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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dire Bare" data-source="post: 8369290" data-attributes="member: 18182">Again, I'm not an expert on ancient Realms lore, but . . . . ages ago there was a series of terrible wars, the Crown Wars, where all the elven kingdoms were fighting each other. At some point, the elven goddess Araushnee convinced many elves to turn against her consort, Corellon. Most of these elves were dark-skinned and lived in the south, but not all. Araushnee's followers lost the wars, and Corellon was so pissed, he banished Araushnee to the Abyss where she became the demon-spider Lolth. Her followers were likewise banished, driven away and persecuted by the light-skinned elves. All of the dark-skinned elves, whether they followed Araushnee or not, were banished. It became a thing about race, rather than completely about religion.So, why did all three drow cultures go into hiding? They were hiding from persecution from their light-skinned cousins. This could also explain not only their remoteness, but the hidden nature of their cities. The aevendrow and lorendrow either never followed Lolth, or turned away from her worship. The udadrow followed Lolth, but were not yet evil . . . but after settling in the underdark and being exposed to the magical faezress energy, they became easily corruptible and began to worship Lolth, the much darker version of their former goddess, Araushnee.EDIT: There is also this bit in the canon about how ALL of Araushnee's followers were cursed with dark-skin. Many already were dark-skinned, but more like the dark-skin of folks in the real world. This is when the drow became jet black of skin . . . later to be retconned a bit to have grey skin with varying shades from light gray to jet black. I choose to ignore this bit of lore, as it reflects some real-world mythology that's pretty racist.In the six-volume novel series War of the Spider Queen, the story ends with the death of the good drow goddess Eilistraee and the curse of the drow is broken. Some of the drow who are not lost to evil lose their cursed skin-tone, and revert to the skin-tones of their ancestors, a more natural dark brown, or even light-skin in some cases. Like the original curse-of-dark-skin, this bit of lore is pretty awful, and I haven't seen it referenced ever again in novels or game products, thankfully. A perfect example of older lore the current D&D game designers feel free to ignore, as they should!</blockquote>

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