Diirinka
| Diirinka | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spiral of Gray, Black & White | ||
| Aliases | The Betrayer, the Cruel Master, the Deep Lich, the Father, the Great Savant | |
| Alignment | Chaotic Evil | |
| Divine Rank | Intermediate Deity | |
| Pantheon | Morndinsamman (Derro) | |
| Portfolio | Derro, Cruelty, Magic, Knowledge | |
| Domains | Chaos, Destruction, Dwarf, Evil, Suffering, Trickery | |
| Home Plane | Hidden Betrayal (Pandemonium) | |
| Worshippers | Derro | |
| Favoured Weapon | Poisoned Dagger or Bite | |
Diirinka is one of the two racial patron gods of the Derro in Dungeons & Dragons, alongside his brother, Diinkarazan. He is sometimes considered to be a member of the Morndinsamman, the Dwarf pantheon, but an outcast member; this varies between sources. This minor deity was only detailed in the sourcebooks "Monster Mythology" for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and "On Hallowed Ground" for Planescape. He did better than his brother in that he got an official 3e update in the Forgotten Realms splatbook "Faiths and Pantheons".
The twin brothers are said to have been ambitious lower members of the Morndinsamman who sought to increase their power by creating a new dwarven subrace to worship them exclusively, a breed of dwarf imbued with great dexterity and a talent for arcane magic - these being talents unclaimed by their relatives. To this end, they sought a means to magically transform mortal dwarves into their intended new image, and ultimately found this in the form of a great storehouse of artifacts hidden in the Underdark. Only problem was that these artifacts belonged to the illithid god, Ilsensine.. more importantly, he caught them as they attempted to flee from his stash with as much loot as they could carry.
Abandoning his brother to Ilsensine's untender attentions, Diirinka escaped with his share of the loot and proceeded to claim his prize; crafting the derro as they are today and offering a share of his power to the savants in order to ensure they would keep his creations faithful. Setting up a new den for himself somewhere in a cold, dark, dank cave on the third layer of Pandemonium, Diirinka set about enjoying himself as the new god of the derro.
Truth be told, Diirinka is a very lazy god; so long as he is revered, he doesn't give a damn what the derro actually do with themselves, and so entrusts leadership of the race to the savants, a subrace of derro sorcerer-priests. When he is moved to reward or punish his people, he does so on a whim. Treacherous and despicable, Diirinka cares for nobody, not even himself - there are rumors he actually still feels a nagging sense of guilt over abandoning his brother. Diirinka takes the form of a derro lich wearing a mutably-formed set of robes whose pattern of gray, white and black is constantly moving and changing. His avatar has the power of an 18th level mage and a 12th level cleric, and is typically dispatched to steal arcane lore & artifacts or simply to commit some act of cruelty that will amuse Diirinka.