Familiar Ground

Over the past few days, I’ve been participating in a communal dwarf fortress story-telling activity, basically chronicling the story of the dwarves in the game in a journal story format.

In that story, I was about to use the phrase “rotten apple in a barrel” when I realized that dwarves probably don’t use that expression but would use something similar.  I didn’t think about it too much, so I just changed apple to plump helmet (a type of mushroom that dwarves eat).

Looking back on it now though, I probably could’ve used a more suitable dwarven expression for “bad influence” than food.  Perhaps “too much coal for decent steel” or “vermin on a roast”.

To  handle with kid gloves is a human saying that means to treat gently (appropriately enough, the opposite is taking off the gloves).  What’s an equivalent saying for various fantasy races that are appropriate?

Trolls – “only eat one arm”

Dwarf – “elf-like”

Elf – “addressing dwarven lineage”