The Fall of House Duergar

Population Migration / Travel

House Duergar was once a great Dulkarnithian house, with much wealth and power among the other Dulkarnithian Kingdoms. They were especially renowned for their military prowess, until they were defeated at the hands of the elves during the Kolkarine Wars. Once this had happened, they lost much of their past renown and turned inwards, redoubling their mining efforts. However, this allowed them to be captured and enslaved by the Illithid.

After the Kolkarine Wars, House Duergar had lost much of its resources and political power. They became a reclusive and self-interested clan, cutting off much of the remaining contact with outside nations. They began turning more and more to their mining efforts. After delving deeper into the mountains below their strongholds, they became convinced that they were very close to an incredible discovery.   This idea pervaded all of their minds, causing every member of House Duergar to become obsessed with these mining efforts. They abandoned all of their former occupations, leaving smiths unlit, temples unkempt, and shops unopened. All of them continued to mine for weeks straight, eating what little food they had left over, but not producing anymore.   They dug and dug and dug and dug until they were so weak that they could barely stand. At that point, they broke through into a cavern. They believed they had finally reached their goal. Instead, what lay in wait for them were the Illithid. They had extended their psionic powers to play on the greed within many of the members of House Duergar and drew them into this obsessive mining. They had done this to weaken the Duergar, which was successful and allowed the Illithid to easily overpower and enslave all of House Duergar, which is exactly what they did.   They used the Duergar to build and do manual labor, but most importantly to experiment on. This caused them to have considerable mutations and develop strange abilities. After a long time in the servitude of the Illithid, they revolted against their captors. However, in order to successfully overthrow them, they made a pact with Asmodeus in order to gain the necessary power to do just that.   This pact with Asmodeus gave him countless more souls than he originally had, which is what provoked the demonic invasion that became known as the Great Desolation.