Litter of dwarves.

[kestal]

How would having dwarves have children by litters of 6, say, impact the world.

If we want the dwarf's society to be sort of close knitted and, collaborative, united, etc, then children being raised together in rather large groups would match this concept well I think. The value of the community would be ingrained in their thought process since the childhood.

Now for the problems with this idea: Assume dwarves sort of match the idea of mammals, etc. Either female dwarves must have ~ 6 teats, or they have to share the load with other people. Maybe we could make it so that the hormone cycles matches, and then litters are taken care of by multiple members of the extended family (that would also match the type of society that we want). A big litter would also mean that at least some time in the past, some of the newborn babies would usually die. If extended members of the family must help, then they can't, in addition, take care of their own children, so the initial use of big litters (counterbalance a high infantile mortality rate) would be moot. Also, we want a stable dwarf society, so that if they now each often have a lot of children, there is a problem. We could therefore have them have babies only very rarely, say 20 years. But this would have the same effect as the problem above. A partial solution to that would be that naturally, they could have children very regularly, but don't anymore. A solution to the "extended family takes care of children -> no children of their own" problem would be that some females could breast-feed even though they are of no condition to actually have babies; or men could breast-feed too?

[fahriel]

There could have been some natural predator that only ate dwarves. Say some sort of cave worm. Over time the dwarves could have hunted them all down (maybe there could be a re-insurgence).

[fahriel]

Also six teats. I love it. They could essentially be like humanoid moles with a stronger sense of community. Maybe that sense of community is what makes them dwarves and not moles. They could be the opposite of the elves in the sense that being together makes them more dwarvish (community orientated) and less mole-ish. Moles are solitary creatures after all. Perhaps there is the occasional solitary dwarf who is extremely territorial and self-reliant.

[ghost]

This community orientated system fits perfectly for the the dwarves. This make them a very united, proud and honorable folk ; the dwarves we love ! The six teats concept is very original, yet a bit odd too, I would me more for the extended family support. We could easily make them give birth very rarely (20 years) by setting a very long time between menstruations. Then I think assuming they give birth so rarely, it wouldn't be a hard task for the extended family to support breastfeeding.