[Necromancing the Stone]

"Thangardt! ya insolent git! Quit ya fartin around wit da gimp an git on back to ya studies!"


Thangardt stood in the center of the classroom, air exchanging from his lungs in slow, careful, deep breaths. He was trying to keep his heart rate under control. The small Duergar, Burton, was his friend. He was an outcast, a cripple, born with one leg shorter than the other. As such, his only blessing is he wasn't killed immediately by whatever family he had at the time. Thangardt, didn't know what drew him to Burton. He couldn't explain the feeling in the back of his mind. he darkness of the underdark was a deep gloom suffocating his every thought, but his mind was a glow...... he was gaining something.....

a conscience.

He began to relish the punishment from defending Burton and the few others similar to him in his neighborhood and his school. They would get tortured, ridiculed, picked on....and Thangardt, a veritable mountain of a Duergar.... would come to their defense. Keeping the strong at bay from the weak.  

His parents tried reasoning with him at first...The underdark is dangerous they said, only the strong can survive, as such Laduguer wills that the weak die. Their arguments made sense, if the strong survived, the Duergar would be strong. But he could see that Burton may not have been strong, but he was quick witted, and hard working. If given a chance he COULD contribute to society. But that wasn't the Duergar way, he was told.  

Eventually his "antics" drew the ire of the Deeplord, and retraining was in order. In the end, his own father marched him to the temple of Deep Duerra and gave him over to the Psionicist-Priests under her command. For weeks he was "retrained." His face and neck were flayed open with knives, his skin burned with lump coal, his fingernails torn out, and a hundred other tortures were visited upon his body in an attempt to bring him back into line with general Duergar society. The mental tortures from the Psionicists were the worst. Illusions of every imaginable horror, every nightmare, every bad thought he had as a child was replayed in his mind, amplified, and thrown back at him, but somehow, his mind held strong.

As is always with any routine, eventually mistakes were made. It only took a a handcuff left cuffed too loosely, and he was able to squirm away and flee into the underdark. Alone.  

A cursory search was conducted. They had to make it look like they cared to recover a Duergar as strong and with as much potential as Thangardt had shown....but they knew he would be dead in a matter of weeks. The underdark didn't brook weakness. It found weakness, swallowed it whole and spit out the bones.  

Thangardt subsisted off of stealing bread and clothes where he could, and managed to stay hidden for longer than anyone would give him credit for. But fate had other plans for him. His clan, the Bloodbeards, had always made their home closer to the surface than other groups of Duergar. It resulted in more confrontations with Dwarves, but less with Drow. A trade made willingly by the Bloodbeards.  

This proximity led to Thangardt being ambushed by Shield Dwarves conducting a patrol. He would have been killed outright, if it hadn't been for his youth and state of dishevelement. The Dwarves took pity on him and brought him home as a captive.  

Over the next few months he spent the majority of his time speaking to his only visitor. The local priest of Moradin. The spoke at great length of the Morindinsamman, Laduguer, and Deep Duerra. They spoke about the great captivity of the Duergar, and their split from their dwarven kin. They even spoke about their hard fought freedom and how dwarves never marched to their defense.  

Through these conversations, Thangardt shaped his world view, eventually becoming a disciple of Moradin. He publicly declared his allegiance to the golden lord, and was released into society of his adoptive clan, the Stonebeards, warily. He spent his formative years earning his place among them and repaying the debt he owed them for not just sparing, but saving, his life.

But as with all things, the wider world called, and Moradin, inexplicably, drew him to Thay.  
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