Page 67 - Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes Deluxe

The dwarves proved to be able s laves, but the elder Laduguer, in response, tried to explain that his people
brain saw within them another kind of usefulness. The had been lured into a trap by the mind flayers, but his
dwarves' innate ability to resist the effects of harmful assertions fell on deaf ears. Thus, with no other ap-
substances such as poison made them suitable subjects parent choice, the lost clan fled back to the Underdark.
for a variety of grisly experiments. Generations of psy- Laduguer focused his fury on Moradin. The dwarves'
chic surgery and physical alterations mutated the cap- supposed father had turned a blind eye as they fell into
tives into creatures that had special powers of their own. the mind flayers' trap, then sat idle as the clan suffered
In time, a leader arose among the enslaved dwarves. unspeakable abuses. Laduguer and his followers swore
Named Laduguer, he struck a deal with Asmodeus, that they wouldn't rest until the father of the dwarves lay
pledging the assistance of clan Duergar against Lolth's dead and Laduguer sat upon his throne.
ambitions in the Underdark. With the help of the Lord of Of course, by declaring his intent to destroy Moradin,
the Nine, the dwarves overthrew their illithid masters in Laduguer created a state of war between the duergar
a great uprising. At last, Laduguer could bring his clan and the other dwarves in the world. Since that time,
upward to rejoin the world they had left behind. the duergar have not eased up on their hostility, and the
dwarves have not relaxed their vigilance.
TRIUMPH TuRNED SOUR
CONFLICT WITHOUT END
When Laduguer and his people returned to the dwarves
of the upper world, they were shocked by the hostility Few others aside from the dwarves and the duergar
they faced. As Laduguer quickly learned, the priests of understand or appreciate the true scope and intensity of
Moradin had long ago labeled the lost clan as heretics, the battles between these two races. Viewed on a grand
spoken of now only as an object lesson concerning the scale, the conflict is a great war of attrition- the com-
fate of dwarves who stray from Moradin's teachings. batants don't often gain or lose territory as the result of
When Laduguer protested this treatment, the priests battle. But on a personal scale, combat is brutal, with no
insisted that Moradin had sent omens and warnings to quarter given or expected.
the lost dwarves, but they went unheeded. Envoys from The duergar fight a persistent guerrilla war of sud-
the other clans had found clan Duergar's stronghold den raids and brutal attacks against isolated groups of
abandoned, with no evidence of invasion, plague, or dwarves. Duergar often begin an attack by burrowing
other calamity. Even worse, the temples of Moradin had into a dwarf settlement from below, then bursting out
been left untended. Only laziness, greed, and contempt in a vicious assault that leaves few survivors. If robbery
for the All-Father could account for the clan's fate. rather than murder is the goal, a duergar war party

CHAPTER 3 I DWARVES AND DUERCAR