Dolazur

Sovereign of Cunning and Conquest.

Lore pending

This page carries Dolazur’s strictures and little else. The wider lore of his faith — his halls, his rites, his clergy, his place among the Sovereigns — has not been written yet. What is here is complete and canon; it is simply not the whole page.

Dolazur is the enemy who was never there.

A battle is a thing that has gone wrong. It is what two commanders resort to when neither of them did the work, and the survivors are permitted to call it glorious afterward because somebody has to. Dolazur’s followers do not fight battles. They arrive at the end of them. They come out of cover and out of the dark, put the fear into a man or into a whole rank of men at once, take his eyes, his breath, or the use of his own hands — and the oldest of them need nothing but a look to pull a man down.

The dwarves put it as a question. A hundred hounds run down two wolves and offer them honest battle. One wolf turns and fights in the daylight, and they tear him into a hundred pieces. The other goes into the dark, and comes back every night for a hundred nights, and at the end of them he is the only thing still standing. Which of the two was brave?

An advantage is a title. This is the whole of Dolazur’s theology and the dwarves have never seen the need to soften it. A thing held is held by whoever could take it. Ask a follower of Dolazur by what right he commands, and if he likes you he will explain that you have just asked him by what right he is standing there, and that the answer is the same, and that you are welcome to test it.

Dolazur’s traditions all tell the same story, and they tell it on his day. Three of the first powers swore to meet Death at dawn. When the dawn came the eldest was elsewhere, carrying something heavy out of the Citadel of the Dead while his brother and sisters bought him the hours with their soldiers’ lives. Others tell it as an accusation. The dwarves tell it as the one clear head in the room: the battle could not be won, could never have been won, and the oath had been sworn by fools to a thing that does not die. Three of them kept faith and bought a defeat. One of them looked at it honestly and came away with the weapon.

Traditions that teach him: the Dwarven Forgepriest, and — asking more — the Gnomish Iconologist.

His worship day is Zol, market day, when a city counts what it has and tells everyone. He shares Zol with Kolkorn, and the two are closer than either likes to admit: on the same morning one servant reckons what a thing is worth, and the other reckons what it would cost to take.

The Sairans do not name him. Where a dwarf says Dolazur, a human says Vulkoor, Sovereign of Betrayal and Bloodshed — and tells the same story about the same theft on the same morning, and calls it appetite. The two brew the same poisons and curse with the same glance, and the human scholars have noticed. The dwarves’ position is that a thing seen from below looks like a knife and a thing seen from above looks like a war, and that this says nothing about the thing.

Strictures

Both of Dolazur’s traditions ask a great deal, and the deeper asks more. Find your own tradition below; it tells you what it adds to the one above it.

Dwarven Forgepriest

• A follower of Dolazur must always wear a ring of leather or cloth, visible upon his person. The ring must be fashioned from spoil, taken off an enemy who never saw him coming.
• A follower of Dolazur must find each day the weakness of one strong thing — a wall, a house, a company, a law, a man — and speak it to Dolazur, and do nothing whatever with it. The finding takes one hour (6 turns).
• On Zol, Dolazur’s holy day, a follower of Dolazur must tell the theft — the oath, the dawn, the empty place in the line, and what the eldest carried out of the Citadel while the others died for him. He must tell it to someone who has not heard it, and he must tell it as the dwarves tell it.
• A follower of Dolazur must never grant an enemy a fair fight. Where the ground, the hour, or the approach is his to choose, he must choose the one his enemy would least have chosen for him.
• A follower of Dolazur must never leave a beaten enemy the means to face him again.

Gnomish Iconologist

An iconologist of Dolazur keeps everything asked of a Dwarven Forgepriest above, and further:

• A follower of Dolazur must obey any follower of Dolazur who has bested him, until he bests them in turn.
• A follower of Dolazur must take no henchman, retainer, or sworn man he has not first bested himself. He must not trust loyalty that can be bought with mere coin.

The advantage

A fight he did not choose is not a fight he chose. Dolazur forbids the even engagement; he does not forbid surviving one. A follower set upon, cornered, ambushed, or handed a battle by a commander over him breaks nothing by winning it, and nothing by losing it either. The sin is walking into it.

The weakness he finds is not his to spend. It is given away. A follower who goes looking for a way into the counting-house because he wants what is in the counting-house has found nothing and offered nothing — that is a day’s work, and Dolazur is not owed a day’s work. What is owed him is the hour spent finding the crack in a thing that has no crack in it, in a wall he will never climb, in a man he will never meet again. The wall is beside the point. The habit is the point, and the habit is his.

Bested is not beaten. The obedience runs only between followers of Dolazur, and only where both entered the contest as a contest and knew what it was. He may call for the return at any hour, and it may not be refused: a refusal is itself a defeat, and the obedience reverses on the spot. A follower who beats another and then hides behind his door has handed his own back.

A contest is not a killing. A follower may be bested at arms, at a wager, at a bargain, at a riddle, or at anything else two men can agree to lose — and a man he means to keep is a man he had better not cripple winning. His household is assembled entirely out of people who have lost to him and know it. This is not the disadvantage a Sairan assumes it to be. There is no argument in a dwarf-hall of Dolazur about who is in charge, and there never has been.

A rout is not a slaughter. To leave an enemy no means is to take the arms, the walls, the men, the office, the name — whatever it was he was strong with. Dolazur has no particular preference for killing him. A beggar in a ditch has been left no means, and will be a great deal more instructive to his friends than a corpse.