What are Drow, anyway?

[LuYangShih]

I was just reading the thread on the "Year Of The Drow", and I got to wondering... How do people define Drow anymore? They were originally the "anti-elves", similar I suppose to the anti-paladin. Elves are free spirited, so Drow are oppressive. Elves love nature and the outdoors, so Drow dwell in dank, dark caverns beneath the earth, etc. Is that all they are? Or do they have something more to them? Personally I simply never thought the Drow had any particular appeal over any other villianous race. I was wondering what other people think of them as, and how exactly they define them.

 

[dagger]

Well in FR they are elves who were cursed by Correlon.

They where led down this path of evil by his wife Lolth.....

Her original name escapes me......


Elistraee, the only current good Drow god, was the daughter of the two.

They are just evil bad elfies, cursed with black skin (at least in FR).

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Drow are scum. Simple.

I play far too many Elf PCs to like Drow.

 

[Sixchan]

Drow are Sado-Masochist lesbians. Fun.

I played too many as a teenager to think of them as anything else.

 

[DerianCypher]

drow are cool

DC

 

[Henry]

They where led down this path of evil by his wife Lolth.....

Her original name escapes me......

Araushnee. (Probably a play on the name Arachne, the Greek myth of the original Black Widow spider.)

Drow had a marvelous appeal when they first appeared back in the early 1980's in Gary Gygax's tournament modules, as a complete surprise back in Hall of the Fire Giant King. Now, because of the demand, they are excessively "done", and some fear over-done. But the big draw was the mystery. WHO WERE these cultic, demon-loving and spider-worshipping mystery figures, and what powers do they have?

Think about it: Drow were not just anti-elves, they were a paradox within an oxymoron, wrapped inside a conundrum.

Here are these elves, skin blacker than nightblue sky, each one of them is a skilled warrior, cleric, or mage, or ALL THREE, and EVERYBODY has magic, that only they can use. Plus, they were a matriarchy, when most medieval fantasy kingdoms were male-dominated at the time. There was NOTHING predicatble about them.

Now, their unpredictability is predictable.

 

[Sejs]

What are Drow?

Old Hat.


Once cool - now cliche, lame and overdone.

 

[Zaruthustran]

What are Drow?

So last year.

 

[Hand of Evil]

At one time they were the bad of the bad, the villian you used as a DM to keep your players in line, to check them. They had power, wit and darkness, they were the fear in the shadows, something that your players worried about.

Now, they are just some dark skined elf fighting with two swords, where did that hand crossbow go! They are a fad, cool, everyone has played them but they have lost their way. No longer are they feared, no longer a mystery, just some beefed up orc for a party to wade into.

Drow is word spell backwards.

 

[Endur]

Drow is the original greyhawk name for a legendary race of Dark Elves. I'm not quite sure why the name "Drow" is also used in the Forgotten Realms (except you can probably blame it on Salvatore or Greenwood).

The Drow filled a role as a cool, magical, mysterious, evil race. Giants, Goblins, and Orcs were not very cool or magical. Illithids, while magical, were alien and were not cool. Vampires, while cool and magical, were almost too powerful and they were undead.

So Drow filled a nice little gap in the D&D ecology.