The Tome Of Drow Lore.pdf - RoseRed

10
and sending the elves back to the surface in fearful retreat
with heavy losses. The war went on thus for years as the
elves pushed against the drow to try and expunge them
from the very records of time, yet were driven back farther
and farther towards the surface each time as they learned
to fear the dark and the sudden death that lurked within
it. The elves of the sunlit world responded by recruiting
allies to their side, the fledgling races of dwarves and
gnomes. These creatures were more at home beneath the
earth than the drow and thus the odds were turned against
the dark elves once more, facing organised and driven foes
more familiar with the paths and ways of the Underdeep
than they. The drow wavered before the renewed and
strengthened onslaught of the elves and their allies.
The Sundering
The elves gathered themselves for one last great strike
against the drow, marshalling a huge host of their most
dedicated and skilled warriors, wizards and pathfinders with
great throngs of their allies ready at their sides. Striking
suddenly and with such incredible force, the seemingly
unstoppable elves drove the drow before them, to depths the
dark elves had never reached even during the years of their
first exile below the surface. The surface elves pursued,
pressing the drow into seemingly dead regions which,
unknown to them, had already been laid claim to by the
true powers of the Underdeep, creatures that the younger
races of the surface had never even conceived of before.
Most terrible of these were the shangu (see page 231), a
race so alien and powerful neither drow nor elf could stand
before them and who saw the trespassers breaching their
domains not just as rivals but also as raw resources ripe
for a grisly harvest. The drow were crushed between these
new terrors and the elves harrowing them from behind, as
if between the terrible hammer and monstrous anvil of a
smith bent on entirely eradicating their tribe.
Assaulted from before and behind, the hosts of the drow
were splintered and scattered throughout the Underdeep as
terrified bands of refugees desperately seeking sanctuary
and solace from those pursuing them. In their wake, the
surface elves and the shangu met each other in a storm of
carnage and destruction. War shook the deep caverns of
the world as potent magic and lethal
warriors were unleashed, leaving the
tunnels slick with the blood of the slain
and the debris of cave-ins. Ultimately
even the elves and their allies fared
no better than had the drow, turning
and fleeing before the horror of the
shangu, but the damage to the drow
was done. With untold thousands
slaughtered and left for the shangu
or the other scavengers lurking the
depths, and the survivors separated
from one another, fearing for their
very survival and with their greatest
leaders slain, the drow still refer to
this terrible event as the Sundering.
The early years of their existence
in the Underdeep were perilous for
the drow. During the war with the
goblins, they had lived close enough
to the surface. Now, separated from
the sun by leagues of rock and earth
and scattered by the Sundering, the
drow lived in hiding, scrounging
their existence from dripping water
and wild fungi. However, they
remembered the lessons the gods had
taught them during the goblin war and
during the war with their cousins that
had followed the Great Betrayal, and
these lessons kept them alive. The