The Tome Of Drow Lore.pdf - RoseRed

100
The Lost Tribes are groups of drow who became
separated from the rest of their race in the vast
labyrinth of the Underdeep. Three of these, the
Sulzthul, the Kanahraun and the Lorgreln, were separated
from their kin at the time of the Sundering. The fourth, the
Pol’Tah, left the remainder of the drow even before the end
of the first goblin war. There were, obviously, other groups
that split off from the drow throughout the course of dozens
of millennia, but these four tribes are the only ones who
survived the terrors of the Underdeep.
Though the Lost Tribes survived the Underdeep, they did
not do so while remaining unchanged. Whether by the
work of a malevolent outside force, as in the case of the
Sulzthul and Kanahraun, or simply as a result of adapting
to the pressures of the environment, these Lost Tribes are
no longer truly drow, either in their eyes or in the eyes of
the drow race. Though it could be argued that every group
of drow at some point constituted a Lost Tribe, splintered
into small clans at the Sundering when they were struck
between the hammer of the surface elves and the anvil of
the shangu, most of these groups eventually re-established
contact and resumed their place within the drow people.
The true Lost Tribes, the four groups presented in this
chapter, are a different story. Fundamentally changed by
their trials in the Underdeep, these groups are the sub-races
of the drow. They take no part in the lives of their ‘true
drow’ cousins, they do not live among them and have no
stake in the Game of Bones.
From the drow perspective, it is only recently that these
Lost Tribes resumed any contact at all with the dark elves.
Indeed, it was less than a century ago that the drow
discovered the existence of the Pol’Tah, the deep
drow, living in a world of eternal night in the
lowest reaches of the Underdeep. Relations
between the drow and the sub-races are
tenuous at best, as both sides have come to
regard the other as alien.
The four sub-races of the drow are
extensively detailed below. Games Masters
will find information on the history of these
Lost Tribes, the abilities and characteristics
that set them apart from ‘true drow’ and a
thorough treatment on the unique cultures
and societies created by the sub-races in
order to survive the Underdeep.
The Lost Tribes
The Kanahraun – The Feral
Drow
The Kanahraun demonstrate just how deeply into savagery
the drow can sink. They are not so much a sub-race as
merely bestial and feral drow, warped and corrupted into
cunning barbarians and necromancers of the deep, twisted
by the cruelties of fate and the machinations of the evil
being they worship.
Unlike most other drow who have developed independently
of the main race, the Kanahraun were not separated from the
main host of the drow during the Sundering, but instead, just
afterward. The Kanahraun were some of the most skilled
warriors and magicians of the drow and were determined
to strike back against the surface elves, chafing at the
thought of their traitorous cousins banishing the drow to
the Underdeep and its previously unguessed horrors before
escaping unhindered to the surface again. Despite the cries
of wiser heads that the drow were already too dispersed
by the Sundering, the Kanahraun set out in pursuit of the
surface elves, intending to take a full measure of bloody
vengeance against those who had turned on them.
They caught the surface elves, and began to harry their
forces from behind, striking and darting away again into the
shadows. Until they struck too deeply, and the retreating
elves turned on them. Pursued by a greatly superior
force of vengeful elves, the drow who would become the
Kanahraun were driven deeper into the Underdeep. They
came at last to a cavern, the
walls of which yawned
with dozens of caves, and
decided to make their
stand here against the
merciless assault of their
cousins.
The elves, however, saw a
different opportunity and,
using their most destructive
magics, brought the
cavern’s ceiling down
on the waiting drow.
Many of the Kanahraun
were killed in that single
stroke, but the remainder
were sealed off, safe from
the surface elves behind thousands