Dwarven motivation

Dwarves can be found everywhere in the known word these days, almost always involved with construction work of some sort. They’re laying down railroads, constructing bridges, paving streets or building houses. The dwarves are good at what they do and they seem to like doing it. They provide quality work at a very competitive price.

Sex and love and wealth
Many are those who have wondered at the behavior of the dwarves. Why do they work so hard for so little; what even motivates them at all? The dwarves don’t seem to care about wealth and riches or they’d be back in their mountains digging up gold and diamonds. They can’t be caring about sex and love as there are no female dwarves to love or make love to (and surely they can’t all be gay?).

The above is mostly true, apart from the bit about love. While it’s true there are no female dwarves and that the dwarves don’t care one bit for sex they’re still able to feel love. They love others of their kin, like brothers love each other, but they don’t form relationships with other dwarves the way members of other species do. The strongest love the dwarf feel is for their dig; their home. The tunnels they’ve helped carve out under the mountain, the dwarves who toil there still and most of all, the main fungus they were born from and whose ancient memories they share.

The mother-creator
The dwarves themselves don’t treat their main fungus as having a gender at all, but they refer to it as female in conversation with non-dwarves. The dwarven words for the main fungus when translated into non-dwarven languages all take on the feminine or neuter genus, never the masculine. Common words for referring to the main fungus of a dig are: mother, queen, lady, sister, matriarch, prima, crone and creator.

It is their relation to the main fungus and the memories the share with it that is the secret behind the motivation of the dwarves. It’s what drives them to do things and it influences what things they do.

Every dwarf knows that what they do in life will be remembered by all of their descendants and by the fungus who gave them life. On top of that they carry on their shoulders the memories of the sins of their ancestors. This knowledge that nothing they do will remain hidden is what drives every dwarf to keep a clear conscience and to always do their best at anything they do.

There’s more to it than keeping a clear conscience and always doing the right thing though. For many dwarves it’s not enough to do their best and keep a clean conscience. The desire to bring something a little extra to the shared memory is a strong motivation for many dwarves. They want to do or experience something that will bring joy to their mother-creator and which will make their descendants proud of them.

This can be simple things like taking part in building something or observing a beautiful piece of art. It can also be more complicated things, like running a charity organization, creating beautiful art or impressive feats of architecture or engineering. In short; anything that will bring pride and joy to the mother-creator and to future brothers.