Alternative origins of the drow

[Angel Tarragon]

Here is how I do drow for my homebrew:

At some point in the past elved used magic to merge the best traits of animals and humanods, creating entirely new humanoids. After many successful humanoid creations, the gods took notice. The peered down on the elves and told them to stop what they were doing. Most of them agreed.

A renegade group of elves continued to do their research on the fusions of animal and humanoid lifeforms. They successfully created one race. The gods automatically knew of this and twisted the elves magic back in on them, transforming them into the drow.

The afteraffects of the mgaic backlash turned their skin black and their hair white. They are exactly like their MM counterpart, with the exception of their obsession of spiders; also not suprisinly, there are no driders in my world.

 

[Mokona]

In my game elves are closely related to fey. Drow, on the other hand, aren't related to elves or fey at all. The drow were created as their own race just like humans, dwarves, centaurs, orcs, and halflings.

 

[Nyeshet]

I don't use them. I completely re-defined (flavor and mechanics) the non-human races. Elves do have a couple underworld races, but both are known for their paleness. There are the Forest Elves - divided into two groups (the boreal and desciduous forest cultures), the Hill Elves (those that live under hills in crystalline caverns - or at least that's how they appear due to the many illusions used therein), the Cavern / Underworld Elves that live continuous deep underground in the vast and complex cave systems below, and a few other (rather minor in numbers) other sub-races of elves.

The Underworld Elves are colorless - in skin and hair, although their eyes are pale amber rather than the pink of albinos. Their eyes are larger than normal, as are their ears, and they live in very small family groups that wander in small territories, finding various fungal and magivore types of food that live so deep below. Occasionally some of these groups come together - or meet accidentally. At other times a group - having become to large to find enough food for itself - will split up, the newer family group leaving to explore unknown regions.

My Underworld tends to be only sparsely populated except near the surface - where Mountain Dwarves and Hill Elves live. The deeper races are small in number, very dispersed, and very reclusive. Some do the occasional trade with the near-surface races, but it is irregular and minor, trading the rare and odd finds that may be of interest to the near-surface races in exchange for some basic tools or additional food, etc. (Although the foods they can eat differ somewhat from what the surface and near-surface races eat, so not all that much food is exchangeable). Some few of these deeper dwelling family groups act as sub-surface caravans - nomads that wander the regions between near-surface communities and so act as go-betweens for these groups, caravans after a fashion.

One of the things about my home world is that magic is impeded underground because of metal veins (iron especially), and stone similarly impedes planar travel - thus the underworld has little in the way of aberrants from other planes or due to odd magics. Some magical regions and materials exist, but they tend to be confined to small areas - with creatures and "plants" and fungus having developed over time to take advantage of the food source rather like some corals, shellfish, and eels taking advantage of hot vents on the ocean floor. Some life exists beyond such regions, but it is quite sparse. Those that live underground often can only stay so long in an area before they have to move on due to diminishing resources - and unless they are familiar with the area they may not find another oasis (as such) before dying. Competition over such areas can be fierce when two groups of different species / races / etc meet at such at the same time, as there is almost never enough for both and the next may be too far distant (or already taken). That also helps keep the numbers down.

Travel through the underworld is not to be taken lightly. Most surface races are not aware of just how extensive the Underworld is, and most Near-Surface races - if aware of its extent - are aware of how difficult survival down there can be, rarely exploring unless they have reason to believe a major find of precious stones or metal has been found - and relatively near by to their home region. Their excursions, thus, are rarely all that distant or for all that long - or both. Adventures can be made from such, but such adventures will be more akin to a wilderness hike through an arid region sparse in food and possibly sparse in water rather than through a region thick with monsters, traps, etc. The lack of food sources also means that the creatures one combats down there are often of smaller sizes rather than large. Even the medium to large sized ones - when they exist - are more likely to be the type that sleeps for months or even years at a time, rousing only when food or danger is sensed nearby and then only long enough to eat or leave.

All in all, the surface and near-surface is where nearly all of the action happens.

 

[Yair]

The story of Murchad's Legacy goes roughly like this:

The elves actually created just about all the other humanoid races (including humans), using them as slave-races. Then one day they realized this was wrong, and that these people deserved their independence. At least, some of the elves thought so. There was a huge civil war, lasting thousands of years, at the end of it the free-the-slaves movement was triumphant. The oher faction, reduced to a relatively small number of elves and their slaves, attempted a "nuclear bomb" solution, involving an epic Shadow-magic spell. But something went horribly wrong, and instead the spell suffused the whole race with shadow and darkness. So now you've got these black-skinned slave-trading elves hidning in the dark reaches of the underdark, biding their time and making plans for the eventual overthrowing of their sunny-side brethern (and world conquest, as sidenote).

I thought it's a rather interesting take, worth mentioning.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Black widow spiders are common in temperate and subtropical forests, and elves love forests.
Perhaps one group of elves began emulating the behavior of the black widow. These elves eventually changed psychologically themselves to fit that pattern.

The elven males became flirtaceous, audacious, overt types.
The elven females became shy, demure, gentle, and studious types.

Where the widow part comes in, is a subject of much discussion. One mundane possibility is the high mortality rate among the males of this elven subgroup, because they are so reckless. Upon dying, they leave their wives bereaved and widowed.
Left to defend themselves, the women of this elven subgroup devised powerful weapons to protect themselves from a hostile world. These weapons are rarely used, but much feared.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I don't know what Drow of the Underdark has as origin, but in the Realms, there's two parts to the story.

The first is Araushnee, Corellon's consort, trying to kill him in order to assume the throne. She failed, was exiled, stripped of divinity, and became the Demon Queen Lolth.

I guess something like this is in DotU, too. But the second part, the part about how the drow became the drow, doesn't really need the first part:

Before the Crown Wars, there were no drow, there were just dark elves. They were their own subrace, like gold and silver and so on, but they were not as different from the others as they are now. They didn't have their own pantheon yet, either.

But then, some of the dark elves, especially those in the nation of Ilythiir, started praying to dark powers (amongst them Lolth, and her son Vhaeraun, but others, too) for power.

During the Crown Wars (which were 5 different, prolongued conflicts, 2 of which were started by the dark elves of Ilythiir), their atrocity of praying to evil gods (to such an extend) finally came to light, and the other elves sought to punish them for their crime. In some very long (I think a decade or so) High Elven Magic Rituals, they invoked the power of Corellon himself. Corellon answered, cursing all dark elves so they could no longer stand the sun's light, and were driven underground. From this day forward, they were called drow, which is a variation on dhaerow - traitor.

Unfortunately, the elven high magic overshot the mark, like so many times before. Not just the dark elves of Ilythiir were cursed, but all dark elves from all elven nations (many of which were just like the other elves).

The weakness to sunlight came from the curse, as did the white hair. Much of their magical abilities (like SR or their spell-like abilities) they got over the centuries by being exposed to the strange Underdark radiation called Faerzress. Their superior intellect, dexterity and charisma has a simple, dark, reason: Selective breeding. A stupid drow will probably not survive his childhood, and anyway, disabled drow are hardly tolerated (being a shame for the House and bloodline), and don't survive their early years, either - and drow consider mere clumsiness, ugliness, or stupidity to be disabilities). Over the course of over 10.000 years, the smart, graceful, and charismatic drow bred true.

 

[an_idol_mind]

In my campaign, elves began as humans. They were blessed by the world's creator and given a fragment of the goddess's divinity, which helped them evolve into the long-lived magical race they are now. Drow are elves who commit high crimes such as murder, rape, or the like. As punishment for their crimes, they are stripped of their divinity, marking them with black skin and turning them into demons that are hunted by elves and humans alike.

At first, drow were weaker than normal elves. Eventually, a powerful drow priestess came into contact with the demon-queen Lolth, and was rewarded with a blessing for the entire species. That created the tougher drow from the Monster Manual. The elves have since stopped using their ritual to create drow, because they realize now that the accidentally created their own worst enemies.

 

[theemrys]

I run a Kingdom of Kalamar game and use the "Blood and Shadow" book for drow. On Telene the drow were originally a surface type of elf who's rulers were seduced by one of the evil gods... it lead to al LONG war which looked like it might get resolved, so the god had them flee instead to help keep up the strife. Anyway, they retreated into the dark and eventually their coloring changed. I'm not really doing it justice but if you ever want to read a REALLY cool alternate take on drow I suggest reading this book. It's written almost like a story so it's a great read and there are still crunchy bits included. Given that it's set in Kalamar, it's not heavy on the magic side... in fact it talks about how they tried to go that way and failed. In Kalamar, drow have an ecl of 1. There is also a whole interesting section on how the gith types trained some drow in fighting mindflayers and created a whole order of monks to fight them (new PrC). All in all, very cool version of drow that is not Lolth based.

 

[kenmarable]

In the setting I'm toying around with, the drow are the original race and the elves are the splinter. So rather than the fall of the drow, there is the rise of the elves as they cast off their dark nature. The drow themselves are necromancers from the Plane of Shadow (Shadow is the realm of the dead in this setting).

As an aside, I also have humans being a hybrid race spawned from orcs and elves.

 

[sckeener]

I have stolen somewhat from Tad Williams....

In the past, elves were the greatest of the Fey. Immortal, wise, good, all that stuff.

There was a major conflict with an evil force (which I'll not detail here). And the elves were losing. Some came to know despair, and chose a dread path - to ensure the continued existence of their people, the younger brother of the elven king murdered his brother, and bathed in his blood...

This worked, sort of. This was the first time one of the great fey drew the blood of another, and the repercussions were downright cataclysmic. The cataclysm did as much damage to the enemy as themselves, calling an end to the conflict, for the nonce. The long-term repercussions have been dire, and the descendants of those who performed the ritual have been marked with the rusty-black of the blood they bathed in.

Interesting. I did something similar. My elves are the Egyptians IMC. My drow are all decedents of Set who killed Osiris. They are not oppressed by the other elves since the Egyptians had no problems with invoking evil to fight evil. As such some of my 'drow' worship other demons (namely Zuggtmoy)

My Summerians are human slaves that rebelled against the benign rule of the elves. They worship all sorts of gods including (Dagon - the demon lord). The elves had a haughty attitude that to be a slave to the elves is better than being free elsewhere.