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So here I was trying to think up new and fun and different character ideas for Pathfinder 2e, when something occured to me . . . why not make a Dwarven Swashbuckler? He could run around with a handaxe and pretend to be just another Dwarven warrior, but there's something . . . off about him. Like how he doesn't use a shield and how he's always tumbling about. Like I said, fun, kooky idea even if it isn't optimal.
So here I was going through character creation process to see if it would work and I wanted this guy to be REALLY Dwarven . . . y'know as a silly contrast to him being a SWASHBUCKLER. So I decide he's from the Five Kings Mountains. I decide on the background 'Courier' as that explains where he got his acrobatics training, jumping and parkouring around the city to deliver missives. Courier gives you a lore of the settlement you lived in. Great. Wanted to figure out where his hometown was anyway.
Only, I go to look it up and . . . there's nothing. Apparently there are a ton of Dwarven cities all linked through tunnels and iron bridges all across the five kings mountains and . . . none of them are named or expanded upon? Seriously, I could find only reference to two cities: Saggorak, a FORMER city that fell to an orc horde and is now inhabited entirely by vengeful dead, and Kovolar, a SMALL settlement on the outskirts of Saggorak that apparently doesn't have undead. That's it.
Really? No other cities? In the 12 years Paizo's been making things, they haven't had ONE AP or a few PFS scenarios where pathfinders got to visit some cities in the five kings mountains?
Am I missing something or is there just no information here other than . . . Dwarves live underground here I guess.
EDIT: Oh, okay, so I found Highhelm, which is the capitol and gives me a bit more to go on. But I mean, that's only three cities to choose from. Nothing else? I mean, we have a detailed map of every city in Taldor and keep going back there all the time, but we only have three dwarven cities? Heck, we've gotten more backgound on the ORC tribes with Belkzen and the like.
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The main book about dwarves in PF1 is Dwarves of Golarion which is actually from 3.5 days. PF2 has stuff about dwarves in the LO series but put the focus more on showing off dwarves from the rest of the world that hadn't gotten any attention so far. It looks to me like Dwarves of Golarion still heavily informs most scenarios featuring dwarven ruins etc; it's aged better than a lot of other X of Golarion books.
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Saggorak/Kovlar is fully detailed in book 4 of Age of Ashes actually!
Is Kovlar small? Lost Omens World Guide presents it as a major settlement.
Anyways, I stopped by to let you know there's a PF1 RPG Superstar module called Down the Blighted Path that details another city : Davarn. It's described as an important trade-hub between the Five Kings Mountains, Druma and Andoran, if I recall, as well as a mining town. There are a few pages at the end with a map of the city and description of a few key locations, including information about characters and organizations in the city. The first part of the adventure also details an annual event to celebrate the beginning of Spring and opening of trade routes. Might be interesting for you.
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If you can wait a few months longer, Guns & Gears is likely to have at least something about dwarves, since Dongun Hold is where a lot of guns come from.
Is Kovlar small? Lost Omens World Guide presents it as a major settlement.
Anyways, I stopped by to let you know there's a PF1 RPG Superstar module called Down the Blighted Path that details another city : Davarn. It's described as an important trade-hub between the Five Kings Mountains, Druma and Andoran, if I recall, as well as a mining town. There are a few pages at the end with a map of the city and description of a few key locations, including information about characters and organizations in the city. The first part of the adventure also details an annual event to celebrate the beginning of Spring and opening of trade routes. Might be interesting for you.
See this is where my thought process is going. It's likely that the information is out there, but buried in modules and APs. And if not, that's also okay? As a GM, I do enjoy when I can take a part of the world and define it myself (as a player I like this, too!) But Kovlar definitely has a wealth of information and is very interesting with it's guild system and how they handle the undead that plague their borders.
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[quote-From Dwarves of Golarian via the Pathfinder Wiki] Kovlar sometimes, but rarely and probably incorrectly, written Kolvar) is a small dwarven city in Five Kings Mountains built in the tunnels and caverns at the southern outskirts of the fallen great city of Saggorak.Is Kovlar small? Lost Omens World Guide presents it as a major settlement.
Anyways, I stopped by to let you know there's a PF1 RPG Superstar module called Down the Blighted Path that details another city : Davarn. It's described as an important trade-hub between the Five Kings Mountains, Druma and Andoran, if I recall, as well as a mining town. There are a few pages at the end with a map of the city and description of a few key locations, including information about characters and organizations in the city. The first part of the adventure also details an annual event to celebrate the beginning of Spring and opening of trade routes. Might be interesting for you.
Also given it is just one section of a much larger city, I dunno how big it can be.
Also thanks for the city of Davarn. That didn't come up in my research.
Looking closer, seems Davarn only has 1000 dwarves where as Kovlar has 4000, but given how comically off the populations of cities are in Pathfinder, that is probably a poor ranking to go by. After all, Absolom is said to have only 300,000 souls, while it is estimated Rome at its height had around a million (and that is WITHOUT magic teleportation and food/water creation and the like) Plus medieval France was supposed to have MULTIPLE settlements of over 100,000 souls, whereas I can find no other Pathfinder city with over 100,000. Maybe Oppara so . . . . I dunno what I am saying. I don't trust the population counters of pathfinder I guess.
For one, Jacobs dislikes Dwarves, which he said is why he put out the book on them so early (3.5 as noted) to get them out of the way. So yeah, Paizo has shunned using them in APs, though with so much lore to cover it might not be so intentional.
PFS had a season arc tied to Dwarves which was pretty important. There should be more lore there, though it might only reflect what you already have.
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I doubt populations are "comically off" since an original developer must have known about "Rome hit a million" since that's well-known. It did take awhile to get to that! In all the turmoil Golarion may be struggling to reach that. And numbers also shrank to far less than that in the aftermath. Assuming these college-educated people had basic knowledge of history means they chose lower numbers in Golarion for a reason. I couldn't say if it were due to historical narrative (i.e. devastation), cultural reasons in its present, or to keep numbers tractable in the context of having much land unsettled and unexplored or for GMs to balance in their minds. Also, for all the advances magic brings, it also brings chaos. One spell can undo quite a lot too.
I would be interested in knowing why, both in game and metagame!
There are better developed regions of Golarion, outside the standard maps. How are their numbers?
I'm reminded of a friend describing her hometown as a "large city", though it only had a population comparable to the suburbs in my area whose main city would pale if compared to the metropolises like San Francisco which gets dwarfed by Tokyo or Mexico City. But yes, her city did dominate its region so I guess she was right?
And when I lived in Japan, one way I'd describe the city I lived in was a "rural city of a million" because...it was, at least at its heart even if the numbers suggested otherwise. Then there was the single battle for a castle in Japan that involved more troops than all of Europe had at the same time. What an amazing discrepancy, right?
Which is to say the population-dial can be tuned up or down as needed and remain plausible. I don't know why Paizo went with modest numbers, but I expect there are reasons.
Ironfang Invasion Book 3: Siege of Stone had a whole primer on the Sky Citadel Kraggodan, and a big chunk of the adventure revolves around it.
I'd also recommend the Lost Omens character guide, which doesn't focus on settlements much but does go into a lot about different dwarven culture.
The issue you may be running into is that level of detail usually requires buying books, as it falls outside of the OGL or whatever. And then you need to figure out which books you need.