Have you featured any deep-underground (underdark, or whatever) cultures in your game that weren't Drow (or drow-clones)?

What are they  like?

I never liked the under-dark.  The players can't see down there and everything else can.  Their torch light will give them away before the even get a hint of anyone else being there.  So I flooded it.

I've used the Derro (sp?) from Richard Shaver's crazy old scifi stories.
Also, the cruel civilization of K'n-yan from Lovecraft's story 'The Mound' is a prescence in my homebrew setting... or they were at least the seed of inspiration (Lovecraft had his own Underdark... full of ghouls, dholes, gugs, ghasts, weird psychics, and Tsathoggua.

The cyborg mushrooms that ended up generated from a session of How to Host a Dungeon. Some mushroom people came across the remnants of the machine things that had left mysteriously after a cataclysmic earthquake. The remnant tech bonded with the fungus people after saving them from a tunnel worm and a new race came into being. They grow best around the deep radiation pit.

Quote from: RPGPundit;926821Have you featured any deep-underground (underdark, or whatever) cultures in your game that weren't Drow (or drow-clones)?

Does a dinosaur-filled hollow earth count?

Coldly furious workaholic duergar living in a sterile militaristic city beneath the streets of their sworn enemies, patiently waiting a hundred years for the right time to execute the most painful revenge possible. They actually proved to be good allies to the PCs, who appreciated their no-nonsense pragmatism and minimalist focus on getting things done.

They trained by subjective themselves to monoliths that assaulted their minds and caused great pain. The goal was to toughen their wills, since their foes were known for their psychic powers. They also concealed their faces with metal masks to prevent identification, since their enemies could kill you from a distance if they had a clear idea of who you were.

I gave them the quirk of being really into 'wool' clothing woven from the fuzz of giant white beetles. A lot of grim striped sweaters.

Industrialized morlocks send their brass men armed with galvanic spears to fight a desperate war against the mind flayer collectives and their enslaved minions. Both sides are fending off skirmishers from the Ivory Kingdom (ghouls), who consume all the wounded they can find.

I don't use Drow. I use Svartalfar instead. They make Drow look like wimps and they don't all live below ground either...

As for deep underground, goblins, mushroom folk, all sorts of blind, albino things without names...
Not every society in the depths can see without light. Several varieties of phosphorescent fungi are popular as light sources, as are globes with Continual Light cast on them.

I never had Drow underground. I wasn't a FR fan and I never did anything with the Underdark until 4e, so my Drow were almost always extra-planar or lived in forests in perpetual magical darkness.

I play in Glorantha, so Mostali dwarves.