Deep Duerra

Deep Duerra, or simply Duerra, is the duergar demigoddess of conquest, expansion, and psionics, and is venerated by those dwarves skilled in the mysterious Invisible Art. Ever the imperialist, the Axe Princess of Conquest is a resolute believer in the supremacy of psionics and the destiny of the duergar to rule all the Underdark.

Description

Duerra usually appeared as a 6 ft (1.8 m), stocky, and powerfully-built, female duergar. Most of her hair was shaved off, leaving no beard and only a monk's tonsured cut and a rear-facing, tightly wound braid on her scalp.

The Axe Princess of Conquest's weapon was Mindshatter, her enchanted battleaxe that, upon striking an enemy, could steal psionic strength and transfer it to its wielder. The enchanted, everbright chainmail armor she was clad in was both shimmering and ornate.

Personality

Duerra is a pompous and arrogant authoritarian with the expectation that her every whim be immediately attended to. She dismisses arcane magic as inferior to psionic power, views the duergar as a unique race whose ancestral relation to other dwarves is an irrelevant piece of best forgotten trivia, and is resolute in her conviction that it is her inalienable right to rule.

However, it is not the actual possession of territory that Duerra enjoys, but the act of obtaining it; the Axe Princess is always plotting, planning, and strategizing for her next glorious conquest. Never content, Duerra is ruthless in her pursuit of assured victory, having no tolerance for anyone, no matter who they are, that doesn't meet her expectations, and considering no sacrifice too great for her continued success.

Divine Realm

Like Laduguer, Duerra's home is the pessimistic plane of Hammergrim, a gray, massive fortress with windowless walls a mile thick. In Hammergrim's vast courtyard, Duerra has her own hall, her personal realm known as the Citadel of Thought. Screams of incredible agony can be heard below the catacombs of the Citadel, the sounds of duergar that offend Duerra being tortured by ember guards spawned from Hammergrim's forges.

Activities

Aside from the constant formulization of military plans, Duerra is known to dispatch avatars to intervene in matters regarding the duergar and other races. Occasionally this is to aid in conflicts where the duergar face psionic foes, particularly aboleths and illithids, and at other times it is because a duergar city has a perfect opportunity to expand their dominion at the expense of others, but, for whatever reason, the ruling duergar authority is unwilling to capitalize on it.

Worshippers

Like Laduguer, Duerra was venerated by the duergar to the near-exclusion of all other Morndinsamman members, the rest being only revered in name. Duerra's worshipers were primarily duergar that studied psionics and the militant warriors among the gray dwarves that chafed at the defensive ways of Laduguer's priests, those that sought to conquer much of the Underdark and would rather crush than cooperate with their neighbors.

Though a few rare surface dwellers called upon the Queen for help in understanding, and more importantly concealing, the Invisible Art that was so often viewed with fear and suspicion, few outside the Underdark had heard of Duerra or her followers. Even hill and mountain dwarves were unlikely to have heard of her, although a handful of hill, mountain, and jungle dwarves skilled in psionics secretly served her (making up less than a percentage of her followers).

Under the surface, Duerra's specific worshipers were known as norothor, (norothar singular) a dwarvish word roughly translated as "those who seize enemy land". The vast majority of her clergy (97%) were female, and before the Time of Troubles they were entirely so. Being lawful evil wasn't a requirement to become one, with lawful neutrality also being an option.

Dogma

Duerra's teachings were that it was the duergar's destiny to rule the Underdark, conquering the stone from which they were spawned, taking the voids in which they dwelt, and claiming the wealth and servitors that could be found within both. Inspired by her mythic accomplishments, her followers stood at the forefront of duergar offensives against the foes they hated most, dwarves and mind flayers, seeking to utterly obliterate such communities. She expected her priests to be capable leaders, and to use cunning strategy in their endless quest for unlimited power, part of their responsibilities being to train younger gray dwarves in the art of war and teach them Underdark survival techniques. While the Ladugueran clergy defended duergar holdings, senior mindaxes took their elite strike forces of duergar warriors and Duerran priests (as well as junior followers of Laduguer) on missions to scout, clear, and seize tunnel systems to help grow the community.

Another crucial facet of her faith was the supposed inferiority of arcane magic; though rare, wizards skilled in crafting magic items were typically respected in duergar society, but Duerra's dogma went against this idea. According to them, arcane magic was weak, unreliable, and obvious when compared to psionic power or magic that had been given and steadied by godly will (the duergar having strong divine spellcasting traditions). Those that relied on petty magics to survive would be destroyed or enslaved by the duergar by means of psionics, and one day all would bow before duergar might and the glorious Invisible Art. Part of the norothor training of youths was helping them to develop their natural psionics. They also attended to and controlled the slave underclass, Axe Princes and Princesses monitoring the thoughts of slaves and masters alike for signs of disloyalty to eliminate as needed, though recently the duergar had been moving away from slavery towards psionically-powered machines.

Rituals

Norothor prayed for spells at night. The duerran clergy had two annual holy days, during each of which an offering to Duerra was made in the form of dirt or stone from the borders of newly conquered land, the brains of psionic individuals, or the shattered skulls of any intelligent creatures.

Relationships

For as long as Duerra had been a divine being, she had been exiled (though not stricken completely) from the Morndinsamman, and she had shown no interest in trying to remedy the relationship. She had no friends among the dwarven gods, though Sharindlar had managed to forge working relationships with her despite loathing her principles and the wandering Dugmaren had no true foes among dwarven gods, tolerated as he was by lawful members of the pantheon due to the beneficial aspects of some of his inventions, though he found Duerra's company trying at the best of times. If some rumors were to be believed, she was the granddaughter of Moradin and Berronar and the daughter of her superior and only ally, Laduguer.

Though thought of by many as Laduguer's daughter, whether in the literal sense or perhaps because he raised her from a mortal to a demigod, the two had a very poor affinity for one another and showed a remarkable lack of compassion towards each other. While Duerra enforced the principles of ambition, greed, might, and stoicism that Laduguer had set for the duergar race, and though she both respected and obeyed him, acting as his chief lieutenant, their alliance was completely nominal.

The Axe Princess secretly felt restricted by her patron, regarding her "father" as a man whose bitterness and spite had wasted centuries of opportunities to claim the duergar birthright, and whereas Laduguer was fixated on feelings of rejection and unappreciation, Duerra was indifferent to the duergar's distant heritage. Duerra endlessly schemed against Laduguer and he did the same in kind, and, in more recent times, Duerra was said to be only a hair away from trying to depose him as the primary gray dwarf deity. Others

Among their list of foes were the derro gods Diirinka and Diinkarazan, the beholder deities Gzemnid and the unnamed Great Mother, as well as the entire drow pantheon. There were also the deep-dwelling gods Blibdoolpoolp, of the kuo-toa, the ixzan deity Ilxendren, and the abolethic elder evil Pisaethces. Laogzed and Urdlen, the ever-hungry gods of troglodytes and evil gnomes respectively, were also among their enemies, with Urdlen specifically burrowing under Hammergrim's ore-rich earth looking for food. On the other hand, the duergar gods had less wicked opposition in Callarduran Smoothhands, deity of the deep gnomes, Psilofyr, protector god of the myconids, and Shevarash, the elven god of vengeance.

Orcus was also an enemy of Duerra since the Prince of Undead once subverted the worship of duergar beneath the Mines of Bloodstone. Particularly fierce was the hatred between Duerra and Ilsensine (as well as Maanzecorian before he died), since the Queen of the Invisible Art had stolen much of the psionic secrets and energy from the Great Brain of the illithids.

History

Duerra's deeds in the ancient past had long since become myth, spoken as legend in stories told by elderly duergar mindwardens. Long before she ascended to the ranks of the divine, Duerra was the greatest queen of the duergar, both an empress and warrior who ruled over an immense subterranean empire with dark ambitions to expand. Her domain (and the place her faith would become especially strong) was the Underspires, an ancient city of giant stalactites in the Northdark founded millennia earlier when the duergar first freed themselves from mind flayer enslavement. Under Duerra's centuries long dominion, she had expanded the duergar empire to include the vast reaches of the Underdark, bringing the race to the pinnacle of their power.

In -1850 DR, with her at the front of the forces, the grim duergar soldiers of the Underspires launched a series of strikes against their many foes. These including the drow of Undreath and the illithids of Oryndoll, the latter of which captured and transformed them long ago around -8100 DR to -8080 DR. It was on one of these occasions, according to dubious tales and legends, that Deep Duerra's forces overran the city of Oryndoll, shackling the resident mind flayers that had once done the same to them. Over the course of the next century, Duerra and her surgeons supposedly wrestled the many secrets and powers of psionics from the minds of the captive illithids, stealing the Invisible Art and transferring it to her clan's bloodline. So great was her psionic might, so the legends said, that she turned the entire illithid colony into her thralls.

Some doubted the accuracy of this myth, notably the mind flayers themselves. In their telling of the story, Duerra was the leader of a slave rebellion, the duergar psionic abilities being done by the illithids themselves to create more efficient slaves. However, while the illithids did indeed modify the duergar, performing generations of countless, gruesome breeding experiments, psychic surgeries, and physical alterations to warp them into a unqiue subrace, the duegar invasions of Oryndoll had occurred, and any potential embellishments aside, Duerra did at some point steal much energy and many of the psionic secrets of Ilsensine.

Sometime around -1800 DR, Duerra's forces turned their simmering hate to the remnants of Deep Shanatar: Ultoksamrin, Holorarar, and the caverns of Alatorin. For her many successes, Laduguer rewarded Duerra with divine ascension, right before her immediate exile from the Morndinsamman. Since Duerra's departure, the Underspires fell into a centuries-long decline, fragmenting and contracting in her absence. Regardless of the questionable veracity of her legends, Duerra was honored by the duergar as the progenitor of their psychic powers, which not only established the gray dwarves as separate from other dwarves, but also enabling them to hold their own against drow magic and illithid psionics. The ancient queen was further worshiped for the uncompromised ambition she displayed to increase duergar dominion, and was revered as a symbol of duergar dominance through expansion and enslavement.

Time of Troubles

During the Time of Troubles in 1358 DR, when Ao forced the gods to walk Toril in avatar form, Duerra took the body of the Queen Mother of Underspires to be her mortal form. Duerra's return sparked a new age of empire-building, helping the city to emerge from its long torpor. The army of elites which she had assembled and trained had made attacks against the outlying settlements of Ironfang and Undreath, helping them to reach their highest level of readiness in centuries. The empire managed to expand their rule to Underdark tunnels beneath the Cloven Mountains, reaching the deepest mines of Tathtar. When the Time of Troubles concluded that same year, Duerra disappeared to the southernmost reaches of the Underdark, her Queen Mother aspect's fate being unknown.

The Queen Mother was serving as regent for her young son Olorn Ridaugaur, who ascended to the Underthrone upon her disappearance. The Queen Mother and her son (as well as his children) were the last remnants of the original Shanatar bloodline, though only distantly so, being over a hundred generations down the line. The 12 ft (3.7 m), self-styled War King had strange powers, including the ability to hurl heavily armored duergar into walls with crushing force using only gusts of winds from his gestures. He also wielded the Barakuir scepter (although he could only use it as a magic club) and was seeking the words of power to help him claim Wyrmskull Throne. He claimed to be Duerra's son, (a debatably true sentiment) and since his mother's departure, he had initiated a great military crusade to expand to the north, an attack so fanatical it was thought Duerra had granted him a warband quest spell.

Over twelve years, his holy warriors had gathered for strikes against the underlands of Dragonreach held by the drow and studded with a few isolated dwarven and svirfbelin settlements. In little time, he had managed to crush many of the enclaves and overrun at least one minor drow city. At the same time, he had also sent his armies against the mind flayers of Oryndoll to the west beneath the Shining Plains. Despite their enthusiasm, the actual successes of these quick conquests had been few and far between, and the awakening empire had quickly created for itself a wide number of rivals and foes, potentially making it vulnerable to a concerted strike. Death and Revival

In 1383 DR, Moradin assembled other members of his pantheon to crush the forces of Hammergrim. Though Gorm Gulthyn and Haela Brightaxe died in the battle, Clangeddin Silverbeard dispatched Duerra while Moradin slew Laduguer. Hammergrim dispersed into the Astral Plane to the sound of victorious battle hymns. She seemingly returned after the Second Sundering.

Deep Duerra

Demigod

Basic Information

Titles

Queen of the Invisible Art
Axe Princess of Conquest
Daul/Daughter of Laduguer

Adjectives

Duerran

Pantheons

Morndinsamman
Duergar

Serves

Laduguer

Attributes

Alignment

Lawful Evil

Symbol

Broken illithid skull

Realm

Infinite Battlefield of Acheron/Thuldanin/Citadel of Thought

Portfolio

Psionics, Conquest, Expansion

Favored Weapon

Mindshatter (battleaxe)

Following

Worshippers

Dwarves
Fighters
Psionicists
Travelers in the Underdark

Alignments

LN, LE, NE

Domains

Knowledge (Memory, Thought)
Law (Tyranny)

Favored Aspects

Animals/Plants

Razorvine

Monsters

Banelar nagas
Dark nagas
Earth elementals
Earth mephits
Helmed horrors
Imps
Meenlocks
Rust monsters
Werebadgers

Minerals

Sapphire
Silver rings

Colors

Dark blue
Silver

Manifest- ations

Aura of a silver crown

Pools of still, fresh water