Deep Duerra

Deep Duerra (dwair-uh), also known as Queen of the Invisible Art or the Axe Princess of Conquest, is the duergar demigod of psionics, conquest and expansion.

Worshipers
Deep Duerra and her clerics are known below the surface as norothor ("those who seize enemy lands"). While very few surfacers know of the goddess and her faith, they are the talk of underground waystations and trading communities because of their recent efforts in the Underdark. Even the older duergar who server Laduguer consider the norothor to be a nuisance, because of the strong degree in which they preach expansionism. Regardless, the norothor serve an important role in duergar society, since they train the natural psionic abilities of young gray dwarves, they attend to and control the underclass of slaves, and they scout and clear out nearby tunnels so the community can keep growing. Because of their focus on the mental disciplines they are often used as ambassadors to psionic races such as the illithids and aboleths. The brashness inherent of the faith however, ensures that many of these missions end disastrously. Duerra's temples are constructed symmetric patterns meant to be visually appealing, and they feature an empty seat at the center of the centermost room. This seat is called the Daul's Throne and serves to remind the norothor that Deep Duerra is always present and watching. Norothor frequently multiclass as fighter or as psions.

Rituals
Norothor pray for spells at night.

The Rallying
They celebrate a perverse festival known as the Rallying on Midwinter Eve. The clerics commemorate the triumphs of the past year this evening, and they announce their intentions of expansion for the coming year. Accompanied by the sound of hammering and war chants the norothor pass around the freshly severed head of an enemy. This enemy is one whose territory they will take before the next Rallying.

The Melding
On the 5th of Mirtul, norothor gather in their temples for the Melding. This is a psionic ceremony where they contact Duerra herself. The result is a communal mind which grants all clerics greater insight in their endless quest for power and territory.

History
In the stories of old duergar mindwardens, Duerra was the queen of a dark and immense subterrenean dwarven empire in ancient times. In their expansionist wars, the queen herself stood in the front of her armies. On one campaign leading to the domination a huge illithid city. Duerra then ordered her men to capture the mind flayers, who were once slavemasters of the entire duergar race. After a century of work, Duerra and her surgeons succeeded in taking the psionic powers from the captive illithids and transferred it into her brood and her clan's bloodline. Mindflayers tell the story differently though, by claiming Duerra was the leader of a slave rebellion. They attribute the psionic powers of the gray dwarves as an invention of their own, used to create a more efficient slave stock. Regardless, many duergar honor Duerra as the progenitor of their psychic abilities. These abilities established them as a distinctive subrace and a symbol of the dominance the duergar shall establish through enslavement and expansionism, until they are the preeminent political force of the Underdark.

Relationships
Immediately on her apotheosis, she was exiled by Moradin. Because of this, Deep Duerra has no friends among the Morndinsamman. Some myths claim that Laduguer was her father, but the two don't show any compassion towards each other. While they are nominally allies, they constantly against one another. Over the past centuries with only small successes, Duerra is now very close to attempting to depose Laduguer as the duergar prime deity. She is hated by the illithid god-brain Ilsensine for the many thefts of psionic energy and information from it.

Dogma
"The children of Laduguer shall conquer the earth and stone from which they sprang and the voids in which they dwell. The seizing of new lands, new wealth and new servitors is the manifest destiny of those who mine the Night Below. Magic is weak, unreliable and unsubtle when compared to the powers of the mind unless bequeathed and steadied by the will of the gods. By means of the Invisible Art, the duergar shall destroy or enslave all those reliant upon petty magics to survive."