Derro [Dwarf]

A derro is dwarf-sized, with skin the white of lake ice under a cold blue cast, straight hair of sickly yellow or tan, and blank, pupil-less eyes. Coarse tufts of hair sprout from its rough hide. Dwarves think derro look human; humans think they look like dwarves. They dress in baggy garments woven from the hair of cave beasts, dyed dark red and brown, and go to war in leather studded with copper and brass. Leaders wear thicker hides taken from far tougher creatures than cattle.

With Dexterity of 15-18, derro are among the most agile humanoids alive, so adjust their AC to match. Each carries a secari, a little ornamental blade used as a dagger, plus weapons meant to maim. Spears and axes kill too quickly to be any fun.

Half of any group carries repeating light crossbows (maximum range 12, two shots a round, six bolts per load, 1d3 damage), nearly always with poisoned bolts. One venom adds 2d6 damage; a crueler one works like ray of enfeeblement. A successful save negates either. A quarter wield the hook-fauchard, a pole arm of 6 feet or more that impales for 1d4 and, 25% of the time, drags a man-sized or smaller target off-balance so that it spends its next round steadying itself. Fifteen percent use a spiked buckler and a hooked aklys: the buckler grants +1 AC against one foe and its spike strikes as a second weapon at no penalty for 1d4, while the aklys is a heavy club on a leather cord, hurled for 1d6 crushing damage and hauled back, with a 1 in 8 chance of unbalancing the target. These daring fighters earn heavier armor (AC 4). The last 10% are children of leaders, heavily armored and trained with spear and military pick, carrying plain bucklers when not gripping the spear two-handed.

Officers come with numbers: one extra 4 HD derro per three, one 5 HD derro per six, and for ten or more a 7 HD leader with a 6 HD lieutenant. Twenty-five derro thus bring eight 4 HD, four 5 HD, one 6 HD and one 7 HD officer, all in heavy armor with fine and occasionally magical arms. Bands of 20 or more add a savant and a pair of students.

Savants have 5-8 HD, can use any weapon or magical item, comprehend languages and read magic by instinct, act as sages in one to three fields, and know 1d4+5 random spells from this pool: blink, invisibility, levitate, spider climb and ventriloquism; light, affect normal fires, minor creation and shadow magic; ESP, hypnotic pattern and paralyzation; lightning bolt, ice storm and cloudkill; wall of fog, wall of force, repulsion and anti-magic shell. They own two or three items, such as potions, scrolls, wands, magic shields, studded leather +1, weapons of +3 or less, bracers of defense, cloaks of protection, brooches of shielding, or rings of spell storing, protection, invisibility or fire resistance. Students know just 1-3 spells, have 4-7 HD, one field of study and one minor item.

Derro tactics are cruel and clever. They snag weapons away (a hook-fauchard disarms with a hit against AC 6, and the derro then keep the victim from reaching the dropped blade), smother spellcasters, and wear foes down with small cuts. Savants aim to frustrate: a lightning bolt is likelier to collapse the tunnel ahead of fleeing humans than to strike them. Derro infravision reaches only 30 feet, but their hearing is so keen it counts as blind-fighting. Intelligent enemies are captured for slaves when possible.

Derro warrens lie below goblin and troll country but above the brinekin and drow. Sunlight sickens them and a few days of it would be fatal, so surface raids happen by night. They are mob creatures; a derro alone is a frantic survivor of some lost patrol, scrambling for home.

A lair holds 3d4+30 rank-and-file derro plus officers, ruled by 1-3 savants and 2-5 students whose baffling, even suicidal, orders are followed without hesitation. When a lair grows much past 40, half its members, leaders and savants go far away to found another; no two lairs have been found less than several miles apart. After a brief period of contact the colonies part ways for good, and no lair has ever been seen fighting or helping another outside the Uniting War. Each lair also keeps 5d6+10 human slaves, each 90% likely to be charmed if any savant or student knows charm person. Humans are the most hated race, used for the vilest labor and for breeding, and somewhere below, legend says, savants in a great citadel plot to ruin the surface and enslave mankind.

Derro have no gods. Savants worship knowledge and everyone else worships savants. Defying a savant's law, which mostly concerns wiping out humanity and amassing obscure lore, earns the Polite Execution, a two-week ordeal dragged across miles of tunnel. Indifferent to gold, derro pay ruinous prices for a few potions or an item missing its command word, and this hunger for magic, plus loot from the surface, drives what little trade they have. Drow see them as dangerous, magic-resistant barbarians too fixated on the surface; mind reavers find them distasteful to eat; duergar disapprove of their cruelty. The derro barely notice.

Roughly every 20 years the race wages the Uniting War against the other deep peoples. Nobody expects to win. The war weeds out weak lairs, unites the race, spreads terror, and sends rumors to the surface that lure crowds of human adventurers below, where they become new slaves.

Fungus can sustain a derro but tastes foul except as spice, so hunters chase big, dangerous game that can feed a whole lair, tormenting it along the way. They rob dwarves or orcs just to start an amusing feud. Open Hunting is their favorite sport: midnight raids on human villages to steal pigs and cattle for later hunting and, above all, to kidnap people.

Derro blood is milky and turns brown and rotten at any touch of bright light. Drow discovered during recent Uniting Wars that it is a handy potion ingredient.