Ancient Dwarf Statues

The ancient dwarves used to venerate their most legendary ancestors by carving statues of them out of the mountain- or hillsides. These types of statues are not build anymore today and are of a specific style at least a thousand years old.

Ancient Dwarf Statues range from about 10m in height to more than a hundred meters tall, though the majority are between 20 and 50 metres. They are carved into rock and not free-standing, one reason why almost all of them have survived the times. Many of them stand in or near places of important battles or guard the entrance ways to valleys inhabited by the ancient dwarves.

According to legends, they used to be painted in bright colours, but over the centuries those colours have faded away and only rock remains. Some of the more recent statues (1000 to 1500 years old) are carved out of multi-layered rocks in such a way that the different colours of the different strata form decorative patterns or even show the features of the face or hands. Even dwarves today wonder how exactly this was done.

Another curious feature of the statues is that almost all of them have a walkway around the feet or sometimes higher parts that leads into a tunnel or room hidden behind the statue. In some cases, these are the entrances to vast underground complexes. Temples, fortresses, even side- or in a few cases main-entrances to dwarven cities. In other cases there is just a small shrine or room for shelter behind and nothing else. Curiously, there does not seem to be a pattern to understand which it is. Some huge statues hide but a shrine, and some small statues lead into cities. There are no visible features on the statues themselves either to discern what is behind.

The majority of Ancient Dwarf Statues - more than a hundred of them in all sizes - can be found within Hanzatia.