
The higher a duergar rose and the more items they possessed, the stronger they would need to be to hold on to what they already had. Yet even when their great schemes to acquire succeeded, the success was never cause for celebration, each acquisition just as incapable of satisfying their unending need for more. At the heart of duergar efforts was simply desire, an insatiable desire for wealth and prestige. Their works were not labors of love, for their goal was not quality, but quantity, an attempt to craft as many items as possible as fast as possible. Appreciation of beauty had been erased from their minds, the aesthetics of their creation ignored. ĭuergar creations weren't flawed or subpar, and in fact were rather enduring, but were completely utilitarian, considered valuable only for their function and bereft of warmth and artistry. The duergar were dauntless perfectionists who never left a job half done and worked hard to excel in their field, and yet the dwarven ideal of achieving mastery of a craft meant nothing to them. In contrast, duergar industriousness was spurred on simply by the primal urge to build and create, driven by a need to own and acquire as much as possible. Dwarves enjoyed their work, from the art of crafting to the trials of their everyday lives, seeing opportunity for success where others saw labor. Most dwarves were accustomed to the inevitability of struggle to be found in existence, but such knowledge was colored by their essential love of industry. Though their vices were many, the moral failings of the gray dwarves could be traced to three primary principles: bottomless greed, unceasing conflict, and rejection of emotion. They were violent and hateful, sullen and insular, greedy and ungrateful, deeply cynical of others' motives and dutifully tracked and nursed every grudge, whether or not any offense was meant. While they did display the redeeming virtues of determination and bravery, duergar took dwarven flaws to their logical extremes. The duergar saw themselves as the true paragons of dwarvish ideals compared to their weak and pampered kin, but in truth, their ways were a dark reflection of those found in normal dwarves. Rather than a flaw, however, they viewed their lack of happiness as their greatest strength, the defining feature of duergar pride. Tyrannical, grim, industrious and pessimistic, the lives of the gray dwarves were bleak and brutal. īecause many duergar found on the surface world were criminal exiles, a surface dweller who encountered one of the gray dwarves was likely to notice facial and arm tattoos that marked the duergar as a traitor to his or her people.

Regular dwarves said they had flat heads, possibly as an insult.

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Most obvious, however, was their dull gray skin and hair, often matched with an equally stolid expression. Many were also thinner than their dwarven brethren. Both male and female duergar were typically bald, with females also lacking the capacity to grow facial hair. Like other dwarves, duergar were typically thick, stocky figures, though beyond this there were many differences.
