Deep Dwarf

**Deep Dwarves**, also called **Gray Dwarves**, or **Underdwarves**, or **Duergr** in their own language, spelled **Duergar** by other Dwarves, were Dwarves who lived exclusively in the Underdark, dragged down by their Mind Flayer captors and pushed down by their Dwarven cousins. They had grey or purple skin and white hair not unlike Drow, as well as pupilless eyes. Also like Drow they had stronger darkvision than their cousins on or closer to the surface but with a weakness to sunlight, they also had an innate ability they could awaken through training to cast Enlarge and Invisibility on themselves.

Their history started when several nearby cities of Shield Dwarves made a pact with the mind flayers with lived below them that they would send them criminals to eat and experiment on in return for the mind flayers not taking any other Dwarves, though these cities were layer overrun by Goblins and the Illithids saw no reason not to take those Dwarves who fled down instead of out. When the Illithids gave them purple and gray skin they began learning psionics the gray-skinned Dwarven god Ladugdwer and his daughter Dwerra who was a goddess of psionics appeared to the enslaved Dwarves and broke out all those would worship them (one myth claims that those who rejected them later escaped on their own and became Derro), this put them on thin ice with the rest of the Moradasamman as they were aiding those deliberately cast out by the law and by treaty (or at least their descendants) and as their status and mind flayer rule cut them off from worshipping them so they were essentially stealing followers from the rest of the pantheon. This worsened into full-on exile when other Dwarves found the Deep Dwarves and attacked them and the Deep Dwarves attacked back, why, the followers of Ladugdwer and Duerra were now attacking Dwarves! This was eventually "resolved" when the two split parts of the pantheon officially signed a treaty saying those who were by then called Duergar were in fact Dwarves and that the gods who were by then called Laduguer and Duera were part of the the Dwarven pantheon and therefore all their worshippers also worshipped Moradin. The conflict is far from over however, most Dwarves still view Duergar as almost creole-like perversions of their race and discriminate against them, and Duergar are hateful and suspicious of other Dwarves for this. And Laduguer and Duera still live in their seperated chunk of Nidavellir, Hammergrim, with Urdlen.

Deep Dwarves are known to be bitter and unfriendly, moreso than other Dwarves, and have a deeply morbid sense of humor, an old Duergar proverb is "Work or die, in the first case you are useful. In the second you are entertaining." They frequently traveled to other cities in the Underdark where they were hated but tolerated because of their wares, but rarely let anyone in their own cities. The Underdwarven society was deeply divided on whether to embrace traditional Dwarven values to prove that they were Dwarves or reject them to spite those who wronged them, kings and queens never cut their beards and had them elegantly styled while rebellious youth often shaved them, which was met with shock and scorn in some Duergar cities, and legal actions in others.