Shadow Dwarves
Shadow Dwarves
The Shadow Dwarves of Di-vi-shuk are the same size and build as the sun dwarves, but they are almost completely albino. Their hair and skin are completely devoid of pigment and their eyes are bright pink, pale blue, or faint yellow. Di-vi-shuk is a starless subterranean realm, the full extent of which is unknown but entrances are known to exist across Tir-tan-gir, Brin-ni-au, and the eastern stretches of Agored Baith. With the exception of their coloration, they are physically identical to the sun dwarves who live on the surface above them. Mentally, they are quite different.
Di-vi-shuk was once the most industrialized and technologically advanced nation. They were far ahead of any other nation and even had fully functional mechanical prosthetic limbs and automaton servitors. About a century ago, a wave of madness swept through the shadow dwarves like an infectious plague and fractured their minds. Each shadow dwarf now has a Chorus of 3d4 voices that speak to and through them. The shadow dwarves consider their choruses to be external to themselves while being intrinsically bound to them—more like a personal retinue of kibitzers than additional personalities.
Most shadow dwarves externalize their chorus by giving them physical bodies in the form of poppets, crude canopic dolls that each house a voice of the chorus. Normally, only their shadow dwarf can hear the voices of the poppets (though the dwarf will often "translate" what the dolls say) but the sight of a shadow dwarf with several poppets hanging from a belt or pinned to their tunic or hat is very unsettling for most that see it, even though the poppets are usually not animate. Usually.
Some shadow dwarves externalize their chorus by carving leering faces on their equipment. Many shadow dwarf warriors use breastplates, pauldrons, helmets, shields, and weapons shaped in the form of demonic faces. Some with smaller choruses (and greater technical acumen) will create a harness of extra mechanical limbs with a face on the palm of each extra hand or a pack of automatons with dwarven faces to represent their chorus.
Di-vi-shuk society ironically did not collapse with the madness plague, but any progress beyond the hyper-local level has slowed to a crawl. Their Senate still meets regularly but debates are endless when each senator now has an internal parliament of bickering voices. Almost everything has stalled or died in committee since the madness began. Cynical outsiders often observe that Di-vi-shuk has gone from more technologically advanced to the most politically advanced nation and has already perfected politics to its inevitable final form.
Technologically, Di-vi-shuk still has advanced mechanical knowledge and can produce amazing prostheses and automatons, but innovation has largely stalled. The mechanics unions and engineering academies are now as uselessly mired as the Senate, so now everything is produced in small batches by individual (or as individual as a shadow dwarf with a chorus can be) mechanics working with a handful of apprentices in their own ateliers. There is no standardization and every creation is made of proprietary parts.
Religiously, Di-vi-shuk once followed the Way of Darkness and old temples to the Dark Three can still be found in the starless realm. Much like the fireborn humans of Aquilan split from the Church of Light to exclusively worship Verath, the shadow dwarves of Di-vi-shuk turned their faces from Ayar and Fel and began to focus their worship exclusively on Vael. Vael, the goddess of deception and secrets, goes by many names: the Rat Queen, the Raven Queen, the Thousand Eyes in Darkness, the Shrouded Lady. The shadow dwarves began to worship Vael in her sage aspect as the Keeper of Secrets. Since the "chorus curse", temples of Vael have been defaced by graffiti (some might even say "profaned") to convert them to temples to "the Hydra who looks in all directions and sees all things". Some followers of the Way say this is probably just another aspect of Vael while others say it is something else. Unfortunately, it is notoriously difficult to get a reliable straight answer directly from the goddess of deception herself about whether or not she is the new Hydra goddess of Di-vi-shuk.
In game terms, the shadow dwarves are duergar (like the Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Duergar class), but their mental powers are different. Instead of being able to grow, shrink, turn invisible, or project heat, they have the ability to carve madness runes as a trap, confuse people with a cacophony of voices like a gibbering mouther, and summon a pack of weak minions (in the form of animating their poppets or unleashing servitor drones empowered by their chorus).