The moment Aaron entered the city, he sensed that something was off.
Gracklstugh was a city dominated by duergar, with derro as second-class citizens and all other races beneath them. Apart from a few organizations from the surface world that traded with the duergar, such as the Zhentarim, the duergar treated other humans and elves with hostility.
Duergar did not like killing people. They preferred capturing them as laborers and slaves. Unless forced to, they avoided fighting whenever possible, especially battles with nothing to gain.
The derro, those second-class citizens, were completely different from the duergar. They were frivolous, reckless, utterly disorganized, and downright insane, with neither integrity nor morals to speak of. The only thing their race had in common was hatred. Derro hated everyone. That inexplicable hatred sustained their souls, and any excuse could make them gnash their teeth in fury, giving them fresh motivation.
It was said that derro had once been hybrids of humans and underground dwarves, and their mixed ancestry had left their temperaments particularly unstable.
The derro had once launched a massive rebellion, refusing to remain duergar slaves. The war destroyed many duergar kingdoms. Although the Deep Earth Kingdom ultimately suppressed it, the derro's sheer madness frightened the duergar enough that they were absorbed into the ruling class as second-class citizens.
Yet what Aaron saw on the dim, smoggy streets were duergar acting deranged. Several merchants grabbed passing customers and forced them to buy their goods, but did so by kneeling and begging, pleading through tears and snot for kind souls to buy their wares, or else they would go to hell.
Street cleaners ran around arresting "drow spies," yet completely ignored Nastya and Viconia.
One weaponsmith even enthusiastically seized Aaron's hand, declaring that they were half brothers with the same father. Not only