Herbological Codex II: The Doctrine of Humors and Herbs

By Olar Stonesalve, Dwarven Healer-Philosopher of the Ironroots Monastery

“Stone cracks when the water within it runs unbalanced.
Flesh, too, when its humors do not flow in harmony.”
— Olar Stonesalve, The Doctrine of Humors and Herbs

I. The Stone and the Body

Olar Stonesalve, eldest apothecary of the Ironroots, believed that the body and the mountain were one and the same — both carved from the same ancient laws of balance and burden. Where elves saw spirit in greenery, dwarves saw structure: bones as pillars, blood as molten ore, breath as the wind through caverns.

He proposed that all living creatures were formed by four humors of stone and soil, each mirrored in the mineral world:

Brine — the humor of water and endurance.
Flame — the humor of passion and vitality.
Dust — the humor of thought and clarity.
Ore — the humor of strength and structure.

When these humors are in balance, one stands firm as the mountain. When they fall into discord, body and mind fracture.

II. The Roots of Equilibrium

Stonesalve’s study of herbs was an act of geology made flesh. He categorized plants by how they corrected the imbalance of humors, each herb a counterweight in the body’s architecture.

Brine plants (mosses, kelp, dewroots) cool the temper and steady the blood.
Flame plants (emberleaf, fire nettle) rekindle courage and circulation.
Dust herbs (sage, greybloom) sharpen the mind and dry excess emotion.
Ore plants (ironbark, stoneflower) strengthen bone and resolve.

To him, the herbalist was a stonemason of the flesh — carving away imbalance, smoothing fractures in the human ore.

“An herb does not heal,” he wrote. “It restores proportion. And proportion is health.”

III. The Anvil of the Spirit

While other healers prayed to gods or spirits, Olar turned to the forge. He claimed that fire itself was divine because it tested all things — a metaphor for suffering and endurance. To temper metal was to temper the soul.

In his practice, a patient was a forge in which imbalance was burned away. Hot compresses, iron-rich teas, and bitter tonics were all forms of ritual heat meant to reawaken the humors’ dialogue. Dwarven smith-priests still say before beginning their work:

“May my forge cure me as much as my hammer cures the blade.”

IV. The Law of Weight

Central to Stonesalve’s philosophy was what he called the Law of Weight — the principle that all things, even emotions, have mass and must be borne properly. Guilt, grief, and pride were heavy humors that sank within the soul, compressing the body from within like deep ore under pressure.

He taught exercises of breath and grounding — “Rooting,” as the dwarves called it — to redistribute this weight. Sitting cross-legged with one’s hands in the soil, the practitioner visualizes their sorrow sinking into the earth, to be reforged as stone.

V. Herbs of the Deep Earth

Unlike elven healers who favored sunlight and air, dwarves harvested herbs of darkness — those thriving in caves and crevices. Olar catalogued the following sacred roots of balance:

Gloomwort, said to drink despair from the blood.
Ironheart, whose bitter taste strengthens resolve.
Gravecap, used to commune with ancestral wisdom.
Ashroot, which grows only in the ashes of funeral pyres, thought to mend broken spirits.

These herbs were steeped in mineral water from the lower aquifers, absorbing traces of copper, tin, and salt — elements seen as divine stabilizers.

VI. The Ethics of Burden

In his later years, Stonesalve warned against what he called false healing: the act of removing pain without restoring balance. He believed pain had purpose — a signal from the humors that one part of the self bore too much weight. To dull it without understanding its cause was to invite collapse.

“To cure is to carry,” he wrote. “When you heal another, you shoulder the stone they cannot lift. Be sure your back is strong.”

This became the creed of dwarven healers across the underhalls — heal not to erase suffering, but to redistribute it.

VII. Death and Reforging

Stonesalve’s final writings speak of the Great Reforging — his vision of death not as an ending, but as smelting. He believed the soul, upon death, descends into the molten heart of the world to be reshaped by divine fire. From that crucible, new spirits rise as ore once more — polished by time, tested by flame.

In dwarven funerary rites, ashes are mixed with powdered iron and sealed in small anvils buried near the forge. Each spark from that forge is said to carry the whisper of an ancestor.

VIII. Legacy

Olar Stonesalve’s Doctrine of Humors and Herbs shaped dwarven medicine for millennia. His apprentices built shrines in the form of hollow anvils, filled not with prayer but with soil from the Deep Earth — a reminder that balance, not purity, is the truest form of health.

The Ironroots still honor him each solstice by mixing molten metal with mountain herbs, forging small pendants called Weights. They hang these around their necks as both protection and reminder:

“May your burdens keep you grounded,
And your balance make you unbreakable.”