The fifth world is a high-technology world, tier 5. Global communication networks, sophisticated weaving and metalworking, caverns and tunnels lined with polished ores and adaptive woven pathways. There is no natural mana flow, and magical entities will find themselves in great peril if they leave the confines of Spire. Enchantments degrade rapidly and new spells are impossible. Technological entities are reliable and healthy. The fifth city itself is situated in a large subterranean cavern, surrounded by miles of rock and carved tunnels. The earth is rich in iron and other mineral resources, and only the area immediately surrounding Spire has been stripped fully of iron traces. The planet has an especially elliptical orbit and thus experiences far more extreme seasons than most worlds. It also has a very long orbit, completing one rotation approximately every 10 standard years. This is divided into 5 seasons, each lasting approximately 2 standard years.
In the spring, snow melts away and the surface experiences rampant regrowth. Seeds hidden beneath the ice erupt to life and grow at lightning rates, starting in the valleys but quickly climbing up to the tallest mountains. What remains of old paths and roads are quickly covered over, and carving out new passageways is an arduous task. The surface above the fifth city is far from any coast lines, with low elevation and high humidity. Shortly after the plant life emerges, animals who had hidden below ground for the winter will begin to dig their way up to the surface, including brave dwarven explorers. For dwarves this is a time of exploration, travel, reconnecting with other colonies, and occasionally of raising and training new young.
In the summer, the environment matures into a sticky jungle. Swamps form in the lowlands and new biomes manifest in the upper reaches of the jungle canopy. The air teems with small bugs and flying mammals. For the dwarves this is a season of cultivation, growing the many staple crops that only thrive on the surface. They carve wide fields out along the jungle floor, thriving between the trees. They traverse the rivers and swamps, fishing and hunting.
In the fall, water becomes scarce and both plant and animal life must compete for resources. Crops are harvested, food is preserved. Relationships with other colonies are solidified and dwarven explorers and diplomats return to their home colonies. Animals become aggressive, desperately hoarding food and other resources, fiercely territorial. The jungle begins to brown. Seeds flow through the air by the millions, congregating in deep drifts. Plants shrink, retrieving their energy and nutrients down into the earth.
The next season is one of cataclysm. Any animal life that hasn't retreated below the earth will find it hard to survive. The land grows dry and brittle. Great forest fires sweep the planet, annihilating the forests, mingling the drifts of sturdy seeds with great drifts of fertile ash. The planet bakes. Half-way through the season, the planet's plant life is fully seared away and the fires die down- then the rains begin. Suffused with ash, smoke, and soot, great torrents of acid rain fall upon the earth. It etches deep chasms into the stone, sweeps up ash and ruins in great floods. Any animal life that leaves its burrows at this time will be swept up in acid floods and find their flesh dissolved away. For the dwarves this is a time of subterranean industry. Invention, art, and performance thrive. Large scale infrastructure projects are undertaken. It's a time of culture, community, and creation.
After the cataclysm comes winter. Soot snow is followed by clean white snow as the atmosphere is cleaned out. Ice sheets build across the continent. Some animal life emerges at this time to explore the surface, including the occasional dwarven scout. For the most part, though, the planet is cold and still. Dwarves do some scouting, but mostly focus on preparing for spring, rationing out their food stores, and the production of new dwarven young. The winter is a time for egg laying and child integration. Sometimes even the birth of new dwarven bloodlines, as exchanged drones are integrated into their new hives.
The primary species of the fifth world are the dwarves. Dwarves are eusocial insectoid creatures who live in large colonies and self identify almost all members of the species as superorganisms. The dwarven individual typically has between 5,000 and 10,000 discrete bodies by the time it reaches full maturity (including a single sexually mature “queen” body), and most cities average around 12 dwarven individuals, plus a few dozen males.
Unfertilized eggs hatch into males. Males average around 5' tall. They have large fuzzy wings and antennae reminiscent of a moth's, and a soft layer of downy fur grows atop their exoskeleton with a rich mane around the neck. Males have limited telepathic connection with their mothers, but are considered unique and singular individuals and rarely stay with their home colony for long. Males are traded freely between dwarves, and they provide widely varied genetic stock for dwarves to cultivate and modify the bodies they make for themselves. Most dwarves will cultivate small harems of 3-5 males, and exchanging males is a key part of cementing close bonds with other dwarves. They are often pampered, well taken care of, but have little in the way of freedom of movement or individual autonomy.
At the center of each dwarf is a single queen. The queen is the first body of the dwarf. To make a new queen, a dwarf will separate off one of their larval bodies which has not yet entered the chrysalis. The larva is cared for by a dwarven body in much the same way as the eggs are by their fathers, saturating it in particular natural pheromones and altering its genetic makeup. This shift prevents the body from entering a chrysalis, instead going through a hormonal puberty in the open air to become a princess, a new dwarf. The princess retains her pupal caterpillar-like form, acquires a massive appetite, and in time will grow much larger than any other bodies, averaging around 20’ long. They grow new segments throughout their lives, with new limbs emerging from each, often the typical five fingered hand but with much variation. After a few dwarven years the princess will begin to produce eggs, becoming a proper queen and entering dwarven society. Until this point she is not considered a full dwarf and has no legal or social protections, so it’s common for princesses to be kept hidden by their parent until they reach maturity.
Once she reaches maturity, the queen begins producing eggs. Eggs are produced nearly continuously, albeit at a much faster pace during the winter months. It’s important to have access to males by this point, as unfertilized eggs will simply produce genetically identical males which the queen cannot use to fertilize her own eggs. With access to males, she’s able to pick and choose from segments of their genetic code to fertilize her eggs and produce new dwarven bodies. These fertilized eggs hatch into larvae, which will cocoon after a few months of eating and emerge as dwarven bodies. Dwarven bodies have no sex, and at the time of writing all dwarves who know the common tongue of Spire refer to themselves and each other with singular they pronouns, except for the Mother who uses she/her. All refer to individual bodies with it/its. Dwarven language does not differentiate between genders so much as differentiating between the singular and the superorganism. Males are distinct not because of their sex, but because they have only a single body.
Dwarven bodies average around 2'-3' tall. They have exoskeletons, three sets of limbs, antennae, 5 pairs of eyes, and a wide range of genetic and morphological variation. Some have wings, others singular limbs that branch at the elbows, others mantis-like claws or grasshopper-like legs. All have at least one set of 5-fingered hands. They come in all sorts of combinations of color and pattern. Young dwarves tend to exhibit a wide range of variation in their bodies, albeit with some strong trends from their original queen DNA, while older dwarves tend to be more specialized and dialed in on their genetic and aesthetic preferences. Males take an active role in caring for eggs, but once hatched the pupa are the sole responsibility of the dwarf themself. Pupa have some limited access to the queen’s empathy and telepathy, retaining a dreamlike awareness of their history and identity.
When a dwarf choses to have a child, that child retains this dreamlike understanding of the mother, even as they are split off from the mother’s continued awareness. In separating them, the mother gives her child a Name, which forms the core of their young identity and their role in the larger hive. The role of “The Mother” typically alternates generations, and making a new Mother is a politically fraught process (or, more specifically, selecting who will make a Daughter who will take up the role of Mother as she reaches maturity).
Within the dwarven legal code, a distinction is made between those rights which are inherited or granted, and those which are universally acknowledged.
Those rights which are universally acknowledged are referred to as the Basic rights. These include the right to freedom of movement, the right to make and exchange males, the right to third party tribunals, the right to food and water, the right to petition third party aid in their home cities, the right to rest and leisure, and the right to education and communication.
These rights which are granted are collectively referred to as the Rights of Motherhood. The Rights of Motherhood include the right to own property including land, the right to found a family, the right to trade with other cities, and the right to declare an Heir. Only this heir can inherit the Rights of Motherhood. They will be born as the Daughter, the Heir, or something of that nature, and will take on the name of The Mother and found their own city family when they come of age. The heir is always the youngest of her siblings, and will rely heavily on her siblings to aid her in raising the next generation. In cases where the Mother dies without declaring an heir, all dwarves of that generation receive the right to found a family. The first dwarf to publicly do so becomes the de facto heir and receives the rest of the Rights of Motherhood for their generation.
To have a child while your own Mother still lives is a grave insult to her. On a practical level, it is to claim that you understand better than her what the hive needs and what roles need to be generated and filled. On a physiological level, it is to introduce a new dwarf to the hive who lacks the empathetic connection with the rest of the city, and is thus often a source of great strife and conflict. When a Mother dies without declaring an heir, her children will debate, argue, or compete to make the next Daughter. As individual princesses don’t yet have full dwarven personhood in multiplicity, the slaughter of others’ princesses is common and acceptable. It’s common for hives to split into many competing factions or even physically relocate across the planet as the generations roll over. For dwarves who produce a Daughter before their own Mother has passed, punishments such as the dispassionate destruction of one’s spare bodies, the murder of the daughter, or full exile are common.
Dwarves experience perfect telepathy between their bodies, and perfect empathy between bodies that share a mother or between the mother and her children. Between dwarves of unrelated parentage, the other's emotions are read clearly but not viscerally experienced. The empathic connection is chemical, achieved via airborne neurotransmitters that flood the area as each dwarven body reacts to stimulus. Emotions will travel through a hive in waves, often faster than the news of what they're reacting to, enabling hives to act in quick coordination to any large scale change. Modern cities have advanced ventilation networks with specialized air filters and fans to accelerate or slow this process as need be. Thoughts, memories, and opinions are transmitted only between the bodies of an individual dwarf via short range electromagnetic transmission produced by a specialized organ adjacent to the brain. The signal is short range in nature, operates similarly to heavily encrypted radio transmission, and is transmitted and received via the antenna.
As the telepathic transmission is short range, capping out at around 500ft, dwarven consciousness is often fractured across many separate cells operating in parallel across the city. Only a single body needs to travel from one room to the next in order to synchronize these cells (or at least update the new cell to the state the old one was at when that body left). The more bodies a dwarf has in a small area the quicker and more accurate their processing is, but at a high enough saturation the overlapping radio transmissions can begin to cause various psychological difficulties for the dwarf, not to mention the logistical difficulties of providing proper oxygen supply and ventilation to a highly populated subterranean area. Different dwarven individuals manage this fragmentation in different ways. The Diplomat, the dwarf who most directly engages with the city of Spire prefers to spread themself thinly and evenly across the city, depositing small clusters of bodies to create relays that ensure that lone bodies rarely fall out of synch with the collective memory and decision making. The Engineer (protege to The Researcher whose work initiated the dwarven portion of the Convergence) tends to group themself in segments of a few hundred bodies, each working in parallel on different tasks, with runners traveling more frequently between groups of related projects. The segmentation allows for deeper focus on individual projects, at the expense of limited knowledge of their other goings on.
Males, as individuals, have very limited cognitive processing compared to their children and very little rights within dwarven society. They are traded between hives during the warmer seasons, and live their lives in service to their new hive's Mother and the children they help raise. Their lives are physically easy and they're well cared for, though they have little in the way of unscheduled time or decision making ability. As an individual, males are not considered true dwarves and have no legal rights within dwarven society.
As any larval princess becomes a mature queen, she begins to produce additional bodies. As dwarves acquire new bodies their awareness and cognitive ability grows. The first time a dwarf splits their bodies and consciousness is a major developmental milestone, and often serves to reinforce the fear of singularity. After all, the bodies that stay together experience very little change when one body walks off, but the body that leaves finds its senses stripped away, its mind slowed, its memory weakened, and only the simple thrust of its mission to guide it. The integration of this disperate memory when the bodies regroup is a powerful lesson in a young dwarf's life. This limited scale is emblematic of youth, but also of old age once the queen eventually dies, giving dwarves a similar spectrum of physical and mental decline in old age to singular members of other species.
Dwarven technology is highly advanced. Due to their utter lack of innate magic, dwarves can handle iron freely, and have the most advanced metalworking of the five worlds. They also excell at fiber manipulation: weaving, tension, and material science. They have an advanced global communication network between the planet's many hives, independant robotic machines, and their textiles are coveted across the five worlds for their temperature regulation, light weight, durability, metamaterial properties, advanced integrated electronic or photodigital devices, and gorgeous coloring.
Dwarven cities are entirely enclosed and temperature controlled, but clothing is still important for their health and treasured in their culture. Due to the nature of their exoskeletons, small debris can be very dangerous for their joint health. Covering one’s main joints is the bare minimum. The Architect, who heads all mining and excavation work within the hive, works closely with the Cleaner to minimize the dirt and stone dust brought into the tunnels, so additional clothing in the hive is a matter of fashion first and foremost. Within Spire itself, where the presence of other species makes this harder to control, dwarves wrap their bodies head to toe in gorgeous flowing dresses and layered joint wraps that protect them from outside contaminants and accentuate their individual styles and tailored anatomies.
Dwarven language is rhythm based, rather than phoneme based. It is produced via clicking of the carapace, often the mandibles, but language can be produced through any joint that produces an audible impact. Many of their songs take place via intricate dances or the chirping of specialized legs rubbing together. The dwarves of the fifth city have both an Artist and a Musician who specializes in drumming-based epics, and most of the city's dwarves integrate musical rhythms into their work in one way or another.
Dwarves each specialize in a particular field of work, and have executive decision making power within their field. Legally, the Mother holds final say on all decisions to be made in the hive. Within Spire particularly, for more complex decisions, the dwarves work as a family, debating their positions until they can come to a consensus or reach a majority vote. The Mother holds the tie breaking vote when needed, but generally trusts her children in their relevant fields. The Diplomat is the dwarven representative in Spire's parlament. The fifth city, at time of writing, consists of: the Mother, the Diplomat, the Artist, the Musician, the Engineer, the Architect, the Cleaner, the Manufacturer, the Botanist, the Hunter, the Weaver, the Programmer, the Scholar, the Medic, the Envoy, and the Traveler.
Dwarves are omnivores. Dwarven food consists of two main groups: preserved plants and fermented meats gathered during the fall, and a selection of algaes, fungi, and rodents that can be farmed in subterranean caverns during the rest of the year. The Botanist and the Hunter handle the entirety of bulk food production, with The Scholar and The Cleaner helping with day to day meal production and their more ornate feast foods.
Dwarves hold large festivals at several points throughout the year, typically aligning with the turning of the seasons and the first birthdays of individual dwarves. There is little interaction between most of the fifth city's dwarves and the residents of Spire, and so the intricacies of their celebrations are poorly known. While all dwarves have occasion to enter the city on occasion, only the Diplomat does so with any regularity. The city beyond Spire's borders is rife with iron, dangerous to other races, and the tunnels are too small for other races to comfortably traverse. Though entry is not disallowed, it is made uncomfortable and logistically difficult. Of the dwarven celebrations only the Diplomat's birthday is celebrated within Spire itself.
Dwarves are generally considered mysterious, intelligent, elegant, and inscrutable. They are hard to sway but powerful allies.