This move utilizes dexterity and maneuverability by surrounding your enemy and attacking from all sides, while also dodging and avoiding attacks. Primarily used by rogues.
Draa Velve “two sword”
This move is famously used by drizzt do’urden and utilizes two weapons. It is a difficult style to learn and requires balance between both hands.
Jivvin Golhyrr “amusing trick”
This is a defensive style that focuses on the enemies weaknesses. Once the enemy showed an opening, the user would act by tripping their foe. Often used by priestesses to humiliate the enemy before killing them.
Kyone Veldrin “alert in the shadows”
This move utilizes the darkness spell which every drow knows, and focuses on attacking enemies while they are blinded by darkness. Though the drow are also blinded by darkness, the goal is to attack the enemy with precision.
Kyorlin Plynn “watch and take”
This is a defensive fighting style with the goal of disarming the enemy to render them ineffective. This was used non lethally so the enemy could be taken as a hostage, often for interrogations.
Luth Alur “superior shooting”
This move utilizes striking enemies with precision while staying out of harms way. Users of this move must have a sharp eye and a steady hand. Often used with Kyone Veldrin.
Orb Alur “superior spider”
This move utilizes great sweeping maneuvers against multiple enemies. Typically the user will leap into the middle of a battlefield and cut down their enemies in one strike. Revered by the noble houses
Sargh’elgg “valor in slaying”
A simple style but requires training to master. Used with light finesse weapons such as rapiers and utilizes dexterity. This was generally taught among poor drow who couldn’t afford proper schooling, though it is also used among priestesses.
Ust Sreen “first danger”
This move focuses on initiative and having the first move against your opponent. Typically followed by another fighting move.
Z’har Thalack “riding war”
This fighting style focuses on cavalry and mounted fighting, typically on wall crawling lizards which required great skill and maneuvering.
Z’ress A’thalack “force of war”
This move requires great physical strength and endurance. It focuses on sheer force rather than accuracy, sometimes even breaking the opponents weapon. This move is often used with heavier weapons. Because of the strength required for this style, it is rarely used and takes great training.
Read more about it here, this was my source: https://web.archive.org/web/20030703084110/http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/fr/fightstyle
Drow Fighting Styles
Most of these fighting styles put an emphasis on the natural dexterity and agility of the drow. But I like to see the fighting style that use strength as well, both dexterity and strength are important when it comes to combat. These fighting styles are used in various different drow cultures, not just lolthite.
Coronis has trained in multiple of these fighting styles, such as jivvin golhyrr, kyorlin plynn, orb alur, and Z’ress a’thalack. She utilizes these moves often, but has also adopted some of the sword fighting techniques of the surface dwellers, she likes to be prepared and versatile, learning multiple fighting styles. Coronis has also trained with both hands, but still has not perfected draa velve. She still finds it important to train with both hands, so she is prepared if she loses an arm or hand. The move she uses most often is orb alur, the sweeping attack. She has used this a lot in our dnd campaign. Though Coronis is great with a sword and most melee weapons, she is not as skilled with the bow. Her eyesight is not as keen as it used to be, which causes struggle when it comes to long ranged weapons. A lot of the moves I use for coronis in game utilize German and Italian long sword fighting techniques as well but I find it important to note the techniques she was trained as a drow. Being a noble lady, she trained with her houses weapon master and had access to better education than the average drow. She has trained her body relentlessly and has greater physical strength than the average drow as well, thought her dexterity is not as high.
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My pet peeve about Forgotten Realms' Drow lore is that despite being told that Drow Society is this super restrictive, matriarchal society with reversed gender roles, we are rarely shown Drow househusbands. In fact, most of the named male Drow characters are portrayed as either career soldiers or arcane spellcasters. This is explained by saying that drow society, as it revolves around the worship of Lolth, regards arcane spellcasting as far inferior to divine spellcasting of clerics, and that while only women are allowed to have high-ranking positions in their armies like the generals and the lieutenants, the grunts and the footsoldiers are mostly composed of men.
My problem with that is..... One, you can't claim that you're reversing the gender dynamic in your fantasy setting and have what's considered to be "a man's work (derogatory)" in said setting be wizardry and the military, two jobs whose real-world counterparts (academia and the military) are *also* considered "a man's job (complimentary)" and are highly male-dominated fields in the real world, come on.
And two, how has this supposedly super-strict matriarchy sustained itself for so long? We've got this class of abused, oppressed, and very rightfully disgruntled gender, many of whom are a. combat-trained and has to vastly outnumber their female superiors, due to how the whole "military hierarchy" thing works, or b. can shoot fireballs and blow up stuff with their minds. Meanwhile, the Drow women mostly stick to religion and politics and lounging about in boudoirs in fantasy dominatrix gear. So what's stopping the men from staging a rebellion? Not to belittle the power that religion and politics hold in a pseudo-feudalistic medieval pastiche society, but I always assumed the reason the church and the crown was so powerful in medieval Europe was because they controlled the military!*
(*don't quote me on this, I'm not a history major)
Look, I don't mind depictions of fantasy bigotry in fiction (I quite enjoy them actually!), and it's possible to reverse the oppressed and the privileged class in a fictional society so that's opposite from real life in a way that it still poses pertinent questions about real-world oppression in our real-world society (e.g. Egalia's Daughters) , but I don't think Forgotten Realms quite manages to do that. If anything, it's weirdly reminiscent of that "feminists don't *actually* want to work jobs, they just want the men to do all the work for them and for women to reap ALL the benefits" antifeminist rhetoric ☹️
(To be clear, I'm not saying that Ed Greenwood and R.A. Salvatorre are misogynists, just that they either were confused about how sexism actually operates in the real world, or that they had some unexamined biases and hangups surrounding feminism that they perhaps failed to address.)
I don't mind fantasy bigotry in my fiction, but I want my fantasy bigotry to be realistic or at least believable, y'know?
A Treatise Regarding the Myth of the So-Called "Dark Seldarine" and the Misguided Interpretation of the Drow by Surface Dwellers
Recently I was struck by the urge to rewrite some mythos of the drow and their associated pantheon in D&D, and decided to frame it like an academic paper since that's what I'm mostly familiar with. While writing I was also seized by the need to detail a few of my ideas for drow society while incorporating current dnd lore revamps, and so now that's in there too. I took several pretty sizable chunks of inspiration from Kismet's Dungeons and Dragons, this blog by Timothy S. Brannan, and the WoTC article detailing new lore for their video game. Also I'd like to say thanks to the people who write and maintain wiki pages-- your hard work is infinitely appreciated lmao.
Also I don't know how to format Tumblr pages yet so this might turn out weird, and also be warned because this is,,, really long. Any tips regarding a more efficient format for this would be gladly welcomed lol!
This is part 1 of this post, part 2 can be found here!
A Treatise Regarding the Myth of the So-Called “Dark Seldarine” and the Misguided Interpretation of Drow by Surface Dwellers (pt. 1, the Society)
Background Information
A Brief Overview
While this treatise is meant to share the drow perspective of the myths of the “Dark Seldarine”, this author first considers it important to provide the reader with brief background knowledge of the drow and their society. The author considers this knowledge to be crucial for understanding the depth of these myths, and in turn crucial for acknowledging the damage that false myths have done to the world’s perception of the drow. As the author is a drow themself, they know this pain intimately from previous attempts to spread their theories. Discussion of the drow and their history in the following pages shall be brief, with the majority of this paper being reserved for a retelling of the myths that lay the first foundations for the drow pantheon. A note before we begin– the pantheon that most surface dwellers refer to as the “Dark Seldarine” is named nothing of the sort. Out of respect for the deities of this pantheon, the author shall only refer to them using the name they have chosen, which is the Gwierante. Pronounced {guh-wee-ront}, the word loosely means “Those Betrayed” in a language now long dead.
Who Are the Dark Elves?
The dark elves, more often called the drow, are a subrace of elves that primarily reside in the hostile environment of the Underdark. They live here due to a multitude of factors that make survival outside of their home immensely difficult, leading to settlement in the Underdark being the lesser of two evils. Like the high elves have two regional branches, the drow have three– aevendrow, udadrow, and lorendrow. Popular belief states that lorendrow and aevendrow live above ground, to the far south and north respectively. This is false, and is a misconception born from the drow’s secrecy as well as the unique ecology of the Underdark in these regions. The aevendrow originate in the far North, where they live amongst glaciers and permafrost. As a result of this, aevendrow tend to have lighter gray or blue skin that reflects their icy home, and shorter ears to retain heat. Residing in the far Southern portion of the Faerünian Underdark are the lorendrow, occupying the vast subterranean jungle of this region. These drow have close bonds with the nature around them, similarly to our wood elf cousins, and those who have heritage from the southern jungle possess a natural resistance to heat. The most common mental image when one thinks of a drow is the udadrow, who live in the temperate regions between the extremes of their sister branches. These drow live surrounded by stone and fungal forests, and are the most well known group to individuals on the Sword Coast. While these subspecies of drow all differ, all are forced to remain in the Underdark.
The Underdark
The Underdark is a continent unto itself, and thus cannot be discussed in full in a paper of this size, let alone by an author of this speciality. Mythos states that the Underdark was made during the forming of the Prime World, before it was split into the infinite orientations of the Prime Material Plane. The dark tunnels left behind by the primordials were soon occupied with encroaching aberrations from the Far Realm, seeking to lurk away from the sight of the surface’s many gods. And here they thrived– magical radiation that remained in the subterranean caverns was an ample food source for these creatures from the Far Realm. For the majority of time, the Underdark was not just hostile, but downright deadly to any attempting to live there. This was the case until the gods of the Gwierante fled here to escape the sunlight of Corellon. The deities pressed back against the aberrations, forcing them into the deepest caverns of the region, now called the Deepest Dark. Once the gods had dominion over the upper portions of the subterranean caverns, they spread flora and fauna from their former home of Arvandor, piercing the imposing dark with bioluminescence.
But though the caverns were now more welcoming, they were still far more hostile than any environment of the surface world. The cavernous spaces are so large as to support their own weather systems, but this precipitation is frequently acidic from the porous rock, or boiling from subterranean magma flows. Though the gods had spread life, very little was capable of extended survival– flora was limited to fungi, mosses, and a few species of grasses. Fauna was primarily composed of giant arthropods, deadly predators, and occasional deep rothé. What little could survive here, however, diversified intensely. The ecology of the Underdark is like nothing seen in the World Above, but remains immensely hostile to individuals trying to live here. But after the Crown Wars, when drow were cursed to never again walk in the sun, they had no choice but to retreat into the caves. They were welcomed by the Gwierante pantheon with open arms, embraced when they had been so cruelly turned away from the Seldarine. Over time spent in their new home, the drow split into the previously mentioned subraces as their physiologies adapted.
The Northdark, homeland of the aevendrow, is defined by its existence as a frozen expanse that never thaws. This area is known for having subterranean glaciers that are as vast as the caverns they occupy, to the point of cities being carved out of the ice. Flora is rare in the Northdark, with the exception of lichens, ferns, and buried mycelium. Aevendrow have learned to prepare many of these species so that they are safe to eat, but as a race are primarily carnivorous. Qalipu rothé, a subspecies of deep rothé with thicker fat, are uniquely adapted to survive in the sub zero environment of the Northdark, and thus have been domesticated by the aevendrow for their wool, fur, and meat. Also found in this region are: giant bats, cave seals, and deep whales.
On the complete opposite side of the Underdark lies the isolated Southdark, a massive underground jungle. This region is humid, with heat waxing and waning according to the flows of magma in the area. The Southdark is believed to be the only region wherein trees can be supported, which is thought to be linked to the oppressive heat allowing the seeds to germinate, and an adaptation to use faezress in place of sunlight. Thus the ecology of the Southdark is very similar to that of surface jungles, with the addition of giant spiders. The region has many established trade routes to other regions of the Underdark, as it is less a grouping of tunnels and more so several giant caverns with small doorways between.
Between the Northdark and the Southdark lies the Middark, the largest of the regions, and the area that most closely borders the Sword Coast. The Middark is primarily stone and magivorous plants, with large bodies of subterranean water. The caverns of this region are linked by small, often dwarven made, tunnels, which connect the drow cities that occupy them. Spiders are the most frequently occurring fauna, due to the reverence that the drow treat them with, and the most frequent flora is forests of giant fungi. This region, despite its hostility, is believed to be the most heavily populated in the Underdark. Primarily it is drow that live here, but one can also find duergar and deep gnomes.
Drow Society
On the surface, drow society is viewed as brutal and violent, a place of slavery and savagery. In reality, this is a dementation of the truth. The fact of the matter is that drow society is entirely constructed around survival. The brutal environment of the Underdark necessitates prioritizing the survival of its people and their children. Atop this, the drow cannot escape the Underdark for extended periods of time, even if they avoided the sun. Bound by a curse cast during the Crown Wars, the entire race is tied to the magical radiation of the Underdark, known as faezress. The drow’s reliance on this lingering magic has forced them to remain in this brutal environment, fighting for their lives day in and day out. But by using the very magic they are bound to, the drow have made bastions of cities in scattered locations throughout the Underdark.
Surface raids are conducted infrequently due to the strain it puts on the drow’s bodies, and are typically only performed for the sake of gaining supplies, rather than outright murdering. While this practice is not ideal and many cities avoid doing it, it is often necessary for survival. (The author would like to state that anyone who thinks this practice proves the race to be evil needs to think long and hard about barbarians and pirates.) Slavery, while once practiced in the past, has not been in effect for a very long time. What surface worlders tend to see as slaves are in fact necromantic constructs, resurrected and maintained by the clergy of Kiranslee. These constructs are used only with permission from the deceased individual, and are kept in good condition. They are treated with great respect– drow view them as active sacrifices from deceased community members, giving their bodies in death so that those still alive might worry about things other than physical labor. Not everyone wishes for their body to be used, and as such the clergy of Kiranslee just as frequently applies death rites to prevent the body from being revived. The bodies of clergy members and children are forbidden from being used as constructs, as it is believed to keep the spirit too distant from the gods. Fighters, merchants, and travelers are the most commonly seen constructs, as well as occasional magical practitioners. While most drow would perform in death simply for the respect of it, their families are also given penance for it, adding an additional layer of motive.
As a tie-in to the importance of survival, drow as a culture consider their history to be priceless, and work hard to maintain it. This can be seen in the practice of children taking their mother’s name between their chosen name and their house name, allowing for heritage to be tracked through the matrilineal line. Drow names also have great meaning– simple names, or “child” names, are gifted by the parents and carried from birth until the individual becomes an adult at 100 years of age. At that time the individual chooses a new name to be known by, oftentimes chosen to reflect aspects of themself. Names can also be rewarded or taken away in extreme situations. For example, the name of the author is Dr. Iraezyr dal Linthrae von Do’ Iryn. Iraezyr means “Mystical Sage”, and was chosen by the author when they began to study the multiverse and its stories. The house name is that of House Do’ Iryn, translating to Walkers in History, and like many house names shows the professions that the family is known for. Between the chosen and house name is the term dal Linthrae. Linthrae is the mother of the author, her name translating to “Genius Seeker”, and the prefix dal means “from; born from or the child of”. Most if not all drow carry the names of their mothers with them, as a sign of respect for going through the difficulty of birthing them, as well as a way of carrying their history as previously mentioned. As drow society is primarily matriarchal, this also makes it much easier to track and remember family members now gone.
The survival rate for any species in the Underdark is incredibly low, the drow included. This is made worse by the low birth rate that they share with their fellow elves, and as such children are immensely important in their religion and society. To kill a child is a crime deserving of capital punishment, and oftentimes death. Criminals and traitors facing the death penalty are sacrificed to the Gwierante, so that the gods may exercise proper punishment. Many other cultures, especially those of the World Above, consider this to be a brutal way of life, but for the drow this is a quick and just way to rid their homes of dangerous individuals. In Lolthite factions, criminals who are sacrificed often are brought back as driders– half drow and half spider, brought back to live out their lives in punishment. Driders are exiled from drow society for their crimes, forced to live on the edges of society in fear and pain. Only the goddess Lolth is capable of transforming individuals into these monstrous creatures, and members of Gwierante faith are sworn to either shun or slay driders they come across.
Drow society is officially a theocracy, but in everyday life mostly functions as a matriarchy. The governing bodies typically consist of a council of Matron Mothers discussing problems from the city and surrounding areas, who are often joined by various other officials; clergy members, sages, and skilled warriors. Judiciary duties are carried out by an Illiante, a council of high priests that symbolically represent the Gwierante deities and act according to their wills. As both systems are based in group sources of power, many issues brought up by the drow people are resolved democratically. Local bodies of government also frequently involve the temples of worship in the area, as they are dramatically involved in everyday drow life.
As life in the Underdark is frequently made easier by the blessings and interactions of gods, worship is an everyday part of life. Most families worship the Gwierante as a whole, with some individuals worshiping one deity more than the others. Festivals celebrating the gods and the drow’s continued survival take place biannually. Religion, and the stories that can be learned from the myths associated with it, are deeply important to the drow, to their history, and to their collective identity as a race banished from the surface.
Honestly, I think if they had to make the drow society a violent matriarchal society they could have at least made mpreg a common occurence in drow. Or idk give female drow penises like hyenas.
In a way they’re even like anglerfish (because it’s a deepsea fish where it’s all dark and the female is the big fish with the lantern while the male fish is a tiny tiny fish sucking on her and feeding with what she eats)!
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a Matron with her Pet.
also saved as "no we aren't already planning an other all draw -escape-from-the-abyss campain after we finish curse of strahd. no.
definetly not.
yeah anyways i don’t buy for a hot second that drow females wear sexy armor because their society is matriarchal and they would definitely not be doing it for the dudes i DO however accept that they might see breasts as symbols of power and therefore might have them fully or partially uncovered when at court and such (obvs not in battle)
can we just re-design drow society to actually make sense because it is bugging the astral plane out of me
So hair in drow society denotes rank/station, right? Is this based on house? Are there specific sets of styles that say 'Baenre' or 'Oblodra'? Or is it just ranks like 'Weapons Master' and 'Matron Mother'? Are there styles for professions? How specific does this get? Is there one for hairstylists? What about 'Lieutenant of Bregan D'aerthe'? It doesn’t seem like there’d be a lot of room for personalization if hairstyles are used to signify rank/house.
I feel like the matron mothers would all get really pissy about sharing the same haircut…
And I feel like we’ve seen enough different cuts on said Matron Mothers to prove they don’t share a style - are they exempt from this ruling? Is it a ruling? Tradition? Random throwaway line to make the drow seem paradoxically rigid despite supposedly being all about chaos and never mind that it doesn’t really seem like it would work?
(My bet’s on that last one.)
Continuing this (admittedly dumb) train of thought:
Has Jarlaxle ever had to sit someone down and be like, “Listen, I know you like your current haircut - and it does look good on you, no mistake - but you're going to have to change it up. Bregan D'aerthe does not have 'Weapon's Master' as a rank.”
Is getting a haircut part of the hiring process for Bregan D’aerthe?
“Hey, I see your whole family’s dead. We’ve got a place for you though, no worries. Just gotta get that haircut taken care of.”
