#drow talk

Hey anon! So I tried writing this so many times and ended up deciding that I'm going to answer this request here by talking about drow men in general, and then do a separate post for Nere that will be up tomorrow!

There's so much nuance when talking about Drow! I'm so obsessed with writing about it, I end up discussing so much that I have to break everything up for organization and simplicity. So let's go ahead and start with this idea in general.

I know you asked for it to be with a human partner, but I'd like to make it more broad because in the end, it's not going to matter what race their partner is if they're not a drow.

This isn't going to be super specific either, just a big accumulation of my thoughts about all this! <3

Thoughts on Drow Men and Submitting to a Non-Drow Partner

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pairing: Drow Men x gn!Reader

Content Warnings: NSFW concepts under the cut (non-explicit), discussion of noncon activity in Lolthian cities

What to expect: above the cut: nuance and Surface drow exploration below the cut: brief NSFW discussion, this is where the CW comes into play, brief talk about dom/sub dynamics

Please check out my post about Drow lore, specifically the sections about Lorendrow/Aevendrow/Udadrow and under the cut about Lolthian society. It's helpful to understand their lore before going into this stuff.

Let's get some considerations out of the way first:

All udadrow no matter their gender or who they follow are taught that they are superior to other races and even other drow communities - and I think this is an important piece when talking about this request. Here I'm only going to focus on udadrow men from the Underdark, as it's mostly them that will have the sort of upbringing and understanding of society that this request is concerned with.

I also think it's important to mention that only Lolthites grow up in a matriarchy and are taught that women are far superior to men, who are considered to be near-worthless. The only people that a Lolthite man would see as superiors are Lolthite women - not women of any race - or possibly other drow men in higher positions/stations than them. (See the "edit" above the cut for some more thoughts on Lolthites!)

The udadrow men who leave their respective societies are not all going to be doing so for the same reason, and they're not all going to have the same attitude about it. However, I do think that the ones leaving to come to the surface are almost always going to be good/neutral-aligned and no longer following the evil members of the Dark Seldarine.

Take the famous Drizzt Do'Urden versus Nere, for example: Drizzt flees Lolthian society because of his disdain for it, he (a very well-aligned character) doesn't agree with how the society runs and the cruel things people are subjected to. Because he's so well-aligned, the teachings of superiority and gender inequality do not stick with him as a belief (to summarize him to an absurd amount). Nere, on the other hand, still has a lot of those cruel tendencies and a general sense of superiority over other races even though he no longer follows Lolth during the events of the game (same with Minthara, actually). He likely was offered more power when he was recruited to the Cult of the Absolute, more power than he'd ever have while following Lolth.

So when we're talking about this request within the context of the game, it's far more likely that any drow men you meet are going to be similar to Nere - power-hungry udadrow who were promised greater things if they left their Dark Seldarine god behind - because the entire gameplay revolves around an evil cult, so we're going to find evil people.

However, if we're talking about Forgotten Realms stuff outside of the game, I'd imagine the drow men you're most likely to meet on the surface are ex-Lolthites who are more like Drizzt - leaving the society they grew up in to find a better, more peaceful life on the surface.

Since this is the "drow men in general" post, I'm going to stick to this idea that the drow men you meet are almost always ex-Lolthites who came to the surface for a better life. With that in mind, I'd imagine that the chances of them already being a better person than an average udadrow are going to be really high. They're far less likely to let the taught prejudice against other races follow them out of the Underdark and into their new lives where they know they'll be heavily outnumbered by other races like humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings.

I think another important note is that drow receive a large amount of discrimination and nasty comments from other races, including (or especially) other elves due to their history, and the general notion that drow are evil and come to do horrible things to people. While people on the surface could use common sense and realize that a lone drow on the surface going about their daily lives is probably not evil nor associated with an evil god, that's not always what happens.

Combining all of these thoughts, it's my opinion that it would be highly likely for a drow man you meet on the Surface to be good/neutral-aligned and open to being with all different types of people as long as they're treated well by them! I think what matters the most is what energy this person gives to them, and how well their alignments and beliefs match up.

[EDIT (06.17.2024)]

I wanted to add a little more in here based on some comments I got the first couple days after this was posted.

1) @bramblepatch had a really wonderful comment I got permission to include here for those of you who aren't super familiar with Lolthite drow info:

"It's equally important to recognize that they're taught that everyone outside their own society wants to kill them slowly and painfully. If your drow male is a formally trained wizard or elite warrior, there's a very good chance that he was being fed extremely graphic propaganda as an adolescent on top of the general societal mistrust of outsiders. If he's on the surface voluntarily, he's probably somewhat open to letting surface people prove themselves, but there is going to be that initial suspicion, and that applies tenfold if you have any degree of apparent surface elf ancestry. (OTOH, non-elf surface people probably have an advantage on gaining his trust over deep gnomes or duergar, who have the whole 'ancestral enemies' baggage.)"

They say it perfectly, I have nothing to add!

2) I did remove a sentence further up in this post that said 'a more evil-aligned drow would have no purpose or interest in [going to] the surface because none of their kin dwells there' and a comment I got made a really good point about that! They brought up the surface drow that live in Cormanthor (a large forest on the Surface), House Jaelre and Clan Auzkovyn, who make up 10k+ of the drow that live there. This group mostly follows Vhaeruaun (all of House Jaelre, to my understanding, and a large portion of Clan Auzkovyn) but I believe there were also followers of other gods like Eilistraee.

This is a really interesting group to bring up in the context of this post because they do things differently than the udadrow of the Underdark, despite how they still follow someone who is evil-aligned. I won't get into this group's history, but I think it's important to mention that they are far more open and cooperative with other races, even other elves, than any Underdark udadrow would be (they just reallllly hate Lolthites). Cormanthor is heavily populated with drow, other elves, and half-elves (humans and a few other humanoid races making up the minority percentage), and these groups are known to be quite tolerant of the people not in their clan/house, all things considered.

If you'd like to look into it more, as I'm boiling it all down a crazy amount, this information comes from The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting which is an official D&D 3rd edition sourcebook that covers the realms up until 1372 DR (120 years before the events of BG3 for those of you who are thinking about this all more in context of the game).

Obviously, the majority of this post more so goes to speak on situations with those that come from the Underdark just because it is my understanding that the drow of Cormanthor are far more open to the other surface races,, so I feel like this request applies more to the Underdark bois :)) But I'm lowkey so excited that they brought this up because I personally LOVE the idea of exploring a relationship with a drow man who comes from Cormanthor!

This is all just to say that discussing stuff about drow on such a large scale can be really nuanced and I have to really generalize, unfortunately. But I'm so happy to talk about this stuff and receive comments like this that open up the discussion even further! And obviously please feel free to mention any corrections that need to be made if I have something blatantly wrong HDFHASDH

[End of edit]

1. big computer broke down. May be too expensive to repair. I‘ve got no access to any illustration or a painting programm right now. So no uploads for a while.

2. spilled water over my laptop a few days ago. It died. New ones are to expensive rn. So no writing either.

3. when I started writing in 2020, there was only one story. I finished it completely, then uploaded it, then wrote part two. I intended to always finish a story before uploading, but by know I have three WIPs between 40 and 150k and a lot of WIPs under 20k. I think I‘ll start uploading them, because I switch between them like crazy and don’t have a clue when one will be finished. Also, I can access them through my work computer.