Drow Magic. Sorcery Of Endless Night.pdf - RoseRed

DESIGNER'S NOTES
Designer’s
Notes
I
like drow, I really do but I have grown a little sick of
them after many years of gaming. Honestly, like a
bad party guest who just will not leave, I have seen
them once too often, and then ten times more after that.
My characters have seen drow in the dungeon, drow in
the caverns and drow in the open fields (at high noon,
no less). There are dark elves in the Dark Beneath,
there are far too many dark elves in ‘Light Above’
and, I suspect, there might just be one in my kitchen
pantry, sneaking about at night, eating bread crumbs
and leaving footprints in the sugar. Though that may
actually be mice, I cannot say for sure.
The point is, I have seen a lot of the dark elves, so
when they handed me this assignment, I was not really
sure what new things there were to say about them. I
stewed over it a bit and came to the conclusion that
the best thing to do would be to go back and distil the
drow down to their bare essence and build on their
foundations as the sleek and sexy supermodels of
villainy, rather than the tedious socialites that twenty
years of overexposure has made them.
So, I thought, what is the bare essence of the drow,
anyway? Is it sexy, brooding boy toys and dominatrix
style leather fetishists with bosoms that put most porn
stars to shame? Well, yes, I suppose it is a bit, actually.
But looking beyond the gothic, fantasy pinup aspect,
the real heart of the drow mystique
can be summed up in three words:
corrupt, fanatical and mysterious.
62
The drow are undoubtedly corrupt. If they were not,
they would not spend so much time obsessing over
the best ways to destroy the good elven gods and their
followers, they certainly would not make so much of a
hobby of knifing each other at the breakfast table. Also,
if they were not corrupt, they would not be stuck in the
Dark Beneath in the first place. I decided the best way
to get across the idea of corruption in a book about drow
magic was in the new spells I’ve introduced. That is
why so many of the new enchantments are so, frankly,
disgusting if you think about them. A wall of living
spiders? A spell which causes virulent diseases to wash
over victims like a greasy tide? Vomiting a stream of
living spiders? Nasty stuff, at least to me. Of course,
the idea of corruption goes beyond the disgusting.
There are enchantments that bring out the darker sides
of the victims and which convince them to think and act
like the drow would. Fairly appropriate, I think.
From there we move into the concept of fanaticism and
the drow are undoubtedly fanatical. They are fanatical
about their love of power, they are fanatical about their
hatred of the ‘good’ surface elves and they are, above
all, fanatical about their love for their bloated spider
goddess, for whom they make endless, genocidal war
against all non-drow. To represent their fanatical
love of their goddess, power and the idea of killing
everything they see, I created the black ceremonies.
Quasi-religious rituals, black ceremonies allow the
drow to move beyond the concept of arcane and divine
spells to a place where fanatical belief and unyielding
effort is enough to blot out suns.
Finally, the drow are at their best when they are at their
most mysterious. That is why the dark weaver makes
his appearance here. The dark weaver is a blending
of all the myriad elements of the drow; he is,
to use the old cliché, intended to be a mystery
wrapped in an enigma (and then wrapped in tight,
black leather). The dark weaver’s eclectic mix
of skills and abilities are great for keeping players
and their characters on their toes, which makes for
the best gaming. Plus, the dark weaver is simply
fun to play.
So now, looking back over this project, I can say that I
have enjoyed the challenge of constructing something
new around the bones of something old. I hope you
have just as much fun using the book as I did writing
it.
Patrick Younts