Duergar aka Gray Dwarves are a subterrean evil race of dwarves with gray or dark skin and fiery eyes. Some have Psionic abilities.

Derro are a degenerate race of dwarves twisted by dark magic. They have pale bluish skin and white hair with glowing pupilless eyes.

Both races are evil.

These races first appeared in print in the early 80s and don't really strike me as particularly Arnesonian. However, both races appear in the 3E Dungeons of Castle Blackmoor.

So I was wondering if we could come up with some backstory or twists that would make them feel more at home in Blackmoor?

One idea I had was to tie them with "Frick and Frack". Frick and Frack were Vampire Dwarves in Dave Arneson's Campaign. They served Lord Fang, the original Blackmoor Vampire. OTOH, if the Blackmoor Dark Dwarves are descended from Frick & Frack, that would make the entire races younger than 30 years old and that hardly seems realistic. I could see Duergar and Derro having a longer history of serving Vampires of the North though, with perhaps Frick & Frack being the epitome versions of their species being awarded with true Vamprisim.

What do you think? Other ideas?


-Havard

I've used the Duergar(psionic) as dwarves who dug to deep and saw something sanity warping. They stayed deep toiling away keeping their minds busy, attempting to keep order in mind or else the whispers of that thing would drive their race to madness and make them its slaves. The thing in question is one of the sleeping ones possibly? I kept the thing vague. Theyre a bit different then traditional Duergar, more focused on their lawful aspect rather than evil.

I usually treat Derro as the strange race with insanity and science in mind. Coming up into cities and kidnapping people to experiment on them with their strange alchemical devices.

Interesting concept, sounds like a good idea to me. Also Golarions Duergar if I remember correctly is the result of dwarves who decided not to follow the Quest for Sky instead staying in the deep caverns toiling away. As for Golarions Derro theyre the result of Pech consuming certain fungi that caused mutations and slowly shifted the strange earth fey to crazy little humanoids who preform strange surgeries on kidnapped people and put them back after drugging them. Very Shaver Mysteries oriented, love how it is used in one of the modules. I could see Duergar also being connected to 'demonic' things, there was a duergar based tiefling in Forgotten Realms if memory serves me that had red skin and infernal blood.