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duergar speaks scottish? resolved.

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:08 pm
by aaron22
i was wondering if duergar speak in the same scottish accent that surface dwrarves typically do? research says that they might, but have not found anything definitive. wondering what you guys think.

Re: duergar speaks scottish?

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:15 pm
by Laughingman
Are there any sources that explicitly state that Dwarves speak with a Scottish accent?

Re: duergar speaks scottish?

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:16 pm
by kleomenes
Its one of those things that is more like we are perceiving it through a universal translator. Common isn't English either

Re: duergar speaks scottish?

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:51 pm
by aaron22
i was reading on it yesterday, but cannot find my source, but it goes something like this:

dwarf comes from another word like dworg or something.. no matter. old folk tales in scotland have them as some sort of dark fairy creature and were responsible for some bad things that happen. there might be several types of dwarves but i clicked on references of these dark dwarves as this was my real end. but i did not find much more on this other than a couple poems that referenced them.

then there was the grimm tales... they moved them out of this folklore and gave them personality and descriptions that are more toward what we have now. they are not scottish though. more german i guess.

then tolkien. tolkien gave them a scottish accent and the personality traits that we commonly see now. why? not sure. maybe because of the scottish background or maybe because it was fun. or even perhaps there was a political agenda.. i dont have the answers. just speculations.

Re: duergar speaks scottish?

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 2:01 pm
by aaron22
any way.. duergar are just regular dwarves that were clan duergar. these dwarves dug too deep and got into the UD and specifically into a mind flayer (hive?) these mind flayers made the clan into slaves and corrupted the poop out of their minds. then they rebelled and made a home deep in the UD and grew from there. but generation after generation cannot repair the damage that was done to their minds. so now they are nasty little (fatherless children). but do they still have the scottish accent or has that been removed from them by the mind flayers.. if i were a mind flayer i would suck out that annoying accent. but that is just me. im also not a mind flayer.

is this wrong? it abridged, but i think it is mostly lore. maybe i am way way off.. been that before. see my input on the thread about the gate spell.

Re: duergar speaks scottish?

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 2:19 pm
by GaretAthran
aaron22 wrote:im also not a mind flayer.
Sounds like something a mind flayer would say.

I mean, it might depend on whether Undercommon has become their native language instead of Dwarven, since it would be there that their accent would originate from.

Condemnation by Richard Baker has Duergar in it, so that might be a good place to look and see if they have the Scots accent.

Re: duergar speaks scottish?

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 2:46 pm
by aaron22
it is exile. have it and found the pages with the fight. and they are scottish LOL..

im still not a mind flayer even if you said condemnation but i totally "knew" you meant exile.

Re: duergar speaks scottish? resolved.

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:57 pm
by Korchas
Just chiming in, but Dwarves have many, MANY different folklores they are rooted in. Among them the general celtic (although those are far more famous for the sidhe (like the banshee!) and their likes), although the "dwarves" there are more like DnD-gnomes and halflings as mischievous tricksters, and more commonly the norse-germanic, where the currently more common picture of dwarves hails from as industrious, underground-dwelling grumps.


So if we were to go with that, they'd have to sound more viking. But they got stereotyped with scottish accents, so roll with it, I guess.


That said, since Duergar hail from the same ancient clans the shield dwarves and gold dwarves descend from, they should probably have the same accent, at worst with minor inflections. But I mean, what language do Illithids speak? grhlabrgl?

Re: duergar speaks scottish? resolved.

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 11:07 pm
by GaretAthran
Speaking meat words is for lower life forms. Superior beings use telepathy. (Also I think illithid would have a really bad lisp with all those tentacles)

Re: duergar speaks scottish? resolved.

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 3:37 am
by the_flame_of_anor
This side discussion on Illithids' communicative tendencies is mind blowing.