The Tome Of Drow Lore.pdf - RoseRed

A drow with such simple things as pepper and garlic at his
table is a rich drow indeed.
Not having access to the wide range of food and spices the
surface dwellers enjoy has made the drow desire them that
much more and has made trade in such items a primary
source of income for several Noble Houses. Those drow
who can afford to spend inordinate sums of money on
spices and preserved foods from the surface, as such things
are regarded as an important status symbol among the
dark elves. In most cases, the more flavourful and esoteric
the dish, the more highly it is regarded, though generally
any fruit or vegetable from the surface is considered a
delicacy.
This is something of a foolish vanity for the drow.
Millennia of living on the numbingly bland foods
available in the Underdeep has given the race as a whole
a very sensitive palate, which does not react well to
highly spiced foods from the surface. Simple spices
such as pepper, oregano and others cause the drow
no significant problems, but as already stated, the
more flavourful the food, the more status attached
to it. Nothing illustrates this better than the peppers
grown in the southern nations of the surface world. Such
things are rare and almost prohibitively expensive to import
into drow cities and eating them will invariably cause pain
and nausea, even vomiting, in a drow. Still, these items are
considered a strong mark of status.
Obviously, this weakness is no secret among the drow and
has often been exploited in the past. A House just finished
with a large celebratory feast to celebrate a victory in battle,
trade or politics makes an easy target for an assassin sent
by a rival.
One significant exception to the drow’s preoccupation with
the most flavourful foods is bread. Taken for granted as a
simple and readily available staple in the surface world, to
the drow it is an item of significant value. Drow often trade
with the surface merely to obtain wheat and other ingredients
necessary to bake it and a baker skilled in making surface
bread is all but assured of constant employment by a family
within one of the Noble Houses. Serving bread at a drow
table is considered a great compliment to the guests and
most commonly used when sealing trade agreements or
forming alliances. A cart full of bread delivered as a gift
has been sufficient to put a centuries-old rivalry on the road
to reconciliation.
The other major source for variety in the diet of the drow
comes from trade with the drow sub-race of the Sulzthul, the
aquatic drow. Drow cities lucky enough to have convinced
their insular and exceedingly xenophobic cousins to trade
with them have access (albeit limited) to the variety of
underwater vegetables harvested by the Sulzthul. These
are not as flavourful as the foods which can be gotten from
the surface, but most drow are anxious for any break at
all from the dreary, unending diet of mushrooms on which
they must otherwise subsist.
For the poorer members of a drow society, however, it is
and likely always will be mushrooms that make up
the entirety of their diet.
Government
T h e
government
of a drow city
differs from
place to place depending on the
balance of power in any given city. Most commonly
however, power is shared unwillingly between the Noble
Houses and the temples, with a slight advantage falling to
the Noble Houses as they have a wider range of resources,
income and influence on which they can draw.
Typically, there is a single Noble House which acts as the
primary government in any given city, though there may
well be other Noble Houses attempting to displace it as
the power in the city. With control of a city come certain
responsibilities, which most Noble Houses are only too glad
to accept as they serve to further reinforce the House’s grip
on power. Most commonly, these responsibilities include
little more than enforcing the law, levying taxes and seeing
to the defence of the city.
Laws in drow cities are few, but they are usually brutally
enforced. In cities where the church of Nazrakoth is a
powerful presence, the task of policing the populace and
enforcing the law is usually given to the temple, which
embraces the responsibility with gusto. In other cities,
these tasks are the province of the ruling power in the city.
Consequently, the degree of law enforcement, as well as
which acts are considered crimes, varies wildly from one
drow city to the next. Some cities might be held under
draconian rule, their streets patrolled constantly by drow
warriors leading a band of ogre slaves to enforce the laws
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