The Tome Of Drow Lore.pdf - RoseRed

6
History of the Drow
What follows is a tale of the origins of the race of
dark elves, as it is known to most drow. Like
any tale of its kind, it is an amalgamation of truth
and myth, and not even the wisest among the drow still
know how to differentiate between the two. The surface
elves tell a very different story, when they can be persuaded
to speak of the drow at all.
Regardless of its level of historical accuracy, this is
generally regarded by the drow as the truth and it still fuels
many of their hatreds and passions today.
The Beginning
Long ago, when the earth was young, when so many of the
races that bestride the world today were not yet imaginings
in the minds of nascent gods, the elves lived beneath the
sun.
They lived so in peace and harmony, safe and untroubled
in the dawn of the world. The many trials and enemies
that would plague them were still unknown during those
long years. The dragons were content to leave the elves
alone, feeling the mammals had nothing to offer them; and
the earth had not yet felt the tread of orcish, goblinoid,
dwarven or human feet. The elves had no thoughts of war,
or even of wants.
There was but one unified race of elves in those days, living
in a series of tribes across the sunny plains, gentle hills,
tall forests and alongside the eternal sea. There were no
settlements, as there was no need for them. There was no
need for anything at all, which is what ultimately sparked
to the first division of the elves.
It came to pass that over the quiet and uneventful centuries,
some elves slowly grew concerned over the state of the race,
a concern they voiced to others. They felt the elves were
becoming stagnant, learning nothing, doing nothing, only
existing as does any mindless beast. Surely the Allfather
wanted more for his creations than merely this?
The discussions lasted decades. There had never been
discord among the elves before and they were unprepared
to deal with it now that it had at last arisen. While some
immediately opposed the idea of change, others quickly
accepted it and still more asked, quite credulously, what
it was that needed to be changed and in what manner this
change should occur? The loose tribes that had hitherto
formed the elven people began to fragment and move
apart both geographically and culturally as the discord
continued. Unknown to the elves, however, the world itself
was becoming a different place and the time was coming
that change would be forced on them all.
The First War
Even as the tribes began to drift apart, primitive clans of orcs
and goblinoids were multiplying in the lands nearby with
a fecundity the elves could not imagine. Spurred onward
by their barbarous gods, the expansion of the goblinoids’
lands brought them closer and closer to the elves, finally
breaching the ancient territories of the elder race. The
elves were curious but unsettled to meet the newcomers,
who seemed ugly and uncouth to their eyes and behaved
in strange and unpredictable ways. For their part, the
goblinoids were frightened by the older, wiser elves and
so the two races withdrew from one another. Most elves
were content to let the goblins and orcs go and to return
to their former lives, untroubled by further thoughts of the
crude younger races they had encountered, but one elf, a
member of the tribe that was to become the drow, did not
trust the goblinoids. Following advice he received in a
rapturous dream, he gathered his tribesmen to him and they
began to fashion the first crude elven weapons. The drow
credit this dream as being the first intercession on the part
of those deities that they would later come to worship as
they ventured deep underground, gifting the elves with the
knowledge they would need to become strong and survive
the struggles lying ahead of them.
As the numbers of the goblinoids swelled, they found
themselves moving again towards the land of the elves,
driven by population pressures and their rapacious
devouring of natural resources. Their gods too had given
them knowledge of weapons, teaching them of the slung
stone and sharpened stick, and they now drove their
numerous children against the elves.
The goblinoids swept down upon the elves in vast numbers,
sending the different tribes running before them. Even the
drow had only begun to craft weapons and learn the arts of
war and so they could not stand against the goblin hordes.
As other elves were pushed into the mountains, the deep
woods or even the sea, the drow found that their only path
of retreat was into caves beneath the earth, the goblins
pressing the attack in their wake and forcing them on.