The Tome Of Drow Lore.pdf - RoseRed

and waiting to meet them in battle. Rage at the drow for
this heinous act overcame their horror however, and the
battle was joined. Again, the drow were victorious and
took enough prisoners to replenish the ranks of their slaves.
Though the hatred of the gnomes for House na’Khotan has
never faded, they never again dared attack Murellin alone.
With the threat of the gnomes removed, the drow discovered
the true value of the city of Murellin. Beneath the city,
protected by its walls and fortifications, lay a mithral mine
of tremendous wealth. Its existence had been kept secret
from the drow, a secret none of the gnomes revealed even
under pain of death. Despite its richness however, it was
a perilous place, full of oozes, poisonous gas, crumbling
rock and other dangers that caused a high death rate among
the gnome slaves House na’Khotan forced to work in its
depths.
Determined to reclaim a source of such great wealth, the
gnomes had set their thoughts to recruiting allies for the
next assault on the drow. With tales of drow cruelty and
waiting gold, the gnomes had found the help they were
looking for among the humans of the surface. Unlike the
previous wars with the gnomes, this one was slow and
arduous, lasting for generations of human lives, but again,
the drow were victorious.
The three wars with the gnomes, though more than three
centuries apart, had depleted the population of House
na’Khotan to a dangerously low number. Faced with nearcertain
defeat should another war come soon, the drow
knew they had two options. They could either abandon
Murellin and its mithral mine, or they could find some way
to increase their population. They chose the latter.
At first, the drow of House na’Khotan attempted to increase
their population in a regimen of selected breeding and
procreation, but this had only a negligible impact on the
House’s reproduction. The fear of another war growing
greater daily in their minds, House na’Khotan turned to
alchemy to increase the fertility of their people.
The process was long and painstaking and yielded results
that were less than what had been hoped for, but it was
enough for the House to begin to recover. Fortunately,
by the time the gnomes made another attempt to reclaim
Murellin, House na’Khotan was ready to meet them. This
time, the gnomes themselves were outnumbered by the
host of surface races recruited with promises of wealth to
make war in the depths. After finally throwing back the
assault, the drow turned their attention again to the surface
world they had left behind so long ago. Many humans had
been captured and enslaved in the last battle of the war and,
under the most persuasive torments the drow could devise,
revealed everything House na’Khotan needed to know to
send spies safely to the surface.
Finding the path to the surface was simple, as it had been
trod so recently by so many and spies sent by the na’Khotan
were some of the first drow to venture beneath the open sky
in a millennia. The work was difficult and many spies did
not return, but enough information came back regarding
the happenings on the surface the drow felt it wisest to
continue the practice.
Meanwhile, House na’Khotan continued using its
alchemical concoctions to increase the drow birth-rate, never
considering there might be side effects. The first female to
give birth to a pale-skinned, black-haired child was a spy
recently returned from the surface. Assuming the woman
had been foolish enough to lie down with a surface elf, the
rulers of House na’Khotan subjected mother and child to
torture and sacrifice. Though she pleaded her ignorance,
her cries were ignored as the lies they must be. However, a
year later there was another such birth, this time to a female
who had never left Murellin. Soon, the drow learned the
truth; that the alchemy increasing their birth-rate had also
damaged them, making the House prone to albinism, which
manifests in drow with pale skin, black hair and grey eyes
as its primary physical symptoms.
For a time, the House simply killed any such children at
the moment of their birth, until one of the House’s spies
who had barely escaped the surface with her life, Urthisa
na’Khotan, came up with another idea. The use of drow
spies on the surface was so difficult, she said, because of
the obvious physical features of drow. Even with the best
disguise, drow could not always hide their true nature and
magical illusions to conceal the spy’s race were too easily
detected. The albinos, Urthisa argued, could serve as spies
on the surface and never concern themselves with disguises
of any kind, so strongly did they resemble surface elves. The
rulers of the House saw the wisdom of her words, and since
then, the na’Khotan have groomed their albino offspring
to work as spies in the surface world. Approximately one
in every 20 births is an albino child, perhaps half of which
will survive to adulthood.
Culture
House na’Khotan was the last House to re-establish relations
with the remainder of drow society and remains the most
separate of the Houses. Though they remain withdrawn and
isolated from all others in the Underdeep, the na’Khotan
maintain a network of surface spies that outstrips any other
such effort by the drow. They also trade with the surface
as much or more than any other drow culture, as they have
found the surface races comprise an eager market for the
mithral mined beneath Murellin.
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