Designing a race of 7 foot tall dwarves

[Jay R]

I'm considering building a new race, but I'm not sure why yet. The idea tickles me.

The race is a relation to dwarves, but 7-8 feet high. I intend to take some dwarven carboard minis I already have on pdf, and just make them bigger.

So how would they be different from normal dwarves? How would they be different?

Would they still be miners, or would the additional height make that too difficult? Would they be allies to normal dwarves, or rivals? [They wouldn't likely mine in normal dwarf mines, which are not necessarily tall enough for them to walk through comfortably.]

I'm deliberately not naming the system, because I'm asking about fluff. Once I know who they are, statting them up will be easy.

Once we have enough ideas about the race, I might add the system for more discussion.

Does it sound fun? Any ideas?

[Geddy2112]

How related? Can they interbreed with other dwarves? If so, are the offspring sterile or even viable? Are the crossbreeds true hybrids that have the abilities of one or the other? Is one breed dominant so a cross results in more traits from one side?

In general, the larger breeds of an animal species don't live as long, as seen in dogs.

They would likely be faster than normal dwarves due to the longer legs.

Check out the muls from dark sun, the half dwarf half human hybrids. They are examples of a "taller" dwarf.

[BWR]

I like (unsurprisingly for those who know me) how dwarves are treated in Mystara. The 'common' dwarf, the PHB version, is actually taken from an older 'proto-dwarf' race and intentionally engineered by an Immortal to become hardier, more resistant to poison and moved underground to help them survive the destruction of Blackmoor and the radiation that followed. As a side-effect they became resistant to magic and disinclined towards arcane magic.

You might do something similar with the PHB-dwarves seeing the tall ones as hopeless throwbacks and primitives while the big-dwarves (oxymoron aside) see the PHB-dwarves as mutations bred as one would animals.

Considering D&D and similar systems/settings already have ridiculously big caverns underground I don't see any problem with the BDs being miners if you wish. The two could be rivals for the same veins and caverns in this case.

[Telonius]

I think the big question of how different they'd be would be in how close their contact is. If it's more of a race of Carrot Ironfounderssons, who have a huge amount of cultural contact with Dwarves, the cultural differences aren't likely to show up too much. They'd still have similar beliefs and cultural values, similar deities. (If their height is seen as a blessing or curse of the gods, then that might be different).

If they don't have too much contact, or if they'd been in a different environment than the average dwarf, they'd have developed different customs, methods of fighting, and specialties.

[Joe the Rat]

Sounds like someone has been playing Kingdom of Loathing.

Here's a question: Are your 7' Dwarves Stretch Dwarves, or are they proportionally 1 2/3 larger? Stretch Dwarves could come out a lot like Hairy Goliaths. Square-Cube My Ass Dwarves might bump over into Large size. On the low side height-wise, but definitely pushing on the mass and square footage.

Dwarven mines are probably still okay. Head Canon: The time-honored 10x10 hallway is a dwarven creation. They like to be able to move and fight two abreast (10'), and the extra ceiling height makes it easier swing picks and axes, and leaves room for air. Yeah, they could do a lower roof, but 2:1 is too short, and 3:2 (6 and change) isn't a nice proportion. 1:1 has a lovely symmetry to it.

[nedz]

I think that the concept you are looking at here is called Giants.

The relationship between them and their shorter relatives is just fluff - whatever the system.

[Jay R]

I think that the concept you are looking at here is called Giants.

Closer to ogres, really. I was at one time considering them a dwarven analog of the Uruk-hai (but I couldn't bring myself to call the Khazak-hai).

Actually, the idea came in part from the "giant class" in original D&D, which included kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc., all the way up to giants. It occurred to me that there could be a "dwarf class" that goes from dwarves to big dwarves, and then who knows? Fire Giants might (eventually) turn out to be unrelated to the real giant races, and just another dwarf race taller than the ones I was introducing.

The relationship between them and their shorter relatives is just fluff - whatever the system.

You'll recall that I said I wasn't asking about mechanics, just fluff.

Here's a question: Are your 7' Dwarves Stretch Dwarves, or are they proportionally 1 2/3 larger? Stretch Dwarves could come out a lot like Hairy Goliaths. Square-Cube My Ass Dwarves might bump over into Large size. On the low side height-wise, but definitely pushing on the mass and square footage.

They are proportional, both because I like the look of dwarves, and because I'm making them from dwarf cardboard minis that I expand before printing. They will dress and fight like dwarves for that reason.

In a world with giants and flying stone gargoyles, I have no worries about the cube-square law. It's as meaningless as the laws of motion and thermodynamics.

"Large" size? Probably, but size categories aren't defined in 2e, which is where these will appear.

Dwarven mines are probably still okay. Head Canon: The time-honored 10x10 hallway is a dwarven creation. They like to be able to move and fight two abreast (10'), and the extra ceiling height makes it easier swing picks and axes, and leaves room for air. Yeah, they could do a lower roof, but 2:1 is too short, and 3:2 (6 and change) isn't a nice proportion. 1:1 has a lovely symmetry to it.

I've been in a couple of 19th century mines. Extra headroom costs lots of work and/or dynamite, and they just don't do it. My headcanon is that great halls are ten feet tall, for high lamps and decorations, but actual mining tunnels are just wide enough for the mining carts, and just tall enough for the miners. This also gives the dwarves a combat advantage when attacked by taller races.


----------------

I'm not worried about interbreeding. They are a race that has been isolated for a long time, and are just now re-discovered by the PCs. This way, the PCs have to learn what they are, because nobody knows yet. In fact, the only interbreeding the party knows of is that one of them is half-Fair Folk, from Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles. Since there are neither orcs nor elves in this world, the issue hasn't come up otherwise.

I'm hoping to lead the party astray, and make them believe they've found evidence of a small human race, when they find old friezes portrayingh humans smaller than dwarves. Of course, these are normal people and the big dwarves.

By the way, everybody in the world knows that dwarves were wiped out in the dwarf/giant wars a couple of hundred years ago. When the PCs get advanced enough to face giants, they will learn that there actually are real dwarves left, but they've been enslaved underground by the giants.

[Jormengand]

They must moil for meat, and no-one must be able to know what that means except for them.

[Milo v3]

The Makers from the Darksiders series are "Giant Dwarves", so giving them a look could be helpful.

[Comet]

In one campaign I ran years and years ago I had the dwarves worship a single deity, the First Dwarf. When the players travelled into dwarf heaven and saw the corpse of this First Dwarf, they found out that he was a titan the size of an entire mountain range. Turns out that the dwarves had been shrinking and shrinking throughout the ages and what we had now were the remains of a once gargantuan race, laid low by the grinding teeth of time.

[Joe the Rat]

They are proportional, both because I like the look of dwarves, and because I'm making them from dwarf cardboard minis that I expand before printing. They will dress and fight like dwarves for that reason.

In a world with giants and flying stone gargoyles, I have no worries about the cube-square law. It's as meaningless as the laws of motion and thermodynamics.

"Large" size? Probably, but size categories aren't defined in 2e, which is where these will appear.

Ah, 2e. Sounds like "Ogreish" is about your target then. Maaaaaybe Half-Ogres, though they come up a bit light. Too long from Dark Sun - would Half Giant be the right size?

In the world of "Perfectly spherical zone of fire" spells, SQLmA makes for a flippant label. Like everything else I name.

[Garimeth]

I'm considering building a new race, but I'm not sure why yet. The idea tickles me.

The race is a relation to dwarves, but 7-8 feet high. I intend to take some dwarven carboard minis I already have on pdf, and just make them bigger.

So how would they be different from normal dwarves? How would they be different?

Would they still be miners, or would the additional height make that too difficult? Would they be allies to normal dwarves, or rivals? [They wouldn't likely mine in normal dwarf mines, which are not necessarily tall enough for them to walk through comfortably.]

I'm deliberately not naming the system, because I'm asking about fluff. Once I know who they are, statting them up will be easy.

Once we have enough ideas about the race, I might add the system for more discussion.

Does it sound fun? Any ideas?

So I actually homebrewed a similar race in my setting, in terms of physiology. In my setting they weren't actually related to dwarves though they were their own race, and had a highly magical society. So I will start with the assumption yours are NOT highly magical, because you did not say they were. So here is my take on your giant dwarves, which I'm trying to imagine as being very similar to dwarves, but larger.

They also live near mountains, but for rock quarries! They are expert masons, putting even the normal dwarves to shame. Their great strength and size enables/enabled them to move stones from further, and build bigger, before pulleys and the like were adopted. They also mine for metals, but usually as it is incidentally discovered while harvesting other materials. They value metal greatly because it is a pain for them to mine for it. On the other hand, they are large, hardy, and strong - so maybe the mines are not as great an inconvenience for them as we think? Up to you.

Because they are renowned stone masons they have built large great cities for themselves, but not underground - they are large, and building above ground, as opposed to clearing areas below ground, is far easier. Since stone is their primary resource for building, not wood, they do not have a widely scattered number of smaller villages and cities - they have organized into large city states. (What their city states look like would probably depend on what the primary diet in their area consisted of. Do they fish a lake or sea? Do they have large arable farm lands?)

That's all I have for right now but some other questions would be:

How long have they been isolated?
Do they know about what has happened to the giants and dwarves?
Are they intentionally isolated from the portion of the world the PCs are from, and/or are they aware of its existence?

[Knaight]

One option for them is to have them also be miners, but to tend to do a different type of mining. The height gets in the way a lot more in tunnel mining than in open pit mining, and the enhanced strength that comes with the size is downright helpful for mining purposes. I could see them having a bunch of hilltop settlements, where the bottom of the hill is also a pit mine. This also has broader cultural implications - conventional Dwarven culture is going to be affected by having a downright enormous population density underground, in very tight spaces. A lot of the traditional depiction of being regimented and rules bound could easily be a side effect of that. With the pit mining dwarves though, there's less of a push for that. The population is less packed, there's room for surface agriculture (probably more in terms of herds of goat and sheep than farming), and new construction isn't the sort of extremely laborious process that takes a highly organized society putting extensive societal resources into it, and can instead be done by comparatively small groups in most cases. Again, that's a reason for the society to be less organized. Then there's the matter of conflicts - dwarves are typically depicted as engaged in long term intermittent warfare with numerous other species, but these are explicitly isolates. They're also much more dangerous individually. Both of these are changes that remove factors that push for more central organization.

With that said, the whole idea of clans build around mines still works fine. Instead of a big underground hall that belongs to one clan, you'd have a pit mine and hilltop that is the center of clan activity. That then stretches outward a bit, with herders moving around in what would likely be considered clan territory, albeit outlying clan territory.

There are a few areas where organization is more critical. One is the mines themselves, which likely necessitate some sort of central authority, if only over the miners. Then there's what to do with all the stone that gets dug up. One possibility is to keep the dwarven propensity for monumental architecture, but instead do things that take advantage of being on the surface. There's the fairly simple and usually wood and thatch houses, pens, etc. The monumental architecture is then directed into massive cisterns that collect rainwater, small scale aqueducts, and the occasional defensive fortification. I'm picturing a fairly low population density, if it's increased the use of stone could get a bit more ubiquitous and the monumental architecture more monumental.

[Garimeth]

One option for them is to have them also be miners, but to tend to do a different type of mining. The height gets in the way a lot more in tunnel mining than in open pit mining, and the enhanced strength that comes with the size is downright helpful for mining purposes. I could see them having a bunch of hilltop settlements, where the bottom of the hill is also a pit mine. This also has broader cultural implications - conventional Dwarven culture is going to be affected by having a downright enormous population density underground, in very tight spaces. A lot of the traditional depiction of being regimented and rules bound could easily be a side effect of that. With the pit mining dwarves though, there's less of a push for that. The population is less packed, there's room for surface agriculture (probably more in terms of herds of goat and sheep than farming), and new construction isn't the sort of extremely laborious process that takes a highly organized society putting extensive societal resources into it, and can instead be done by comparatively small groups in most cases. Again, that's a reason for the society to be less organized. Then there's the matter of conflicts - dwarves are typically depicted as engaged in long term intermittent warfare with numerous other species, but these are explicitly isolates. They're also much more dangerous individually. Both of these are changes that remove factors that push for more central organization.

With that said, the whole idea of clans build around mines still works fine. Instead of a big underground hall that belongs to one clan, you'd have a pit mine and hilltop that is the center of clan activity. That then stretches outward a bit, with herders moving around in what would likely be considered clan territory, albeit outlying clan territory.

There are a few areas where organization is more critical. One is the mines themselves, which likely necessitate some sort of central authority, if only over the miners. Then there's what to do with all the stone that gets dug up. One possibility is to keep the dwarven propensity for monumental architecture, but instead do things that take advantage of being on the surface. There's the fairly simple and usually wood and thatch houses, pens, etc. The monumental architecture is then directed into massive cisterns that collect rainwater, small scale aqueducts, and the occasional defensive fortification. I'm picturing a fairly low population density, if it's increased the use of stone could get a bit more ubiquitous and the monumental architecture more monumental.

That's actually rather similar to what I was imagining, I just didn't imagine them living in the pit mine, more so that they transported the rock and stuff nearby and built cities there. Good observation about the sheep and goats. The aqueducts and cisterns are also good, but I think that you could combine that with the monumental architecture. I agree about the low population density.

EDIT: Just wanted to clarify that I'm just jointly spit-balling ideas with you.

[Knaight]

That's actually rather similar to what I was imagining, I just didn't imagine them living in the pit mine, more so that they transported the rock and stuff nearby and built cities there. Good observation about the sheep and goats. The aqueducts and cisterns are also good, but I think that you could combine that with the monumental architecture. I agree about the low population density.

I was thinking of the aqueducts and cisterns as the monumental architecture. Even smaller aqueducts are pretty impressive feats of engineering, and the cisterns would preferably be huge. I could also see networks of dams between hills to create reservoirs. As for cities, while that could work it undercuts the low population density a bit. I'd go in for more of a rural hill tribe sort of situation, where the hilltops are population centers but not huge.

[mikeejimbo]

I think that the concept you are looking at here is called Giants.

The relationship between them and their shorter relatives is just fluff - whatever the system.

Interestingly, I have a setting where dwarves, gnomes, and giants are all closely related. Dwarves and gnomes share a genus, while all are in the same family. Dwarves and gnomes enslaved giants at one point in their history, and even now giants are second class citizens.

[Temperjoke]

They could be descendants of prehistoric dwarves, from a time before the dwarves became cave-dwellers. Perhaps some event in the planet's past caused an extinction event among the dwarves, except for the branch that moved deeper into the caves, and this group that was isolated from the others. They could be hunter-gatherers, with amazingly precise and impossibly strong stone weaponry. Along this line, they could worship a more primitive form of the same dwarven god that your regular dwarves worship, using some of the same symbols and more basic forms of ritual worship.

[Douche]

In Warcraft you have the Titan constructs. The Titans were basically the progenitors of life, and they created runic constructs, basically walking statues, that were the original dwarves. It wasn't until the enemies of the Titans (the Lovecraftian old gods) created the curse of flesh (to weaken them and make them able to be killed) that dwarves were actually considered alive and able to reproduce

Anyway, a common theme in most of these comments is that the larger dwarves existed first - a neanderthal-like race that eventually became the dwarves we know today.

[Lord Torath]

Ah, 2e. Sounds like "Ogreish" is about your target then. Maaaaaybe Half-Ogres, though they come up a bit light. Too long from Dark Sun - would Half Giant be the right size?

No. Half-Giants are twice the size (Square-Cube law again) of humans, so between 10 and 12 feet tall (roughly double human height), and weighing between 800 and 1600 lbs (roughly 8 times human weight). Ogres are, as I recall, 9-10 feet tall. Minotaurs are about 7-8 feet tall.

[Jay R]

Wonderful ideas! Knaight and Garimeth are doing most of my work for me, and the rest of you are adding some great supporting details.

OK, they are now pit miners and masons primarily.

At least at first, there will only be one clan of them, both because of the isolation and the fact that is not a highly populated world, with lots of wilderness.

Because one large forest has been very difficult to cross for a very long time, and is now open again, it's easy to introduce previously unknown villages, clans, or other small-to-medium groups. My current idea, subject to immediate change for reasons of either plot or whim, is that there is an area in the mountains that has no good passes to less hostile lands. There is a very large pit mine nearby, and a small set of dwellings that would be called a village if isn't wasn't primarily one large stone structure. It's at one end of a high mountain meadow that can support food. Nearby mountains are forbiddingly steep, and rich in goats. The aqueducts bring in melting snow from nearby peaks. The whole area will probably be based on Trail Peak and the Bonito valley at Philmont Scout Ranch, with the stone village at Beaubien. (I may put old dragon bones at the site of the airplane crash on Trail Peak.)

The aqueducts bring water to the village/ stone palace. They are awe-inspiring in sight, but the most impressive aspects are hidden underground. They bring water via the closest possible route, whether there are miles of stone in the way or not.

No, these dwarves wouldn't know about the dwarf/giant war, because they've been isolated longer than that.

I don't need to work out taxonomy or evolution, since neither inherently exists in a magical world. Like Tolkien's Middle-Earth, I think this universe has existed about 10,000 years. The entire universe, including all gods, are created by the children of the Lord and the Lady, about whom the PCs know almost nothing.

Great ideas! Please keep them coming!

[nedz]

The Bell Pit mine concept is good, but in the real world a lot of mining takes place in Placer deposits. This is where the Ore has been washed out, and then sorted by streams. This would make them River-mining Dwarves. You could even give them boats - which leads into seafaring. These would be the McBoatyface clan perhaps

[Jay R]

The Bell Pit mine concept is good, but in the real world a lot of mining takes place in Placer deposits. This is where the Ore has been washed out, and then sorted by streams. This would make them River-mining Dwarves. You could even give them boats - which leads into seafaring. These would be the McBoatyface clan perhaps

Wow. You just added an excellent idea, which I should have already thought of.

I'd already planned to base their homeland in Northeastern New Mexico. But a few miles to the northwest of where I was about to place them was a mining town called Elizabethtown, which was based primarily on placer mining, with more water to be brought in by the Big Ditch - 11 miles of high aqueducts and sluices cut through solid rock - an incredible engineering project for the early west.

It failed. It never brought in enough water. Too much was lost along the way through evaporation and leakage. But with the superior engineering of the big dwarves, perhaps E'town would have survived, and not become the ghost town it is today.

Yes, they will be miners of stone. But where there is gold, miners will always seek it, and the aqueducts of the big dwarves will be an incredible architectural triumph, leading to the placer mines.

Thank you all for helping put together this idea.

[SethoMarkus]

The whole area will probably be based on Trail Peak and the Bonito valley at Philmont Scout Ranch, with the stone village at Beaubien. (I may put old dragon bones at the site of the airplane crash on Trail Peak.)

Had just been lurking until I saw this. Have to say, having visited that area, ir would definitely make for a great until-recently-isolated region! Beautiful landscape for a mining and grazing society as well!

[Knaight]

Wow. You just added an excellent idea, which I should have already thought of.

I'd already planned to base their homeland in Northeastern New Mexico. But a few miles to the northwest of where I was about to place them was a mining town called Elizabethtown, which was based primarily on placer mining, with more water to be brought in by the Big Ditch - 11 miles of high aqueducts and sluices cut through solid rock - an incredible engineering project for the early west.

It failed. It never brought in enough water. Too much was lost along the way through evaporation and leakage. But with the superior engineering of the big dwarves, perhaps E'town would have survived, and not become the ghost town it is today.

Yes, they will be miners of stone. But where there is gold, miners will always seek it, and the aqueducts of the big dwarves will be an incredible architectural triumph, leading to the placer mines.

Thank you all for helping put together this idea.

I like it. It also has some fun cultural implications - this is a very isolated group, so wherever the gold is going it's not trade. The population also presumably grows fairly slowly, and with the mining focus that means that gold will accumulate, and gold/person will probably increase. So this raises the obvious question of just who the moneyed class is? It's probably not the warrior class, because there probably isn't much of a dedicated warrior class - these dwarves are highly isolated, the food situation is pretty good, there isn't overcrowding, a lot of the sources of war are conspicuously absent. The miners who actually strike gold could potentially be very rich, but placer mining is likely to distribute it a bit more widely than is common in underground mines.

That leaves a few particularly noticeable options, all of which have real world analogs. There's the administrative class, who are actually responsible for overseeing the monumental engineering. These are likely higher ups in society, and them acquiring wealth makes a fair amount of sense. Great architects and engineers could also ask a lot for their services, so they might make money. The mines generally seem situated pretty close to the centers of civilization, which makes the mining town phenomenon where people find gold, a small town springs up, and the suppliers of equipment, food, alcohol etc. end up being the ones who cash in dramatically less likely. Still, it could happen.

What's particularly noticeable though are the herders. We've established that there really isn't much in the way of farming going on, and that makers herders more valuable. They provide the goat meat that is the mainstay of diet, they provide the goat wool and goat leather that likely provides a lot of the clothing. On top of that, in the context of something inspired by the American West, there's an obvious analog. Cattle Barons made a great deal of money, and that can work as an analog.

Then it comes to what the gold is actually used for. It might just be used for money, but that's both boring and not particularly clannish or dwarfy. Gold based jewelry on the other hand? That works just fine. Bracers and necklaces, earrings and circlets, beard decorations and hair pieces, there's a lot of jewelry that can use gold. I'm picturing goat ranchers with thousands of goats, wandering the hills, bedecked in expensive jewelry while a dozen workers under them help manage the herd, themselves wearing marginally expensive jewelry. Much of it is old, passed down families for generations.

[Jay R]

Very interesting thoughts.

Gold is not much use as money if everybody has a lot of it. So it is used for decoration.

They've been isolated from the rest of civilization by a forbidding haunted forest, unsafe to travel through. While this prevents war, it does not mean they don't need to defend their homeland. Raiders, hungry beasts, and other threats still abound. (I already established that the PCs' home village, elsewhere in the forest, was occasionally raided by goblins.)

And of course many D&D dangers come up from underground.

So there is a warrior class, but in a small village, that could be pretty much everybody. I want the world to feel medieval, so I will retain a straightforward feudal system. There will be a king / chief engineer / prime architect in charge. It's basically a small village, but living in a huge, impressive, well-decorated castle.

So the social situation is pretty much established. Now I need a plot. When the PCs discover them, what adventure will be there? Obviously, I can always time a raid with their arrival, but is there any clear plot element that can grow out of the set-up we've all just put together?

Possibilities:
1. Placer mining with a big water source is fast, effective, but really hard on the land. Erosion of the landscape is mot merely a by-product - it's the actual goal. Is this causing unnoticed problems far downstream?
2. Do gold deposits go down forever, or will they eventually dredge out all the available gold? Do they need to move to Baldy Town or French Henry (2 real-world gold mines to the east)? If so, that's too high up to easily bring in water.
3. Did the strip mining (whether an open pit or a water-sluice) cause difficulties for the underworld, and are monsters coming up from the underground for revenge?
4. Are the miners far-sighted enough to avoid these problems, and catching their used water below in a large lake? (Eagle Nest Lake was created with a dam in the early 20th century, not far below Elizabethtown.)

Anything else? What can the big dwarves do that affect the PCs?

[Garimeth]

Very interesting thoughts.

Gold is not much use as money if everybody has a lot of it. So it is used for decoration.

They've been isolated from the rest of civilization by a forbidding haunted forest, unsafe to travel through. While this prevents war, it does not mean they don't need to defend their homeland. Raiders, hungry beasts, and other threats still abound. (I already established that the PCs' home village, elsewhere in the forest, was occasionally raided by goblins.)

And of course many D&D dangers come up from underground.

So there is a warrior class, but in a small village, that could be pretty much everybody. I want the world to feel medieval, so I will retain a straightforward feudal system. There will be a king / chief engineer / prime architect in charge. It's basically a small village, but living in a huge, impressive, well-decorated castle.

So the social situation is pretty much established. Now I need a plot. When the PCs discover them, what adventure will be there? Obviously, I can always time a raid with their arrival, but is there any clear plot element that can grow out of the set-up we've all just put together?

Possibilities:
1. Placer mining with a big water source is fast, effective, but really hard on the land. Erosion of the landscape is mot merely a by-product - it's the actual goal. Is this causing unnoticed problems far downstream?
2. Do gold deposits go down forever, or will they eventually dredge out all the available gold? Do they need to move to Baldy Town or French Henry (2 real-world gold mines to the east)? If so, that's too high up to easily bring in water.
3. Did the strip mining (whether an open pit or a water-sluice) cause difficulties for the underworld, and are monsters coming up from the underground for revenge?
4. Are the miners far-sighted enough to avoid these problems, and catching their used water below in a large lake? (Eagle Nest Lake was created with a dam in the early 20th century, not far below Elizabethtown.)

Anything else? What can the big dwarves do that affect the PCs?

I think a combination of them would work well. I would combine 1 and 4 somehow to make a nature vs. civilization adventure. Maybe angry druids or fey creatures.

[Asmodean_]

Please name them on some sort of pun on oxymoron.

Oxyminers?
idk

[nedz]

Please name them on some sort of pun on oxymoron.

Oxyminers?
idk

Roxymoon

Noxymoor

Ono My Rox

[Garimeth]

So after further consideration:

The run-off has formed a lake, which flooded out the area that was down there, making everything that had been there before pissed. The erosion from years of the placer mining has pretty much worn out the area that they initially were in (no idea how long this would actually take. The families/community that supports the miners have settled at the lake, and the miners are actively seeking a new location. Local nature based entities, or otherwise, are pissed about what they have already done, and are banding together to attack/contain/stop them.

Do the PCs support the displaced/angry/vengeful creatures/druids/fey that have been displaced by the thoughtlessness of the dwarves? They want blood - not words!

Do the PCs defend the dwarves against the angry denizens, even though they brought the situation on themselves?

Could be developed more, but you get the gist.

Also I was discussing this topic with a co-worker and when I mentioned the goat and sheepherding he responded by asking why they aren't using terrace farms if they are masons, because their food production would be much better.

[Cernor]

Please name them on some sort of pun on oxymoron.

Oxyminers?
idk

Aurumorons, perhaps? The more obvious meaning of "Golden Morons" could be "bright dullards" in the local dialect?