The dwarves of Ferramwyn are weird.
Humans are fairly straight forward. They have aura cores and conjuration cores. If you have a conjuration core, you control one of four elements. However, what your 'element' is exactly seems to have some wiggle room. There are some theories that the limitations of 'elemental magic are entirely subjective. If the user believed he could use all four elements, then he should be able to.
In practice, this doesn't seem to be the case.
Although Ryan does a fine job of pushing the envelope, the further he gets from baseline (water, in his case), the more and more mana he needs to dump into the manifestation of his magic. Some theorized that the limit isn't imposed by the user, but by the world in general. What everyone believes is what limits the range of magical effect. Everyone knows there are only four elements, so there are only four elements.
Then you get people like the saints. Healers. So called 'light elementalists'. So-called because they actually do not seem to be able to manipulate light, but the quasi-concept of 'life'. Theoretically there would be a dark, or death elemental, but there has been no official recorded manifestations of such a mana user. Light elementalists are rare, but there have been a few. One married into the royal family a few generations back, in fact.
The elementalists are the default 'nobles' of any human nation. Being a royal carries with it great power and privilege, but it also comes with it a responsibility. You get to enjoy being a big shot, because when push comes to shove, you are effectively in the military. It is possible for mana users to forgo their 'nobility' and become a commoner, but such an individual is often shunned and ostracized by society. On the other hand, you can't get called up to go fight in a war. You have an obligation as a noble to society as a whole, at least in theory.
Aura users are another story. Most aura users are 'low nobility'. They can only use their magic on themselves, which puts them head and shoulders above the commoners, but it seems to be a 'default'. If a bloodline of mana users becomes too inbred, or too diluted by 'weak stock', you might have a child who has steel grey eyes. This usually results in a scandal and the house in question will suffer socially because of it.
However, sometimes commoners can have a magical child with no magical ancestors. Usually it is an aura user. Aura user bloodlines have managed to have elemental users spontaneously arise in a child. This often results in very careful management of who your partner will be. In some families, males are encouraged to have sex with anything that moves in hopes that maybe the child will have magical eyes. Not all families mind you, because it can cause inheritance issues, but for families on the outs, sometimes a 'spray and pray' attitude to 'replenish the family stock', isn't the worst choice.
There doesn't seem to be an issue with different elements having children, either. Your element seems to be determined by gender. While every once in a while it will switch, usually if your dad is an air user, and your mom is a water user, the son will have golden eyes, and the daughter will have blue. Elementalists and aura pairings almost always result in aura users, so it is frowned upon.
Now humans are basically the 'base line' of mana users in this neck of the world. Demons are an entirely different beast with a wide range of strange powers based off their mana cores that, unlike humans, have a physical manifestation in their body. There is no conjuration or aura core that you can physically remove from a human, but you can do that with a demon. It is assumed that the reason a demon core has such a wide range of possible powers is because it is far more 'grounded' than human mana cores.
As long as we are on the subject, we should touch briefly on elves. While there have been no elf sightings in over two centuries, they should be mentioned. Elves do not have any sort of internalized mana core. All elves have an externalized mana core that manifests as some sort of spirit or animal. This means, unlike humans, every elf born can, and is, a great mana user. It also makes them far more susceptible to getting screwed because if you can destroy their 'companion', they die. Otherwise, they have the greatest range of possible powers, and are considered the strongest known mana users one could find. Why they all ran away two centuries ago is anybody's guess.
Which, finally, brings us back to dwarves.
It's important to understand the other four major magical races before you can understand the magical physiology of the dwarves. No dwarf has ever been born with a mana core of any sort. Unlike every other seemingly 'magical' being, including beast and sapient, dwarves lack any sort of centralized mana.
Which isn't to say that dwarves can't use magic. Far from it, they are just 'infused' with mana. Their entire bodies from the tip of their toes to the end of their beards has mana in it. It moves slowly, but it is there. The can't do the flashy magic of the humans, nor have the strength of the elves, nor the sheer range of powers of demons. Dwarves cannot use magic on themselves or use it to cast anything.
Dwarves mana manifests itself in two ways. The first of which is their resilience. Dwarves are tough. The way the mana is spread out through their body basically results in a 'web' of magical energy. It acts like a 'cushion' that helps the average dwarf simply take more punishment than most. This isn't just physical punishment, but an ability to resist direct magical effects. It's not god-like, mind you, but a blast of magical fire that would burn anyone else to a crisp might only singe a dwarf's beard.
Funny aside, Dwarves LOVE to get in fist fights. A bunch of dwarves who get drunk playing the game 'drink', will often devolve into a game of 'punch' later in the evening. They have some resistance to stabbing and slashing, but seem to be able to take blunt force trauma better than most. This is part and parcel for your standard 'commoner' dwarf.
Like the humans, there is the 'next level' of mana users in dwarves. They are the dwarven equivalent to nobility, or master smiths, if you translate from the dwarves tongue. Master smiths can use their mana externally to affect objects. The weakest master smith can craft the finest objects in a tenth of the time of any human craftsman. He never misses the head of a nail when he swings his hammer. His blade carves exactly what the master smith desires when he whittles wood.
Master smiths with higher levels of mana can create magical objects. Humans can do that as well, but they have to carve magical formula directly into the object. They use complex magic circles and special materials to make whatever it is they desire, and it also often requires the use of multiple different mana users to get the exact effect desired.
A dwarf basically just infuses the required pattern directly into the material itself. A master smith's ability to alter the objects he touches allows him to put any such magical patterns deep inside the object itself and seems to have little limit as to what material he can use. Of course, some materials are better to use than others, but a powerful master smith could make tissue paper as hard as steel just by fiddling with it. The limitations are time, skill, experience, and how much mana the dwarf has at his disposal. These limitations can be gotten around if you have group of dwarves who know how to work well together.
This natural 'stronger together' nature of dwarves has resulted in a rather particular outlook. Dwarves are very community orientated. Dwarves use the word 'we' all the time. Dwarves think of clan, family, self, in that order. So when the Ferramwyn family committed some forgotten offense many years ago, the dwarves king's punishment was particularly harsh.
Banishment.
They were to be cast out from under the mountain, not to return until all those currently alive had died. Then, and only then, could they return to the dwarves homeland. The Ferramwyn family, abandoned by its clan, took what few belongings they had and marched out onto the harsh surface. It was assumed they would all perish. Perhaps it was fate, or karma, or the gods, but the weather was remarkably mild that winter. The path they selected was fairly free of monsters and they marched out of demon infested mountain range right into the lands of Lyonesse.
The king at the time had just slain the second great calamity, a mad dragon that had gone on a rampage for several pervious years. The king had married the saintess, peace reigned across the land, and then a bunch of dwarves refugees showed up at the kingdom's northern borders.
What luck, thought the king.
The king at the time personally came to greet the dwarves and immediately set upon treating them with great respect. The relationship between races was never good at the best of times, so the king had a great deal of work ahead of him, but the saintess was everything that the name implied and the two, working in concert, managed to win over the hearts and loyalty of the Ferramwyn dwarves.
The king treated the dwarves like equals and the dwarves responded with oaths of friendship for they were a prideful people. Just getting them to accept help was an S-tier quest in and of itself, however, once won over, the dwarves were staunch allies of the crown. They could be considered a 'mini-kingdom' inside the kingdom. While ultimately the dwarves answer to the crown, inside their borders they made their own laws and took care of enforcement of said laws.
The reason being that the dwarves are the industrial heart of the kingdom.
A kingdom the size of Lyonesse would have been crushed by its larger and stronger neighbors a long time ago if it wasn't for the dwarves ability to mine like fiends. Even the dwarf with the least amount of mana can cut through bed rock like nobody's business. This isn't to say they swing a pickaxe and iron leaps out of the ground, but they are faster then any human by a factor or four, easy. Throughout the kingdom, dwarves lead forges, or mining projects, or building projects, or what have you.
Oh, about that banishment? When the last living dwarf out of the originals who were banished died, the dwarves kingdom sent someone by to tell them they were now allowed to return.
The Ferramwyn dwarves told them to get stuffed.
Their time on the surface had changed them. They didn't even look like the pale, dour, and grey bearded dwarves from the old lands anymore. They had tanned cheeks and deep chestnut brown hair. The two groups exchanged insults and haven't spoken since.
This means that while the kingdom of Lyonesse has an excellent working relationship with the Ferramwyn dwarves, they are the only friends the Ferramwyn dwarves have. The old dwarves kingdom would like to have them wiped out for daring to survive. The nations that border Lyonesse would love to see the dwarves gone as well, if for no other reason to weaken Lyonesse. All this animosity might have resulted in nothing, if not for a certain ruler that would like to weaken the kingdom that currently held the single greatest threat to his existence.
A lord of demons who was very, very good at pitting his enemies against each other.
