The Duar Race

The Duar race has built one of the most prolific and technologically advanced civilization in the Lands of Anár, having spread from the Homestead mountains of Greater Anár to all corners of the continent. As a race, the Duar maintain steadfastly to their personal and collective history and culture, believing in the continuity of both.

As a race, the Duar evolved in the mountains and hillsides of Anár, and have clung to these areas, developing homes, towns, even vast cities within and under the slopes of the mountains. The Duar have an affinity for enclosed spaces, the solidity and assurance of stonework, and the bounty of the mineral and metallic resources beneath the surface of the lands.

Duar Culture (top)

The culture of the Duar is based on the concept of personal responsibility and the importance of the individual amid the greater makeup of family, Clan, and society. The goal of every Duar is to become the greatest expression of themselves as possible within their life; the greatest task a Duar can and should undertake is his or her self-improvement.

The Duar are not, however, necessarily self-centered or selfish. They are encouraged to understand and honor the history of their family and Clan as a means to understand from what they spring. They are then encouraged to find their own path in a context of the larger Clan and societal dynamics. All Duar are responsible for their own actions and the consequences of the same. They are held to this standard and together, chose to cooperate for the good of all.

Many Duar find that their paths lead away from the commonly accepted bounds of society, and, when they choose these paths, the Duar of that society nod their heads and accept the choice at face value.

Conversely, the greatest evil that the Duar know is enslavement. Any coercion of someone away from their chosen path, be it through physical, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual means, is considered the greatest violation of a person. While the traditions of the Duar are respected and honored, they are never used as a bludgeon to keep new generations in line.

Society (top)

Duar society is based on a hierchical layering of units. The most basic is the individual itself. Beyond that is the immediately family of the Duar, which tend to be small and tight-knit. Several families often form a Clan derived from common ancestry. Clans then form communities, commonly called "Monts," which can vary a great deal in population.

Duar families are controlled by the matriarch of the line and entrance into a Clan are measured through marriage to the females of a family. While control of a family is often considered something of a group effort involving all members of the family, the final decisions are made by the matriarch.

Conversely, the leadership of Clans falls to the Patriarchs. The matriarchs of each family within a Clan form a council of advisors that in turn chose a Jarl that makes decisions for the entire Clan. This structure allows the Duar a certain level of balance to their decisions.

The Jarl of a Mont typically has a wide range of latitude in his power, but ultimately is answerable to the matriarch council and, through them, to the people at large. The Duar to not tolerate tyrants or despots for long and unpopular Jarls are often deposed by the matriarchs. With this said, the Duar take their governing seriously and often chose methodical, progress-minded solutions to rash actions.

Beyond their personal actions and choices, beyond the standing of their families and Clans, the Duar have few layers of social status. Profession is often a key element in a society's makeup, but in Duar society, where most professions are deemed equal on their face, these play little part. The Duar are more likely to judge an individual on his actions themselves, rather than the professional context in which they appear.

Nonetheless, the Duar respect artistry, service to the public, and spiritual wisdom. Professions that emphasize such things carry with them a slightly heavier weight in society than those that do not. All Duar, however, have an equal voice in their society and all points of view are heard and weighed equally.

Technology (top)

Technologically, the Duar have the edge over other civilizations amid the Lands of Anár. Developing from family based, tribal bands into the Clans of today, the Duar society only began to achieve technological advance when the Clans began cooperating for their mutual benefit. This allowed them to move from hunting and gathering activities to establish an agrarian production base that allowed their population to expand.

Food production by the Duar is a well-balanced mix between animal husbandry and agrarian food production. Some of both activities take place in underground locations, with the herding of animals that normally dwell underground and the growing of fungi, lichens, and molds. Aboveground, the Duar herd a variety of small mammals for food production and domesticate larger mammals to assist with transport and heavy work. They have domesticated several grains and tuber species, which they use as the basis of their crops. Food production is still routinely supplemented by hunting activities, including the taking of large mammalian game and fishing.

As the Duar's population grew, they were able to develop professions other than food production, spanning many levels of craftwork, most notably stonework, gem craft, and metalwork. The creation of said crafts has given rise to a thriving middle-class that facilitates the exchange of food for worked goods (and vice versa) using either straight barter or monetary exchange. This has led to trade among Clans and Monts, which has had the side effect of exchanging information and craft techniques, as well as facilitating the spread of domesticated plants and animals to all locations where Duar dwell.

The Duar technology level is most obviously expressed in their architectural and mechanical achievements. The Duar built elaborate underground communities with extensive artwork and layouts. They often marshal the spaces they create as both tribute to their families and Clans and to higher forces that they honor. Hand-in-hand with these communities, the Duar utilize hyraulic forces, from rivers both above and below ground sources to drive large mechanical apparati for a variety of purposes, from drilling through stone, to the grinding of grain, to the powering of defensive stoneworks (drawbridges, gateways,etc.).

Biology (top)

As a race, the Duar are short humanoids that evolved from ground-dwelling and burrowing predators. They have differentiated into four species based on environment and evolved into humanoids within the last 2 million years. They then have begun a long development into a civilization. Because of their close biological ties, the various species of the Duar consider themselves one unified race and one unified culture, even if there are differences between them.

The Duar range from 3'5" to 5'5" in height, depending on the species. While they generally favor stocky, strong builds, this varies by gender and species. Duar males sport more body hair, beards, and a generally heavier builds than do Duar females. The Duar hair colorations range widely from black, to dark brown, the light brown, to blond. Their skin tones also range highly. Generally the more fair skinned and light-haired a Duar is, the deeper they live beneath the surface, but this is not a hard-and-fast rule.

Life Cycle (top)

The Duar have a standard mammalian reproduction and life cycle. Female Duar generally give birth to one to two fraternal children, but are capable of carrying up to four children at a time. Despite that more than one child can be carried to term, identical twins, triplets, or quaduplets are extremely rare. Children are carried for 10 months prior to birth.

Duar children grow from infant to toddler in less than a year and are often mobile and speaking by that time. They grow quickly, moving through the child and prepubescent stage within 10 years. What follows is a protracted adolescence lasting nearly a decade, in which a Duar reaches sexual maturity fairly quickly, but does not reach full growth until the stage is over.

The adult stage of life for a Duar lasts forty years, during which time, fairly little changes on a physiological level. After this stage comes approximately 20 to 40 years of old age, called "Sage Time," if the Duar is male, and "Crone Time," if the Duar is female. Duar lifespans generally range between 90-110 years, although extremely venerable members of the race have reached upwards of 120 years of age.

Attributes (top)

All Duar, no matter the species or the gender, share common physiological attributes based on their common genetic heritage.

Heightened Sense of Smell: As a holdover of their formerly predatory nature, all Duar have a heightened sense of smell and are able to distinguish specific aspects of their immediate environment by smell alone.
Low-Light Vision: The Duar have developed eye sight allowing a Duar to operate normally utilizing little to no light. In combination with their heightened sense of smell, this affords the Duar the ability to operate normally in their underground dwellings.
Thin Breath: The Duar naturally live underground. As one of their adaptations to that environment, they are able to survive for extended periods breathing very thin air, such as might be found at high altitudes or deep underground.
Musk: Having developed as a defensive measure from their animal past, the Duar maintain the ability to emit complex scents from glands in their skin. While to the uninitiated, these scents can be baffling, Duar instinctively understand these signals, adding a layer of invisible "body language" to Duar communication.
Interbreeding: All the species of the Duar can technically interbreed with one another, as they share enough of a common biological heritage to do so. Generally, the child of an inter-species relationship favors one of the parents more than the other, but they also share of a blend of characteristics.

Species (top)

While the Duar, as a race, share common attributes and ancestry, they have differentiated into several major species. The differentiation began due to environmental differences, but over the last twenty-five thousand years, as the Duar have developed a unified culture and civilization, the environmental distinctions have become moot.

The Duar: the main species of the Duar race are the Duar themselves, who utilize the name for their species and the race as a whole. The Duar are stocky, serious-minded, both logical and intuitive at once, and who build elaborate architectural spaces within the mountains and deep beneath the earth. The Duar have several subspecies:

Dûnduar: The Dûnduar live underground, but have the a great deal of contact with the surface. Because of their chosen environment, this subspecies of the Duar is generally what other races think of when they think "Duar." The Dûnduar dwell in the mountains and in the foothills of mountain ranges in elaborate underground cities and often serve as intermediaries between other races and those Duar who live deeper.
Grûnduar: The Grûnduar live in the deep reaches of the earth, rarely venturing to the surface. As such, they tend to be more insular and less trustworthy than the Dûnduar, but with enough contact, they can be won over. They also tend to be more tradition-bound than other subspecies of Duar.
Ûnduar: Where as the Grûnduar live deep, the Ûnduar live deepest, exploring the abyssal caverns far beneath the surface of the world. They tend to be fringedwellers, preferring lives outside of mainstream Duar civilization, but are consummate explorers in their own terrain. Few races know the Ûnduar exist, and the Ûnduar prefer it that way.
Drûduar: Like the Ûnduar, the Drûnduar also live on the fringe of Duar civilization, although instead of dwelling deep underground, the Drûduar live almost entirely on the surface amid the forests of the world. As such, they have the most contact with the Kernuar and generally strive for good relations.

Nôkuar: The Nôkuar are slightly smaller and slightly more slender than the Duar. While the Duar are tradition bound and honor their past, the Nôkuar prefer to look toward the future. They tend to be intellectual, experimental, explorational, and are credited with a better wit than the Duar.
Báguar: Conversely, the Báguar are the homebodies of the Duar race, prefering to establish rural communities in often isolated locations and to maintain their way of life without outside intervention. They have a tradition of hospitality toward visitors, but do not seek out adventure or action within the political realm. The Báguar are generous, insular, and as traditional as the Duar.
Átuar: With an affinity for bodies of water, from streams, to rivers, to the ocean itself, the Átuar are the most eclectic and accepting of the Duar species, having frequent interactions with other races. The Átuar are diplomatic, accepting, and willing to learn, and see life as a great river with many stops along the way.

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