Drow OCs

bi/pan ☆ 30s ☆ Drow OCs ☆ Grey elves ☆ Appreciator of Elezen ☆ Casual player ☆ XIV Gpose ☆ Occasional thirst traps 🔞 · · ─ ·✶· ─ · · Heavily OC focused · · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

[booty-uprooter]

do you prefer running dungeons for the first time with other players or npcs

other players

npcs

Remaining time: 3 days 18 hours

[ehlonna-makes-stuff]

Maybe a weird take, but I think the old, weird, racist and just whacked-out descriptions of D&D's "always evil" species work if you assume they're in-universe propaganda. Like, the whole "drow are led by women, are always naked, are back-stabbing, duplicitous, keep men as slaves, and have strange rituals involving a spider goddess" might be inspired by the truth, but it sure sounds like the kind of thing an uptight, patriarchal society would write about a group of people they want burn at the stake, right? Like if someone told me that was pulled straight from the Malleus Maleficarum I'd probably believe them. "Orcs and goblins are stupid, violent, cannibalistic raiders who will raze your town and steal your women back to their backwards cave towns" really sure sounds like the kinda thing you read in historical texts about a society when the empire wants to justify colonizing them.

And the fact that all these "evil, barbaric" species always seem to have beef with the high elves, well, kinda points the finger toward whose leaders are spreading the narrative, don't it?

Like I don't blame anyone for wanting to move away from "fantasy racism" in their fun improv game with friends, I think that's great. But you still see "fantasy racism" show up a lot in contemporary campaigns and it always seems to be justified in-universe (except against tieflings, I guess) and that just DOESN'T sit with me

Just give another side to the story. High elves have this whole mythology about how Corellon cast down Lolth and all her children for being a traitor - and that story exists in-universe, and it's probably the first one humans hear. But you really think that's the drow side of the story? Really?? "Thats so interesting that you worship a god of the sun, we worship a traitor spider adulteress who turns us into mutants for failing arbitrary tasks" like FUCK that what's their actual version of the Corellon-Lolth cycle mythos?

[drowxiv]

I'm sorry I have to gush about this in a way that doesn't fit into the tags. In the late 1970s the Drow were created as an "evil race". I've mentioned before how I find it really funny that in a moment of ill-informed horniness they decided to make all of them wear skimpy clothes (as a sign of power of course!) without realizing that the reason it "works" for Drow is because they live in a society where they won't be harassed for what they're wearing. So at least we accidentally got some great social commentary out of it. By the early 1990s they seemed to realize they'd made a shitty trope or at least something that was too shallow to be compelling. The Drow's story/history quickly established itself as a criticism of the power religion can hold over a society. As much as I'm ironically not a fan of Drizzt or R.A. Salvatore (that's a whole other thing) he always did a very good job depicting how trapped the Drow are by Lolth and how many Drow feel helpless and wish to escape but fear persecution of the church. (Quick edit sorry!) That is to say that lore-wise they leaned super hard into it being "two major gods squabbling" but since they were too invested to completely re-do the Drow the original undertones couldn't be undone. So while I think the pivot shows they realized they messed up fairly early on, they never "fixed" the actual issue of them being like "Hm I know let's have DARK elves and make them EVIL!" They basically put a lil band-aid over that huge gaping mistake. I can't find my first edition of this book to confirm what it said but in Drow of the Underdark for 3.5e the Drow version of events is officially different than the Elf version of events!

This is the really important part and I love that they chose to do this from a storytelling standpoint. Because, yeah, as you were pointing out - each group has motivation to tell their history a specific way. To answer OPs question directly - this is the official Drow Exodus mythos that they tell:

As one of my friends summarized perfectly "Lolth took the Drow in the divorce." The full PDF is available to read here & whoever is holding it down over on Neocities is a hero.

[drowxiv]

Stuck in the throat of Gods

[girlnextvore]

Horny posting about your OCs is how we save this planet

[drowxiv]

By the sword

[drowxiv]

A Taste

[lianawes]

CIRCLE

[drowxiv]

Could you take the three of them?

[drowxiv]

I love that even with a small sample pool I've got three kinds of people emerging in the notes

1. A couple anticipated "in a fight? ... :3" Heck yeah I knew some of you would be out there!

2. My reliable aesthetic enjoyers - I appreciate you!

I expected the first two but in my haste to tease type 1 the possibility of type 3 slipped my mind...

3.

You know what? Valid

[homoeroticjunoincident]

the best thing a fictional man can be is having the worst time of his life

[drowxiv]

Penance owed

[drowxiv]

Quick Durafein appreciation because I had to make a really quick ref sheet for him

[annabelle--cane]

love when an absolute nightmare of a character is introduced and all you can think is "jesus christ buddy what the hell is your problem" and the narrative gives you a hot minute to stew before explaining Exactly what is Their Problem. and you just sorta sit back in your metaphorical rocking chair and think "huh. yeah okay fair. that would do this to a person, yes."

[drowxiv]

Survive

[drowxiv]

Could you take the three of them?

[ahollowgrave]

liking my own post on someone else's blog so they know i like the tags

[sirensongsea]

"One word of advice- You go lookin' for trouble, and sooner or later, trouble will come knockin'."

[wolquestion]

2/1/26

What flavor of chip would your wol(oc) be?