The March of the Cicada Knights

On Dwarves

The Long River Kingdoms were the first to encounter these strange beings. Their name for them, Dwa-Phen (which in time and under less sophisticated tongues becomes our crude “dwarf”) has many translations. The most commonly cited translation is “The Earthen Folk”, or perhaps “Children of the Caves”. Some scholars argue it could be translated as “The Armoured Ones”, or “The Old Men of Many Plates”. These translations are suitable enough, to one degree or another. But none are accurate.

The name “Dwa-Phen” actually translates to “The Cicada Knights”. 

The Cicada Knights

The Cicada Knights live in enormous subterranean hives, many miles below the surface of the earth. They are born in litters that number in the thousands, blind, pale, wriggling things spawned from a single towering brood mother. They spend their first one thousand, one hundred and seventeen years as larvae, suckling from the golden sap of the World Tree until they are ready to begin their slow peregrination to the surface. They march in single file, driven by instinct and sightless eyes, until they reach the upper cave mouths of their subterranean homes. Then, all at once, the moulting begins.

This process is a slow and gruelling one. Their soft, squishy flesh stiffens and splits, revealing the rocky chitin and grim burgundy eyes of the Dwa-Phen that gestates within. They leave these papery husks behind in their caves and venture forth. It's thought that the discovery of these husks is where the myths of sun-cursed stone dwarves first originated.

The adult Dwa-Phen’s new form is a highly specialised one. They bear massive, pickaxe-like claws covered in heavy layers of chitin, capable of effortlessly chiselling through even the hardest of stone. Their eyes - which bulge from their head like enormous rubies - are suited for seeing in pitch-black environments. Their short, hunched stature is perfect for the cramped conditions of their underground burrows. 

The Cicada Knights dig up and up, burrowing through layers of rock before finally emerging blind and writhing in the sun. They shake the sediment from their shells and, guided by the same instinct that brought them to the surface, begin their march into the dense pine forests that blanket their mountainous homes. Different colonies of Dwa-Phen emerge at the same time, following similar migratory paths and moving at near identical speeds. Upon reaching the deep heart of the forest, they begin the Song. 

Song of the Cicada Knights

To call it a “Song” is perhaps generous. The sound - which is generated not by the Cicada Knight’s mouth but the serrated plates of its inner thigh - is closer to a deafening, droning roar, reminiscent of stone rumbling down a mountain. There are few individuals alive today that have experienced this Song first hand. One report from a scholar of the Lake Crossing Tribe - written some four thousand years ago - describes how some especially pious tribesfolk claimed to hear words amidst this drone, comparing the Song to one of the tribe’s many hymns. This report has not been corroborated as of the modern age.

The Song typically lasts for around four months uninterrupted. During this period, the Dwa-Phen have not been observed as requiring food or water. Occasionally a nearby elf - the apex predators of the Long River pine forests - might pick off and devour a distracted Dwa-Phen or two, but given the sheer size of the amassed swarm these few losses make little impact on the Song as a whole. 

Theories upon Dwarven Nature

It is still unknown as to why the Dwa-Phen engage in this strange behaviour. Some have suggested that it is an elaborate mating ceremony, in which new brood mothers are selected and good breeding stock is exchanged from one hive to another. An astrologist from the Court of the Heavenly Lantern posited that - since the Cicada Knights possess a prime numbered lifespan of exactly one thousand, one hundred and seventeen years - this behaviour is specifically timed to avoid synchronization with their primary predators, namely the elves of the Long River pine forests, who possess an incredibly short reproductive cycle that operates in intervals of exactly 12 years. 

Of course, there are the more superstitious theories. Some have posited that the Cicada Knights solely come to the surface to engage in mass reconnaissance, seeking new lands to swarm to and new mountains to conquer. Others suspect that the Dwa-Phen’s sonorous Song is in fact a prayer as the lost Lake Crossing Tribes once said, and that their strange pilgrimage is religious in nature. This assertion is perhaps strengthened by the sudden uptick in dreams whenever the Song is heard: Dreams of a rumbling in the dark, and the clenching grasp of a colossal stone hand.

All we know for certain is that, after four months of constant droning, the Dwa-Phen return to their homes beneath the earth where they die en-masse, ready to be cannibalised by the remaining brood mothers who will spawn the next generation of dwarves. Each brood mother - alone and sated - then returns to their own corner of the vast subterranean hive, entering a slumber that is only interrupted by the birth of the next clutch. Time passes, tribesfolk are born and die, and the truth of the Cicada Knights fades into legend and superstition. 

If the records are correct, I write this in the one thousand, one hundred and sixteenth winter since the last great swarm. Our world has grown much since then. The Long River city states span the length and breadth of their territory, growing greater in power and requiring greater and greater shares of the great pine woods. Tensions grow between the creeping Kingdoms and the hungry elves that hold their borders. Even now we receive missives from the wilder tribes speaking of shuddering earth and singing stones. What will the dwarves do when they next break earth and discover, with blinking eyes and the voice of their slumbering god in their chittering throats, that the world now belongs to us? 

Will they, perhaps, seek to take it back? 

---

The Re-Forging of the Dwarves

I write all this - in addition to my other entries into the Sealight Safari series - to invite you to join me on a little quest. Between the proliferation of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons and the heavy hand of Tolkein, the fantasy genre is at risk of becoming stale. I want to challenge that. I don't believe in mixing things up for the sake of mixing them up - anyone could take a Tolkein elf, call it a "Glimbleflar" and sack off for lunch - but I do believe in approaching the things we love with a critical and creative eye.

In short, I want your help in making fantasy weird once more.

Dwarves are one of those instantly recognisable fantasy staples, occupying a similar mythological niche as elves and dragons. Various cultures have stories of tricksy little folk who dwell underground, but the vast majority of dwarfdom in modern fantasy comes from Norse tradition, where they are described as diminutive and masterful artisans that serve the gods.

When it came to re-inventing the dwarf for this blog post, I decided to return to this ancient tradition for inspiration. Many of the early sagas that describe the dwarves - also known as Svartálfar or the "black elves" - were among the first entities to have been created. These sagas state that the maggots and larvae that feasted upon the corpse of the primordial Ymir would go on to become the first dwarves, no doubt imbibing some of the cosmic giant's divine spark as they munched on his decaying flesh. It was this insectoid origin that inspired the Cicada Knights.

Cicadas have always struck me as incredibly eldritch creatures. Their life cycles are utterly bizarre - decades spent underground, suckling upon tree sap before eventually clambering to the surface en masse, screaming incessantly for weeks on end, shagging, and dying. They breed in prime-numbered cycles, ensuring that their predators have a hard time syncing up with their incredibly unusual schedule. Even their appearance - perfectly symmetrical, shiny, yellow-black shells and enormous, crimson eyes - is surreal and beautiful.

If I wanted to make my dwarves weird whilst still maintaining some recognisable features, I couldn't do much better than to base them on cicadas; Both are subterranean, after all, and have a shared insectoid origin. Dwarves - in the Tolkeinian style, at least - love to sing, and this is ostensibly true of cicadas. They have an ongoing beef with elves, who I have always interpreted as being hyper-predatory and almost bird-like - much like the humble cicadas' ongoing animosity with their bird predators.

In the introductory comic, we see a cicada knight emerging from the darkness. I wanted to create something uncanny here, so I leaned into the insectoid capacity for eye-spots and other pareidolia-inducing effects. The cicada knight's "face" (actually the front of its head) vaguely resembles that of an elderly man when seen in dark conditions. This is perhaps a defence mechanism, designed to spook off any elves that get too close.

If you would like to incorporate the Cicada Knights and their strange style of dwarfdom into your home games and settings, you are entirely free to do so. In fact, I would encourage you to not only take these critters as your own, but to put your own spin on them - create something even weirder, if you like!