Clan Duergar - A History

[Demuladon]

Clan Duergar - A History

by Demuladon



It is beyond the mental capacity of most members of the short lived races to understand, I mean *really* understand, the mind-set of a Duergar. It's because the short lived races have no real concept of history, for a start most of them can barely recall what they were doing last week, and I guarantee that *none* of them remember what their ancestors were doing over eleven millenia ago.

But members of Clan Duergar remember. And we will never forget.

To understand a duergar you must first understand the Duergar race, and to understand Duergar race you will need to journey back more than 11,000 years.

That's when the eight great dwarven clans of the north fell into civil war - a war based on greed, as each clan sort to expand their holdings at the expense of the others. The civil war would last 900 years, and only ended when an external threat, in the form of an illithid invasion, forced the dwarven clans to unite against the common foe.

For 20 savage years the the Mindflayer Wars were faught, many thousands of dwarves died, and eventually the illithids were driven back. Dwarven historical texts dryly mention that:

"In the wake of the retreating illithids, the surviving dwarves discovered that the caverns of Barakuir, which had been cut off in the early days of fighting, lay empty. Clan Duergar had been carried back to thralldom in the mind flayers' realm."

For four thousand years decendents of Clan Duergar were enslaved by the illithids and, subjected to countless illithid breeding experiments, were slowly transformed into a new race: Duergar.

For four thousand years the Gods of the dwarven Pantheon abandoned Clan Duergar, and all the while the dwarven clans let their brethren in Clan Duergar suffer in darkness and without hope.

During millenia of slavery the Duergar, seemingly godless and alone in the dark, developed the cold mithril anger that gave us the strength to rebel against our illithid masters and eventually free ourselves of the mind flayers' dominion. During the rebellion we extracted a heavy price from the illithids and never again have they attempted to enslave the descendants of Clan Duergar.

It is worth noting that soon after finding freedom the Duergar learnt that we are in fact "not godless". One god, who eventually revealed himself to us as Deep Duerra, claimed to have helped Duergar escape the illithids and to survive the terrors of Underdark.

I am deeply suspicious of the timing of Deep Duerra's revelation. In my mind it was only the raw strength and innate powerful magics of the Duergar race that gained us our freedom. But I digress and will say no more of this.

It is definitely true that after gaining our freedom Duergar did not only survive, we thrived - at least for a while.

History shows that the newly liberated Duergar carved out holdings in the northern Underdark beneath the Orsraun Mountains and in isolated caverns deep beneath the Great Glacier.

Five thousand years have passed since the Duergar freed themselves. During recent millenia Duergar strength and numbers have been slowly declining. It just so happens that also during recent millenia the god Vergadain, a dwarven god of trickery and wealth, has re-kindled his interest in the Duergar.

To me at least, it seems possible that Vergadain's interest in the Duergar, and our waning Duergar numbers, are related. I believe Vergadain is securing the future of his precious dwarfs by slowly withering the Duergar race (by inducing in-fighting amongst Duergar) before we can extract full payment from the dwarves.

Recently, deep within the dark safety of Mir, the drow assassin Nilan foreshadowed the destruction of Toril unless there was a truce between dwarf and Duergar (in fact between all the races of Toril). Even given the peril at hand, it is still difficult for me to understand how the drow can ask this. By the way, if Nilan has been consorting with dwarves as I suspect then I now understand King Artikerus's attempts on his life.

The question is - are Duergar prepared to let the Vile One destroy all of Toril in order to finally repay the dwarves for their millenia of treachery?

The decision is not clear cut.

[Clan Blindhammer]

Nicely written man:) At least there are some of us who know our histories:)