Editing Veins of the Earth (section)

==Cultures in the Veins==
Excepting the knotmen, these are all takes on the "classic" cultures of the Underdark.

The [[drow| aelf-adal]] are refugees from nightmares who once escaped and tried to take over the world, only to be beaten back.  They desperately hate all other forms of life, but are hesitant to try to kill them all since they know they're products of dreams and aren't sure if they'd survive that genocide, so they mostly settle for plotting the reversal of the world down in the dark.

The [[dao| deep janeen]] are decadent, evil genies of elemental earth who are flighty and artistic, occasionally stopping adventurers to ask them to review the dungeon they just traversed. They are also insanely dangerous to talk to, but just as dangerous to try to ignore once you have their interest.

The [[derro| dErO]] are heavily based on the original Shaver stories, and do a good job of simultaneously being horrible, scary, and kind of funny in a black comedy sort of way.  They behave schizophrenically, they utilize clever but twisted machines that may or may not often backfire, they do horrible things for pointless reasons in infinite feedback loops they're too stupid or crazy to notice, and they take pills that let them hear the players and GM talking, but cause them to suffer for metagaming if they at all acknowledge what they've heard.  This can happen to PCs who unwisely try their drugs.  

The [[duergar| dvargir]] are actually pretty much like their normal counterparts in many ways, save that they're even-more focused on working for its own sake; their totalitarian culture literally worships the concept of work and their behavior is diagrammed in an algorithm on one page, representing their computer-like mindset. One of their pictures implies they may be the only culture down here to master gunpowder, and they have a form of carbide electric lights that are ecologically-unfriendly.

[[Elemental| Substratals]] are what you get when you cast a summoning spell for earth elementals too close to the source of all Earth, and therefore pull something a bit too powerful and conscious for your own good. The party has basically just performed an alien abduction by accident and derailed the plot by getting pulled into earth elemental politics.

The [[svirfneblin| gnonmen]] are an interesting meditation on what kind of "good" race could survive in such a harsh, alien environment so inimical to life, and an oddly-hopeful little section after like half a book's doom and gloom. They revere light, life, and action, and focus on the now, refusing to let themselves be ground down into despair.