D&D General Drow as in Cow or Drow as in Snow: Where did the Dark Elves Come From?


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Thanks.

On the black = evil association, I find it very interesting that many are doing it, while fewer notice that the "White" elves aren't much better.

In the version I read (not really delving into their background, so it's most probably from 3e), Drows are cursed not to withstand daylight, so they had to take refuge to the Underdark, where there is a corrupting influence that made them (and other Underdark denizens) more susceptible to evil. So basically, they are shunned for being Evil while forced to live in an Evil-corrupting place, much like poor people in the 18th century were blamed for thievery when they had no other means of sustenance. It's not as bad as if they had really free will (not having to live in the Underdark) and had chosen to be Evil without external influence. The existence of the Lorendrow, who lived in the shade of a jungle and weren't exposed to the Underdark and turned out to be Good is evidence that the regular drows can't be blamed for their evil ways, their free will reduced by the magical nature of their environment. I agree that it's conceptually difficult to imagine that "the rocks around me made me kill puppies" but it's what perspire from their lore, and with magic, why not?

On the contrary, regular Elves are rooted for, despite none of their lore being better. I mean, their chief god is a major dick, and their inspiration isn't better. The sidhe from English lore doesn't look to be good, Tolkien Elves are major dicks : the ME elves either refused to follow the Good gods of the setting to the undying lands, or went back pushed by pride (and being cursed by their gods for this). They are mostly aloof and unrelatable, and I really can't see Thranduil as good, for example. The most relatable ones are... half-elves like Elrond (morally saved by their human half?). Even in D&D lore, they have a genocidal history. The 3.5 MM entry for quaggoth states that:
Quaggoths were never an enlightened species, but they were not always the brutal Underdark denizens they are today. In a distant age, quaggoth tribes dwelled upon the surface as nocturnal arboreal hunters, possessing their own language and culture. When elves appeared in the mortal realm, they clashed with the Quaggoths, eventually driving them to near extinction. Only by fleeing deep into The Underdark did the Quaggoths survive.

As they passed the ages deep beneath the world, the quaggoths’ fur lost its color and their vision adapted to the Darkness, even as the constant danger and Weird Magic of their new realm transformed them. Turning increasingly brutal and savage, they ate whatever food they could find—and when they could not find it, they preyed on each other. As cannibalism became part of their culture, their past was abandoned.

So basically, White Elves get away with quasi-genocide, cultural genocide at least, forcing the native quaggoth to take refuge to a morality-warping place. And they are the "good" species. They can be of any alignment, so there is no external, metaphysical Evil that made them choose genocide over cohabitation with the native Quaggoth who dwelled in the trees before them, or that forces them to revere Corellon as Good despite what he did to Drows. Is it only because they are White with blond hair that they can escape scrutiny in 2020? Or because we accept that history is written by the winners (and therefore we have countless novels about Drows being evil while the Quaggoth Genocide is mostly kept under the carpet? Behaving awfuul seems to be a thing from the Elf species, irrespective of their skin colour, with underdark denizen pushing it to 11 because of external causes.
 
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As my introduction to the DnD community was via Warhammer Fantasy, I spent years thinking that the drow were extremely pale skinned Dark Elves, just like their warhammer depiction.

Needless to say I was very confused when people started calling them problematic.
It seems to me that the Warhammer Dark Elves were heavily inspired by Moorcock's Melniboneans.. and Moorcock was a big source inspiration for a lot of DnD (and Warhammer). So you're not too far off 😅
 

"All of the monsters in question are unique to AD&D, and as I wrote virtually all of their stats and descriptions they are in fact my creative products, not the IP of WotC. That's a FWIW." Gary Gygax gave a lot to this hobby, but geez, he was pretty cavalier with acknowledging sources. Like, if he was a student he would definitely violate all of our academic integrity rules.
Yup. These kind of pronouncements are very much in keeping with what gets discussed in When We Were Wizards. Gary and the Blumes strongarmed all the creatives at TSR into signing their IP rights over to the company, and Gary led the way by signing first, but he later acted like and argued that said contract never actually applied to him. The courts in the 1980s disagreed, but here he was in 2007 still pretending.

Which is extra galling given that my understanding is that WotC paid him and Dave significant sums after their acquisition in '97, to ensure there would be no further disputes and make sure they had the goodwill and support of the originators.

I pronounce "drow" like "cow", but if the word itself descends from "troll", then wouldn't pronouncing it like "show" make more sense? It's not like we pronounce "troll" like "trowel".

I met Frank Mentzer back when I was a kid and heard him speak in person over many days, and he pronounced it drow (as in grow) on many occasions, so that’s how I have always, and will always pronounce the word.

In fact, it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started hearing it pronounced like cow, and it still sounds extremely odd to me.

We've always pronounced it Drow as in Cow - I've never heard it pronounced as in grow!

Google says to pronounce it to sound like cow. But Forgotten Realms wiki gives both options. The official 2e handbook said to rhyme it with cow, as well.

Apparently Gygax Gygax said it as rhyming with "wow," but also said to pronounce it however you want, which seems like good advice.

Gygax: “I pronounce it to rhyme with ‘cow,’ but if you prefer to pronounce it differently, that’s perfectly okay. Whatever works for your campaign.”
I’ve always gone with the non-cow version, because it sounds cooler, everyone uses the cow version, and cows are lame.
The original word definitely rhymes with and is a variation on Trow aka Troll. As a kid I assumed Drow rhymed with snow, and thought rhyming with cow sounded absurd, but made myself get used to it after Dragon issue 142 (Feb 1989) officially told us that it rhymes with cow:

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I think . . . that Gygax didn't create the drow to embody sexist and racist tropes intentionally, but rather pulled those tropes from the literature and mythology he was familiar with . . . and yes, his own sexism shone through . . .

But when called out on it later in life, he doubled down (on the sexism, not the racism).

But to be fair to Gygax, the "rehabilitation" of the drow didn't start until relatively recently and has been doled out in dribs and drabs by the current D&D team.

The drow in Salvatore's novels slowly went through the "Klingon Effect" where Drizzt (and his dad) were the only good drow, the rest consummate villains. Over time, Salvatore's drow characters grew in nuance, helped along by the "War of the Spider Queen" novel series (by other authors than Salvatore). But until recently, the drow were still a pretty "always-evil-race" (except Drizzt), just with more depth than the initial cardboard. In Salvatore's latest novels, there is a civil war being fought in Menzoberranzan, between Lolth loyalists and those who now reject the Demon Queen of Spiders and her evil ways. And the hero team discovered a "lost" civilization of goodly drow living under a glacier in the far, far north, the aevendrow. Web articles from WotC also introduce the lorendrow who live in a jungle down south somewhere. But these changes haven't been introduced to the game itself yet, and we really haven't learned much about the lorendrow since they were announced something like four years ago . . .
It's evolved over time, but the lore for Drow has always had some non-evil rebels and subversives.

In D3 The Vault of the Drow one of the encounters possible is with disaffected drow youth who are "neither totally degenerate nor wholly evil - they are haters of the society around them and see no good in it", and who can potentially be recruited as allies against the forces of Lolth.

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Drizzt comes along in 1988. Then by 1991 you get 2E supplement The Drow of the Underdark, which details the cult of Eilistraee, a matron of good drow who long to return to the surface, whose rites of song and dance take place under starlit skies. So already there we're getting a larger population of non-evil Drow.
 
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On the pronunciation of drow, I go with the cow pronunciation. One thing I've learned from years of going to cons is that there are a million different pronunciations of all the different made-up words (and unfortunately, sometimes not made-up ones) of D&D. But I am increasingly fond of Poul Anderson's take (which is pretty much the exact opposite of Tolkien):

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Last fourteen years with an arachnophobe in my face to face game so no drow as well.
I am an arachnophobe. I try to minimize the spider thing with drow, but it's really hard to get away from in pre-written adventures. Like, what is it with fantasy games and spiders - they're omnipresent. I positively hate the spiders in Dark Souls 2.

I always wince when druids wildshape into giant spiders.
 

I think the drow are cool. They are super loosely based on myths, but the version we have is almost completely a unique D&D-thing.

But how I would interpret them (and same goes for many other "evil" species,) is that whilst the general idea of the lore is true, the version we get is the one written by their enemies. It is the patriarchal humans and racist surface elves who tell the stories of drow being evil. An sure, they can be not-nice, like everybody, but they're no more evil than those who deride them and perhaps even less so.
 

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