Thanks, AJ! You’ve given me all sorts of ideas! I’ll stop bugging you now. These little guys are probably the second group I least want to get captured by in the Underdark.
It seems like everybody who makes dungeons and dragons videos just looks into the camera and talks I like this channel best because it's not about filming yourself it's about the lore and imagery and good narration
Derro are such lovely little buggers, up there with other fun small races like Goblins and Kobolds for me. I feel that as a race so truly mad there should be a bit more too them, surely some of the more crazy ones among them should be capable of coming up with some incredible things, or even uniting people in some grand cult/community. But then again that might make them too similar to Kua-Toa.
I want to play a Derrow. He'll be completely insane and cannibalistic. The only reason he doesn't kill and eat the party is because he has convinced himself that he has already eaten them all and their spirits live within him so he has all their knowledge and powers. He takes all the credit for every action the party does. Nothing can convince him that the party is real, but if he was somehow convinced (like a nat 20 insight check) he would immediately attack. He also has a hook hand. He cut off his hand for flipping him off. He claims he lost it in a battle against a bunch of Drow, and a Mindflayer, and Myconids, and a Dragon, and giant Flumphs, and surface dwellers, and a crocodile, and an army of golems, and Pennywise the Clown. It's a conspiracy and they know I'm onto them, see? That's why their ringleader cut off my hand, so I wouldn't be able to communicate to you through sign language about their plan.
The concept of the Derro originated with the "Shaver Mystery" stories published in pulp scifi magazines of the 1940's & 50s. These were presented as fact by the publishers and tens of thousands of people believed in the Shaver mythology, much of which revolved round an underground race named the Deros - short for "detrimental robots" - who controlled the minds of surface dwellers with invisible rays. In those stories they were also an ancient and degenerate species. Coincidentally, Richard Shaver passed away the year after 1st edition was published.
With the blasphemy of them wanting to create life as a core of their culture, I could see a lot of semi-intelligence clockwork and Frankenstein-style undead being part of their encounters. Could even make them the source of Warforged and/or Androids in some settings.
I had actually played one, back in 3.5. But mine was born by a curse on the cheating wife of a dwarf, cheating him with a gnome (so that hybrid was born). He was an CN archivist/warlock with passion for bad pranks and megalomania, already seeing himself in the path for goodhood since liv1 (when something went wrong it was just a test for his endurance). I also made the "bad" choice to have his madness represented also by the fact that when he lied, if the lie was convincing (aka passed the contested roll) he will be SURE about that was the truth. This made into hilarious moments like when i lied to a pixie, sain' that the bard was just a puppet and him a ventriloquist... after that he will be bewilded when the bard started to talk by himself and yell "Silence Belly!" to his own stomach. But the pinnacle was a twisted plan for have an orcish tribe fight for him agaist a gnoll tribe the party was hunting down. He convinced a orc taken prisoner of bring him alone nighttime to the orc village for speak with the shaman, here he said (paraphrasing) "i'm a chosen of Gruumsh, here for bring war on the gnolls" (i'm putting down simple now, but he made many preparations, and had 2 backup plans if all went bad). He even carved out his own eye (he was mad after all) to prove himself. Nat 20. So suddenly he belived Gruumsh actually send him, also the Shaman was ecstatic. I've changed PC after that, a liv4 controlling a orc warband was a little bit too far. Maybe one day we will met him again as an npc, convinced to be a jinn sultain or gods know what xD
I'm toying with the idea of them being failed versions of the illithid experiments that created the duergar in my setting. They definitely are underutilized!
The deeper you go in the Underdark the more extreme and predatory the environment becomes. So much so that the Derro are pretty average as dwellers go. Imagine being this screwed up, just to survive down there? Surface dwellers are pretty soft and tame in comparison.
I'm getting ready to wrap up a campaign and start a new one.I had just last week brainstormed an encounter using a derro sorcerer, derro assassin and some Dharzi Hunting Dogs- from the first printing of the Deities and Demigods. They are tracking Elmo has he makes his way back to Hommlet. Now I've got some new juice to add to the mix. A sorcerer with an eye beam attack, and the assassin with a tentacle arm.
May be worth mentioning the game Sword Coast Legends features a derro assassin you can potentially recruit into the party. He’s just as insane and evil as you describe here, and wonderfully written.
I love the ferro dwarves, like a young hardworking man uses his rage to work harder as he holds it in. The drow are like social, charming and fun, but tricky and majestic, the illthids hammer you with thier authority and destroy your minds, and they all eat the fungus in the underdark. Pretty fricken sweet
I was originally going to play Curse of the Crimson Throne and completely replace the one instance of Derro with undead children, but I'm coming around to the Derro, provided I build them up. This is something you've generally been very helpful with. I've been able to establish encounters far before they actually happen by peppering encounters with different walks of life conspiring against the players and gradually revealing deeper depths of conspiracy backed by a population of one thing or another. My players are now, for the moment at least, in charge of a guild of wererats, because I made their plight and schemes a more integrated part of the initial campaign. Thanks for that, man, I really appreciate it!
I feel like crazy races like the derro and koatoa as well as abberations should be played kina like the Malkavians from vampire the masquerade. With a gift of insight manifest as the strange cluster of visions and such we already have something kinda like this with the savants. I think it would make for an interesting roleplay with the dm
Strange.. the dark subterranean dwarven race in my own story setting(non dnd related) is four armed... But thats about where the similarities end mine are are a utilitarian, one might even say eugenic society, I call them apex dark elves(The term dark elf was first used in the poetic eda and most likely was in reference to the dwarves) their common ancestors with the dwarves we're famliar with had very insect like proportions (hearkening back to when odin first uplifted them from the magots feasting on ymir's corpse), the apex dark elves still maintain some of these features. They're pretty zen and they're actually capable of Smithing in their sleep. The reason they don't come to the surface is because their hereditary desire to smith is so strong that in order to avoid wasting time mining they have developed a symbiotic relationship(not like venoms relationship with eddi brock more like a persons relationship with their car) with sack like creatures that consume mineral rich soil and excrete ore, and those creatures dont to to well near the surface.
In my world Derro are C/E dwarves and are pale with white hair and white eyes and they are absolutely mad and solitary a Derro can make other Derro with other Dwarves and Driinka is the god of the Derro and is individually more powerful than the other members of the dwarven pantheon but all together the lawful Dwarven gods can defeat him amd keep him away from the rest of the dwarves
Wish I had listened to this for the first part of "out of the abyss" - one flavor my players vividly remember is coming upon their friendly guide as he arranged dozens of body parts in an intricate and artistic pattern.
Great video as always AJ. I've always thought derro have been underutilized by D&D in general. I've read most of the published forgotten realms books and can only remember them being used once as the derro savants controlled the duergar king of one of the bigger duergar cities but the king's son had them all killed after a successful coup. Malicious psychopaths was how they were described. An accurate assessment it would seem.
Ever since you did your other Dwarf videos, I was really looking forward to you doing a Derro one. They changed a little since I used them. Then again, I'm a 2nd Ed and earlier dinosaur. Do current editions have a player character version? Decades ago, I had a player who wanted one. He did pretty well until he failed to keep up his Gnome disguise. He was a really fun cruel comic relief guy. Not bully cruel, but like The Joker (DC Comics) cruel. The irony is that he was True Neutral (Cn leaning)... always seeing himself as some kind of saint. His class was Bard, Jester kit.
@@AJPickett Thanks. Homebrew seems to be a big thing with fellow AD&D veterans in a LOT of things. The Derro are ripe for gameplay as both mindless enemies and insane antagonists, thus ripe for being an interesting source for a player character. Too many new gamers think role-playing games are about grinding and level earning. They are about story and fun... something people doing the digital versions often cannot experience.
i could see a prisoner getting messages in dreams from Diinkarazan, making him a cleric or warlock of the demigod and ultimately escaping to take revenge on their captors(and killing some derros occasionally). Maybe freeing the Mad God could be the end goal of the campaign for the character, creating a BBEG or a whimsical benefactor
They are really interesting creatures ... you can do with them much more strange things than you can do with a dwarf, especially with the mutations part ... and I like that part :)
I use the Derro as a slave race of the Drugar. Whipped chained and used in an almost magic giant tracking blood hounds. With a very evil dwarven gimp suits. Sniviling pain loving wretched things. They are so wretched that they would attack anyone or anything that would try to free them.
Isn’t it cool when that happens? Happened to me today when I was looking online at the board game ,”tyrants of the underdark” or something like that. One of my minis was on the cover..the undead one
"Are {the derro} running out of favor?" Well I can tell you I've set up a band of derro underneath an industrial human city in my current campaign that the party is hunting for to put a stop to their abductions. Mostly inspired by their appearance in Paizo's Curse of the Crimson Throne, though I'm also using derro NPCs from Kobold Press and, obviously, looked up your vid to mine fore more ideas to use. Looking to be a good time, I do love these demented little experimenters.
I’m always torn about some of the underdark races. I want to feel bad for races like the Derro or the Drow because their Gods are so cruel to them. But being tormented so has caused them to enact that same cruelty upon random people. There are always things that stalk the deep places of the world, much more vile things that deranged dwarf offshoots, let’s hope they help stem Derro populations before they spread too far.
One of the villains in my current campaign is a derro savant guarded by derro anti-paladins. They are followers of Nyarlathotep questing for certain arcane texts. PCs might have to cut a deal with him as he has info on a drow city they need to infiltrate.
An unsavory task that most certainly will end in fighting him and his retinue. Made worse by the fact th that he always refers to himself in the 3rd person.
I looooove the Derro. Being a fan of the Lords of Madness these guys make great minnions..... Oh you want toavoidthe Drow hunters, and Mindflayer Slavers, have insane Dwarvencasters! Hahahahaha!
i could see a single derro trying to attacka group or town or such by itself but thinking its part of a large army or such and well can see how that would turn out if its just one regular derro
I love the derro. So many possibilities. I remember that there were rules for removing derro insanity I read somewhere but I can't remember where it's from.
The Nights Below box set adventure. Aboleth are the main villains however the Derro did show up as one of the hostiles on the way to stopping the creation of an Aboleth God.
Great video as usual. The Derro were always one of my favorite underdark races, much more so then the overused Drow and Duergar. In my homebrewed campaign, they are degenerate humans who worship a primordial of darkness modelled after Nyx.
I am a little confused. If the derro are creations of mortal experimentation; the the chained god is unknown to all but the elder brains, and the gods are thought-beings, then does the chained god actually exist? Is this one of those instances of multiple timelines blending and/or retroactively erasing each other like the creation of the ilithid?
In the video, I am exploring the difference between the mythology of Derro, Dwarves and Duergar, and what the actual origin is. What complicates it is that the beliefs of these races is directly influencing the gods and the gods, can reshape reality. So, the truth has become the myth.
I accidentally genocided the derro in an epic divine game. Mostly it was a result of lighting the Underdark with a variant of Amaunator's eternal sun. To be fair, It did forever imprison. Father Llymic who was released after having atropus almost kill the sun. The world was barely recovering from the global undead epidemic.... and then the ice age hit. And the Underdark became a haven for the survivors of that unlucky double blow. Only the survivors weren't particularly merciful to the derro or the drow. So the world was mostly saved. Only world where you can go blind looking down hahaha. oops.
You sir, just gave me the idea I needed for Menzoberranzan Nights. I have been pondering how the other monstrous races turned the city into more of an underdark melting pot.
@@AJPickett well I guess what constitutes a half-orc. If a orc and an elf have a child are they half orc or half elf. How are they regarding civilizations. Do they have their own communities Clans or tribes of nothing but half-orcs. The usual.
there's something tame in D&D always blaming the screwed-up-ness of a race on gods. if we take gods from the equation, Drow, Duergar & Grimlocks could have the same Ilithid origin (not Svirfneblin, these guys were subject to Fomorians). what unimaginable evils could have happened to a group of Duergar to make them Derro is something most DMs & module writers would never willingly touch.
Well, the subtext of this entire video is my answer to that very topic.. the lore is often the mythology of the human and demihuman races, it may be based on fact, but as is the case with the Derro, the truth has little to do with gods at all.. the nature of the gods is in fact, shaped by the delusion of the Derro and the other races own ideas about them and their true origin.
Alternatively you can easily say that many races are the product of their environment. I you evolved in the underdark as a small race surrounded by horrific monsters and other races that what to slaughter or enslave you then you turn out crazy and evil as a survival mechanism. Or you just state that a wizard did it and then say no more.
I literally just had a conversation about these things last night cause my dm is using their name for a city and i wanted to turn into one of them and he thought i wanted to turn into the city
Yo!!!! I love your videos! They give me so much inspiration! I've created a True Good Derro Spore Druid. Her backstory is her family left her to die out in the underdark and was found by an unusual Myconid Colony and was raised among them. Now that she's old enough she acts as there agents across the verse as well as scratching an unusual adventuring itch she's had from birth. Her first stop was a "neighboring" Deep Gnome Settlement where she befriended and eventually fell in love with a Deep Gnome Gloom Stalker Ranger. Sadly their relationship wasn't to last as her gf was killed in a skirmish with Drow Raiders. She prefers to stay out of the underdark ever since except to report back to her Colony to disseminate her memories and experiences.
Lmao I just massacred a bunch of derro in Out The Abyss (I’m a Ranger with prior knowledge of the Underdark btw) and my teammates were abhorred and wanted to spare them, but little did they know how crazy these little bastards are. My team is literally like the white people in Rambo 4 and I’m Rambo
Those silly dudes from The Time Machine. The original movie they were midgets that got hurled around like rag dolls. In the remake, they were muscle men.
It's probably just a continuity snarl between and within editions, but what do you make of the disturbing mention of Derro using human slaves for breeding in the 2e Monstrous Manual? "Derro hate humans more than any other race; they use humans for the most demeaning manual labor and for breeding." "The derro also raid other races for food. Sometimes, they merely rob the dwarves or the orcs, hoping to provoke an amusing conflict. But such excursions are tame compared to Open Hunting, the derro term for midnight raids into human settlements. When Open Hunting, a derro party steals cattle and swine, to let loose and hunt at a later time, but it primarily kidnaps humans. As mentioned before, derro treasure humans for slaves and for breeding." The 1e Monster Manual II states that 80% of the slaves kept by the Derro will be female, but doesn't say why. And in the description in the Monstrous Manual it states, "Their features remind dwarves of humans, and vice versa.", further hinting at their origins. I suppose their hatred of humanity is racial memory trauma from their origins and treatment at the hands of the Suel Imperium, but why would they need to use humans "for breeding"? Are we to understand from this entry that the Derro are a monogender race? Or that they breed entire populations of human slaves?
I am playing a wild magic derro that has been exiled from the underdark. He is determined to shed the stigma of his race and seeks more out of life than what the underdark has to offer. He isnt crazy but he is neurotic
Hey im a bit confused a bit on where you get your information on some of this stuff such as @9:13 , can you tell me where you found that or have citations?
Moore, Roger E. "Legacies of the Suel Imperium," Dragon Magazine #241 (TSR, 1997). AD&D 2nd Edition Monster Mythology (TSR, 1992), Forgotten Realms wiki, Wikipedia, various monster manuals, I tend to take a lot of information from the novels with a grain of salt and in this case, largely ignored one of them. There is some conflicting lore in the case of the Derro when their origins are examined strictly from a mythology point of view, as the Dwarves, Duergar and Derro all have a differing account of it.
Cheese Republic Unite Great video You are in your groove Your confidence is shining through If someone is in an invisability spell, would detect magic detect them?
Could you explain if detect magic would allow the caster to see who is invisible, or just an aura of their invisible form? Could you break down how a sprite "magically" turns invisible until it atracks, casts a spell or loses concentration? As in combat- how long after it atracks/ casts a spell does it return to invisible, is it automatic or limited in any way. Thank You both
I’d wager no, maybe a paladin/cleric but a paladins oath is far more important and holds more sway over them than a clerics, and the breaking of this oath is what creates the death knight, sorta like the oathbreakers from LOTR but on mega steroids, in the event of a cleric/paladin breaking their oath I’d modify the death knight to be more magic focused as well if it were my campaign, but obv you COULD make a “death cleric” if you wanted but it doesn’t seem logical to me
In 4e at least, there was a type of undead called a "huecuva" which was a priest/cleric that turned on the clergy and, to me at least, seemed like a cleric-lich. That said, it's your game, if you want to create a cleric death knight, I'm sure your players will dig it.
Lich/Mummy Lord/Death Knight are in many ways the evil-sentient-undead equivalents to Wizard/Cleric/Paladin, respectively. But personally I can see death knighthood as the final "reward" of a lot of evil martial characters who serve greater evils in the same way lichdom is for a lot of evil wizards. This can mean relevant multiclassing (warlocks of Zariel and clerics of Vecna come to mind), or just sworn service that doesn't amount to actual-class-level-based-on-it. I take the established lore to mean an initially good paladin who turns evil or breaks their oath seriously enough ALWAYS becomes a death knight upon dying un-redeemed, not exactly that becoming one at all was exclusive to them. The current Monster Manual even mentions giving DKs undead minions, but replacing them with similar-CR fiends if the DK in turn serves an archfiend.
@@AJPickett OOTA redux campaign bible is now 169 google doc pages long. And I haven't even cracked 5e's Elemental Evil campaign open yet for extraction. This damn Drow Archwizard really gets around doesn't he.
@@oVoidhawko uh, okay, I have a black eye and a fractured rib that says you might, MIGHT, be full of shit. I'm not saying you definitely are, but, well, the guy at the bar didn't take it as a term of endearment. I don't know, maybe I didn't say it right. Maybe the guy was from a different part of Australia where "I porked your sister so hard her head popped off" means, "I porked your sister so hard her head popped off". I'm just not sure.
@@dsandoval9396 Ya probably just found the foreigner.. keep asking, and don't worry when the bartender starts dragging ya out the back.. he's just gonna split a few beers with ya.
That has nothing to do with how close he is, I'm pretty sure that's just the compression of the audio file. You hear it all the time in shitty movie rips that look like they were recorded in 144p.
@@-Untitled- No, it doesn't. He needs to either buy a new cover, get a new mic, or clean up the recording while editing. Again, the issue is not the distance he is from the microphone
"Back up OFF the mic" is NOT a complaint about distance and record. It is a statement of him not being on the mic at all, because he sounds like he's under water. Once the sound is fixed, then get back on the mic. Thus my original comment still stands. Now you two dumb clucks, back up of the comments.
"I want great content, how does he do that?" *He does it full time as a job.* "But there are adverts in the videos I watch for free!" *Well..... yeah... but are you paying him though?* "No, why would I do that?" *Because you want great content!*
@@AJPickett dont get profit shamed you have few commercials not overly absurd amount like other channels of this ilk it's your time and effort that makes these wonderful videos of great quality so you just keep up the lore mastering you very much deserve income from it cant please everyone lol
![[TH]FFWS SEA 2024 Fall - Knockout Stage Day 5](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/N2tl9xkQyyU/mqdefault.jpg)
I think any of my characters who ran into these things would see them as a less redeemable form of goblin
Thanks, AJ! You’ve given me all sorts of ideas! I’ll stop bugging you now.
These little guys are probably the second group I least want to get captured by in the Underdark.
Yes, they are VERY nasty.
It seems like everybody who makes dungeons and dragons videos just looks into the camera and talks I like this channel best because it's not about filming yourself it's about the lore and imagery and good narration
Derro, an Illithid delicacy.
I’ve always played Derro as being similar to Goblins. Just a bunch of tweaky little bastards that want to shive you and take your shiny bits.
One of the few "friendly" races in the underdark. Good luck getting them to trust you though.
Derro are such lovely little buggers, up there with other fun small races like Goblins and Kobolds for me. I feel that as a race so truly mad there should be a bit more too them, surely some of the more crazy ones among them should be capable of coming up with some incredible things, or even uniting people in some grand cult/community. But then again that might make them too similar to Kua-Toa.
Instablaster
The book Venom in Her Veins features a derro settlement...they are as crazy as you can imagine
I want to play a Derrow. He'll be completely insane and cannibalistic. The only reason he doesn't kill and eat the party is because he has convinced himself that he has already eaten them all and their spirits live within him so he has all their knowledge and powers. He takes all the credit for every action the party does. Nothing can convince him that the party is real, but if he was somehow convinced (like a nat 20 insight check) he would immediately attack. He also has a hook hand. He cut off his hand for flipping him off. He claims he lost it in a battle against a bunch of Drow, and a Mindflayer, and Myconids, and a Dragon, and giant Flumphs, and surface dwellers, and a crocodile, and an army of golems, and Pennywise the Clown. It's a conspiracy and they know I'm onto them, see? That's why their ringleader cut off my hand, so I wouldn't be able to communicate to you through sign language about their plan.
👍 R.P. It hard! 😎😞👌
The concept of the Derro originated with the "Shaver Mystery" stories published in pulp scifi magazines of the 1940's & 50s. These were presented as fact by the publishers and tens of thousands of people believed in the Shaver mythology, much of which revolved round an underground race named the Deros - short for "detrimental robots" - who controlled the minds of surface dwellers with invisible rays. In those stories they were also an ancient and degenerate species.
Coincidentally, Richard Shaver passed away the year after 1st edition was published.
Good to know, thanks Blyledge.
I feel sorry for these guys. If only there was a way to peice them back together, to have them heal.
With the blasphemy of them wanting to create life as a core of their culture, I could see a lot of semi-intelligence clockwork and Frankenstein-style undead being part of their encounters. Could even make them the source of Warforged and/or Androids in some settings.
I had actually played one, back in 3.5. But mine was born by a curse on the cheating wife of a dwarf, cheating him with a gnome (so that hybrid was born).
He was an CN archivist/warlock with passion for bad pranks and megalomania, already seeing himself in the path for goodhood since liv1 (when something went wrong it was just a test for his endurance).
I also made the "bad" choice to have his madness represented also by the fact that when he lied, if the lie was convincing (aka passed the contested roll) he will be SURE about that was the truth.
This made into hilarious moments like when i lied to a pixie, sain' that the bard was just a puppet and him a ventriloquist... after that he will be bewilded when the bard started to talk by himself and yell "Silence Belly!" to his own stomach.
But the pinnacle was a twisted plan for have an orcish tribe fight for him agaist a gnoll tribe the party was hunting down. He convinced a orc taken prisoner of bring him alone nighttime to the orc village for speak with the shaman, here he said (paraphrasing) "i'm a chosen of Gruumsh, here for bring war on the gnolls" (i'm putting down simple now, but he made many preparations, and had 2 backup plans if all went bad). He even carved out his own eye (he was mad after all) to prove himself.
Nat 20.
So suddenly he belived Gruumsh actually send him, also the Shaman was ecstatic.
I've changed PC after that, a liv4 controlling a orc warband was a little bit too far.
Maybe one day we will met him again as an npc, convinced to be a jinn sultain or gods know what xD
New to me. My party is heading to the under dark shortly. I'll be making use of these guys. Thanks AJ!
I'm toying with the idea of them being failed versions of the illithid experiments that created the duergar in my setting. They definitely are underutilized!
Sometimes even though you pity someone you still have to bring them down.They will cause to much suffering to excuse otherwise.
The deeper you go in the Underdark the more extreme and predatory the environment becomes. So much so that the Derro are pretty average as dwellers go.
Imagine being this screwed up, just to survive down there? Surface dwellers are pretty soft and tame in comparison.
I'm getting ready to wrap up a campaign and start a new one.I had just last week brainstormed an encounter using a derro sorcerer, derro assassin and some Dharzi Hunting Dogs- from the first printing of the Deities and Demigods. They are tracking Elmo has he makes his way back to Hommlet. Now I've got some new juice to add to the mix. A sorcerer with an eye beam attack, and the assassin with a tentacle arm.
You should do a video solely based on different types Shamans. Lizardfolk Shamans, Kobold Shamans, and Gnoll Shamans are some of my suggestions.
May be worth mentioning the game Sword Coast Legends features a derro assassin you can potentially recruit into the party. He’s just as insane and evil as you describe here, and wonderfully written.
I love the ferro dwarves, like a young hardworking man uses his rage to work harder as he holds it in. The drow are like social, charming and fun, but tricky and majestic, the illthids hammer you with thier authority and destroy your minds, and they all eat the fungus in the underdark. Pretty fricken sweet
I love the underdark. I like to call it the work zone
Darren and Damo in DnD? What a time to be alive
I was originally going to play Curse of the Crimson Throne and completely replace the one instance of Derro with undead children, but I'm coming around to the Derro, provided I build them up.
This is something you've generally been very helpful with. I've been able to establish encounters far before they actually happen by peppering encounters with different walks of life conspiring against the players and gradually revealing deeper depths of conspiracy backed by a population of one thing or another.
My players are now, for the moment at least, in charge of a guild of wererats, because I made their plight and schemes a more integrated part of the initial campaign.
Thanks for that, man, I really appreciate it!
I really do love putting were rats in my cities, I fully approve!
I feel like crazy races like the derro and koatoa as well as abberations should be played kina like the Malkavians from vampire the masquerade. With a gift of insight manifest as the strange cluster of visions and such we already have something kinda like this with the savants. I think it would make for an interesting roleplay with the dm
Strange.. the dark subterranean dwarven race in my own story setting(non dnd related) is four armed... But thats about where the similarities end mine are are a utilitarian, one might even say eugenic society, I call them apex dark elves(The term dark elf was first used in the poetic eda and most likely was in reference to the dwarves) their common ancestors with the dwarves we're famliar with had very insect like proportions (hearkening back to when odin first uplifted them from the magots feasting on ymir's corpse), the apex dark elves still maintain some of these features.
They're pretty zen and they're actually capable of Smithing in their sleep.
The reason they don't come to the surface is because their hereditary desire to smith is so strong that in order to avoid wasting time mining they have developed a symbiotic relationship(not like venoms relationship with eddi brock more like a persons relationship with their car) with sack like creatures that consume mineral rich soil and excrete ore, and those creatures dont to to well near the surface.
In my world Derro are C/E dwarves and are pale with white hair and white eyes and they are absolutely mad and solitary a Derro can make other Derro with other Dwarves and Driinka is the god of the Derro and is individually more powerful than the other members of the dwarven pantheon but all together the lawful Dwarven gods can defeat him amd keep him away from the rest of the dwarves
Wish I had listened to this for the first part of "out of the abyss" - one flavor my players vividly remember is coming upon their friendly guide as he arranged dozens of body parts in an intricate and artistic pattern.
Great video as always AJ. I've always thought derro have been underutilized by D&D in general. I've read most of the published forgotten realms books and can only remember them being used once as the derro savants controlled the duergar king of one of the bigger duergar cities but the king's son had them all killed after a successful coup. Malicious psychopaths was how they were described. An accurate assessment it would seem.
Ever since you did your other Dwarf videos, I was really looking forward to you doing a Derro one. They changed a little since I used them. Then again, I'm a 2nd Ed and earlier dinosaur. Do current editions have a player character version? Decades ago, I had a player who wanted one. He did pretty well until he failed to keep up his Gnome disguise. He was a really fun cruel comic relief guy. Not bully cruel, but like The Joker (DC Comics) cruel. The irony is that he was True Neutral (Cn leaning)... always seeing himself as some kind of saint. His class was Bard, Jester kit.
No official playable race yet, but I have zero doubts that there is a homebrew version somewhere.
@@AJPickett Thanks. Homebrew seems to be a big thing with fellow AD&D veterans in a LOT of things. The Derro are ripe for gameplay as both mindless enemies and insane antagonists, thus ripe for being an interesting source for a player character. Too many new gamers think role-playing games are about grinding and level earning. They are about story and fun... something people doing the digital versions often cannot experience.
1st & 2nd edition are the best editions 😁
i could see a prisoner getting messages in dreams from Diinkarazan, making him a cleric or warlock of the demigod and ultimately escaping to take revenge on their captors(and killing some derros occasionally). Maybe freeing the Mad God could be the end goal of the campaign for the character, creating a BBEG or a whimsical benefactor
They are really interesting creatures ... you can do with them much more strange things than you can do with a dwarf, especially with the mutations part ... and I like that part :)
I use the Derro as a slave race of the Drugar. Whipped chained and used in an almost magic giant tracking blood hounds. With a very evil dwarven gimp suits. Sniviling pain loving wretched things. They are so wretched that they would attack anyone or anything that would try to free them.
That's a really cool idea, i get an almost necromunger chronicles of riddick vibe from it. 👍
good start to the day to find a new AJ video, thanks for another nerdy gift Sir
Thanks AJ for this awesomeness. I so appreciate all you do~!
You are most welcome, this one had me dive into some pretty deep game history!
I so want to team them up with those cannibal halflings from Darksun! Story reason for alliance? Derro flesh tastes truly horrible. :3
2:05 I think I have this exact mini. I recognize the pose and the haircut.
Isn’t it cool when that happens? Happened to me today when I was looking online at the board game ,”tyrants of the underdark” or something like that. One of my minis was on the cover..the undead one
The best bedtime stories. AJ the legend
"Degenerate Derro race"
AlMoSt As MuCh Of A dEgEnErAtE aS mE?
"Are {the derro} running out of favor?"
Well I can tell you I've set up a band of derro underneath an industrial human city in my current campaign that the party is hunting for to put a stop to their abductions. Mostly inspired by their appearance in Paizo's Curse of the Crimson Throne, though I'm also using derro NPCs from Kobold Press and, obviously, looked up your vid to mine fore more ideas to use. Looking to be a good time, I do love these demented little experimenters.
I’m always torn about some of the underdark races. I want to feel bad for races like the Derro or the Drow because their Gods are so cruel to them. But being tormented so has caused them to enact that same cruelty upon random people. There are always things that stalk the deep places of the world, much more vile things that deranged dwarf offshoots, let’s hope they help stem Derro populations before they spread too far.
One of the villains in my current campaign is a derro savant guarded by derro anti-paladins. They are followers of Nyarlathotep questing for certain arcane texts. PCs might have to cut a deal with him as he has info on a drow city they need to infiltrate.
An unsavory task that most certainly will end in fighting him and his retinue. Made worse by the fact th that he always refers to himself in the 3rd person.
Good stuff, AJ! I'm still rockin' Greyhawk in my home group and love hearing the references!
I did a one shot Goblin party in the underdark
I looooove the Derro. Being a fan of the Lords of Madness these guys make great minnions..... Oh you want toavoidthe Drow hunters, and Mindflayer Slavers, have insane Dwarvencasters! Hahahahaha!
i could see a single derro trying to attacka group or town or such by itself but thinking its part of a large army or such and well can see how that would turn out if its just one regular derro
I always thought these where just crazy practice dummies that run around and scream when you hit them. Now i kinda feel sorry for them...
I always liked the Derro. I think it was because of the cool drawing of one in the AD&D Monster Manual 2.
YEssss an AJ video and coffee, happy morning =)
I just introduced him to my campaign in yesterday so this video actually help a lot thank you brother
Love you work! Have you considered doing a "series" on some of the famous wizards?
I am considering it. ☺️
Nice video. And 1.2k views in one hour, good job.
I love the derro. So many possibilities. I remember that there were rules for removing derro insanity I read somewhere but I can't remember where it's from.
The Nights Below box set adventure. Aboleth are the main villains however the Derro did show up as one of the hostiles on the way to stopping the creation of an Aboleth God.
Thanks been looking forward to this one
I've always been interested in them but have never Incorporated them into any of my games
It's scary how you can't even say the word Nazi without getting demonetized. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Yeah, it's sad.
Lol my last name is a damn midget monster wtf 😂
I like to use them as tie ins for the Far Realm, specifically I change the Duergar in the gates of firestorm peak adventure to Derro
NEGA-GNOMES!
More like Nega-Dwarves, really.
@@brendensibo9320 Nega-Dwarves would be Duergar
@@tatsusama3192
True. But Derro aren't too gnomish, so...
oof being a derro doesn't seem like it's a happy experience.
Nobody ever talks about Muls. I always wanted to play a half dwarf.
Great video as usual. The Derro were always one of my favorite underdark races, much more so then the overused Drow and Duergar. In my homebrewed campaign, they are degenerate humans who worship a primordial of darkness modelled after Nyx.
The Derro are truly derro
I am a little confused. If the derro are creations of mortal experimentation; the the chained god is unknown to all but the elder brains, and the gods are thought-beings, then does the chained god actually exist? Is this one of those instances of multiple timelines blending and/or retroactively erasing each other like the creation of the ilithid?
In the video, I am exploring the difference between the mythology of Derro, Dwarves and Duergar, and what the actual origin is. What complicates it is that the beliefs of these races is directly influencing the gods and the gods, can reshape reality. So, the truth has become the myth.
Makes me wonder if Pierce Brown took any inspiration from this while writing Red Rising.
I accidentally genocided the derro in an epic divine game. Mostly it was a result of lighting the Underdark with a variant of Amaunator's eternal sun. To be fair, It did forever imprison. Father Llymic who was released after having atropus almost kill the sun.
The world was barely recovering from the global undead epidemic.... and then the ice age hit. And the Underdark became a haven for the survivors of that unlucky double blow. Only the survivors weren't particularly merciful to the derro or the drow.
So the world was mostly saved. Only world where you can go blind looking down hahaha. oops.
You sir, just gave me the idea I needed for Menzoberranzan Nights. I have been pondering how the other monstrous races turned the city into more of an underdark melting pot.
Cool.
Why must you constantly tempt me with bad ideas for player characters?
Good morning! Er, afternoon..? Yes. :D
Here wuz Seamus!
Seamus has a job lined up!
Big government job too.
Review process is terrible, had to drive all over the state these past four days.
Congrats!
Another masterpiece AJ. When will you be doing a Half orc video
What would you like me to cover in that video?
@@AJPickett well I guess what constitutes a half-orc. If a orc and an elf have a child are they half orc or half elf. How are they regarding civilizations. Do they have their own communities Clans or tribes of nothing but half-orcs. The usual.
@@matthewfritz4629 that helps me a lot actually, thanks 😊
@@AJPickett also since they're a playable race what kind of combination of traits could you do. Orc-elf, Dwarf, Dragonborn.
there's something tame in D&D always blaming the screwed-up-ness of a race on gods.
if we take gods from the equation, Drow, Duergar & Grimlocks could have the same Ilithid origin (not Svirfneblin, these guys were subject to Fomorians). what unimaginable evils could have happened to a group of Duergar to make them Derro is something most DMs & module writers would never willingly touch.
Well, the subtext of this entire video is my answer to that very topic.. the lore is often the mythology of the human and demihuman races, it may be based on fact, but as is the case with the Derro, the truth has little to do with gods at all.. the nature of the gods is in fact, shaped by the delusion of the Derro and the other races own ideas about them and their true origin.
Alternatively you can easily say that many races are the product of their environment. I you evolved in the underdark as a small race surrounded by horrific monsters and other races that what to slaughter or enslave you then you turn out crazy and evil as a survival mechanism.
Or you just state that a wizard did it and then say no more.
I literally just had a conversation about these things last night cause my dm is using their name for a city and i wanted to turn into one of them and he thought i wanted to turn into the city
good video AJ
Great video:) also so close to 50k subscribers!
I run a Derro Bard called 'Devo'. ;)
*cracks a whip*
Yo!!!! I love your videos! They give me so much inspiration! I've created a True Good Derro Spore Druid. Her backstory is her family left her to die out in the underdark and was found by an unusual Myconid Colony and was raised among them. Now that she's old enough she acts as there agents across the verse as well as scratching an unusual adventuring itch she's had from birth. Her first stop was a "neighboring" Deep Gnome Settlement where she befriended and eventually fell in love with a Deep Gnome Gloom Stalker Ranger. Sadly their relationship wasn't to last as her gf was killed in a skirmish with Drow Raiders. She prefers to stay out of the underdark ever since except to report back to her Colony to disseminate her memories and experiences.
Wow, they really suck. Very thorough lore telling. Great video.
Thanks :)
Derro the goblins of the underdark
Goblins have darkvision...
Derro?
No. Therro.
Lmao I just massacred a bunch of derro in Out The Abyss (I’m a Ranger with prior knowledge of the Underdark btw) and my teammates were abhorred and wanted to spare them, but little did they know how crazy these little bastards are. My team is literally like the white people in Rambo 4 and I’m Rambo
Those silly dudes from The Time Machine. The original movie they were midgets that got hurled around like rag dolls. In the remake, they were muscle men.
Would you say they are a bit like Evil Gully Dwarves?
Much more intelligent.
Fucking Glorious
It's probably just a continuity snarl between and within editions, but what do you make of the disturbing mention of Derro using human slaves for breeding in the 2e Monstrous Manual?
"Derro hate humans more than any other race; they use humans for the most demeaning manual labor and for breeding."
"The derro also raid other races for food. Sometimes, they merely rob the dwarves or the orcs, hoping to provoke an amusing conflict. But such excursions are tame compared to Open Hunting, the derro term for midnight raids into human settlements. When Open Hunting, a derro party steals cattle and swine, to let loose and hunt at a later time, but it primarily kidnaps humans. As mentioned before, derro treasure humans for slaves and for breeding."
The 1e Monster Manual II states that 80% of the slaves kept by the Derro will be female, but doesn't say why. And in the description in the Monstrous Manual it states, "Their features remind dwarves of humans, and vice versa.", further hinting at their origins. I suppose their hatred of humanity is racial memory trauma from their origins and treatment at the hands of the Suel Imperium, but why would they need to use humans "for breeding"? Are we to understand from this entry that the Derro are a monogender race? Or that they breed entire populations of human slaves?
Not monogender, likely it's to counter the low fertility rate of their dwarven heritage.
I am playing a wild magic derro that has been exiled from the underdark. He is determined to shed the stigma of his race and seeks more out of life than what the underdark has to offer. He isnt crazy but he is neurotic
Derro is a techno music group I think
What's your thoughts on the new reprint where Derro are classified as aberrations?
not a fan
Hey im a bit confused a bit on where you get your information on some of this stuff such as @9:13 , can you tell me where you found that or have citations?
Moore, Roger E. "Legacies of the Suel Imperium," Dragon Magazine #241 (TSR, 1997). AD&D 2nd Edition Monster Mythology (TSR, 1992), Forgotten Realms wiki, Wikipedia, various monster manuals, I tend to take a lot of information from the novels with a grain of salt and in this case, largely ignored one of them. There is some conflicting lore in the case of the Derro when their origins are examined strictly from a mythology point of view, as the Dwarves, Duergar and Derro all have a differing account of it.
@@AJPickett sweet thank you so much!
Cheese Republic Unite
Great video
You are in your groove
Your confidence is shining through
If someone is in an invisability spell, would detect magic detect them?
I'd say yes it would
Yes, it should.
Could you explain if detect magic would allow the caster to see who is invisible, or just an aura of their invisible form?
Could you break down how a sprite "magically" turns invisible until it atracks, casts a spell or loses concentration?
As in combat- how long after it atracks/ casts a spell does it return to invisible, is it automatic or limited in any way.
Thank You both
a comment
Melded with grimlocks,how did that turn out?
Can a Cleric become Death Knight like a Paladin?
I’d wager no, maybe a paladin/cleric but a paladins oath is far more important and holds more sway over them than a clerics, and the breaking of this oath is what creates the death knight, sorta like the oathbreakers from LOTR but on mega steroids, in the event of a cleric/paladin breaking their oath I’d modify the death knight to be more magic focused as well if it were my campaign, but obv you COULD make a “death cleric” if you wanted but it doesn’t seem logical to me
In 4e at least, there was a type of undead called a "huecuva" which was a priest/cleric that turned on the clergy and, to me at least, seemed like a cleric-lich. That said, it's your game, if you want to create a cleric death knight, I'm sure your players will dig it.
Thx, just wanted to know if there was any lore backing me up.
Lich/Mummy Lord/Death Knight are in many ways the evil-sentient-undead equivalents to Wizard/Cleric/Paladin, respectively.
But personally I can see death knighthood as the final "reward" of a lot of evil martial characters who serve greater evils in the same way lichdom is for a lot of evil wizards. This can mean relevant multiclassing (warlocks of Zariel and clerics of Vecna come to mind), or just sworn service that doesn't amount to actual-class-level-based-on-it. I take the established lore to mean an initially good paladin who turns evil or breaks their oath seriously enough ALWAYS becomes a death knight upon dying un-redeemed, not exactly that becoming one at all was exclusive to them.
The current Monster Manual even mentions giving DKs undead minions, but replacing them with similar-CR fiends if the DK in turn serves an archfiend.
The DMG has options for a Death Domain cleric, so that might suffice
5:45 there we go, more stuff for buppido.
How the hell does this guy even know about dirinkarazan..?
edit: more tharizdun adjacent lore. @_@
Books... Too many books.
@@AJPickett OOTA redux campaign bible is now 169 google doc pages long. And I haven't even cracked 5e's Elemental Evil campaign open yet for extraction.
This damn Drow Archwizard really gets around doesn't he.
I think Derro is a derogatory term in Australia, isn't it? I'm pretty sure.
@@oVoidhawko uh, okay, I have a black eye and a fractured rib that says you might, MIGHT, be full of shit. I'm not saying you definitely are, but, well, the guy at the bar didn't take it as a term of endearment. I don't know, maybe I didn't say it right. Maybe the guy was from a different part of Australia where "I porked your sister so hard her head popped off" means, "I porked your sister so hard her head popped off".
I'm just not sure.
@@dsandoval9396 Ya probably just found the foreigner.. keep asking, and don't worry when the bartender starts dragging ya out the back.. he's just gonna split a few beers with ya.
Second
и снова накрутка просмотра и комментария для алгоритмов ;) ! лайк прилагается 3
The more of your videos I watch.
The more I realise how shit DnD lore is and how poorly it was constructed.
Kinda like real life lore. And for the same reason. No one person made it.
Back up off the mic. You sound like you are underwater.
That has nothing to do with how close he is, I'm pretty sure that's just the compression of the audio file. You hear it all the time in shitty movie rips that look like they were recorded in 144p.
Thank YOU for telling ME on HIS behalf. I think my original comment still stands.
@@-Untitled-
No, it doesn't.
He needs to either buy a new cover, get a new mic, or clean up the recording while editing. Again, the issue is not the distance he is from the microphone
"Back up OFF the mic" is NOT a complaint about distance and record. It is a statement of him not being on the mic at all, because he sounds like he's under water. Once the sound is fixed, then get back on the mic. Thus my original comment still stands.
Now you two dumb clucks, back up of the comments.
@@-Untitled- You're way too defensive about this. Chill out.
I automatically unsubscribe from all channels that have Mid content commercials. Great channel , Good bye
"I want great content, how does he do that?" *He does it full time as a job.* "But there are adverts in the videos I watch for free!" *Well..... yeah... but are you paying him though?* "No, why would I do that?" *Because you want great content!*
I love the video and i listen to intently to just AJs voice i didnt even hear the advert lol the Derro religious origins had me absolutely riveted
@@AJPickett dont get profit shamed you have few commercials not overly absurd amount like other channels of this ilk it's your time and effort that makes these wonderful videos of great quality so you just keep up the lore mastering you very much deserve income from it cant please everyone lol
If you hate ads, get YT Red or an adblocker.
Yelling at people who don't give you things you want for free is what communists do.
@@zoopdterdoobdter5743 Gimme Gimme Gimme 😂😂😂