D&D 5E New Drow cultures coming in Starlight Enclave, the Lorendrow and the Aevendrow

[Hexmage-EN]

I'm curious where the Exandria setting is taking its depiction of the drow as compared to what WotC is doing with the drow.

The original Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting had this to say about drow:

• The drow have always looked the way they do and didn't begin worshiping Lolth or go to the Underdark until the beginning of a war between the gods that ended about 800 years ago.
• Both aberrations of the Underdark and the god Tharizdun target the drow to corrupt, destroy, or mutate them.
• Mass panic and paranoia in drow cities has led to frequent riots that the ruling class has responded to with increasingly authoritarian methods.
• Drow commoners sometimes offer themselves up to the aberrations "to end their suffering", with some being transformed into doppelgangers. Meanwhile, some drow nobles seek the Blood of the Spider Queen to transform themselves into driders.
• Despite the "madness of the underworld", most drow are too proud to escape to the surface. Those drow who would flee are scorned.
• Of the drow refugees who go to the surface, most live in secret in major cities. Those who find the wood elf enclave of Lyrengorn are actually welcomed and able to live in peace. However, the Verdant Guard of the high elf city of Syngorn kill drow on sight (the description of Syngorn itself includes a section on "Prejudice" that explains non-elves aren't trusted, dwarves are barred from the city, and half-elves are "an embarrassment to not only the family that bore them, but to the cultural purity of Syngorn".).
• The largest city of the drow in the Underdark of Tal'Dorei is Ruhn-Shak, which has a surprisingly small population of less than 7000. The drow make raids upon the surface under cover of night to abduct slaves and sacrifices to the Spider Queen, the tunnels they use to do so closed and reopened by a caste of druids known as pit witches.

So, drow at least always looked the way they do even before getting involved with Lolth, but other than a specific wood elf enclave being welcoming to drow the rest is pretty harsh. Though they are described as being from an evil culture, more time is spent talking about how terrible life is for the drow of the Underdark. I'm also curious how much of Syngorn's explicit racism against non-elves will survive in Tal'Dorei Reborn; I would say it would be expunged completely if not for the fact that two of the PCs in the first Critical Role campaign were half-elves that left Syngorn due to prejudice that have an upcoming novel about their background.

Moving on to Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and it's very different drow society:

• The drow of Wildemount emerged from the Underdark beneath the ruins of Ghor Dranas, the city Lolth and the other Betrayer Gods once held as the center of their control on Exandria. However, these drow have turned from the worship of Lolth to another entity, the Luxon, and sought the surface as part of a religious quest in its honor.
• In the centuries since the war between the gods, the drow of Wildemount have rechristened Ghor Dranas as Rosohna (a name that means "Rebirth") and founded the Kryn Dynasty, a nation dedicated to reaching out to and integrating the nomadic descendants of the Betrayer Gods' followers. It is the largest elf-majority nation of the continent. Roshohna itself has 75,000 drow citizens, which make up 66% of the total population of the city (over ten times the size of the drow population given in the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting for Ruhn-Shak, Tal'Dorei's largest drow city).
• The drow of the Kryn Dynasty seek to convert the various peoples who accept the dynasty to faith in the Luxon. Using artifacts called Luxon Beacons, drow and other citizens can ritualistically ensure through a process called consecution that they will be reincarnated in the body of child born within range of a Beacon, memories of their past life eventually resurfacing as they grow older. Those who live under the dynasty are not required to convert to worship of the Luxon, but worship of a Betrayer God is a crime punishable by imprisonment or death.
• A consecuted individual is not guaranteed to be reborn as the same kind of being that they were in their previous life. As a result, the drow of the Kryn Dynasty are respectful to all peoples, partially due to the fact that consecution to a Luxon Beacon means that a drow could potentially be reborn as a member of any other people group within range. This experience of living life in different bodies is "crucial to their religon and their culture". Among the most influential figures in the Kryn Dynasty are Sunbreaker Olomon, a former drow who is now a minotaur, and Skysybil, a former drow who is now a goblin.
• The ruler of the Kryn Dynasty is the Lawful Neutral Leylas Kryn. None of the other "Figures of Interest" noted are of a Chaotic alignment, and the only one with an Evil alignment, the Neutral Evil Essek Thelyss, not only has a Lawful Good brother but was himself befriended by the protagonists of Campaign 2 of Critical Role, during which he eventually repented of his old ways and joined the party against the campaign's final villain as part of his attempt to atone.
• The Dwendalian Empire has demonized the drow with imperial propaganda. Attitudes towards drow aren't noted in the neighboring Clovis Concord, but it is noted that elves of all kinds are more common there. As for the Kryn Dynasty drow themselves, they have no ill-will towards other elves and in fact wish to win converts to worship of the Luxon.
• Lolth, furious that the drow of the Kryn Dynasty have turned from her to worship the Luxon, is the mastermind of scattered cults collectively called the Children of Malice. Though some of her Children of Malice are xenophobic drow whose distrust of other peoples has been amplified by her influence, Lolth has also been forced to "set aside her pride" and recruit from among the many different people groups of the region to set them against the Kryn Dynasty.

The drow of Wildemount are, to put it lightly, radically different and much more detailed than the drow of Tal'Dorei. Whereas the drow of Tal'Dorei are basically what you get if you put the default D&D drow into a much more hostile version of the Underdark, the drow of the Kryn Dynasty live on the surface, have rejected Lolth for a new deity and a new religion based on reincarnation, and are the founders of a nation that welcomes all peoples (so long as they don't worship the Betrayer Gods). Lolth has so little impact on the drow of Wildemount that I honestly almost forgot to even mention her or her Children of Malice. Their worship of the mysterious Luxon and their desire to convert and consecute members of other races adds an element of mystery and potential conflict with others who do not share the faith, keeping them from just being "the good drow".

It remains to be seen what will be established about the drow in Tal'Dorei Reborn, but one of the authors, James Haeck, has revealed that drow representatives of the Kryn Dynasty are seeking to try and convince Syngorn to help them save the drow of the Underdark of Tal'Dorei from Lolth. I'm curious to see how much detail the book goes into on this as it has the potential for a great deal of complexity: the high elves of Syngorn possibly realizing how prejudiced they are compared to the drow of Wildemount, the drow of the Underdark being suspicious of the non-Lolthite drow and their dealings with the high elves, and the possibility of the Luxon-worshiping drow wanting to not only turn the Lolth-worshiping drow from the Spider Queen but to convert them to worship of the Luxon.

To compare this to the recent developments with the drow of the Forgotten Realms, both settings started out with primarily evil drow who worship Lolth before introducing new and different cultures that do not worship Lolth. Exandria, as a much newer setting, had the luxury of introducing an entire nation of drow who do not worship Lolth and have relations (both good and bad) with other civilizations. The Forgotten Realms, in contrast, added two new city-states of non-Lolthite drow that have apparently been around for a very long time but somehow managed to hide themselves from the outside world. This makes the drow of the Kryn Dynasty a more open affront to Lolth that seem unafraid of her wrath.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It would have needed to be very well executed to achieve the goal. Not impossible, but very difficult to do in a way that would please everyone (but the current version obviously failed to please everyone, so...)



This story bit has been rejected by some posters on this board, so if they are representative, it's problematic to build on this piece of lore. The reasoning was "being cursed to be black is offensive, irrespective of the obvious reference to Apollo cursing crows to be pitch black".

The second problem is that it establishes Corellon as evil. Cursing a whole people for rebellion, why not, but their descendant? It's a very Olympian (= dickish) move. And Corellon is supposed to be good, and in the current mindset, you can't be good and curse innocents for things they couldn't do anything about.

On the other hand, continuing the story would be consistent with established lore. Introducing two good drow cultures makes "evil drow" a minority. Therefore, all the racism Drizzt had to face made basically a lot of people in the FR racist morons instead of legitimately wary -- in a "all drows are evil, except Drizzt" world, it's rational to assume that a Drow you don't know is evil unless you know Drizzt. In a world were most drows are good but a subset of them have a questionable culture, considering that a random drow is probably evil is stupidly prejudiced, like in real life. The chane certainly increased the level of racism in the FR.



Indeed.



And that more and more people are questionning their own culture. Having heroes helping cells of resistance inside the Menzoberranzan empire is cool, much than facing a monolithic empire. It also allows meeting all sort of non-cooperation within the drow societies (some who will help, some who will say "I can't help but I won't rat on you" and some who say "sorry, I can't not call the guards... if it were only me it would be OK but I have a family". It would make the evil of Menzoberranzan more credible and therefore more palatable. [And keeping the Corellon curse story, the drows elite could have a real reason to plot against the other elves. Misguided, but credible. It would make the curse both heavily criticized and failing its purpose, so the bit of lore could be kept without causing outrage].

For one thing, why cant Corellon be a little evil, or at least capable of an evil act? A person (or a god) is a complex individual. We certainly have plenty of mythological examples of gods behaving in ways we would consider evil, but the God is still considered more or less good on the average.

Regarding the Drow, aren't these new cultures unknown because they were retconned...I mean hidden until now? If people didn't know about them, then you're back to all Drow but Drizzt being evil, and people are justified in their feelings until they suddenly become racist jerks when the good Drow show themselves.

 

[Dire Bare]

Meh... I am not convinced that this is significantly better, especially if they decide to give slightly different stats to different drow. You still have one group that is about as inherently evil as before, except it's Udodrow instead of Drow.

To cut to the core of the matter, they could have just moved forward rather than sideways. Instead of popping up new sub-subraces, they could have continued the story of the Drow.

Weren't they supposed to be just the elves who revolted against the Seldarine? They were never a "race" to start with, just unrelated evil Elves who banded together, pretty much because evil is what you do and not what you're born, and these individual elves chose to be evil, lost their war and were cursed as a punishment.

They could have clarified that their color is not "black" in the same sense used to describe black humans, black dwarves and (yes!) black elves, but different (whatever it means, they leave RULES vague, why the hell they can't leave one description vague?). Most importantly, recognizably different, that's the meaning of the punishment, being visibly branded. My favourite shorthand description of drow was "as the photographic negative" of elves (including hair and eyes), if only WotC finally openly depicted elves as varied as humans therefore including all the shades of brown, a "negative-colored" elf could be also white, but somehow still recognizably different from a regular white (as human) elf.

And then... pretty much because of the principle that evil is what you do and not what you are born, after centuries of segregation, despite their own attempts at maintaining an "evil culture" it becomes clear that there are still good drows born just like there are evil high elves born. The curse has failed its purpose on the long terms.

No need for popup subraces "they were always there but we didn't know" shenanigans.

Didn't read the thread, did you? Granted, it's closing in on 400 posts now, but . . . .

They have continued the story of the drow, or the udadrow. They have, over time, shifted the classic drow from all-evil-all-the-time to folks who can be of any alignment, but exist in a society dominated by an oppressive and evil cult dedicated to a demon goddess. They have given us two brand-new drow cultures AND retconned the existing drow culture . . . although the retcon has been in fits and starts over decades of game books and Salvatore novels. The last 2 or 3 Salvatore novels in particular have been working hard to make it clear the (classic) drow are not an inherently evil race, and not even an inherently evil culture, but a society of folks trying to survive the priestesses of Lolth.

In the current novel storyline, roughly half of Lolth's priestesses in Menzoberranzan have renounced Lolth and are about to engage in civil war with those loyal to the demon spider. It's a good bet that when the current storyline wraps up after the next two novels, Menzoberranzan won't be totally free of Lolth's influence, but will be a more diverse place.

 

[Yaarel]

For one thing, why cant Corellon be a little evil, or at least capable of an evil act? A person (or a god) is a complex individual. We certainly have plenty of mythological examples of gods behaving in ways we would consider evil, but the God is still considered more or less good on the average.

Regarding the Drow, aren't these new cultures unknown because they were retconned...I mean hidden until now? If people didn't know about them, then you're back to all Drow but Drizzt being evil, and people are justified in their feelings until they suddenly become racist jerks when the good Drow show themselves.

It seems to me, the current 5e Forgotten Realms canon makes Corellon a little evil.

Corellon is a terrible, negligent, even abusive parent.

The initial appeal of Lolth was her offering better parenting. In such a dysfunctional family, many elves like this idea.

Heh, and I think of the reallife implications. The only prominent gender-fluid aspect of D&D, is also a horrible, horrible, parent. As far as recognizing reallife identify groups, it feels like two steps forward and one step back.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It seems to me, the current 5e Forgotten Realms canon makes Corellon a little evil.

Corellon is a terrible, negligent, even abusive parent.

The initial appeal of Lolth was her offering better parenting. In such a dysfunctional family, many elves like this idea.

Heh, and I think of the reallife implications. The only prominent gender-fluid aspect of D&D, is also a horrible, horrible, parent. As far as recognizing reallife identify groups, it feels like two steps forward and one step back.

I dont believe a fictional member of a real life identity group needs to be a perfect examplar of goodness, even if they are the only or most prominent member of that group. Characters are more interesting when they have flaws.

 

[Scribe]

I dont believe a fictional member of a real life identity group needs to be a perfect examplar of goodness, even if they are the only or most prominent member of that group. Characters are more interesting when they have flaws.

This is what I always think on when people comment about how the gods are flawed.

Of course they are. They are Gods.

 

[Malmuria]

Dogs. Dogs are inherently good.

Everything else is evil.

What about police dogs?

 

[Alzrius]

What about police dogs?

Don't forget this guy:

 

[Remathilis]

What about police dogs?

Even inherent goodness can be corrupted.

 

[wellis]

This is my take. Most drow are at most complicit in an evil society they can't escape, with the truly heinous individuals being part of the upper classes that Lolth has arbitrarily picked-out. Since the drow are isolated in the Underdark most other peoples will only interact with the Lolthite leaders and their chosen. Lolth could even have designed things this way to generate hostility against the drow, keeping them from escaping her influence.

This is what I imagine.
Like there are levels of dickishness or nastiness.
I would frankly classify most average drow as pumped full of propaganda, but the nobility and power shakers are just pure nasty.

Though honestly, most drow foes in the novels seem to be nobles and such.