The Tome Of Drow Lore.pdf - RoseRed

House Pelshothe
Renowned craftsmen and traders, the drow of House
Pelshothe are well-known throughout the lands of the dark
elves for their skill at artifice and commerce, as well as
the distinctive weapons and armour used by the House.
Though one of the last Houses to re-establish contact with
other drow, they have grown and thrived in the years since
and have become one of the foremost economic powers of
the drow.
Background
One of the smallest groups to survive the Sundering,
the House of Pelshothe fled for many miles through the
Underdeep, leaving the weak and the old where they fell,
until those strong enough to have survived the seemingly
endless days of the journey at last collapsed from
exhaustion.
Tired and bloodied, the warriors and mages of House
Pelshothe prepared to meet the drow’s pursuers, listening
intently in the utter darkness for the sound of approaching
feet. Above the gurgle of nearby water and the low rumble
of shifting stone in the deep however, there was only
silence. The drow of House Pelshothe waited anxiously,
trembling in exhaustion and terror, but no scaled-skinned
shangu rushed forward to consume them, no lumbering
ogre charged into their midst. At last, almost unbelieving
of their good fortune, the drow realised they had somehow
run far and fast enough to reach safety.
Not willing to trust this good
fortune too far, the drow of
House Pelshothe took time
to rest and recuperate before
moving on, following the
sounds of water until they
came at last to a tangled
web of caves surrounding
a great underground river.
With such an abundance
of food and water at the
ready, the leaders of House
Pelshothe chose to make
these caves their temporary
home. They had no way to
know it would soon become
a permanent abode.
The shangu had not
truly given up the search
for the bounty of easy
prey that had bumbled
unsuspectingly into their
lands, sniffing out the trail of the drow with their magic
and enslaved servants. Scouts left behind by the rulers of
House Pelshothe discovered the slow but steady pursuit of
the shangu and returned to the rest of the House with this
terrible news. The decision to keep running was made in
moments.
To slow the pursuit of the shangu, the mages of House
Pelshothe used their spells to collapse the entrances to the
tunnels inhabited by the drow, before the entire House began
making its slow way downstream. The journey was no
more than a few days old, however, when it abruptly ended
at the lip of a waterfall plunging more than a thousand feet
into the unknown darkness below. There seemed no way to
descend the glass-smooth rock beneath the cataract, much
as there seemed no way to escape through the twisting
tunnels that surrounded the river. Convinced this would
be their last stand, the drow of House Pelshothe prepared
for battle. It never came. For reasons the Pelshothe never
knew but gladly accepted, the shangu did not pursue them
past the collapsed tunnels.
Now, however, the Pelshothe found themselves sealed
in. The scouts who went to explore the tunnels found a
tortured labyrinth with no way out, but which was inhabited
by a nightmarish menagerie of slimes and oozes. The few
mages capable of casting fly who descended into the depths
of the earth beside the rushing waterfall returned to report
that there was nothing at the bottom save an enormous
underground lake, again with no exits. The idea of clearing
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