Understanding The Drow (Archive)

This article is an archive of the old version of this book. Information within may no longer be canon to the Ascension Academy Roleplay. Please refer to the Ascension Academy Classes page for an updated catalog of books.
==Volume One: An Introduction==
===Understanding The Drow:===
Drow, also known as dark elves, deep elves, night elves, or sometimes “The Ones Who Went Below” on the surface, are a dark-skinned sub-race of elves that predominantly lived in the Underdark. They are often hated and feared due to their infamously cruel nature and cut throat society. It is highly debated whether such culture lends itself to the nature or if the nature is a product of the culture.
===Appearance:===
Drow are shorter and thinner than other sub-races of elves. Females are generally bigger and stronger than males. The skin of the Drow is dark grey, jet-black, or obsidian (with shades of blue). An exception are the albino drow, the Szarkai. Generally, Drow keep their hair long, and they decorate it with pins and webbing made of precious metals. Drow hair could be stark white, pale yellow, and, more rarely, silver or copper in color. Drow are incapable of having beards. Drow eyes could be any color, with bright red being the most common.
Purple or blue eyes indicate surface elves and/or human ancestry. It is possible to read some information in the eye color of a Drow. For example, Drow eyes often reddened when they are angry and turn yellow when they were sick, poisoned, or under some negative magical influence.
The Drow start to show signs of aging when their age nears 600. One of those signs consisted of their hair growing thin, turning yellow for females, and silver or grey in males.
Due to a process of selective breeding that lasted for several generations, Drow look attractive even when compared to other elves. Their alluring appearance, which could be used for seduction, was more often used to instill fear. According to Nojheim, meeting the beauty standards of the surface races make them prone to turn a blind eye on the deeds of the Drow, and to be lenient to them.
===Abilities:===
Drow are more agile and alluring than most humanoid races. This is not a coincidence but the result of selective breeding over several generations. Like all elves, drow require no sleep. They instead enter a meditative trance while retaining full awareness of their surroundings.
Drow have darkvision due to their tendency to live in the Underdark as well as excellent hearing. However, that same vision leaves them sensitive to sunlight and other bright lights.
Drow have a tremendous resistance to magic and a high tolerance to poison that they usually train to strengthen throughout their lives.
Drow are frail like any other elf. They have a tendency to ambush their enemies with ranged weaponry, and retreat when melee combat was the sole other option. They favor light and quick weapons like rapiers, and they would choose hand crossbows when possible to deliver their poisons from afar.
===Culture/Society:===
The history of the drow is filled with confusion and uncertainties. Many fanatical drow tell lies and fabrications about their own history to serve the ends of the noble Houses and of the faith. At times, pieces of history are entirely deleted from the records, usually in the wake of a Noble House falling.
Drow live in city-states characterized by a theocratic, matriarchal, and militaristic society. They recognize female drow as more valuable than males, who are considered worthless. This gives female drow absolute power. Males who hope to find any place of power often resorts to ends as treacherous as the women that ruled the drow, hoping to perhaps win a coveted place as the mate of a powerful matron mother.
The drow’s view on other races run from potential slaves or the targets of extermination. Contracts with “lesser races” are not seen as actually binding. They are readily broken as soon as they stop being beneficial to the drow party. The drow believe that all “lesser races” have to be subjugated, or driven to extinction when representing a threat.
===Personality:===
Drow, by reputation, are almost entirely evil. They are overall decadent but manage to hide it under a veneer of sophistication. Drow are arrogant, ambitious, sadistic, treacherous, and hedonistic. From birth, the drow are taught that they are superior to other races, and that they should crush those beneath them. They are a race of emotionally stunted people, with a tenuous grasp on sanity and scarred mentalities, among which relatively undamaged minds are considered abnormal. However, it is suggested that the drow have no innate drive towards evil and their morality is colored by the society they live in.
Most drow’s personal goals are about increasing their station in life, as they desire the power on others that a high station would provide. The scarcity of resources in the Underdark and the limited chances for advancement within the society forced most drow to aggressively compete with each other. Drow are a violent race, and violence is often their favorite, if not instinctive, method for conflict resolution.
As a general rule, drow can’t afford to show emotions like compassion or love, for they are easy to exploit. Their environment turns them into distrustful sadists with a constant readiness to backstab people, both in the figurative and literal sense. Drow have a tendency to prefer emotional cruelty over physical ones. Cruelty is also seen as a means of self-validation. The drow believe that any person that can not defend themselves deserves to be inflicted cruelty, and by delivering cruelty on a weaker creature, the drow could prove their superiority.
The constant strife of their society led the drow to be paranoid and fear everyone and everything. They fear the potential loss of their station, the most lost loyalty or outright rebellion of their underlings, and the potential of punishment from their superiors. Drow are incapable of trusting other creatures, no matter their race as they were taught from an early age to be distrustful.
Drow are hedonists. They love to surround themselves with what they considered beautiful, generally without paying attention to the cost. They generally believe to be entitled to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted to do it. This extends to partners, and they have a tendency to be lecherous. While the drow understand the value of forging bonds, they do not see value in the virtue of honesty. Forming bonds is thus a dangerous endeavor and mostly of temporary nature. Even in moments of safety or relaxation, the drow are always alert and constantly expecting attacks of any kind, Therefore, they are rarely surprised when those actually happen, depriving the attacker of the advantage of surprise.
Drow are vengeful people by necessity. Not answering to slights with punishment is easily perceived as weakness by other drow, and it is essentially the same as inviting exploitation, abuse, or even death.
===“Good Drow:”===
“Good drow” amount to about 15% of the entire race. However, most of them aren’t actually of good alignment, but are merely chaotic neutral or lawful neutral. Even actual good drow generally have problems to form a sense of morals for themselves. They generally act in the same way as evil drow due to social pressures and risks. As mentioned above, being soft in any way is lethal in drow society, and therefore, these people often die.
For more detailed information on Drow, please read our other volumes.
==Trivia==
*Vevina Ciseris believes that this book was written by a surface dweller due to the name.
**This is further supported due to how biased the book seems to be.
Category:Books
Category:Ascension Lore