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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CruelSummerLord" data-source="post: 4234089" data-attributes="member: 48692">The drow in my version of Greyhawk are inherently evil.  They know it, and they LIKE it.  Some very few drow could tend towards neutrality, but not good.  A good drow is literally a freak, an abomination.  That means no Drizzt Do'Urdens, no Eilistraees.  The drow have their origins with the elven race as a whole, born from the blood Corellon shed in his battle with Gruumsh, and the tears Sehanine Moonbow shed for him.  Most of these were born into the elves we know today, to be fractured by the Seldarine's later foolishness.  Some elves, however, were corrupted.  Yurtrus, orcish god of rot, disease and decay, sought to avenge his lord's defeat at Corellon's hand, by destroying that he would hold most dear.  He bled on some of the issue of Corellon and Sehanine, he defecated on others, he infected still others with his foul touch.  Whatever he did, he rotted and corrupted the souls of the elves, making them the darkest evil from the beginning.  They became the drow.  So did they seek to destroy the elves of the light, but they were too few in number, just as Yurtrus had planned.  The orcish god had no intention of taking the polluted elves as his own, he sought merely to create a source of grief and shame for the elves and their gods, a cycle of hatred and sorrow that would last evermore.  Embittered and hateful from their defeat, the drow fled to the lands beneath the Oerth, where they became affected by the strange radiations that emanate from its center, the antithesis of the energy of the sun.  Altered and transformed by these radiations, the drow developed new ways of life, and conducted researches into the most foul of arcane knowledge, which brought to them awareness of the demoness Lolth, who they took as a patroness.  Lolth encouraged the drow in their vile ways, nurturing their hatred of the elves and of those around them, giving them clerical powers in return for the increased prestige she gained in the Abyss.  Other demons and vile beings, such as the Elder Elemental God, came to be revered by certain groups of drow, and the race was by no means uniform in its religious beliefs or its politics, dissident groups often claiming new patrons when they came  at cross purposes with the church of the Spider Queen.  As time passed, the drow were fundamentally altered by their exposure to the radiation that comes from within the Oerth.  They developed inherent magical abilities, the power to cast fairy-fire, globes of darkness, magical hypnosis, and other strange and mysterious abilities that arose not from their own innate magical power, but their exposure to this strange radiation, called faerzress by some.  It imbued also their weapons and armor, which were by themselves not magical but imbued with the radiation's powers.  However, the faerzress of the Oerth and the light of the sun are eternal opposites, destroyers of each other.  To that end, the weapons and armor of the drow disintegrate if exposed to sunlight, and even the drow themselves will be burned alive if exposed to the rays of the sun.  Now, they may only come to the surface world in the darkness of night, to kidnap and murder as terrors in the night.  The drow themselves are dependent on the faerzress-they must return to it to replenish their abilities, and to keep their weapons imbued with the powers that so seem like magical weapons.  Since those long-ago days, the drow have passed into popular legend.  Humans, dwarves, gnomes, halflings and even some elves consider drow bogeymen, used to scare their children: Don't wander into the woods alone, or the drow will get you!Stop crying, or the drow will hear you!Eat your vegetables, or I'll tell the drow!There are those who know, however.  Those who have faced death at the hands of the drow, such as the courageous adventurers who battled Against the Giants.  Those of great power and wisdom who study things most dismiss as flights of fancy, such as the Mage Mordenkainen or Overking Xavener.  Those who have been abducted by the drow, forced into the living hell that is being a slave in a drow city......all of these know the horrifying truth of the drow.</blockquote>

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