Naris of the Wilds @naristhewilder - Tumblr Blog

diceprophet

Villaintines Day, D&D Style!

This dragon is red, Green, black, white, and blue. Tiamat is pissed, And coming for you!

ROLL FOR INITIATIVE.

rpgrules

From @knights_clubs (instagram).

andro-womeninarmor

D&D Propaganda Poster by Joma Cueto Found here

sirobvious

Oh…

Well do you think I should inform people that, to my knowledge, in D&D when they say “falchion” what they really mean is “kiegmesser”?

naristhewilder

Probably not given Travis is playing the character and he’s fairly knowledgeable of weapons so he probably means a falchion

aneyeforannai

Happy darkest day! Keep your hearts aflame and bellies full and may the demons jump voluntarily into the flames of Yule.

userboxer

chistowski

Daily 319/365

Check also my Facebook, Instagram and ArtStation :)

shaydh

Yeah, I pretty much imagine that the lower classes of Drow are perfectly sane and normal. Its just the upper classes that are batshit crazy.

Right? There’s no way the majority of drow could get away with acting how nobles do in the books, even with Lolth micromanaging shit.

leidensygdom

I always had a bit of a headcannon of commoners being in general more chill and stuff. There is no way a society in which kids get killed as sacrifices, in which everyone can be assasinated easily, in which most of them die during school or just random shit happening, could be fucking viable. Specially when it seems like only the matrons of each house is allowed to have kids? What happens with the others if they can’t do a new house? They just seem to… stay there? Do nothing?

In general drow societies seem slightly ilogical to me but- I do think that commoners are mostly minding their own business and trying to simply do whatever they need. If everyone was so worried about murder I really doubt they’d have time to produce actual needed stuff. And “slaves” don’t make societies make sense by themselves… But I feel like drow societies are written as if “EVERYONE IS A NOBLE NON NOBLE DON’T EXIST THAT IS PERFECTLY LOGICAL”

shaydh

Yeah this. Don’t get me wrong, I really like drow society being evil, but make it neutral evil instead of chaotic evil and it seems a bit more sustainable. Maybe even lawful evil bc they have to obey Lolth. But following the story of a commoner living a normal uneventful life isn’t as much fun I guess

But anyway I’m convinced Drizzt’s narration was biased and it wasn’t as he described in Homeland.

all-drow-all-the-time

This is all really good, two thumbs up. I’d like to add that in my Underdark campaign I ran over the summer, that drow commoners basically lived a normal life with added in slavery, drugs, and prostitution as all normal things. They weren’t AS xenophobic as the nobles, they were more just mildly racist, and they could achieve some cushy lifestyles by becoming inportant merchants and owning their own businesses and being sponsored by nobles. Instead of murdering their competition, they would just sabotage and harass them and/or force them into a business partenership.

Marriage would play a far more important role for commoners, and they, unlike the nobles, would likely not have to sacrifice their sons because the more children they have, the greater the chance of one of them being majorly successful, therefore bringing in more money. Their families would probably be tighter knit as well, since it’s all them against everyone else kind of dynamic.

Also, major rumor mongering is a skill to be desired.

And yes, I fully believe that Drizzt was a bit biased in his description of drow life. He never really got into the true muck or heights of it because he ran away so young, so he never really saw either the normal side or the truly depraved side. I also believe that he might have had some kind of social disorder (yeah, he TOTALLY was just NATURALLY good and avoided ALL the brainwashing just because Zaknafein, who wasn’t even involved with Drizzt for the first 15 years of his life, was his dad. Totally.) and that’s why he really struggled with the concepts of drow society.

stelera

I’m totally jiving on all this commentary (and on analysis of good kid Drizzt and his narrative bias) and if I may I’d like to expand on this? It’s unfortunate we didn’t get to see more of common drow life in Homeland, but I do think there’s a reason for that. Drizzt isn’t just like a good guy with Teflon morals and principles innate to his sense of self, but he’s also sheltered and priveleged. I wanted to kind of explore this concept with an OC, but think about it. Drizzt as a noble, even a male, afforded some amount of protection from his title (or else he would have been killed long ago for his rebellious nature and sacrilege). He was also given the opportunity to have an education of the highest quality and became an incredibly skilled fighter. With hose tools he was able to just up and leave and actually escape the clutches of Drow society altogether, even survive long enough to make it to the surface? Something an untrained commoner would never hope to achieve. #CheckYourNobilityPrivilege

Think perhaps commoner life is more tame than the wild world of political intrigue and sabotage of the nobility, but consider too that it may be structured a bit more like feudal societies, wherein the commoners have little to no protections by any measure of justice or law (naturally) and they serve whichever noble house to which they belong in exchange for the protection of that house’s military and political power. There’s a lot less freedom of movement for the commoners, but by excelling in military or magical training, or in specific artisan crafts, they can gain some amount of importance and thusly added protection from the house to which they belong. Unlike slaves they’re free to perform whatever task they so chose and some make decent careers out of whatever task, so there’s likely fewer complaints about the lack of upward mobility (again, it sure beats being a slave, or dead, whichever is worse in drow society).

I like to imagine then that money is a lot less important in drow society, because real power vomes from three major sources, resources (things like land, livestock, and raw materials, or enough of one to trade for the others), military strength (number of capable and trained warriors and casters), and Lolth’s approval (not just the number of clerics/priestesses a house can produce, but also the tactical cunning of the house, translating into a high amount of sociopolitical activity and a constant upward climb along that ladder, which seems to be most pleasing to Lolth’s chaotic evil nature). If these things are what are most valued I feel like money is used less than bartering for goods and/or political favors.

At least this is how I had personally been interpreting the basic structuring of Drow society outside the immediate nobility. Sorry this ended up a lot more of a tangent than I originally intended… :X

all-drow-all-the-time

^ yes to all of this!! I love how you described it, and I think that’s a far more concise way of looking at drow society. You did way better than I did stumbling through trying to describe it lol.

You have also inspired me to get on with doing a full-on analysis of Drizzt. I have a lot of thoughts about him, good and bad (mostly good tbh because he’s my fave but I recognize his faults), that I think would be fun to share.

fire-adira

I’m reblogging this without any relevant commentary because you all already said much of what I had to bring to the table. Loved reading it all .w.

drowxiv

Loving everything about this but I just wanted to throw out there - if you want to get some more (canonical) savory tid-bits about Drow life you can read the War of the Spider Queen books. Each book has a different author (It’s not as jarring as you’d think) but it’s all one over-arching story line that takes place mostly in the underdark. They describe some of the more common areas and go into detail about how spider’s have built webs in doorways so the commoners are getting into their houses by crawling through their windows so they don’t disturb the sacred creatures. They visit lots of bars and taverns, talk about lower houses, battle captives, men who are disgruntled by the matriarchy, they visit another drow city and describe life there, go into detail about the hierarchy of nobles, commoners, and slaves, etc. It’s a really great set of books if you just want to immerse yourself into their culture while also reading about a cool adventure. As a bonus they ALSO cover surface Drow!

agent-underdark

Yep I’d recommend them. Rebagel for those who lost faith in the other books. WotSQ is great.

whaleinwhite

I’ve always headcanonned “sacrificing male newborns” more as a population control thing than a rite demanded by Lolth. I imagine no noble house would like to have more sons than daughters, because a. the house would be viewed as weak, b. the male drows could rebel and overpower female drows (similar to what happened in Sschindylryn). So if a house has a lot of daughters, or at least more daughters than sons, there’s no point to killing male newborns - as they wouldn’t disturb the gender balance, and keeping them alive would always make the house a little bit more powerful.

all-drow-all-the-time

That would make the whole sacrificing thing make a lot more sense. It would also explain how House Baenre in Salvatore’s novels can get away with not killing ANY of their sons (or at least so we’ve seen) and still hold Lolth’s highest favor.

“#i remember I once saw a theory that drizzt is autistic”

Dude, if you could somehow find that theory I’d love to read it because I’ve been having some similar theories lately. The more people to add to the theory, the more solid it can get. It would explain SO MUCH about his personality and some of his strange actions/choices.

naristhewilder

Another book I would recommend for drow info is the drow of the underdark book it goes heavily into their social structure and psychology. It is a player guide so it's less fluff and more raw info, a good example from it is that drow in groups or communities tend towards neutral evil independent drow tend towards chaotic evil.

To touch on a point made earlier yes drow society is illogical and should collapse but doesn't due to lolth's meddling. As for the houses they are made up of multple family cells who all can have children.

Another point is that commoners do exist and they tend to live longer given no one gains anything from killing elders.

#ooc

casey-jane-lewis

More fun facts about ancient Celtic marriage laws: There were no laws against interclass or interracial marriage, no laws against open homosexual relationships (although they weren’t considered ‘marriages’ since the definition of a marriage was ‘couple with child’), no requirement for women to take their husband’s names or give up their property, but comedians couldn’t get married

thefingerfuckingfemalefury

It’s Adam and Eve not Adam Sandler and Eve

annajiejie

I want to expound upon “comedians couldn’t get married” thing because it’s actually really interesting. Satire was respected in Ancient Ireland. It was thought to have great power, enough to physically maim the subject one was making jokes about. Satirists could bring down kings with a witty enough insult. That was actually their original function. When the king didn’t do right by his people, a bard was supposed to compose a poem so scathing it would raise welts on the king’s skin to oust him (it was illegal for a “blemished” king to rule.) Unwarranted satire was considered a form of assault. So what it boils down to is ancient Celts being like “These people are too dangerous to reproduce. DO NOT TRUST THEM WITH CHILDREN. EVER.”