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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7205732" data-attributes="member: 6787650">One idea that I've had noodling around in the back of my head for a while is Lawful Good drow as antagonists. The idea is that, as elves, they take the long view, and they realize that just as previous civilizations (dragons, mind flayers, etc.) toppled and fell as other, newer races simply overwhelmed them with numbers, even so elves must eventually get sidelined and then bred out of existence by other faster-growing races including humans. It's literally a fight for survival for them, and they exterminate humans (and any other non-elves) in much the same way that humans in Australia exterminate rabbits (IIRC). Not cruelly, but because it's "necessary" for the sake of their children and their childrens' children, given the way they've defined their racial identity.To humans they are as scary as regular drow, and they still send out genocide parties and exterminate entire settlements, etc., but their motivations for doing so are genuinely Lawful Good and relatable, in a horrible Hobson's Choice/moral dilemma sort of way.Normal elves are ashamed of the drow and refuse to talk about them--it's their dark secret--but drow never harm normal elves, and normal elves only rarely execute drow for their "crimes." (Imagine a human executing another human for killing someone's pet rabbit. It basically doesn't happen.) They more often imprison the drow, who are completely cooperative and do everything they can to serve their elven brethren while in captivity (always the first to do the nastiest jobs, etc.). Lawful Good, remember. The whole situation with humans is a big nasty mess and nobody knows what to do about it, but everyone also knows where it's leading in the long run too, so nobody can really blame the drow but they also can't bring themselves to sanction their actions either. Basically, normal elves just kick the can down the road.Half-elves are a relatively recent development (the first half-elves showed up less than a thousand years ago) and are causing a major philosophical row amongst the drow. If humans are interfertile with elves, does that mean that humans can themselves be thought of as potentially the elves' childrens' children? If the whole elven race gets absorbed into the human race, and pure-blooded elves vanish but most humans have some elven ancestry, does that constitute the end of the elvish race or not? Is it a catastrophe worth preventing? Is exterminating humans in fact unnecessary to protect the elves in the long term? You can think of this debate as a variation on the real-world debate over whether it would be okay for machines to take over the world and end the human race, as long as the machines started out as human brains that got uploaded to the Matrix. Again, no one is really comfortable with either answer, but to the extent that there are rogue drow (also Lawful Good) at odds with their brethren, working to prevent genocide, they will often be found aiding half-elves. The other side of the debate considers half-elves as a particularly abominable and philosophically dangerous species of human, and tries to prevent them from being conceived, and to wipe them out if possible. Painlessly and humanely, of course.So anyway, that's my idea for Lawful Good drow antagonists. They'll still attack the PCs, and they'll still call up spider-demons, and everyone will still be terrified of them except the elves (who don't want to talk about them), and the players may or may not ever figure out that these drow are actually Lawful Good... but if the PCs ever get into a conversation with one (e.g. a captive) and start trying to push the drow's buttons, they'll discover that the drow's psychology is completely different than they probably assumed.</blockquote>

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