#aodian

l know in the lore, the Underdark is regarded as a sort of lawless land made up of multiple levels where the matriarchy kills or attacks as many people as they can in some sort of effort to spread Lolth’s reign, however i find it makes for poor story telling and I have a lot of drow characters I like to be able to give diverse backgrounds to and fitting them into the current Underdark setting was difficult. Instead I like to imagine it as more of a Tevinter-esque land (from Dragon Age) wherein magic is regarded as prized and is a honed skill that often turns many people to desperate struggles for power. In the Underdark, “dark” magic (like necromancy/blood magic) is regarded as natural and carries no real stigma, neither does slavery or servitude for non-magic using drow or those considered non-noble or lesser. 

The upper levels of the Underdark would be relatively safer and more “civilized” and perhaps even grudgingly trade with surfacers (there’s actually a town in the lore where part of the area collapsed into the Underdark, I assume this would be one of the few places where it would be very easy to access the upper levels of the Underdark, and where drow would be able to escape to from the lower, less safe layers). The lower layers below that would be where the hard-core Lolthite clerics live and work, and where most of the slavery/servitude and dark/forbidden magics took place and where the places with poorer conditions of freedom in general were located. 

I imagine there’s more than a few people who disagree with the sentiment that the Lolthite’s spread and want to escape or perhaps try and change things, but considering the Underdark’s cavern system and dangerous creatures make it too difficult to traverse alone a lot of people have a hard time escaping without help, which is where someone like Fay would come in.

Fay works as a noble attempting to use the power they have in their district to undermine some of the stricter rules the council of nobles has in place in order to try and make it easier for them to help shuffle people out of the slavery system and into safer districts, or even to the surface all together.