What are 'Derro'?

[CrackedChair]

From what I've seen, they seem to be Underdark inhabitants, but that's all I can really recall about them. What exactly are they?

[Yora]

They are mutated degenerate dwarves who live in the deepest parts of the Earth and worship a god of madness. There's not really a lot about them.

[Lord Torath]

I think they were introduced in The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (module S4). They are rumored to be a cross of dwarves and evil humans, and favor spiked bucklers and tripping weapons.

[Thialfi]

They are one of two races of evil dwarves. Derro are the crazy, chaotic, evil, magic using dwarves.

[LibraryOgre]

They are one of two races of evil dwarves. Derro are the crazy, chaotic, evil, magic using dwarves.

Whereas the other, Duergar, tend to be "Like dwarves, but EVIL."

Derro actually play a slightly larger part in Dragonlance, where they're the Theiwar clan. Known for being a bit backstabbing and evil, they're also magic-users, and standard derro are led by savants, who are magic-users.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

They are mutated degenerate dwarves who live in the deepest parts of the Earth and worship a god of madness. There's not really a lot about them.

So they're CHUD?



Nice.

[TheIronGolem]

From what I've seen, they seem to be Underdark inhabitants, but that's all I can really recall about them. What exactly are they?

Drow + Short - Briefly Trendy Hero = Derro

[Blacky the Blackball]

Derro - evil underground dwellers that kidnap and torture people - are based on the "Dero" about which Richard Sharpe Shaver wrote in the 1940's to 1960's, as part of something somewhere between a "Hollow Earth" conspiracy and an "Ancient Astronauts" conspiracy.

Whether Shaver actually believed his theories or not is up for question, but is seems likely that he was a paranoid schizophrenic and the "Dero" that he alleged were sending telepathing messages to him were a symptom of this.

The whole thing is commonly referred to as "The Shaver Hoax", although - as I say - it seems more likely that he did genuinely believe in them rather than just making up the stories for publicity or money.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them (although you can find other sites discussing them if you Google "The Shaver Hoax" or "Dero"):

Shaver claimed to have worked in a factory where, in 1932, odd things began to occur. As Bruce Lanier Wright notes, Shaver "began to notice that one of the welding guns on his job site, 'by some freak of its coil's field atunements', was allowing him to hear the thoughts of the men working around him. More frighteningly, he then received the telepathic record of a torture session conducted by malign entities in caverns deep within the earth". According to Michael Barkun, Shaver offered inconsistent accounts of how he first learned of the hidden cavern world, but that the assembly line story was the "most common version". Shaver said he then quit his job, and became a hobo for a while.

[...]

During 1943, Shaver wrote a letter to Amazing Stories magazine. He claimed to have discovered an ancient language he called "Mantong", a sort of Proto-Human language that was the source of all Earthly languages. In Mantong, each sound had a hidden meaning, and by applying this formula to any word in any language, one could decode a secret meaning to any word, name or phrase. Editor Ray Palmer applied the Mantong formula to several words, and said he realized Shaver was onto something.

According to Palmer (in his autobiography The Secret World), Palmer wrote back to Shaver, asking how he had learned of Mantong. Shaver responded with an approximately 10,000-word document entitled "A Warning to Future Man". Shaver wrote of extremely advanced prehistoric races who had built cavern cities inside the Earth before abandoning Earth for another planet due to damaging radiation from the Sun. Those ancients also abandoned some of their own offspring here, a minority of whom remained noble and human "Teros", while most degenerated over time into a population of mentally impaired sadists known as "Deros"—short for "detrimental robots". Shaver's "robots" were not mechanical constructs, but were robot-like due to their savage behavior.

These Deros still lived in the cave cities, according to Shaver, kidnapping surface-dwelling people by the thousands for meat or torture. With the sophisticated "ray" machinery that the great ancient races had left behind, they spied on people and projected tormenting thoughts and voices into our minds (reminiscent of schizophrenia's "influencing machines" such as the Air loom). Deros could be blamed for nearly all misfortunes, from minor "accidental" injuries or illnesses to airplane crashes and catastrophic natural disasters. Women especially were singled out for brutal treatment, including rape, and Mike Dash notes that "[s]ado-masochism was one of the prominent themes of Shaver's writings". Though generally confined to their caves, Shaver claimed that the Deros sometimes traveled with spaceships or rockets, and had dealings with equally evil extraterrestrial beings. Shaver claimed to possess first-hand knowledge of the Deros and their caves, insisting he had been their prisoner for several years.

Palmer edited and rewrote the manuscript, increasing the total word count to a novella length of 31,000. Palmer insisted that he did not alter the main elements of Shaver's story, but that he only added an exciting plot so the story would not read "like a dull recitation". Retitled "I Remember Lemuria!"; it was published in the March 1945 issue of Amazing. The issue sold out, and generated quite a response: between 1945 and 1949, many letters arrived attesting to the truth of Shaver's claims (tens of thousands of letters, according to Palmer). The correspondents claimed that they, too, had heard strange voices or encountered denizens of the Hollow Earth. One of the letters to Amazing Stories was from a woman who claimed to have gone into a deep subbasement of a Paris, France building via a secret elevator. After months of rape and other torture, the woman was freed by a benevolent Tero. Another letter claiming involvement with Deros came from Fred Crisman, later to gain notoriety for his role in the Maury Island Incident and the John F. Kennedy Assassination. "Shaver Mystery Club" societies were created in several cities. The controversy gained some notice in the mainstream press at the time, including a mention in a 1951 issue of Life magazine.

[Blackhawk748]

So they're CHUD?



Nice.

More of less, i know Pathfinder mentioned them in one of their booklets (i cant recall which atm) but there are several works that seem like Derro.

[Mordaedil]

Derro are half-human, half-dwarf.

[hamishspence]

That's Mul from Dark Sun.

Derro might be descended from human/dwarf pairings, but they're pretty different from both - and do not qualify for "dwarf only" or "human only" feats.

They even have the Monstrous Humanoid type rather than the Humanoid type.

[Mordaedil]

That's Mul from Dark Sun.

Derro might be descended from human/dwarf pairings, but they're pretty different from both - and do not qualify for "dwarf only" or "human only" feats.

They even have the Monstrous Humanoid type rather than the Humanoid type.

Oops. Memory cross-over I guess after looking at the Destrachan.

[hamishspence]

They still look pretty like humans or dwarves - main difference is bulging all-white eyes.

[Nifft]

IIRC there was something in Greyhawk about Derro being created deliberately by the Suel empire. One of the Suel gods was so disgusted by this that he left their pantheon and became a dwarf god.

(That's setting-specific, of course, and it's not necessary even within that setting.)

[GungHo]

Derro are something you bring out when you've decided that you want to get serious about your crazy orifice probe abductions but can't use space aliens.

[Arbane]

Derro explain Derro. And The Machine.

[Telwar]

Derro are something you bring out when you've decided that you want to get serious about your crazy orifice probe abductions but can't use space aliens.

...that's a really good description, actually.

[RedWarlock]

And here I was, thinking to myself, "Don't go on /r/paranormal tonight, you'll give yourself crazy ghost/demon dreams!" Instead, I'll have crazy conspiracy/eldritch-horror dreams. Just what I needed.