: i just was thinking how strange it was that even though
: the dwarves were so successful, they only had two
: cities. i was wondering if in fact they had more, that
: were secret and not marked on the map, or if they used
: to have more and they were destroyed, and were dwarves
: children of wyrd, or were they just kind of there like
: in LOTR? also, was there any reason to think that the
: dwarves had axe warriors that were in myth 3, and if
: so, why would they stop using them( it would help them
: fight off the ghols) and are the dwarves going extict
: because there seems to be very few?
: Gothmog
Since Zeph has already said most of what I was going to say, I'll just restrict my attention to the Axe-warriors section.
If you believe GURPS, Axe-warriors were considered to be semi-obsolete by the end of the TFL era. However, during the actual invasion of the dwarven homelands, I suspect that they would have played a small but important part in the defence of the dwarven cities: after all, you need someone to hack up any Ghols who get past your waves of explosives. However, once they had joined the armies of the West, it came down to simple practicalities. A Dwarf with explosives is far more useful to Alric than a Dwarf with an axe, since anyone can swing a sword, but it takes dwarven ingenuity and dwarven insanity to make a good demolitionist.
