Dark Dwellers
Created by Mark Cummings







FREQUENCY: Very rare
NO. APPEARING: 2-24 in large lairs; 1-8
wandering or in small lairs
ARMOR CLASS: -4
MOVE: 12”
HIT DICE: 9-14
% IN LAIR: 80%
TREASURE TYPE: V, W in large lairs; G
in small lairs; nothing on individuals
NO. OF ATTACKS: 3 (claw, claw, bite) or
1 (by weapon)
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-6/1-6/1-8 or by
weapon type
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Nil
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Regeneration
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Standard
INTELLIGENCE: Average to high
ALlGNMENT: Lawful evil
SIZE: L (9’ + tall)
PSIONIC ABiLITY: Nil
    Attack/Defense Modes: Nil

Dark Dwellers are much like trolls in
appearance, lending support to the theory that the two species are distant relatives. Dark Dwellers (also known as subterranean trolls) have the general physical characteristics of trolls, including regeneration, but are physically different
in some respects and vastly different in
overall intelligence and basic behavior. 

They are bigger and stronger than
trolls, and the warriors almost always
(90%) wear plate armor. They are lawful
evil instead of chaotic evil in alignment. 

Dark Dwellers are excellent miners
and smiths. They have the following
special abilities:

—All of the mining skills possessed by
dwarves, according to the AD&D™ Players Handbook.

—The ability to construct secret doors
that are only detectable 8% of the time by
elves, and then only if they are actively
seeking them. Men detect them only 4%
of the time when searching for them. A
sword or another magical device with
the ability to detect secret doors will detect them only 33% of the time. Multiple
searches of the same area are allowed.

— The ability to construct mechanical
traps that will only be detected 75% of
the time by a sword or a Find Traps spell.
True Seeing will reveal them 80% of the
time. Thieves find/remove such traps at 
a -20% to the score they normally need to
be successful.


— The ability to construct their own
arms and armor.

Dark Dwellers are very strong. Males
have a minimum Strength of 19, enabling
them to attack at +4, and to do an additional 8 points of damage per hit with
their favorite weapon, a great sword.
Their strength allows them to wear plate
mail of unusual thickness and to carry
great shields, which gives them an effective armor class of -4. Females have
strengths of 17-18, with “to hit” and
damage bonuses accordingly reduced,
and do not bear such heavy armor and
shield (AC 0). Males and females are
equally ferocious, but the females have
9-11 hit dice while males have 12-14 hit
dice each. 

The main weakness of subterranean
trolls is their inability to withstand bright
lights. Full exposure to the light of the
sun will blind. Light and Continual light
spells cause them to lose their +4-to-hit
bonus, However, they will not flee from
light spells, and only true sunlight will
blind them.


Dark Dwellers share a communal lifestyle. In a small lair, all of the inhabitants
will be adults. In a large lair, one third of
the creatures present will be young.
They will function as regular trolls with
regard to melee, etc. 

Subterranean trolls are very greedy.
They live in their extensive, hard-to-find
underground tunnels, venturing forth at
night to raid and hunt for food. Their
superior infravision (150’) combines with
their excellent sense of smell to make
them formidable hunters. Mainly carnivorous, they will eat any kind of flesh.
They live for about 200 years and have a
very low rate of reproduction. 

Their favorite tactic is to build a lair
near a populated area. The advance 
team will consist of 2-12 adults. They will
avoid the inhabitants of the area in an
effort to expand the lair until it is large
enough for the rest of the tribe to come
and join them. Then they will begin a
campaign of terror and destruction, living off the inhabitants and their livestock
until the inhabitants drive them off (rarely) or until the inhabitants are killed off or
driven out. They will then live off the
game in that area while a new advance
team seeks a new area to raid.

Subterranean trolls have one more
ability that makes them even more fearful: the ability to domesticate the Antrodemus dinosaur as a beast of burden
and as a war mount. Since Dark Dwellers
must raid at night, they use these beasts 
to increase the range of their raids.
There is a 33% chance that a large lair
will contain 1-20 of these beasts. 

The lair of a group of Dwellers wilI
always be more extensive than the group
needs. It may consist of many levels;
subterranean trolls love to mine for the
sake of mining. 

All of the group’s treasure will always
be kept in one central location that is
well concealed and well trapped. A lair
will always have more than one entrance,
and these will be hard to find. There is a
1% chance to find such an entrance in an
all-day search of five square miles, per
every 20 men involved in the search. Additional bonuses to the chance of finding
the entrance are as follows: 

— Each additional day of search of the
same area, plus 5%
.
— Each Ranger or Druid involved in a
search adds 2%; each elf adds 1%.


— If the lair contains Antrodemus dinosaurs, add an additional 10%. 

Subterranean trolls will sometimes
build small lairs with only one or two
entrances to use when raiding areas that
are more than one night’s journey away
from the main lair. When Dark Dwellers
leave an area, other creatures may move
into their abandoned nests, bringing
their own treasure with them. In this way,
many networks of underground tunnels
and chambers have been formed for adventurers to loot and die in.
 
Dragon - Monster Manual III - Dragon 51