Diirinka

Diirinka is the patron god of the derro (particularly the savants), and twin brother of their forgotten demigod Diinkarazan. Titled the Betrayer, Diirinka is a god of magic and knowledge, as well as cruelty, said to have created the derro by stealing magic and cleverly leaving his sibling to pay the price, teaching the degenerate dwarves the virtues of being deceitful and cruel.

Description

Diirinka preferred to appear as a diminutive (around 3 feet and 6 inches (1.1 meters)) tall, stunted creature, a kind of derro-lich hybrid.

Diirinka wore a magical robe of in a state of constant change, always swirling gray, white, and black. He could draw up to five magical strands from it each day and when holding them in his hand could cast difficult to resist versions of slay living, disintegrate, and destruction by touch from white, gray, and black threads respectively. He also carried a +3 dagger of venom and wand of cold and wore a ring of telekinesis and a brooch of shielding.

Personality

Diirinka is a mean-spirited, hateful, despicable deity. He is a chaotic and treacherous individual (as well as a skilled improviser) with little care for anything and anyone and a willingness to betray them all to accomplish his goals. Notably this apathy extends to himself, perhaps because the ancient betrayal he dealt to his brother still gnaws at his soul.

Divine Realm

Diirinka's realm, known as The Hidden Betrayal, is, appropriately enough, hidden away on the 3rd layer of Pandemonium, Phlegethon. No one who sees it ever returns to tell of it, though it is said to be chillingly dark and endlessly dripping with foul water.

Activities

Diirinka only sends avatars for his own benefit, usually either to obtain magic items or to amuse himself with acts of cruelty. If he chooses to punish his servants it is either out of whim or temper, and he never sends them omens (although he sometimes indirectly guides them to magical items or locations, albeit always on a perilous route).

Worshippers

Before his banishment from the Mornsdinsamman, Diirinka was the dwarven god of magic and knowledge, his swirling spiral symbol used since the times of Deep Shanatar having marked many magical artifacts from Torglor. By the time of Shanatar's fall however his worshiped had been abandoned in favor of newer gods, such as the likes of Dugmaren Brightmantle. Derro

While most of the derro worshiped Diirinka, there were very few actual clerics in their wisdom-deficient ranks. Rather, than priests in the orthodox sense, the clergy of Diirinka was occupied by "savants" granted power by Diirinka in a wholly unusual way. Rather than granting them spells, Diirinka infused the derro with sorcery stemming from an unusual source for a god, that being his own magical nature. The race had a greater-than-normal tendency to develop sorcerous powers, and those who had them were considered specially blessed by the Great Savant, which was in fact true. Their innate magical skills were the result of Diirinka shaping their bodies and brains during gestation, his work on their forms allowing for such power.

The magic of derro savants was considerable, though not all their sorcerers were automatically savants. First, they had to reach a certain level of power, with most savants accompanied by two less experienced students. The savants were the undisputed leaders of the derro, exerting their authority at all times, and other derro followed them fanatically. The visible madness common to all members of the race, most typically manifesting as paranoia and mania, were noted by derro only when exhibited by savants, odd behaviors they believed arose because the savants carried messages from the Deep Lich.

Dogma

In reality, Diirinka was fairly indifferent to what his savants actually did or taught and sent them no signs, caring only that they revered him and helped the derro grow stronger. Savants took it upon themselves to guide their people and were the interpreters of Diirinka's teachings. They maintained order among their groups and forces and gave instruction as to the proper treatment of slaves (discipline through cruelty and fear), typically using spells to confuse and irritate rather than kill so as to enslave the defeated.

Savants pursued magic and power, their key objectives including adventuring and crafting to acquire magical items (while local derro pantheons sometimes had a warrior demigod with a secondary influence in weapon-smithing, magical weapon manufacturing was indisputably Diirinka's domain). All were trained in some esoteric sphere of knowledge, usually the arcane, and some were known to experiment with fungal extracts and poisons to the end of functionally pacifying (and lobotomizing) their slaves.

Temples

The Hall of Sacred Spells was a known shrine of Diirinka within Gracklstugh.

Relationships

Diirinka and his twin brother were perhaps the least respected of the dwarven gods. Even the avaricious Abbathor, despite being distrusted and disliked by the other members of the Morndinsamman, was considered a member of the pantheon. Even the duergar gods Laduguer and Deep Duerra were at least considered members-in-exile, still acknowledged by the dwarves and with Laduguer's leave being debatably mutual. Diirinka and Diinkarazan were not just banished but completely disowned.

The most commonly given reason for the banishment of the twins by Moradin was that both were irredeemably evil, and while true, it was also possible that fear and jealousy of their magical powers played a part in the consensus. Diirinka was the most magical of all the dwarven deities, a notably distinctive trait as the pantheon had few cases of arcane or mystic gods.

Diirinka and Diinkarazan were often considered the youngest of the pantheon's elder members. The twins were thought to be children of a dwarven god that was a lesser deity at the time of their conception, possibly even Moradin himself, although this was unclear.

To all but the derro, Diirinka was a wholly loathsome being. His only known ally was Kiaransalee, an ascended necromancer and goddess of the undead. Other members of the pantheon however, including Lolth, Vhaeraun, Eilistraee, Selvetarm and Ghaunadaur, considered him an enemy. The duergar gods were also among his foes, and the duergar believed that he had cursed part of Hammergrim so that haunting spirits slowly drained the ruling chieftain until he was incapable of ruling without them (though they might have confused him with Diinkarazan).[note 2] Other enemies of the Deep Lich included Callarduran Smoothhands, patron of the deep gnomes, and Shevarash, elven god of vengeance.

History

Diirinka was once the patron deity of the Shanatar fiefdom of Torglor, the Silver Kingdom, located beneath the Snowflake Mountains, a city with extensive connections between the upper and middle Underdark but few to the surface world. Befitting their patron, the dwarves of Torglor were renowned for their invention and rune magic. Like Korolnor, the city of Diinkarazan's dominant faith, Torglor's forces skirmished with the thrall armies of the illithids in Oryndoll long after the formal conclusion of the Mindstalker Wars, and its artisans had developed many unusual weapons and tactics for besting the mind flayers, many of which were used into the future.

At some point, Diirinka and Diinkarazan, young gods at the time, sought to expand their dominion and create their own dwarven subrace, one made distinct by possessing qualities that other dwarves lacked, namely speed, dexterity, and skill in magic. The pair were drawn to deeper places than other dwarves, and in their exploration of the Underdark found a vast cavern glittering with raw, elemental magic. They began gathering the strange, alien artifacts scattered about a green, central crystal sphere floating just above the ground.

As they did however, a large, spectral brain floated up from the sphere, surveying them coldly. Somehow, they had stumbled upon the realm of Ilsensine, and it had not taken kindly to their intrusion. Before the illithid god could punish the diminutive dwarves stealing its secrets, Diirinka backstabbed his brother, leaving him to suffer Ilsensine's wrath. Diinkarazan would be made to suffer in the Abyss, his existence forgotten by nearly all but the illithids; he was shunned in derro lore as taught by the shamans and so Diirinka's twin was known by few derro, and when he was it was in the context of getting betrayed, and Diirinka was still the one to emulate.

After this mythic event, Diirinka would return to his own lands with some of Ilsensine's secrets he managed to escape with, and begin meddling with the magic he had stolen. He hid himself from the other dwarven deities and spent centuries experimenting on dwarves, and in the gruesome process left whole races of mindless, deformed, dwarf-like abominations shambling in isolated cave complexes when he disposed of them. He would twist his former dwarf followers until he perfected the derro, warping them into the hateful race they would be for ages after, his creations reaching their ultimate form in the savants.

Given that the derro were a race of mad fanatics, the origin stories they told themselves varied in accuracy, though grains of truth were nonetheless present. In orthodox derro mythology for example, Diirinka created them purely using his own skill, which was certainly false, as the cruel experiments of the illithids played at least some role in the powers of the derro. Depending on what foe Diirinka's savants wanted to polarize the community against, Ilsensine, or even the mind flayers in general, weren't always the antagonists. The only common factor was that Diirinka betrayed his brother to escape with magical power stolen by a great evil force.

Exactly what happened past this point was another point of contention in derro lore. In some myths the dwarf gods drove the derro away due to their jealousy of Diirinka's creations and own prowess, while in others he preemptively hid them in the Underdark to avoid an envy-rooted uprising. In actuality it was the former, good dwarves driving the derro to the depths of the Underdark whilst the dwarf gods banished Diirinka.

As for Diirinka's dwarven legacy, Torglor's ruins had long been abandoned, though those who battled Oryndoll's denizens still sometimes returned in the hopes of finding new ways to defeat illithids. The Torglor Scepter meanwhile, marked with his spiral symbol, never left scholarly hands, having been the property of the Halruaan noble family of Ryscelsar for centuries.

Diirinka

Intermediate deity

Basic Information

Titles

The Betrayer
The Father
The Great Savant
The Deep Lich
The Cruel Master

Pantheons

Morndinsamman
Derro

Attributes

Alignment

Chaotic Evil

Symbol

Spiral of white, gray, and black

Realm

Windswept Depths of Pandemonium/Phlegethon/Hidden Betrayal

Portfolio

Cruelty, Knowledge, Magic

Favored Weapon

Spell storing dagger of venom

Following

Worshippers

Derro

Alignments

CE

Domains

Evil (-)
Destruction (Torture)
Knowledge (Espionage, Thought)
Magic (Arcane, Divine)