NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 4155955" data-attributes="member: 7177">Interesting thread - it touches on a number of issues I have thought about intensely when developing <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=74" target="_blank">Urbis</a>. In fact, there's a whole <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=219110" target="_blank">thread</a> on this board where I list a huge number of tropes and attempt to add all of them to the setting in various ways...But on to some more specific comments in this thread, and how they relate to Urbis.Well, here's how I did drow in Urbis. You be the judge if it is or isn't cliche.First of all, I need to explain how <a href="http://eruvian.com/race.asp?raceID=70" target="_blank">eladrins</a> fit into Urbis. Basically, eladrins are "noble elves" - elves from specific family lines who are blessed with the powers of the realm of Faerie through a special ritual shortly after birth. As a result, they get fey powers and extended life spans.Now some elves got resentful of the fact that the noble houses kept all those blessings to themselves - and so they turned to some of the darker powers of Faerie for help. Those entities taught them another ritual, which turned their children into <a href="http://eruvian.com/race.asp?raceID=71" target="_blank">drow</a> - oh, and this ritual requires the sacrifice of a sapient being.The children of drow start out as "normal" elves with fair skin, just like the children of eladrins, so the ritual needs to be redone for each new generation. Thanks to that sacrifice requirement, drow culture is generally pretty nasty - but individual drow do not necessarily have to be evil (besides, while human and eladrin sacrifices are preferred, sacrificing a kobold, orc, or similar being will do just as well - and what's the life of a supposedly evil and inferior race against giving one's child special powers and extended life spans? You decide...)This setup also has some interesting consequences for a certain <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=486" target="_blank">elven kingdom</a> where the ruling eladrins became (a) infertile with each other and other elves and (b) lost the right to do the eladrin ritual. Let's just say that a lot of people in this nation are giving the drow ritual serious thoughts...<a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=315" target="_blank">Not in Urbis</a>. Mind you, hobgoblins aren't really liked by most humans, but few wouldn't call them a "civilized species"...Well, Urbis is currently going through a magical industrial revolution, and its society has more in common with the Victorian Age than the middle ages...Other inverted tropes in Urbis (apart from the <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=392" target="_blank">Meji Restoration Elves</a> I mentioned earlier):- <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=292" target="_blank">Dwarfish boat people</a>- An <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=725" target="_blank">outer plane</a> that's both Good- and Death-aligned.- An <a href="http://eruvian.com/locale.asp?localeID=358" target="_blank">Evil Empire</a> where killing off the leader might actually make things worse.And a whole lot of other stuff I'm to lazy to list at the moment.</blockquote>

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