Buppido

**Buppido** was a cunning derro mage from the duergar city of Gracklstugh. He was a cunning but eccentric man, and he believed himself to be the living incarnation of the lost derro god of vengeance, Diinkarazan. As a result of his derro madness and his fervent belief in his own divinity, Buppido was known to brutally murder and sacrifice others, believing it would strengthen himself. While traveling from Gracklstugh to Blingdenstone in 1486 DR, he was captured by drow slavers and taken to the the outpost of Velkynvelve, where he would go on participate in an escape effort.

Buppido was an NPC in the ongoing *Out of the Abyss* adventure.

## Description

Buppido was a derro male with pale blue-white skin, patches of unkempt white hair, and white eyes lacking pupils. He stood at about 3 feet and six inches (1 meter), and weighed about 80 pounds (36 kilograms). Due to his unkempt hair and skinny frame, Buppido looked pitiable, even when compared to fellow captives at Velkynvelve. During his stay at the drow outpost, he was only ever seen wearing 'clothing' made of burlap, which only added to his bizarre and sad appearance.

## Personality

All who met Buppido would first be met with a gregarious and eccentric mage, friendly and polite despite a few personality quirks. He enjoyed conversation and feeling useful to others, especially when it came to his own arcane knowledge. Although he had moments of saying bizarre things or not taking stressful situations seriously, most who met him would consider him harmless, despite his eccentricities. However, those who traveled with him for long periods of time would often find that not everything was as it seemed.

Like all of the derro, Buppido suffered from a racial madness. Though this varies from derro to derro, in him, it manifested as murderous delusions of grandeur. He believed himself to be Diinkarazan, a lost derro demigod of vengeance and murder who was betrayed by his twin brother Diirinka. As the Avatar of Vengeance and Murder, he felt as though he had to offer up occasional bloody sacrifices to himself, so he could one day lead his people to glory. The victims of these bloody acts were random and generally undeserving, as Buppido didn't target them based on his actual opinions, but rather a random whim. As a result of his delusion, Buppido saw any setbacks he faced as just another part of his "divine plan". As he was the living incarnation of a god, he could not possibly die- and if he did somehow die, it would just be another setback. After all, the loss of a mortal body means nothing to a god. This sincere belief made him fearless, even in the face of terrifying odds.

## History

### Life Before Velkynvelve

Buppido was born and raised in the West Cleft District of Gracklstugh, and like most derro he received a less than adequate early childhood. His birth mother sold him to another derro at a young age for money to buy her own food, and as a result he was raised under the care of a derro savant who inexplicably wished to give the newborn the role of 'apprentice'. He was raised more as a lab assistant than a son, but in comparison to the lives of other derro in the slums, Buppido was lucky. Though not a sorcerer himself, he was intelligent and cunning- his derro madness starting out as an occasional outburst of anger that paled in comparison to the tendencies of most of his peers. From his foster mother the young derro picked up an interest in magic, and though the savant was both unwilling and incapable of teaching- over the decades Buppido began to grasp the complexities of magic.

When Buppido was only forty, his foster mother died in a failed derro riot- leaving him without a source of scrolls and texts to learn from. With noone to rely on, Buppido had his first truly violent outbreak- killing another derro who had attempted to claim his foster mother's home after her death. As the duergar cared very little for what happened in the derro slums so long as it didn't spill out of slums, he was never punished for this murder. Murder, though not uncommon or discouraged among the derro, marked young Buppido as untrustworthy and made him an outcast among his neighbors who believed they might be next. Thus, if he wished to learn magic, Buppido would need to leave the slums he called his home.

During one of the few occasions were derro were allowed to make trips to Darklake District, Buppido took the opportunity to leave Gracklstugh and travel through the Northdark. He ended up traveling to the nearby Myconid colony of Glomeria, staying among the friendly and mercantile Myconids there for a while before his journeys took him to the deep gnome village of Fiddlebarrow. Buppido spent the next ten years in Fiddlebarrow, learning politeness from his accepting svifneblin neighbors. Seen as a harmless oddity, Buppido was only forced to leave the village after a fit of rage led to him harming (but not killing) the village's wizard.

It was only after he began traveling the southern edges of the Darklake with other merchants and small caravans that his occasional fits became more common- and as a result, the usually polite and intelligent derro mage was forced to address the cause. Rather than realizing that the source was bottled up anger and a lack of inhibitions, the knowledgable mage began to see his attempts at murder as an inherited tendency. He first began to worship the derro god of murder Diinkarazan as a patron, before coming to the conclusion that he was the god reborn in a mortal body. His goal became to accrue knowledge and worshipers, so that one day his apotheosis would be complete. Those he chose to kill were no longer victims of anger and passion, but whoever he felt like killing at the time.

### Rage of Demons

In 1486 DR, Buppido's search of knowledge and power took him to the growing deep gnome settlement of Blingdenstone, where he met a deep named Pelek. Due to his charisma and the lack of an urge to kill Pelek, the two became fast friends. After knowing eachother for two months, Buppido wished to show his friend where he lived, which led to the two of them venturing all the way to Gracklstugh. While in the West Cleft District, Buppido and Pelek discovered the Whorlstone Tunnels, a faerzress-suffused cave system housing wandering monstrosities and a group known as the Empty-Scabbard Killers (though Buppido was not aware of the latter until much later). In a faerzress-suffused cavern that had been tainted by abyssal influence, Buppido killed his friend Pelek in a ritual manner. To his surprise and enjoyment, Pelek soon became a ghost- unable to leave the tunnels but somewhat under Buppido's control. Believing Pelek's undeath to be a sign, Buppido slew many other derro in the same room- with each of his victims becoming undead that were under his control. This phenomenon drove Buppido to believe he was on the brink of godhood and unstoppable, and he resolved to try and bring a powerful priest or mage from Blingdenstone to his new lair to serve as a more powerful undead servant.

While attempting to return to Blingdenstone, Buppido was captured by drow slavers near Velkynvelve. In 1487 DR, after a relatively short stay at that outpost, he and a group of thirteen other captives took part in an escape plot. Alongside these fellow escaped slaves, Buppido traveled to the kuo-toa village of Sloobludop, where he witnessed the *Rise of the Deep Father*, an event that leveled the settlement. Though he escaped the event unharmed, Buppido took the appearance of the Abyssal Lord as a sign to return to his home in Gracklstugh. While traveling on the Darklake with the adventuring party and a duo of smugglers, Buppido chose to ritually murder the smuggler Hemeth and make it appear as though the duergar had been sacrificed to the drow god Lolth. The death of Hemeth was not linked to him by anyone other than the warlock Arius, and Buppido managed to return to Gracklstugh alongside the smuggler Excellence.

Once in Gracklstugh, Buppido continued his murderous rites, becoming an ally of convenience with both the Cult of Demogorgon and Empty-Scabbard Killers, organizations in the tunnels who saw Buppido's tendency to murder those who entered the cave system as a blessing. The adventuring party he once traveled with eventually discovered Buppido and his murderous practices when they entered the Whorlstone Tunnels in search of the derro Droki, and the warlock Arius slew Buppido easily- despite the derro's undead servants. In the end, Buppido's delusions of grandeur proved to somewhat be true. Though he was not in fact a god of murder and vengeance, being slain within his own lair would give him the same fate as all he had slain there- Undeath.