Excerpt from Volume 1 of F.M-P’s folklore anthologies. The author’s notes have been preserved.

When I began to ask about what the creation myths for other races were, the dwarves were some of the first to answer… after I did them a few favors, that is. And, in the traditional fashion of these things, “them” refers to each individual dwarf I asked.

That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by how casually their stories of how the dwarves came about agreed¹. Even the elves (with their genetic memories leading to the start of time) disagree on aspects like their First City’s name as they lament; The dwarves, however, all tell a story that goes like this:

By Our Hands, the Work Was Done #

Once, there was a great city ruled by the elves, and things went well for a while. Then the elves got lazy – they thought they could magic their way out of every problem, and that it would always be a quick fix anyhow. Their methods worked for a while – and then they got even lazier.

We found this out when, during a routine inspection, we discovered a potentially devastating pattern – a pattern of degradation which, if it continued, could send the whole city tumbling down. We wrote up our findings in a letter to the elves, marked it “Urgent As Fuck, Reply Right Now”, asked them to schedule a meeting, and got this back in return.

“Thanks for your concern, we’ll give it the appropriate attention.” Yup, those lazy-ass elves sent back boilerplate. Probably because our letter didn’t say “mythril” anywhere in it. Fortunately our ancestors knew it was time to get shit done.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t agree on what needed to happen. Some of us thought replacing the bits that measured weird would reset it; others thought it was some kind of curse, and we just needed to bash the elves’ doors down; still others thought the best choice was to brace the afflicted structures, although they got real quiet when we asked how and with what. Who knows what we could have done with the time we wasted arguing before The Foreman showed up.*8

They were well groomed, with thick bands of muscle showing they knew their way around a construction site and wide hands befitting a blacksmith. They had long hair and a long beard, intricately braided and pinned to their clothing such that it was practically part of the outfit, what with how it perfectly framed the valley between their cannonball-sized tits. They were more wide than tall, but could make a room burst with presence alone. They walked right into our yammering, banged their fist against the table, and had us all jump as that great marble table fractured, but somehow didn’t break.

“See this?” The Foreman shouted, gesturing at the table as we stood dumbfounded. “This is where you all are right now. If you keep this yammering up for much longer, you’ll break and be lesser for it. So, are you going break into useless pebbles, or are you going to work together and maybe actually fix things?”

With their help, we were able to agree on where to begin: warning the people who lived in the city, and scouting out places they could evacuate to should the worst come to pass. We’d meet again at the next new moon, to take new readings and determine how to proceed. Of course, a single afternoon wasn’t enough to fix our ancestor’s behavior: we played games of pride and let grudges get in the way. The Foreman had to step in numerous times to remind us that our foe was not each other, and we’d have come to blows on countless occasions if it weren’t for their way of knowing when tempers were about to boil over. But the work got done, no matter how badly.

At the new moon, we re-inspected where we’d found the pattern – and found it getting worse. It was tainting other things, like the wells and the mythril, so we thought we might actually be able to get the elves off their asses. We wrote up our update to the elves, marked it U.A.F.R.R.N, made damn sure to include the warts on the mythril, asked them to schedule a meeting, and got the same shit back as last time.

“Thanks for your concern, we’ll give it the appropriate attention.” Those damn elves with their mythril binkies².

We met back up and agreed, with the elves apparently power napping, that the best choice for us was to prepare an evacuation. After all, even if the elves had gotten off their asses and helped the first time, there was no guarantee they’d find any solution in time: might as well build new systems that were resilient. We’d build a new city, and make sure everyone knew how to get there.

This time, we were at least able to begrudgingly cooperate. We agreed on a site within the week, then gathered basalt and lime while we drafted a design we could all live with. The Foreman watched us, making sure we didn’t get too far into useless debates as we hefted paving stones and mixed up plaster. We did some things twice, and only barely spent more time working than arguing, but the work got done.

And at the end of the project, we looked up at what we’d built and we looked out at each other and we came to an agreement: the city we’d just built, as nice as it was, wasn’t really big enough to hold everyone.

The Foreman, upon hearing our revelation, cracked open a big toothy grin and said they’d been waiting for us to realize that; hell, they felt our city was too small, and once that’d been said we were inclined to agree. How in the hells had we not noticed!

So off we went again, sending a few men to update the elves and the others as the rest of us went down the list of sites. We got to work: we all spoke and we all listened as the walls went up and the plaster went on. The Foreman came by each site from time to time, dropping off materials other sites had in abundance and taking our excess; in time we found the rhythm to that seemingly random act and made sure we had that stuff ready and bundled. By the end of it we were putting up new cities in days rather than months, and occasionally pausing between to make sure other groups were well supplied. Until, of course, our hearts called us back. And it was a damn close thing.

There were cracks in the walls and mold in the gutters when we arrived, and the streets felt squidgy when we walked on them. We met up with the ones who’d tried to change the elves’ minds, and had only been met with “Thanks for your concern, we’ll give it the appropriate attention”; they’d convinced some people to leave, but many more had been swayed by elven platitudes and were just now discovering they were in danger.

We said screw the elves. Their “appropriate attention” had just come round to bust down their doors and bash their teeth in; they could deal with the aftermath of their neglect.

For everyone else, we quickly formed a plan: there would be three evacuation points along each of the main roads out, right by major landmarks. As we guided people towards the gates, we’d try to stagger their exits to make sure there weren’t too many people passing through at a time. Some of us started from the center, and worked our way out; some of us started from the gates, and worked our way around. Not a single door went without being knocked upon, not a single street was traveled twice, and not even the pets were left behind, let alone the smallest babes. The streets were shaking by the time we got the last few in sight of the gates, and everyone watched from afar as the city started to crumble.

But the work got done, and that’s what mattered.

“So anyway,” they always said with the same intonation, “that’s how we learned to work together, and to solve our problems with our own hands and hammers.” They say the Foreman drifted around after that, usually showing up when a fight was about to break out or something big had just broken, but it was relatively infrequent and usually the dwarves played peacekeeper just fine.

They cite this incident as why they hate the elves.

By Our Hands the Work was Done © 2026 by CaerbannogMochi is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0