What have you done to Drow in your world?

[Thunderfoot]

1) Drow are not a playable race due to A) They are rare on the surface (as in non-existent except for raids) and B) They are EVIL!!!

2) They are the ORIGINAL elvish race. The surface elves were once humans that were changed due to deific influence, made to both honor and poke fun at the evil sub-surface pointy ears. (Needless to say this hasn't gone over well now that the elvish secret is out.)

3) Lolth - is renamed and a goddess, but more evil than sin on a platter with a side of gravy.

4) They are actually played as intelligent as they are supposed to be - IOW, they aren't so arrogant that they are ignorant. My biggest problem with drow (and most evil races) is that since 2E AD&D, the evil races have gotten PC (for politically corrected) make-overs and evil bad-guy lobotomies. Meaning when they have the PCs right where they want them, they let them escape and press the big red self-destruct button that blows up the secret lair (thank you Hollywood for evil ineptitude.)

5) Did I mention they are evil? They are also sneaky, they have been recently exposed as subversively causing racial dissension among the elves and humans. Hmmmm, refer to #2 and #4 - and this is just what the party has discovered...

 

[Clavis]

I completely play up the BDSM aspect of the Drow, and not in the suburban-housewife-who-buys-a-pair-of-furry-handcuffs way. I mean in the De Sade way, using slaves as mounts, furniture, and toilets. I base their society on a FemDom version of the Sodality of the Friends of Crime from De Sade's "Juliette", and model the behavior of Drow females after Juliette herself. There is nothing laudable or desirable in Drow society, except that they commit the most unspeakable acts with an attention to a perverted sense of grace and beauty. They have absolutely no sense of personal limits, except what can be imposed on them by those stronger than themselves. They don't just worship the Demon Queen of Spiders (who is NOT a Goddess), but all kinds of different Demons; whichever ones serve their purposes at the moment. They are as faithless to the Demons as they are to everything else. Naturally, they are not available as a PC race, and I would worry about any player who wanted to use one as a PC.

 

[The Cardinal]

I completely play up the BDSM aspect of the Drow, and not in the suburban-housewife-who-buys-a-pair-of-furry-handcuffs way. I mean in the De Sade way, using slaves as mounts, furniture, and toilets. I base their society on a FemDom version of the Sodality of the Friends of Crime from De Sade's "Juliette", and model the behavior of Drow females after Juliette herself. There is nothing laudable or desirable in Drow society, except that they commit the most unspeakable acts with an attention to a perverted sense of grace and beauty. They have absolutely no sense of personal limits, except what can be imposed on them by those stronger than themselves. They don't just worship the Demon Queen of Spiders (who is NOT a Goddess), but all kinds of different Demons; whichever ones serve their purposes at the moment. They are as faithless to the Demons as they are to everything else. Naturally, they are not available as a PC race, and I would worry about any player who wanted to use one as a PC.

VERY, VERY nice! I might have to steal that - and combine it with stuff from R.S.Bakker's Prince of Nothing books...

 

[Ranes]

I haven't done anything radical with them. They worship the demon, Lolth. They are all evil. They are not playable. The darkness they create is total.

I did consider describing them as having a pallid, almost translucent skin but decided that was too similar to the way I envisaged surface-dwelling elves. Instead, I've turned their blackness up to eleven. They have pitch black skin, eyes, teeth and blood. It's a physical manifestation of the evil they embody.

And they never fight with two weapons.

 

[Clavis]

VERY, VERY nice! I might have to steal that - and combine it with stuff from R.S.Bakker's Prince of Nothing books...

Just imagine what a cruel Drow mistress could do with her 5 inch adamantine Stiletto Heels of Wounding, and magical Whip of Ecstatic Pain....

 

[Greg K]

For my campaign, I moved them to the surface (an island nation), limited them to standard elf traits, and made them demon worshipping pirates.

 

[Ruslanchik]

I've always liked the idea of placing all elves in a huge forest with trees that are like half a mile tall. The regular elves live in cities at the tops of the trees, where the sun shines. Long ago, a group of elves broke off and moved to the forest floor where only the dimmest light reaches. They developed dark skin as camouflage and are brutal predators, killing anyone who wanders into their territory. They have a connection with insects, especially centipedes, and use poison to great effect. On new moon nights, they often venture up the trees to raid the elves and steal their children.

I like the idea of the Drow being an ever-present threat to the elves, something that the elves would try to hide from outsiders. The elves would go to great lengths to protect others from the Drow, building walkways through the trees so that no one has to travel on the ground.

 

[Jhaelen]

I killed them and took their stuff!

Erm, what?

Well, in my current campaign elves are fey and one of the two major (humanoid) antagonistic groups (the others are the animal tribes (aka lycanthropes)). So far drow didn't make any appearance. If I decide to use them, they'll get the Half-Fey template (minus the wings but including the fly speed). I'm not going to use any of the default background (except that they dwell in the Underdark), but I'll stay close to their standard look.

 

[Satori]

I completely play up the BDSM aspect of the Drow, and not in the suburban-housewife-who-buys-a-pair-of-furry-handcuffs way. I mean in the De Sade way, using slaves as mounts, furniture, and toilets. I base their society on a FemDom version of the Sodality of the Friends of Crime from De Sade's "Juliette", and model the behavior of Drow females after Juliette herself. There is nothing laudable or desirable in Drow society, except that they commit the most unspeakable acts with an attention to a perverted sense of grace and beauty. They have absolutely no sense of personal limits, except what can be imposed on them by those stronger than themselves. They don't just worship the Demon Queen of Spiders (who is NOT a Goddess), but all kinds of different Demons; whichever ones serve their purposes at the moment. They are as faithless to the Demons as they are to everything else. Naturally, they are not available as a PC race, and I would worry about any player who wanted to use one as a PC.

I like.

I'm considering adding a rebellious sect of males who worship Grazzt.

Am I the only one who can't figure out why Grazzt wasn't the original Dark Elven Demon King? I mean...he even LOOKS like a Dark Elf!

 

[CruelSummerLord]

The drow in my version of Greyhawk are inherently evil. They know it, and they LIKE it. Some very few drow could tend towards neutrality, but not good. A good drow is literally a freak, an abomination.

That means no Drizzt Do'Urdens, no Eilistraees.

The drow have their origins with the elven race as a whole, born from the blood Corellon shed in his battle with Gruumsh, and the tears Sehanine Moonbow shed for him. Most of these were born into the elves we know today, to be fractured by the Seldarine's later foolishness.

Some elves, however, were corrupted. Yurtrus, orcish god of rot, disease and decay, sought to avenge his lord's defeat at Corellon's hand, by destroying that he would hold most dear. He bled on some of the issue of Corellon and Sehanine, he defecated on others, he infected still others with his foul touch. Whatever he did, he rotted and corrupted the souls of the elves, making them the darkest evil from the beginning.

They became the drow.

So did they seek to destroy the elves of the light, but they were too few in number, just as Yurtrus had planned. The orcish god had no intention of taking the polluted elves as his own, he sought merely to create a source of grief and shame for the elves and their gods, a cycle of hatred and sorrow that would last evermore. Embittered and hateful from their defeat, the drow fled to the lands beneath the Oerth, where they became affected by the strange radiations that emanate from its center, the antithesis of the energy of the sun.

Altered and transformed by these radiations, the drow developed new ways of life, and conducted researches into the most foul of arcane knowledge, which brought to them awareness of the demoness Lolth, who they took as a patroness. Lolth encouraged the drow in their vile ways, nurturing their hatred of the elves and of those around them, giving them clerical powers in return for the increased prestige she gained in the Abyss. Other demons and vile beings, such as the Elder Elemental God, came to be revered by certain groups of drow, and the race was by no means uniform in its religious beliefs or its politics, dissident groups often claiming new patrons when they came at cross purposes with the church of the Spider Queen.

As time passed, the drow were fundamentally altered by their exposure to the radiation that comes from within the Oerth. They developed inherent magical abilities, the power to cast fairy-fire, globes of darkness, magical hypnosis, and other strange and mysterious abilities that arose not from their own innate magical power, but their exposure to this strange radiation, called faerzress by some. It imbued also their weapons and armor, which were by themselves not magical but imbued with the radiation's powers. However, the faerzress of the Oerth and the light of the sun are eternal opposites, destroyers of each other. To that end, the weapons and armor of the drow disintegrate if exposed to sunlight, and even the drow themselves will be burned alive if exposed to the rays of the sun. Now, they may only come to the surface world in the darkness of night, to kidnap and murder as terrors in the night. The drow themselves are dependent on the faerzress-they must return to it to replenish their abilities, and to keep their weapons imbued with the powers that so seem like magical weapons.

Since those long-ago days, the drow have passed into popular legend. Humans, dwarves, gnomes, halflings and even some elves consider drow bogeymen, used to scare their children:

Don't wander into the woods alone, or the drow will get you!

Stop crying, or the drow will hear you!

Eat your vegetables, or I'll tell the drow!

There are those who know, however. Those who have faced death at the hands of the drow, such as the courageous adventurers who battled Against the Giants. Those of great power and wisdom who study things most dismiss as flights of fancy, such as the Mage Mordenkainen or Overking Xavener. Those who have been abducted by the drow, forced into the living hell that is being a slave in a drow city...

...all of these know the horrifying truth of the drow.