Drow Architecture

[painandgreed]

IMC, many of the Drow cities are in abysses. The city is very vertical in arrangment with the walls of the abyss (perhaps a few hundred yards apart) have houses, shops and such carved from the walls. They are also covered with centuries of spider silk that form some of the structural makeup of the buildings as well as the walkways that zig zag across the walls as well as back and forth between them. Entrances, doors, hallways and such in this region tend to be funnel shaped as that's the shapes the giant spiders that live in the same walls are used to forming. This arrangement makes it very easy for spiders to manuver all around the city as well as drow that can spider climb or fly. Any attackers enter near the bottom and must fight their way up in full view of the ceiling structures.

The cities tend to be socially structured vertically. From the ceiling drops stalagtite shaped formations of web and rock that act as the churches and offices of various parts of the cities government (the male and female fighter guilds). Nearby, across the top of the walls are the noble family estates with social status of the dwelling dropping as one goes down the walls. Near the bottom, the walls change into mushroom and slime farms that also house insect "livestock". The bottom of the abyss itself acts as garbage dump as well as breeding ground for insects and worms that form the spiders and drows food.

Once inside the walls of the abyss, archetecture takes many different forms according to the whims of the family that lives there. Given the chaotic nature of the Drow, there are few regular layouts. Some stretch deep back into the walls while others are also laid out vertically with each room of a "house" sitting on top of another. Furniture and such are either carved directly out of the stone walls, shapped from stone or metal, manufactured from the woody stalks of some of the mushrooms grown. The richer families can have the insides of their abodes as well as furnature covered in spider's web similar to what their clothes are made from. Such webs also have special qualities due to the type of spider that created them or enchantments that the drow have learned to cast. Such qualities can become sticky with command, entangle, prevent scrying or even astral or ethereal travel.

Each family owns their own abode along the walls of the abyss. With the fortunes of the house, they might expand or contract along the walls, moving up if possible. In extreme cases a house might even move from their ancesteral home but these cases are rare and signify an even greater change of status than the height on the wall of the new estate. Familes, when falling on hard times will sell or trade off rooms and areas to their neighbors, slowly moving everything to a center area of their living space. Usually within a few decades, fortunes shift and they can buy back such spaced from their neighbors who might be falling on hard times or need allies.

 

[Set]

I was always fond of the idea of a three-dimensional 'web' city. A crevasse or cavern was filled, top to bottom, with permanant webs, magically strengthened to be able to bear the enormous weights of the entire city. Buildings would be composed of chitin, woven into place with webbing, a sort of 'drow concrete,' and suspended at various levels throughout the cavern / crevasse, with web-bridges extending from one area to another in a bewildering and ever-changing maze of construction. As alliances would shift, and different regions would become more or less 'popular,' bridges to and from those areas from different locations would possibly change, being cut away and re-routed to the new 'it' place. The more bridges that lead to a particular district or noble house, the more 'status' it would have, temporarily, and the major nobles would simply have to have their own private 'bridge' to wherever the place-of-interest was. The webs would be magically flame-resistant, but not otherwise indestructible, and acts of sabotage would occur. It isn't enough to defend your noble house, but you may also have to defend the various support strands that are vital to holding your house up! A cunning adversary might choose to 'cut loose' a seemingly unrelated property just because it's loss will mess up your own bridge-routes to certain areas, etc. The most wealthy and magically-potent houses will have used Phase Spider silk and spells to create web-doors and passageways (and bridges...) that can be rendered ethereal with a command, allowing someone to bypass a sealed corridor, or a house patrol to cause invaders swarming over one of their bridges to plummet to their deaths!

Another variation on the three-dimensional city would be a cavern or crevasse city where the Drow have layed spider silk along the walls, and empowered them to confer Spider Walk upon those who wear boots of the same type of spider silk. Every dark elf in the city has such footwear, and they have buildings built into the walls of the crevasse that only they (and other climbing creatures) can easily reach. Slaves and goods are lowered or raised with ropes and winches, and once brought to a certain level, a slave will have no way to ever leave the property they inhabit, other than leaping to their death...

 

[Vascant]

This may seem like a wild idea but there have been several novels dealing with the drow, most recent I think are the War of the Spider Queen series. I can state from personal experience these novels have provided a near endless source of ideas and flavor.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

This may seem like a wild idea but there have been several novels dealing with the drow, most recent I think are the War of the Spider Queen series. I can state from personal experience these novels have provided a near endless source of ideas and flavor.

There's actually a follow-up to that series (well, two, but only one of them concerns itself with drow), but since those drow are almost exclusively non-Lolthites (Lolthians?) and close to, or on, the surface, you will not get too much information about spiderkissers there.

The novels that do have lots of drow action in them are most of the early books in the Drizzt series, the first book in the Starlight & Shadows series (Daughter of the Drow), and War of the Spider queen. The books often contain descriptions about the drow houses (both the buildings and the "noble houses")

 

[The Mad Kaiser]

The novels that do have lots of drow action in them are most of the early books in the Drizzt series, the first book in the Starlight & Shadows series (Daughter of the Drow), and War of the Spider queen. The books often contain descriptions about the drow houses (both the buildings and the "noble houses")

Have any excerpts to share?