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What is your take on the nature of the hollow rock Whiners produce? The books have various references to it and mention some possibilities but there isn't anything concrete (I think).

I'm quite happy for details to be left up to each group but we are in the process of saving a group of Whiners and I'll need to figure out the details sooner rather than later. So I was wondering whether any of you might have some ideas that I could use as inspiration (or steal shamelessly).

I'm particularly interested in the potential mutual benefit Whiners and Stone Singers might derive from a cultural exchange. This is hinted at in Vale of the Dead but no explanation is given.

Whiners are basically mammalian termites. It's not so much that they EAT the rock or that they can chew through stone. More that they use crude tools to break it down and then the grit and smaller rocks with their saliva is like the pulp used by other hive insects to build their hive.

So picture 1 part burrows and 1 part ant hills (like what ant eaters go after). There is a above ground structure made from the saliva/rock pulp that they build up with the material they gather from digging down. The bulk of the hive is bellow ground where the queen is protected.

I might add some sources of inspiration for the whiners' dwellings. Apart from wasps' and termites' building techniques, I also thought of swallows' nests, built from mud mud and saliva, and of course concrete, which has been used in our world since ancient times. A less obvious source of inspiration, which is nice to show players, is spongeous bone as seen in an electron microscope (I'm trained as a veterinarian and thus studied histology, which is a great source of strange landscapes):

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/e1/42/2d/e142 ... 004356.jpg

Thanks for chiming in Brior! It is really helpful to hear more about what you had in mind. The visual to go with that is great, too. That does give me a bit more to work with.

Can I ask what you had in mind for the interaction between Oralda and the Whiners in the Vale of the Dead? I get that both sides might be interested to learn about how others go about creating some structures but that seems to be of mostly academic interest. I didn't get the impression that they would actually be able to learn the other's method. An I missing something here?
Or is it more that the Whiners could help there Dwarfs in their building of the world while the Dwarfs could offer protection (the whiners sure could use some of that)?

Can I ask what you had in mind for the interaction between Oralda and the Whiners in the Vale of the Dead?

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To me, the dwarves have an academic and religious interest in learning as much as possible about stone and stone building, while the whiners could be offered a secure place, guarded by somewhat more reliable people than the current drinking orchs. I don't think the dwarves hope to get help with building the world as such, but rather hope to use the whiner techniques for certain tricky structures. It might turn out that they can't benefit, but it's worth a try.

This is my take, and as always I encourage other interpretations.

Thanks, that makes sense and does give me some more ideas on how to handle the Whiners my group has adopted.

Btw, if you'd like to read more about that, there are session write-ups (mostly from the perspective of our Elven minstrel) here: https://journeysofthelost.obsidianporta ... enture-log