Church of Deep Duerra

The church of Deep Duerra was the primary religious organization dedicated to the worship and service of the goddess Deep Duerra, the Queen of the Invisible Art. They were commonly called Duerrans.

"The mind is but another material, set before us to shape into a weapon."

- Gargosa Ironmind

Dogma
Duerra's faith taught that it was the duergar's destiny to rule the Underdark, conquering the stone from which they were spawned, taking the voids in which they dwelt, and claiming the wealth and servitors that could be found within both. Additionally, while wizards skilled in crafting magic items were typically respected in duergar society, Duerra's dogma went against this idea, preaching the inferiority of arcane magic. According to them, arcane magic was weak, unreliable, and obvious when compared to psionic power or magic that had been given and steadied by godly will (the duergar having strong divine spellcasting traditions). They declared that those who relied on petty magics to survive would be destroyed or enslaved by the duergar by means of psionics, and one day all would bow before duergar might and the glorious Invisible Art.

Activities
Inspired by her mythic accomplishments, Duerra's followers stood at the forefront of duergar offensives against the foes they hated most, dwarves and mind flayers, seeking to utterly obliterate such communities. While the Ladugueran clergy defended duergar holdings, senior mindaxes took their elite strike forces of duergar warriors and Duerran priests (as well as junior followers of Laduguer) on missions to scout, clear, and seize tunnel systems to help grow the community.

Duerra expected her priests to be capable leaders, and to use cunning strategy in their endless quest for unlimited power. Their responsibilities included the training of younger gray dwarves in the art of war, the teaching of Underdark survival techniques, and aid in developing their natural psionics. They also attended to and controlled the slave underclass, Axe Princes and Princesses monitoring the thoughts of slaves and masters alike for signs of disloyalty to eliminate as needed, though recently the duergar had been moving away from slavery towards psionically-powered machines.

Membership
Like Laduguer, Duerra was venerated by the duergar to the near-exclusion of all other Morndinsamman members, the rest being only revered in name. Duerra's worshipers were primarily duergar that studied psionics and the militant warriors among the gray dwarves that chafed at the defensive ways of Laduguer's priests, those that sought to conquer much of the Underdark and would rather crush than cooperate with their neighbors.

Though a few rare surface dwellers called upon the Queen for help in understanding, and more importantly concealing, the Invisible Art that was so often viewed with fear and suspicion, few outside the Underdark had heard of Duerra or her followers. Even hill and mountain dwarves were unlikely to have heard of her, although a handful of hill, mountain, and jungle dwarves skilled in psionics secretly served her (making up less than a percentage of her followers).

Under the surface, Duerra's specific worshipers were known as norothor, (norothar singular) a dwarvish word roughly translated as "those who seize enemy land". The vast majority of her clergy (97%) were female, and before the Time of Troubles they were entirely so. Being lawful evil wasn't a requirement to become one, with lawful neutrality also being an option.

Titles
Novice members of Duerra's faith were called the Closeminded, while full priests were known as Mindaxes. In ascending order of rank, priests were known by the titles of Psionic Blaster, Mind Thruster, Ego Whipper, Id Insinutor, Psychic Crusher, and Thought Conqueror, with High Old Ones of the church having individual titles and being collectively known as the Axe Princes and Princesses of the Invisible Art.

Classes
Specialty priests of Duerra were also called norothor. Slightly heigtened fortitude and high mental capacity was required to become one, including above average intelligence and force of personality and particularly high wisdom. Such followers had various powers of mental protection and assault at their disposal.

Duerra's clergy was highly varied in terms of the specializations of its members, with many having undergone multiple forms of training. Around 75% of all Duerran clerics were psionicists and in general members frequently trained as psions and fighters. Specialty priests made up a fourth of the clergy, with pure psionicists slightly behind them followed closely by crusaders; normal clerics only made up about a tenth. The rest of the clergy consisted of various combinations of fighters, specialty priests, clerics, and rogues.

Orders
A secretive order of Duerran psionic priests known as the Mindstalkers of the Invisible Art had cells in most northern duergar settlements in the Realms, their goal being to unify the Northdark duergar kingdoms into an empire ruled by their collective consciousness. Though centuries from being finished, their invisible tendrils had already extended, secretly controlling much of duergar trade in the Savage Frontier and, in recent decades, acting from Skullport to cull psionic talent from slaves and steal surface dwellers with skill in the Invisible Art to breed with their own kind.

Rituals
Norothor prayed for spells at night. The duerran clergy had two annual holy days, during each of which an offering to Duerra was made in the form of dirt or stone from the borders of newly conquered land, the brains of psionic individuals, or the shattered skulls of any intelligent creatures.

The first celebration was a perverse festival known as the Rallying conducted on Midwinter Eve. That night, Duerra's followers came together to commemorate the triumphs of the past year and announced their intentions to expand for the coming year. The duergar worked themselves into a grim fury accompanied by the sound of dark war chants and the pounding of hammers into stone, both causing echoes through the tunnels. The culmination of these exaltations was the display of a freshly severed head of an enemy that would be passed around the group, the race of which was the next foe they planned to besiege and take territory from before the next Rallying.
 * The Rallying:

The other Duerran holy day was celebrated on the 5 of Mirtul, and it was on this day that skilled Invisible Art practitioners joined together in Duerran temples to perform the Melding, a psionic ritual ceremony where the assembled duergar minds contacted Duerra herself. While in this state, the collective duergar formed a communal mind rivaling that of the great illithid elder brains, providing the clerics of the collective with many of the greater insights that led to psionic and technological advances, aiding them in their endless quest for power and dominion.
 * The Melding:

Shrines & Temples
Duerra's temples were hewn from solid rock and always constructed in aesthetically pleasing, symmetric patterns, while also being designed to muffle sounds. These houses of worship served as armories, barracks, and command centers, for the priests of Duerra were expected to maintain training grounds and armories inside all their strongholds. The priests organized patrols, oversaw the armories, and honored Duerra by planning for holy crusades there before later executing their plans. The buildings were the second-largest fortresses in a stronghold and normally extensively fortified, housing not only weapons and armor but also emergency supplies and the settlement's army.

An empty seat was always in the center of the centermost room in one of Duerra's temples, an elevated dais called the Daul's Throne meant to remind the norothor that the Queen of the Invisible Art was always present and watching (though her avatars occupied the throne when they appeared).

Symbol
Duerra's symbol was a shattered skull, usually that of an drow, dwarf, or illithid. The Duerrans carried their holy symbol in the form of a silver orb in diameter carved to resemble a mind flayer skull with a large crack across the top, normally with a steel chain threaded through the ears so it could be worn as an amulet.

Dress
Ceremonial clothing of Duerra's faith was ornate chainmail armor made to mimic her own (often treated with everbright or blueshine), and velvet, dark blue robes trimmed with surface animal furs. Other raiments included drab gray clothing and dull jewelry. Besides their priestly vestements, they wore drab chain or plate mail typical for duergar and a hooded, ankle-length, gray-blue robe. Norothor could wear metal armor if they pleased, though helms not made for psionics tended to interfere with their powers.

Weapons
Most Mindaxes used a battleaxe to deliberately imitate Duerra, but they were also skilled in common duergar weapons, including heavy and light crossbows, picks, short swords, spears, and warhammers; their beautiful weapons were often bejeweled.

Spells
A number of spells were unique to Duerran priests or were closely associated with them:
 * Augment psionics
 * Deflect psionics
 * Steal psionic strength

Relationships
Exact opinion of norothor widely varied within duergar communities. While younger gray dwarves admired their confidence and assertiveness, the norothor preached their expansionist philosophy so heavily that they were considered a nuisance by older dwarves that favored Laduguer. Elder dwarves viewed the norothor as cocky upstarts whose aggressiveness would bring down the collective wrath of the drow, illithids, and aboleths (as well as other Underdark races) on their heads.

Indeed, other Underdark races viewed the emergence of Duerra's faith as a threat to their own lands. The more recent efforts of Duerra's priests pre-Spellplague had made them the talk of underground waystations and trading communities. While in theory the norothor focus on psionic discipline would make them ideal ambassadors to beings like illithids and aboleths, in practice their inherent brashness meant diplomacy often went awry, the illithids in particular loathing the dwarven adepts that dared to use psionics against its rightful masters.

History
"Our gods sprang from among us. They endured our hardships and carved a path to our salvation. What has your god done for you?"

- Morkai Ashlord

Duerra's deeds in the ancient past had long since become myth, spoken as legend in stories told by elderly duergar mindwardens. Long before she ascended to the ranks of the divine, Duerra was the greatest queen of the duergar, both an empress and warrior who ruled over an immense subterranean empire with dark ambitions to expand. Her domain (and the place her faith would become especially strong) was the Underspires, an ancient city of giant stalactites in the Northdark founded millennia earlier when the duergar first freed themselves from mind flayer enslavement. Under Duerra's centuries long dominion, she had expanded the duergar empire to include the vast reaches of the Underdark, bringing the race to the pinnacle of their power.

In -1850 DR, with her at the front of the forces, the grim duergar soldiers of the Underspires launched a series of strikes against their many foes. These including the drow of Undreath and the illithids of Oryndoll,  the latter of which captured and transformed them long ago around -8100 DR to -8080 DR. It was on one of these occasions, according to dubious tales and legends, that Deep Duerra's forces overran the city of Oryndoll, shackling the resident mind flayers that had once done the same to them. Over the course of the next century, Duerra and her surgeons supposedly wrestled the many secrets and powers of psionics from the minds of the captive illithids, stealing the Invisible Art and transferring it to her clan's bloodline. So great was her psionic might, so the legends said, that she turned the entire illithid colony into her thralls.

Some doubted the accuracy of this myth, notably the mind flayers themselves. In their telling of the story, Duerra was the leader of a slave rebellion, the duergar psionic abilities being done by the illithids themselves to create more efficient slaves. However, while the illithids did indeed modify the duergar, performing generations of countless, gruesome breeding experiments, psychic surgeries, and physical alterations to warp them into a unqiue subrace, the duegar invasions of Oryndoll had occurred, and any potential embellishments aside, Duerra did at some point steal much energy and many of the psionic secrets of Ilsensine.

Sometime around -1800 DR, Duerra's forces turned their simmering hate to the remnants of Deep Shanatar: Ultoksamrin, Holorarar, and the caverns of Alatorin. For her many successes, Laduguer rewarded Duerra with divine ascension. Since Duerra's departure, the Underspires fell into a centuries-long decline, fragmenting and contracting in her absence. Regardless of the questionable veracity of her legends, Duerra was honored by the duergar as the progenitor of their psychic powers, which not only established the gray dwarves as separate from other dwarves, but also enabling them to hold their own against drow magic and illithid psionics. The ancient queen was further worshiped for the uncompromised ambition she displayed to increase duergar dominion, and was revered as a symbol of duergar dominance through expansion and enslavement.

Time of Troubles
During the Time of Troubles in 1358 DR, when Ao forced the gods to walk Toril in avatar form, Duerra took the body of the Queen Mother of Underspires to be her mortal form. Duerra's return sparked a new age of empire-building, helping the city to emerge from its long torpor. The army of elites which she had assembled and trained had made attacks against the outlying settlements of Ironfang and Undreath, helping them to reach their highest level of readiness in centuries. The empire managed to expand their rule to Underdark tunnels beneath the Cloven Mountains, reaching the deepest mines of Tathtar. When the Time of Troubles concluded that same year, Duerra disappeared to the southernmost reaches of the Underdark, her Queen Mother aspect's fate being unknown.

The Queen Mother was serving as regent for her young son Olorn Ridaugaur, who ascended to the Underthrone upon her disappearance. The Queen Mother and her son (as well as his children) were the last remnants of the original Shanatar bloodline, though only distantly so, being over a hundred generations down the line. The, self-styled War King had strange powers, including the ability to hurl heavily armored duergar into walls with crushing force using only gusts of winds from his gestures. He also wielded the Barakuir scepter (although he could only use it as a magic club) and was seeking the words of power to help him claim Wyrmskull Throne. He claimed to be Duerra's son, (a debatably true sentiment) and since his mother's departure, he had initiated a great military crusade to expand to the north, an attack so fanatical it was thought Duerra had granted him a warband quest spell.

Over twelve years, his holy warriors had gathered for strikes against the underlands of Dragonreach held by the drow and studded with a few isolated dwarven and svirfbelin settlements. In little time, he had managed to crush many of the enclaves and overrun at least one minor drow city. At the same time, he had also sent his armies against the mind flayers of Oryndoll to the west beneath the Shining Plains. Despite their enthusiasm, the actual successes of these quick conquests had been few and far between, and the awakening empire had quickly created for itself a wide number of rivals and foes, potentially making it vulnerable to a concerted strike.