The Duergar of Baraz and Underdark

The Duergar



Squat and broad, the humanoid creatures´ skin resembles stone, hard rough and grey in colour. Like a dwarf yet distinct. The creature appears completedly hairless, and their strange milky eyes envoke beasts of the deepest darkest caverns. Armor finely made but crude in appearance protects the creatures vital areas while a wicked looking axe on their hip deters would-be attackers. The creature sneeres. Their teeth stark white against the slate grey of their skin. This is a Duergar. A gray dwarf. Dour, sad and generally angry. Holding most of their interesting secrets deep within their culture. Their kingdoms are vast, and sub-cultures many.

Duergar are dwarves whose ancestors were transformed by centuries of living in the deepest places of the Underdark. Several underdark realms are saturated with strange magical energy called Faerezz, and over generations, early duergar, like the Drow, absorbed traces of it.
Their ancestors pushed away by the Dark Elves in their power struggles and were mad-driven by greed, endlessly delving beneath the earth into the lower underdark. This brought them into contact with beings known as The Sleepers. These wicked aberrations of the deep dark held the Duergar as slaves with their nightmarish powers for generations, invading their minds and performed horrific experiments on them. The Duergar developed Psionic powers and were able to combat the terror of The Sleepers, and become their captors. The origin or reason for these powers are a cultural secret of the Duergar.
 
Their powers have been passed down to their descendants, and have since forged a new life for themselves in the Underdark and beyond. Impervious to phantasms. But slavery and the nightmare they endured had forever changed them. Darkening their spirit. Despite winning their freedom, the tyrannical and grim ashen-skinned Duergar are dour, pessimistic and untrusting creatures, always toiling and complaining, struggling to remember what it was like to be happy or proud.
As Duergar delved deeper than any other dwarves they ended up building fantastic cities. Using ancient dwarven knowledge and myriad slaves, they work tirelessly to expand their subterranean kingdoms. They wear drab clothing designed to blend in with stone, along with simple jewelry that reflects their severe and utilitarian demeanor.

Duergar value toil above all else. Showing emotions other than grim determination or wrath is frowned on in their culture, but they can sometimes seem joyful when at work or pursuing a goal. They have the typical dwarven appreciation for order, tradition, and impeccable craftsmanship, but their goods are purely utilitarian, disdaining aesthetic or artistic value.
They do appreciate the power and convenience of machinery. Some sub-cultures have created a hybrid combination of flesh and metal. Duergar have started to imprison members of their communities in metallic constructs which are designed to create great pain on the host. Pain which then creates powerful psionic energies which also fuels and empowers the construct.




Worship:
The Duergar worships Bolrindor, The Twin headed Primal Deep Dragon. The entity is depicted as a Primal Great Wyrm Deep dragon with Obsidian scales with a purple sheen. The name stems from Dwarven and means «The Greatwyrm of understone». The temple grounds is seated at the deepest parts of the Duergar empire, unknown to man. This holy ground was supposedly where Bolarindor nested his avatars to strenghten the cold stone and safeguard the darkness of the underworld in the 1st age.


Deep dragon priests rule the Duergar Twin Dragon clans. They create all the laws and also enforces them. Recognised by their twin dragon tattoos and deep dragonscale armor. To become one is a very torturous process. The rites invlove many brandings and tortures having to perform feats of superhuman endurance meant to cull the weak. Only the best and strongest can become a Draknador. The final culmination of all of these messed up trials pits the Duergar initiate between two crushing blocks of stone and leaves them there for isolation for a week. If surviving the Draknador should have unlocked even more of their psionic minds, seeing more of the truth of their past. The meories that becomes unlocked shows the dragonpriests how Bolrindor shaped the underdark and nurtured it´s cold darkness after Middle-earth was created. So grand was the dragons´ will to create that the Duergar saw this entity worthy of worship, as they already shared the desire and skill to work stone in the dark depths of the underdark. Bolrindor can point the clans towards materials with whitch to toil and produce, to emulate the dragon deity´s dogma by creating new and wondrous things as tribute to his greatness. Some subcultures only create magnificent items to praise their god.  Bolrindor resents the creations of Morgoroth which resides in the lowerdark. Strange creatures, ugly spindly things and mewling monstrosities which The Twin Dragon views in disgust. Duergar that is corrupted by these entities are known as Darrow.

It is unclear how the Duergar really came to be. The oldes scriptures preach that the Duergar was born from the ashes of Bolarindors creations; The eggs of understone. When broken and reaching maturity the avatars of the Deepfather scattered across the underdark to wage war on the enemies of Bolarindor. As their tasks where finished they lay down to merge with the deep stone to forever guard The realm of their progenitor. It is said that these natural tombs can be located by gargantuan sources of Faerress coming from the mountain cracks in the Avatars´ resting place.

Enemies and Duergar evolution:
The mighty Dark elves ruled vast sectors in the underdark with guile and cunning. They wiped out many dwarven storngholds and clans with their offense and potent poisons. The dwarves that delved deeper to escape became the Duergar. After breaking free from The Sleepers´ horrors the Duergar built cities that later became kingdoms, and spread across vast swats of land in the Underdark. With their racial abilities and deep knowledge of the underworld and the Sleepers, allowed The Duergar to win war after war against them.

As the Duergar expanded they encountered the Dark elves again. This time they made many Dark elf strategies obsolete as Duergar became immune to poison after their toils in the unhospitable environments of the lowerdark. It was their shared love of crafting magic items, hatred for Fire Giants and slavery ownership that changed their warmongering and into trading with each other. Eventually the power and hegemony of the Duergar kingdoms became so great that they could openly challenge the other dwarven clans and the Black Orcs.



Today Duergar wage war on their dwarven kin, believing themselves to be true dwarves. They also fight the subterrainean Fire Giants clad in black iron. Duergar forge alliances when it is convenient and can break those alliances when they have nothing more to gain. They take and hold slaves to toil in the underdark, regarding them as free labour and crude currency. All enemies of the duergar fear their psionic ability to become insvisible, and with their skin and clothing almost camoflauging in the shadows.

The horros of the lowerdark still tries to recapture the minds of the Duergar. Tricking the communities which have gotten the furthest into the lowerdark, feeding of the prayers, tenteing them into further and further acts of depravity. Those that find out about the entity might even decide to embrace it.

The greenskins:
Orcs took advantage of the chaos and calamity that entailed in the end of the 2nd age when the Avatars of Bolrindor entered their long slumber. They stole some of Bolrindor´s unborn children from his bosom. Today known as Wyverns. Purple and feral drakes serving the Void alongside the Black Orcs.