This is part four of a multi-part series exploring how I, Lise, see the drow of D&D. For more info, see part 1’s introduction. Also worth reading is the post where this all started: “On making the drow less problematic.”
- Introduction + the banality of evil and social Darwinism
- The law of “don’t get caught”
- The ultimate in “guess” culture
- Chosen ones (you are here)
- Connoisseurs of sensual pleasures
- Sexual orientation
- Gender identity and trans-ness
- Yes, heat vision
- Drow language
- Consent in the matriarchy
- No one is born knowing their society is fucked
- Etc etc
Chosen ones
The thing I think a lot of people don’t understand about the drow is how they see themselves as “chosen ones” — those who followed Lolth into the Underdark when she broke with the primary elven god Corellon Larethian.
No matter how lowly and powerless the individual drow, they see themself as lucky to be born drow, because they are free from Corellon’s tyranny.
In their view, every other race is out to get them. Nothing they do is indefensible, because otherwise they will be destroyed. If they ruthlessly cull out the weak, the disabled, the incommodiously male? Well, that’s only to make them strong enough to defeat their enemies and take revenge on the “fairies” (surface elves) who wronged them.
And if at first they don’t believe it? Well, it’s drummed into their head in their school years until they do. Another thing about the drow — they excel at propaganda.
Much of this is canon, to be sure. We see Master Hatch’nett lecturing Drizzt as much in Homeland. We also see Drizzt’s resistance to it. But we never see the inside view of someone who truly believes it.
Here’s how I explored it in the story of Kzandr, my paladin of Lolth in my drow intrigue game. — his “come to Lolth” moment:
In the dream, Kzandr was in a cage made of eight massive bars, gleaming like chitin. No, he corrected himself, they were tremendous spider legs — multi-jointed, skittering against stone as they closed around him.
Another moment, and he realized it was Lolth herself, as depicted in the statue, her embrace a vise grip from which he could not wriggle free.
Except…
He looked outside the cage, and his blood ran cold. Crowded around the cage were monsters out of the storybooks that Aksharu shared with him, in the rare moments when she was in a good mood. Grey-skinned duergar, bristling with rage, growing to twice the size of an adult drow. Cunning svirfneblin with murder in their eyes, shaping stone itself. And worst of all, the fairies, the darthiir, their pale skin a mockery of the drow form, their disdain and their deadly menace palpable.
He knew, too, that underneath some of those forms were other drow, the sort who sought to escape the embrace of the Spider Queen, the heretics who ran to other gods.
But he was safe — inside the chapel, inside this cage. Of all the places he could have been born, it was here, where eight legs separated him from cruelty and treachery. The Spider Queen was protecting her brood, not imprisoning them.It was the world outside that was the enemy.
A Prison Made of Chitin, chapter 1
Next up: “connoisseurs of sensual pleasures,” a.k.a. “drow fuck.” 🤣
