Mod: Blast from the Past, Return of the Underkings

[PvK]

Spear convenience would depend a lot on the tunnel. I've tried simply carrying around fairly long (5-foot or 6-foot) poles inside a modern house and found it was fairly tricky to get around without bashing the pole into something.

[HoneyBadger]

PvK: True, that. But, you have to consider that, defensively, it has a lot of potential-and defense is what the dwarfs are all about. You wouldn't see a dwarf carrying around a spear in an area he didn't know well, or a place where it would would be a liability due to space.

Things become different, though, when it's in a tunnel *designed* by the dwarfs, and it's a spear *designed* by the dwarfs.

Personally, I think dwarfs would invent a lot of their own weapons. They're master craftsmen, with lots of time on their hands, and lots and lots of enemies.

There was an old issue of Dragon Magazine that featured new dwarfen weapons. Things like a crossbow that fired sharpened discs of metal-ideal for ricochet damage I would think, in those "hard to reach" places, the dwarfen claymore-a short, stout 2 handed sword, designed for dwarfs by dwarfs-with the phraise "short, thick, and nasty" as a byword, and the ceremonial dwarf battle-club, which-being a dwarf weapon-was a lot more than just ceremonial, made of metal inlaid, lead-cored hardwood, and used by dwarf calvalry mounted on angry mountain goats.

They might very well use axes frequently-I just don't see them as being their primary, be all-end all, weapon.
Maybe for dwarfs that live on the surface? where they need to chop down trees, to make charcoal if nothing else.
But does Gimli really *need* to be carrying around...what, 5 axes or so? What did he use to pick his teeth with? Maybe that's why dwarfs grow beards, to hide all the dental damage...

I think, the deeper down you went in a typical dwarf underkingdom, the less and less "typical" the dwarfs you'd meet would become. There might even be some women down there...