Dwarf

Dwarves, Homo Neanderthalis, are a race of short, hardy, and strong humanoids, and one of the oldest races.

Description
Dwarves were the first. They smelted the first iron, built the first temples, farmed the first crops. They were the first to write, to herd, to taste rivers and wage war. Dwarves have always been the first, in all things, but for over ten thousand years now they have… stagnated. Due in large part to their small population and hazardous way of life, Dwarves as a whole have become significantly less populous and rarer in the world. Spread out in holds, each fortress acts as its own independent city state, with no real central authority over any of the dwarven holds. Perhaps a mountain range has a collection of federated holds, but that is the extent of their government.

Culture
Dwarf Culture prizes honor, but not personal honor as the Orcs or Goblins do. Dwarves prize your family’s honor, the collective judgement of a thousand years of good and bad deeds tied up in your name. Losing and regaining honor is part of the ebb and flow of everyday life in a dwarf hold, and the spectacle of duels, grudge matches, knot battles, physical contests, and oratory battles occur often and without warning, and the shame of losing one's honor due to some great tragedy or misdeed is a shame that carries for centuries thereafter. It doesn’t help that dwarf families are small and can quickly break apart, meaning a name is just as likely to vanish into history as it is to rise to prominence.

Apart from the ebb and flow of familial honor, life in a hold is very stagnant. Families continue to work the jobs they have always worked, mining or fishing or building or ruling, and each hold is unique in its own right. To describe dwarf culture in detail would require describing the culture of all 1,000,230 holds currently on the planet.