Psyren]

In Dragon Age, dwarven libraries are called "shaperates" and they involve etching detailed archives/memories directly into stone tablets using lyrium (that setting's phlebotinum) a magical mineral that only dwarves and severed mages aka Tranquil can handle safely.

Notable about DA is that it's a setting where Dwarves very rarely go to the surface, and those who do become outcasts from larger dwarven society.


Mushroom and root beer, of course.

Yuck. No hops?

Really dwarves should getting high all the time rather than drunk. But that wouldn't really fit with their faux-scottish sendup.

[Peelee]

Roots, woody fungi, and animal-based parchment.

The bigger question is how they make decent beer :smallbiggrin:

From the byproducts of Deep Cows (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23677259&postcount=355), obviously.

[Scots Dragon]

From the byproducts of Deep Cows (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=23677259&postcount=355), obviously.

They're called rothé. (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Deep_roth%C3%A9)

[Saelethil]

Really dwarves should getting high all the time rather than drunk. But that wouldn't really fit with their faux-scottish sendup.

Interesting cultural differences could arise between Hill and Mountain Dwarves as a result of what what can be grown and kept. Hill Dwarves are more likely to drink fresher malted beverages like ale and can more easily trade for things like tobacco. Mountain Dwarves are mostly stuck with what stays good for a long time (high proof liquor) and what can be grown underground (‘shrooms).

[Cikomyr2]

Well, people have given a lot of good answers.

Fungi, roots, stone.. Hell, maybe they consider blank paper to be a fantastic commodity worth trading precious metal and jewels for.

Ultimately, it will be up to the world-builder to decide, and it will depend heavily on the flavor of dwarves you are looking at. Are they isolationists? Traders? Stone-worshipers?

[Evaar]

This feels to me like asking what humans drink if they live on land.

They go harvest it. They build their cities underground, they're not afraid of the surface. Unless, of course, they ARE in your setting.

[JackPhoenix]

Mushroom and root beer, of course.

I don't think that's actually possible. You need sugar to get alcohol, and fungi don't make sugar (yeast used for fermentation consume it), so they can't serve as a base for booze. You'd need external resource from somewhere that allows photosynthesis somewhere in the process.

[Psyren]

Roots (tubers and nodules especially) can contain sugars though. Not saying that's definitively the answer but it's at least plausible if you have fantasy roots that go deep enough.

As someone mentioned above though, that's more likely to get you liquor than beer.

[Blood of Gaea]

I don't think that's actually possible. You need sugar to get alcohol, and fungi don't make sugar (yeast used for fermentation consume it), so they can't serve as a base for booze. You'd need external resource from somewhere that allows photosynthesis somewhere in the process.
Once they get fermenting yeast from elsewhere, they can keep that going for long periods of time.

It could also just involve particularly sugary roots, or even a flat out magical plant

[olskool]

The question came with me thinking about giving a dwarf a book about masonry as a fluff, IC excuse for him to later have proficiency in mason tools as part of leveling up.

Then, I found myself facing an issue: How would they make papers for a book, without wood? Do they use something else as a substitute? Are they making pages with stones instead?

I honestly have no clue here!

I see Dwarves harvesting wood from the slopes and nearby hills next to their mountain stronghold. This would also be where they graze Sheep, Pigs, and Goats for food. So paper COULD be made the old-fashioned way, from trees. Another method that Dwarves might adopt is the Tin-Type book. By either etching or punching symbols into thin sheets of Tin, you could create a very durable medium for recording important information.

[Cikomyr2]

This feels to me like asking what humans drink if they live on land.

They go harvest it. They build their cities underground, they're not afraid of the surface. Unless, of course, they ARE in your setting.

I guess, except if you want to include the aspect of the Dwarves that "they an hold out in their mines for decades if they have to". Which, granted, is not necessarily something that always have to be true, but thinking about what necessities for civilization the Dwarves are lacking when they undergo their "we don't come to the surface" phase is fun world building musing

[Grim Portent]

My personal inclination would be etchings for things that don't need to be portable, so stone or metal tablets/plates with writing carved into them for library equivalents where a given text is only going to be moved within the building, and pachment/vellum made from goat/sheep/calf skin for things that might need to be carried around, like diplomatic letters, royal proclamations and so forth, because it's not cheap so you want to use it sparingly. Goats and sheep are both good livestock for mountainous or hilly terrain, and the belly skin of a lamb (or calf, but cows and cliffs don't mix,) properly dried was a very common material for making books in medieval Europe.

Modern day wood based paper is actually a fairly recent invention, and reed or pith based papers like papyrus or rice paper seem to require very specific plants.

[Sigreid]

That's the real reason they're always fighting orcs, goblins and drow...

[Grim Portent]

That's the real reason they're always fighting orcs, goblins and drow...

The thought did occur to me of more grimdark dwarves being partially skinned when they died and their skins turned into parchment for writing important family stuff on. Like birth records and geneology, so a beardlings birth date, name, parentage and so on is recorded on pages of a family chronicle likely made from their great grandparent's back skin.

[ZardukZarakhil]

I like to imagine that large dwarf cities have cavern complexes to grow plants under hydroponic conditions and are tended by dwarves who cast Daylight spell over them on rotation.

Also gives them the option of fish farming for food.

[Sigreid]

More seriously, Daylight spells, plant growth spells, miracles and enchanting all exist. There's no reason they can't have crop chambers that are basically enchanted year round grow rooms complete with artificial sunlight.

[Catullus64]

More seriously, Daylight spells, plant growth spells, miracles and enchanting all exist. There's no reason they can't have crop chambers that are basically enchanted year round grow rooms complete with artificial sunlight.

See, I feel that the "they use magic to do it" line of thinking only runs so far, or at least in my world-building thought. The specific spells you mention (and the kind of spells that often get brought up in these discussions) are at least 3rd-level; that's very powerful and sophisticated magic, which has to be performed by a very skilled and specialized individual, D&D almost universally running on the logic that powerful magic can only be wielded by experienced and highly practiced mortals. Heck, in the example of farming by Daylight, you probably need many such individuals, since one casting of the spell only covers a very small (in farming terms) area for one hour.

Highly skilled and specialized people require a certain food surplus to exist in the first place to support them, because while their skills may increase productivity in the long term, in the short term (the time it takes for them to both learn and apply those skills) they're going to eat that food while not producing any themselves. In order to get to the point where they can have large groups of wizards casting Daylight over large caverns full of crops, Dwarfs would need to have a very reliable food supply already, and probably a high degree of social organization and accumulated learning.

For that reason, I generally think that a certain level of non-magical achievement and innovation is required before you can assume that fantasy peoples use D&D magic to bypass these problems.

[JackPhoenix]

Also, Daylight isn't sunlight.

[Sigreid]

See, I feel that the "they use magic to do it" line of thinking only runs so far, or at least in my world-building thought. The specific spells you mention (and the kind of spells that often get brought up in these discussions) are at least 3rd-level; that's very powerful and sophisticated magic, which has to be performed by a very skilled and specialized individual, D&D almost universally running on the logic that powerful magic can only be wielded by experienced and highly practiced mortals. Heck, in the example of farming by Daylight, you probably need many such individuals, since one casting of the spell only covers a very small (in farming terms) area for one hour.

Highly skilled and specialized people require a certain food surplus to exist in the first place to support them, because while their skills may increase productivity in the long term, in the short term (the time it takes for them to both learn and apply those skills) they're going to eat that food while not producing any themselves. In order to get to the point where they can have large groups of wizards casting Daylight over large caverns full of crops, Dwarfs would need to have a very reliable food supply already, and probably a high degree of social organization and accumulated learning.

For that reason, I generally think that a certain level of non-magical achievement and innovation is required before you can assume that fantasy peoples use D&D magic to bypass these problems.

They could also have plants that feed off of Vulcanic fissures.

But for world building, my last answer could be a great adventure hook. Suppose the grow chambers were created long ago or were gifts from the dwarven gods and can no longer be easily reproduced. Problem is, they are starting to fail or are under attack or have been conqured.

You could also have where they depend on their cousins the gnomes to facilitate trade for surface goods.


Also, Daylight isn't sunlight.

And neither are the grow lights gardeners and other indoor plant growers use.

[Catullus64]

They could also have plants that feed off of Vulcanic fissures.

But for world building, my last answer could be a great adventure hook. Suppose the grow chambers were created long ago or were gifts from the dwarven gods and can no longer be easily reproduced. Problem is, they are starting to fail or are under attack or have been conqured.

You could also have where they depend on their cousins the gnomes to facilitate trade for surface goods.


Those are good answers, but at that point you're adding on more assumptions that can no longer be answered by PHB magic (like the spells you referenced). My point wasn't that creative or fantastical solutions can't be provided for these kinds of problems, but (in part) that doing so generally requires going beyond what the game rules provide us. The magic in the base rules exists mostly for adventuring, not production or infrastructure: if it had been developed for those things, it would probably look very different.

[JackPhoenix]

And neither are the grow lights gardeners and other indoor plant growers use.

They are made to replicate sunlight. Daylight isn't. It's just Light cantrip with larger AoE.

[Sigreid]

Those are good answers, but at that point you're adding on more assumptions that can no longer be answered by PHB magic (like the spells you referenced). My point wasn't that creative or fantastical solutions can't be provided for these kinds of problems, but (in part) that doing so generally requires going beyond what the game rules provide us. The magic in the base rules exists mostly for adventuring, not production or infrastructure: if it had been developed for those things, it would probably look very different.

Well, one of the weaknesses of the published content is that the adventures and such often have wonderous things that are well outside what the players could do with no explanation of how the players could do them if they want to kingdom build or whatever.

I think personally I could see dwarves and other under ground races having essentially artificers that are civil engineers tasked and skilled to solve the problems of living underground.

In some of the descriptions of the underdark they also have vague descriptions of luminescent crystals and such IRRC. And I know the Neverwinter Online game had an underdark with glowing crystal veins with plants growing around them.

[Wintermoot]

Forget books.

What do dwarves use for toilet paper?

[Sigreid]

Forget books.

What do dwarves use for toilet paper?

Gnomes of course

[Catullus64]

Forget books.

What do dwarves use for toilet paper?

Something like a sponge on a stick, like the Romans used, would be my guess.

[Cikomyr2]

Something like a sponge on a stick, like the Romans used, would be my guess.

Roman sponges were made off real sea sponges. So I think we are getting back to "how would they make their sponge?"

In fact, let's be honest. Anything plant-base and even animal-base would be extremely difficult for the Dwarves to recreate except if we go all Fungi.


And I don't want to be the on bummerer "Stop having Fungi (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys)"

[Grim Portent]

I would assume they'd use cloth sheets and a bucket of water for toilet paper, same basic idea as was common practice in our world before the invention of toilet paper.

Sheep and goats are good at living on mountainous terrain, so they'd be logical livestock for dwarven outposts and surface farmsteads, and both can provide wool to make cloth. Llamas or alpacas would also work.

Farm them for wool, turn wool into cloth, dampen cloth and use it to wipe between the cheeks, rinse the cloth in a bucket and repeat.

This also provides them with textiles for clothing, carpets and tapestries without needing access to one of the handful of plant based fabrics.

[warty goblin]

When it comes to recording information on a metal sheet, you have 3 options, all of which are distinct.

1: etching. This is where you apply a resist to areas of the metal, and then soak in it acid for a while. The acid will dissolve and discolor the untreated areas, leaving the remainder bright and slightly raised. You can create very fine work this way, and applying the resistant is basically just writing or painting the text onto the metal sheet. However, it will also be the least durable of the options listed here, and require access to lots of acid. This is also the only one of the three I have not personally done, so can speak the least to.

2: engraving. This is etching in reverse, so instead of removing the background and leaving the text raised, you cut the text out and leave the background unaltered. Usually you do this with an absurdly tiny hammer (mine weighs about a tenth of a pound), and a variety of very fine chisels you have to sharpen constantly. This method will produce very durable texts, but be extremely slow - monks hand-illumating texts will make your Dwarven book engravers look like literary snails - and I'd expect a sort of very reduced runic script to appear. You engrave metal towards yourself with (if you are right handed) the hammer in your right hand. This means that you like straight lines, and you can most easily carve those lines running from high right to low left, so expect a lot of vertical or right - to - left descending lines. Once you start to do left - to - right lines at much of an angle to the vertical, you have to either rotate the piece, or yourself. I've not personally engraved text, but there's nothing particularly complex about it. Mind, I'd expect something the length of this post to take me over a day, at least with the horribly curvy English alphabet.


3: stamping. You take a letter stamp, put it on the metal and bang it with a hammer. Theoretically very simple, in practice a large pain in the ass to get to look halfway decent. Justifying the characters is a pain, and you have to be quite careful not to dent the metal too deeply, although thicker plates help here. Get the metal too thin, and the denting will be so bad you can't effectively put text on both sides. If your dwarves have access to alarmingly good presses, you could make a metal printing press, but the pressures required are tremendous. You'd also need a substantial industry of engravers to make the letter dies, as they will wear out with use.

In all cases, the plausibility of producing much of a corpus of work depends sharply on the availability of a soft metal like copper or lead, and the ability of your dwarves to turn it into fine sheet. Until you get industrial rolling mills this is non-trivial, at the very worst you're looking at multiple rounds of hand-hammering and annealing, which will consume enormous amounts of labor and fuel. Once you have, say, water driven rolling machines it gets a lot better, but even then you're looking at staggering costs per book, and also books that weigh a hundred pounds or more. These things would be literally worth as much as entire towns.

[Grim Portent]

2: engraving. This is etching in reverse, so instead of removing the background and leaving the text raised, you cut the text out and leave the background unaltered. Usually you do this with an absurdly tiny hammer (mine weighs about a tenth of a pound), and a variety of very fine chisels you have to sharpen constantly. This method will produce very durable texts, but be extremely slow - monks hand-illumating texts will make your Dwarven book engravers look like literary snails - and I'd expect a sort of very reduced runic script to appear. You engrave metal towards yourself with (if you are right handed) the hammer in your right hand. This means that you like straight lines, and you can most easily carve those lines running from high right to low left, so expect a lot of vertical or right - to - left descending lines. Once you start to do left - to - right lines at much of an angle to the vertical, you have to either rotate the piece, or yourself. I've not personally engraved text, but there's nothing particularly complex about it. Mind, I'd expect something the length of this post to take me over a day, at least with the horribly curvy English alphabet.

I imagine it would be fairly normal for dwarves in an engraving based literary culture to spend a lot of their youth as menial scribes. Real life monasteries often tasked young monks with churning out copies of religious texts, sometimes as a punishment IIRC, and if dwarves are clan/duty oriented and mostly literate it would make sense to task the ones that are too young for heavy labour or skilled tasks to the job of churning out lots of mediocre copies of written or dictated material. Or possibly even as a penalty for various misdemeanours.

[Psyren]

Pressurized bidet as a feat of engineering.

[Peelee]

Pressurized bidet as a feat of engineering.

Living underground means you don't even need to construct water towers, most water sources are above you anyway. Makes for convenient plumbing.

[warty goblin]

I imagine it would be fairly normal for dwarves in an engraving based literary culture to spend a lot of their youth as menial scribes. Real life monasteries often tasked young monks with churning out copies of religious texts, sometimes as a punishment IIRC, and if dwarves are clan/duty oriented and mostly literate it would make sense to task the ones that are too young for heavy labour or skilled tasks to the job of churning out lots of mediocre copies of written or dictated material. Or possibly even as a penalty for various misdemeanours.

The labor costs of doing the engraving will be huge, because it's slow, but basic engraving isn't that hard a skill to learn. I'm not saying it's a trivial skill; your average modern Joe off the street will be hopeless at it, because your typical modern person has horrible hand skills, the grip strength of a soggy noodle, and no familiarity with precision tool manipulation via hammer, but these won't be a problem for your standard dwarf.

I think the great challenge to this is just how enormously expensive engraved (or etched or stamped) books will be, simply due to material costs. Parchment is bad, copper plate is going to be much, much more expensive per unit area, and no more efficient in terms of words per page. Arguably less so, since highly detailed engraving is much harder, comparatively speaking, than writing very small.

All of which which suggests to me that this would very much be produced in high prestige workshops for huge sums of money. If you can afford the hundreds of square feet of sheet metal necessary for a book, you can afford a very skilled artisan doing the copy and making it look good. I'd figure lots of illustrations, embellishments, possibly inlay of more precious metals for first letters, and so forth. You're creating a very permanent ( and difficult to move!) record of something extremely important, you aren't going to wuss out over some labor fees. It'd be like buying a top of the line private yacht and installing horribly uncomfortable seats to save a few thousand bucks.

This is also mostly going to be copies. Engraving is not fast enough to be useful for composing text, and is basically impossible to erase. I'd figure the composition could be done by painting sandstone tablets, which can be ground clean easily enough with a chunk of granite or similar.

[Zetakya]

Living underground means you don't even need to construct water towers, most water sources are above you anyway. Makes for convenient plumbing.

Makes for convenient incoming plumbing, the outgoing waste water disposal is another matter.

[Cikomyr2]

Makes for convenient incoming plumbing, the outgoing waste water disposal is another matter.

Just find a convenient lava pit man

And a chimney system to collect the steam, condensate it back into clean water

BAM you just justified steam power

[Pex]

The creators of Playdwarf keep their secrets.

[Sigreid]

So, thinking more about ways to have a grow chamber without breaking either magic or tech. Mirrors. Even if just highly polished metal mirrors could be used to bring sunlight down into specified chambers for growing things. There's be a lot of math and maintenance involved, but I think it would be possible.

[Peelee]

Makes for convenient incoming plumbing, the outgoing waste water disposal is another matter.
For dwarves, who are pretty much pigeonholed as diggers? :smallamused:

Just find a convenient lava pit man

And a chimney system to collect the steam, condensate it back into clean water

BAM you just justified steam power
Conversely, this. Quite nice.

[Grim Portent]

For dwarves, who are pretty much pigeonholed as diggers? :smallamused:

Conversely, this. Quite nice.

Having played Dwarf Fortress, water underground is not easy to deal with no matter how good at digging your beardie boys are unless you like having rotten bodies in the cistern. Rest in peace my brave sock loving idiots.


A possible option for water plumbing would be to build a dwarven city below a mountain spring or glacial meltwater stream but above an underground river. Preferably one that doesn't feed back into the spring somehow. Water comes in from above, flushes things down, underground river carries it away, sucks to be downstream in multiple ways. Would probably require Roman style public toilets with a common gutter to do your business in though, otherwise maintaining a strong enough flow to carry away solid waste might be difficult if you're dividing the water between thousands of individual toilets.

It would also probably not smell great, but toilets rarely do.

Or a dry toilet could work, with the resulting waste being collected, dried and burned as fuel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dung_fuel#:~:text=Dry%20dung%20is%20more%20com monly,content%20less%20than%2030%20percent.).


In any case, my general thought is that the real world had answers to these kinds of issues, they were just usually kind of gross when viewed through a modern lense. No one wants to know the dwarf king writes letters on lamb skin and has a duke that wipes his arse with a cloth and a bucket, but it's actually quite sensible worldbuilding for them to be there, and as a result I tend to prefer such mundane things over things like magical toilets or paper made of mushrooms.

[JackPhoenix]

It would also probably not smell great, but toilets rarely do.

And that's why dwarves are resistant to poison. Well, that, and the alcoholism.

[Peelee]

Having played Dwarf Fortress, water underground is not easy to deal with no matter how good at digging your beardie boys are unless you like having rotten bodies in the cistern. Rest in peace my brave sock loving idiots.

I've never played that particular plumbing simulator.

[Grim Portent]

I've never played that particular plumbing simulator.

Water's not a huge part of fortress design unless you want to do something ambitious like flooding Hell for the giggles or making water+magma traps or drowning chambers for invaders, but dwarves do need to drink and bathe, so they need access to some water, preferably a renewable source of water so you need to somehow tap a river or lake, surface or underground, for water.

Because life is cheap and dwarves are stupid many attempts to dig a cistern to keep water in wind up with the water being littered with dead dwarves who died in mining accidents or got caught in the rush of water filling the cistern. Or who managed to fall down a well and drown.


Another option for plumbing solutions has popped into my head.

The pig toilet. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_toilet) Helps plump out the diet of livestock without any real effort on the part of the dwarves.

[Leon]

Living underground doesn't mean they only ever stay underground (outside of examples where they do ~ Dragon age for example and even then they have trade contact with those who don't)