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v0.31:Beard
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Many creatures in the game (even Template:L) have a group of tissues which are together known as a 'beard'. The most common type of 'beard' a player will encounter is the Template:L beard.
Dwarven Beards
A dwarven 'beard' consists of both his cheek whiskers and his chin whiskers, and is specific to males. The game keeps track of a hidden 'length' attribute for each tissue. At birth, a male baby dwarf has a beard of length zero. After that, they gain 1 length every day until they have 1000 length.
The beard does not affect anything other than the description as yet. Interestingly, different dwarven Template:Ls tend to have different cultural hairstyles, including beard styles.
Although most creatures have both of these tissues, they have no such appearance as a beard. This leads to many players believing that Template:L have beards, which is incorrect.
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Characteristics
Dwarven hair is extremely hearty; the average dwarf hair is many times longer and several times thicker than the average human hair. The range of colors is quite large; common colors include dark blues, black, any number of shades of gray, silver, white, brown, copper, rust, and even flaming orange-red.
Because they are grown to such incredible lengths and thicknesses, dwarven beards act as an extra layer of defense against external dangers - the resiliency of the beard helps protect the dwarf's face from physical blows, the expansiveness of the beard helps protect the dwarf's face and upper body against sources of radiation, and in its normal state, the beard almost completely covers the nasal passages and the mouth, acting as a sort of natural gas mask, which keeps noxious gases and other airborne contaminants from being inhaled. Also, each hair is coated with unique oils that give it the ability to attract and trap some germs and bacteria, which are then either scrubbed out in the bath, or (more commonly) immersed in strong alcohol from the inevitable poorly-aimed quaff.
Dwarven beards as a sensory organ
The remarkably thick hairs of the male dwarf's beard are a marvel of biology. Each hair contains millions of sensory receptors of incredible diversity, including but not limited to hairs that gauge humidity and air flow, hairs highly sensitive to the presence of Template:L, air pressure sensing "Template:L" hairs that are hooked directly to the brain's pleasure center and chemically reward dwarves for digging deeper, and even hairs that produce more and more vitamin D the longer a dwarf spends underground, to the point where any solar contact at all results in an Template:L and immediate Template:L.
Female dwarves use their long, luxurious knuckle hairs for the same purposes.