A crumbling stone arch stood at the entrance to the Jade District.
Several dwarves stood beneath it, apparently guards, though their posture was strange.
Their skin was coal-black and their pupils tiny, nothing like those of the gray dwarves.
They wore crude leather armor haphazardly tied together with leather cords, yet held finely crafted steel weapons.
Most unsettling of all was their behavior. These dwarves seemed insane, giggling foolishly one moment, then roaring without warning the next, enough to make anyone jump.
Renato and Balin hid behind a half-collapsed building on a street corner, watching from a distance.
"They're probably the gray dwarves who were hunting the orcs," Renato said quietly.
"Those aren't Duergar, Renato." Balin paused, then said through gritted teeth, "No, they aren't even dwarves."
"They're Duergar." The dwarf tightened his grip on his hammer. "The products of experiments, twisted by mind flayers' psionic powers. What disgusting, blasphemous experiments could create monsters like these..."
Monsters? Renato hardly thought the so-called Duergar before him qualified as monsters.
Aside from their darker skin and unstable mental state, they looked like dwarves, moved like dwarves, and even shouted in the Dwarf language...
As far as Renato was concerned, Duergar were dwarves.
Still, dwarves declaring other dwarves no longer dwarves was nothing unusual. Renato kept his thoughts to himself and simply asked:
"So how do we get in? Kill these Duergar dwarves?"
"No." Balin immediately rejected the idea. "Duergar are loyal servants of the mind flayers. Their brains have been altered, creating a close mental link with those Octopus Heads."
"If we kill them, the mind flayers might come running."
The dwarf looked around, his gaze settling on a sewer cover nearby.
"We'll go through the sewers," he decided. "If my guess is right, they should lead straight to the Dain residence