The Tome Of Drow Lore.pdf - RoseRed

amongst them. The Pol’Tah were easily fooled by his
trickery and all the people rejoiced that the Allfather was
speaking to them again after so many years of silence.
Speaking through the prayers and meditations of the priests
and elders of the Pol’Tah, Kez’Skul urged them to follow
a path more to his liking. He found their self-imposed
exile in the deepest regions of the Underdeep amusing, and
urged them to remain. He also began to slowly move them
away from those few tenets of the Allfather’s faith to which
they still adhered. Eventually, Kez’Skul would wean the
Pol’Tah away from all memory of the Allfather and his
teachings, substituting a newly created aspect of himself,
Vermthizzl, the Light in the Deep.
This new land of the Pol’Tah, though too deep for the
shangu, was not without its perils. Though the drow
quickly began herding and keeping the beasts that could be
used for food, there were other creatures in the deeps more
inclined to use the drow themselves as food. The most
dangerous of these were the purple worms, near-mindless
eating and burrowing machines that came through the Drez
Khelim with alarming frequency. Before long, the Pol’Tah
found out why.
In a cavern just below the complex of tunnels the Pol’Tah
had made their own was a purple worm spawning ground.
The drow, sensing an opportunity, absconded from the
cavern with some of the eggs which, after hatching, they
raised to maturity. They maintain the tradition still of
domesticating purple worms, which they use for tunnelling,
trash disposal, transportation and combat.
For millennia now, the Pol’Tah have lived in the deepest
regions of the Underdeep, the vast majority of their
population still in and around Drez Khelim. They have
forgotten the sun; they have forgotten the Allfather. And
until relatively recently, when a far-ranging band of House
Devoren Explorers happened upon them, they had forgotten
other drow.
Overview of the Pol’Tah
Millennia spent in the misty tunnels of Drez Khelim
have had a profound influence on the Pol’Tah. They are
all but completely blind now, their sight atrophied by its
uselessness here. Their eyes appear as milky-white orbs,
with a faded blotch of pink where the pupil would be.
Only the brightest of lights can still register on their failed
vision, a sensation they find uncomfortable but fascinating.
Vermthizzl, the aspect of Kez’Skul they still worship, is
known as the Light in the Deep for that very reason.
The Pol’Tah have more than compensated for their
blindness, however. Their hearing is uncommonly sharp,
even for elves. More importantly, they have developed
tremorsense and blindsight as innate abilities. The Pol’Tah
are completely at home in the dark, and their new abilities
make them the equal of any sighted foe.
Life and Death with the Pol’Tah
The Pol’Tah are born to darkness, and in darkness they
remain.
Like all other drow save the Sulzthul, the deep drow reproduce
slowly. Also like other drow, they have experimented with
magical and alchemical means of making themselves more
fertile, with some success. While prostitution is less of an
ingrained institution in Pol’Tah society than in that of other
drow, it is certainly still present, and used to speed up the
birth rate that much more.
One unique feature of Pol’Tah births is the frequency of
multiple offspring, twins to be specific. These births are
not so frequent as to be common, but they happen far more
often among the deep drow than among other drow, for
whom a multiple birth is a nearly mythic rarity. No one
knows why this is the case with the Pol’Tah and indeed
until contact was re-established with other drow in recent
years, the deep drow had long since ceased to think of it
as anything unusual. There are many theories, including
something in the food, some long-forgotten attempt to
increase the Pol’Tah’s fertility, even that the multiple births
are a result of the influence of the living earth itself. None
of these are correct. The frequency of twins is a hint given
to the Pol’Tah by Vermthizzl, the only clue he has ever
given to his true nature – the Trickster, the being with two
faces. The Pol’Tah never considered such an idea however,
which Vermthizzl found greatly disappointing.
The Pol’Tah have always been extremely healthy, kept that
way by their isolation, by the arts of their alchemists and
herbalists and, for the wealthy, by the spells of the priests
of Vermthizzl. Disease is beginning to be a problem in
their society, however, as renewed contact with the drow
above has introduced new ailments and diseases to the deep
drow civilisation.
When death comes for the Pol’Tah, whether from battle,
accident or old age, the body is disposed of in one of two
ways. For those deep drow of high standing, or even those
who can afford a modest fee, there is interment. The body
is taken to a cavern several miles from Drez Khelim called
the Lair of Bones. There, a tame purple worm is used to
gouge a hole some 10 feet deep into the rock wall. The
body is interred there, the hole sealed up and a marker
placed on the site. After several particularly opportunistic
necromancers began to use the Lair of Bones as a handy
supply depot for raw materials, the place came to be under
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