Drow society

[Jayngfet]

After re-reading war of the spider queen I began wondering...

How does drow society work, in theory elves in general take a long time to grow into adulthood, competent wizards, clerics, and fighters take longer still. And yet the matron mothers seem to be fine with killing their best wizards, sending the closest thing they have to loyal high level fighters on suicide missions, and generally act stupidly.

How does a society like this survive on it's own, let alone an inevitable slave rebellion, male rebellion, a seige, and an organization? They can't even stop killing each other for nonsense reasons in the middle of war and surrounded by enimy warriors(one drow stabbed another in the back when running from angry slaves).

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

They're Drow, they don't need to survive.

Really, I think they've survived thus far through extreme luck. And the meddling hand of Lolth, intervening regularly.

[Tengu_temp]

The Drow fluff is written by fanboys who love evil, darkness, women in black leather and BDSM subtext blatant BDSM elements. Don't expect logic.

[DMfromTheAbyss]

It doesn't work... simple as that.

The "author", "DM", or person (s) controlling the world that use them in this way do so becouse drow are "cool", popular and chaotic evil... so it's sortof a what would a chaotic evil society that works look like... which if you think about it... yeah it doesn't... they wipe themeselves out and the few survivors get aten in the underdark...

But that would make them poor villains... so people ignore it... as an extinct elves aren't popular or cool

[comicshorse]

If Drow breed like rabbits then the competive advancement thing kind of works. Just not if they have any non-Drow enemies waiting to take advantage of them

[Myatar_Panwar]

As far as I can tell, the Drow society exists purely because of Lloth. If they were just a bunch of godless evil elfs, then they would have probally all died off by now. But through Lloth they can find some form of order.

Lloth keeps the males down by giving her females great abilities, and giving them obvious favor. If you were a male, and saw that Lloth of course exists, why would you go against her priestesses and risk her wrath?

Priestesses dont usually act without reason. Sure, they may take down a house or two to gain further favor, but wouldent risk anything drastic without at least some form of a nod-of-approval from Lloth.

Which reminds me, I need to finish that War of the Spider Queen series after I get caught up with the whole Drizzt line.

[Jayngfet]

Well if Elistrae is any sign Lolth isn't that smart a goddess. Come th think of it, why do drow even worship her, she's cruel, unforgiving, her afterlife will likely kill you(after her oether worshipers probably did), she let's her two main groups of followers slaughter each other for fun, Her Plane of existence defies all logic(STARS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY), could kill you and eat you're soul because she was bored ...or for no reason, beign even more chaotic than evil. She gets her own children to commit genocide over each other so she can posses the survivors.

...What in the nine hells do the Drow see in her?

[Zeta Kai]

The Drow of the Underdark book specifically addresses this on page 26, in the section A Final Word on Drow Society. The short answer is basically that Lolth directly intervenes in Drow society & that without her, the Drow would destroy themselves. She likes the Drow the way they are, but she knows that they must be kept from killing each other.

I always suspected that this what Gruumsh does for the orcs.

[Devils_Advocate]

How does D&D society in general function, with horrible mosters launching raids on peaceful villages and BBEGs trying to take over/destroy the world all the time?

Oh, wait. That stuff doesn't happen all over the place, all the time. It's relatively rare, and the lives of most humans in the world actually center around really boring stuff, like tilling grain. But because that stuff is boring, it doesn't get a lot of screen time. The on-camera action is not a representative sample of human society.

Similarly, one should not expect that the on-camera action in a story about drow will give a representative sample of how drow society functions. Rather, one should assume that one is being presented with the most interesting happenings, and that the average drow's life is considerably less exciting than this most of the time. Sure, a single drow lives long enough to eventually encounter some significant events just by waiting around until significant events happen nearby. But most of their lives are going to be spent doing relatively dull things; they've pretty much got to spend way more time rebuilding the damage from the last major calamity than they do causing the next one. You don't see a bunch of novels about drow just quietly looking for opportunities to grab power but never actually doing so because a good one never presents itself, not because that doesn't make up a significant fraction of the average drow's existence, but because it doesn't make for compelling reading.

(Although I think that could make for a pretty good book.)

Unless the official material actually says that the Underdark is a non-stop murderfest or something, in which case the authors are just stupid, or at least not even trying to make things believable. I haven't actually read the books, I'm just speculating here.

[comicshorse]

I'm not sure I always thoguht all the mundane, peasant stuff in Drow society was done by slaves. Freeing the Drow to devote themselves to politics, personal power and murdering each other

[Jayngfet]

let me sight an example a second time:

We have a commoner drow, not a Priestess, or a wizard, or a fighter, just some commoner/expert who builds boats for a living. She has a kinfe and is on the run from very angry escaped slaves, armed to the teeth and burning stone homes to the ground. Her only allies are a few low level commoners and a couple of Clerics with no spells and few items. If any of them slow down they will be left behind.

She stabs a business rival, and no one questions it.

This was when her life was on the line and everything was falling apart around her. Not even a noble vleric or a matron mother making a power grab, some boat builder stabbing another to get rid of the competition.

[comicshorse]

Yeah but if she justs wounds him. He will drop, the slaves will waste time finishing him off and she will have a better chance of getting away.
In a LARP I saw a Rager hamstring a fellow part member while pursued by a pack of shadow hounds. We'd have complained but it did save all our asses

[mostlyharmful]

They are shielded by the power of plot, completely selfdestructive societies with breeding cycles in the centuries and cities in materially desolate locations surrounded by enemies and beset by an insane God that has no redeeming features from it's worshippers point of view.... From a mechanics point of view it's even worse with their +2 LA and a Con penalty they pretty much suck below mid to high levels in an LA buyoff world and Suck Utterly without buyoff, and they don't even get anything amazing for that, a little SR and some crappy SLAs and small stat bonuses These guys are so utterly beyound believable its laughable, at least the greenskins have got their breeding rates and clanish tendancies to justify them, Drow should just be a laughing stock

[Jayngfet]

If memory serves she didn't wound her, she killed her. And the victim screamed loudly.

[LibraryOgre]

A quote from someone else...

"The drow do not live in a matriarchy. The live in a psycho *****iarchy. Look at their patron deity. Lolth is a crazy teenage girl who really hates the funny feelings that boys give her so she beats them, devours them, and then cries about why no one wants to talk to her. Sometimes she wants to be nice, but she can't give up that 'necro-goth' spasm0anger image she worked so hard to build. She wants to go to the prom, but everyone will make fun of her, so she'll just light their houses on fire and kill their babies instead. Her hair is black this week, blue next week, and shaved clean off the week after that. All the while, she's killing everyone who looks at her, everyone who ignores her, everyone who worships her, and everyone who forsakes her. She's practically a goth cheerleader."

[Tengu_temp]

I love that we can all agree at least on one thing - that drow suck!

[comicshorse]

I think Drow just tend to be overwritten if the infighting is made more for political position and less to the extermination of entire noble houses, they could work.

[KillianHawkeye]

From what I read in Drow of the Underdark, Drow beliefs can be summed up with two points:

1) Drow only care about power. It can be political power, magical power, personal power, whatever. Drow don't care about wealth, unless that wealth can give them power. And a Drow will do anything to get power, since they have no feelings or morals.
2) Anybody who isn't a Drow is a meaningless tool. Any Drow is by definition better than any non-Drow (even if they are a threat or more powerful, such as Aboleths, Mindflayers, or revolting slaves). Also, Drow females are by definition better than Drow males. (Even the males are raised to believe this.)

This has the following effects on Drow society:

1) Personal interaction between Drow is based entirely on domination and control. Any two Drow that come into repeated contact with each other will attempt to gain some power over the other until a clear dominant emerges. This is the basis of the Drow hierarchy. Females always have an advantage in this situation. Of course, the subservient Drow will always be looking for a way to tip the balance back in their favor, which is why a Drow with anything to lose is by necessity extremely paranoid.
2) Might makes right. This is an undeniable fact of Drow society. A Drow will do whatever she thinks she can get away with. A Drow noble can murder a merchant on a crowded street for no reason and there will be no repercussions. Generally, a Dominant Drow can do anything even to another (less powerful) Drow because the victim doesn't have the power to do anything about it. There are no police in Drow society, because if the victim of a crime or misfortune is unable to defend or avenge herself, then the attacker is considered justified in doing whatever was within her power to do.

There are a couple of exceptions to this, however. Occasionally a weak Drow will make a (temporary) alliance with a more powerful one in order to take down a mutual enemy (or get revenge against one). Also, the Priestesses sometimes interfere in other people's business. Due to Lolth's position at the center of Drow society, the Priestesses almost always exert some control within a Drow city.

---===---

So, with that in mind, to address the situation where a Drow merchant killed another merchant while they were running away from a slave revolt, consider any of the following motives:

- If the killer was in a submissive position, she may have used the chaos of the revolt to off her rival in the hopes of avoiding consequences from the victim's family.
- The killer may have had some reason to seek revenge against the victim and simply took the opportunity, since gaining that power would be more important to her than some insignificant slave revolt.
- The killer just wanted the satisfaction of killing the other Drow herself, so she made sure to do it before the slaves had a chance to catch up and kill them all. (This one's a little unlikely, since a Drow wouldn't normally be this desperate.)
- A hundred other reasons that probably make sense to a Drow.

The reason Drow society is so difficult to understand is because Drow are so deranged and inhuman. It's hard for us as humans to put ourselves in their pointy shoes, since it goes against all of our real world experience.

[Jayngfet]

Has anyone seen anything in 4e on this subject? I'd be tempted to convert for that alone.

[Doomsy]

Honestly. My biggest gripe about Drow society is why the guys take it so easily. Think about it.

You're considered disposable and treated like a second class citizen. You're also generally pretty well armed. They will kill you at a whim and make it hurt and draw it out horribly [I]anyway[I] most of the time just because they can.
You have absolutely nothing to lose.
So why the hell not just whip out the knife and see how many you can kill before the rest drag you down once things start looking down? Or just on a bad day, since you're doomed anyway? Just go nuts and do your best to die rather than get taken alive.

[Jayngfet]

Honestly. My biggest gripe about Drow society is why the guys take it so easily. Think about it.

You're considered disposable and treated like a second class citizen. You're also generally pretty well armed. They will kill you at a whim and make it hurt and draw it out horribly [I]anyway[I] most of the time just because they can.
You have absolutely nothing to lose.
So why the hell not just whip out the knife and see how many you can kill before the rest drag you down once things start looking down? Or just on a bad day, since you're doomed anyway? Just go nuts and do your best to die rather than get taken alive.

Especially bad considering there was a rebellion, despite the fact that the females had next to no magic and were weakened by a hoard of rampaging slaves armed to the teeth.

One wonders how Gromph takes it like he does, considering that he is quite possibly the most powerful mortal being in the universe, capable of binding powerful elementals and transforming demons into pure undiluted evil capable of giving a cleric powers without Lolth .

[TheOOB]

Honestly. My biggest gripe about Drow society is why the guys take it so easily. Think about it.

You're considered disposable and treated like a second class citizen. You're also generally pretty well armed. They will kill you at a whim and make it hurt and draw it out horribly [I]anyway[I] most of the time just because they can.
You have absolutely nothing to lose.
So why the hell not just whip out the knife and see how many you can kill before the rest drag you down once things start looking down? Or just on a bad day, since you're doomed anyway? Just go nuts and do your best to die rather than get taken alive.

Because your goddess tells you to accept that fact that your are a male, and thus inferior to a female. People do a lot of crazy things because of religion. Look at real-world religions who suppress females for example, oftentimes not only do the females not go against it, but they chastise the ones who do. Religion is a powerful tool.

[Jayngfet]

Powerful enough to have someone live through centuries of oppression, ending when you're given a sub-par place in a gloomy doomy afterlife(where you're probably eaten by some unholy thing, or eventually killed by demons).

[Dervag]

Well if Elistrae is any sign Lolth isn't that smart a goddess. Come th think of it, why do drow even worship her, she's cruel, unforgiving, her afterlife will likely kill you(after her oether worshipers probably did), she let's her two main groups of followers slaughter each other for fun, Her Plane of existence defies all logic(STARS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY), could kill you and eat you're soul because she was bored ...or for no reason, beign even more chaotic than evil. She gets her own children to commit genocide over each other so she can posses the survivors.

...What in the nine hells do the Drow see in her?

Power. Overwhelming power, with no real restraints. For the kind of people the drow are, isn't that enough?

The Drow of the Underdark book specifically addresses this on page 26, in the section A Final Word on Drow Society. The short answer is basically that Lolth directly intervenes in Drow society & that without her, the Drow would destroy themselves. She likes the Drow the way they are, but she knows that they must be kept from killing each other.

I always suspected that this what Gruumsh does for the orcs.

Thing is, the orcs are sort of quasistable because they naturally form bands with strong leaders. They don't necessarily fight each other all the time, and they aren't quite as likely to betray each other as drow are. Also, they breed quickly which makes them less likely to be killed off quickly. So while orcs may all be killed if they're too aggressive against the neighbors, they won't end up destroying their own culture as easily as the drow would (without divine intervention).

Honestly. My biggest gripe about Drow society is why the guys take it so easily. Think about it.

You're considered disposable and treated like a second class citizen. You're also generally pretty well armed. They will kill you at a whim and make it hurt and draw it out horribly [I]anyway[I] most of the time just because they can.
You have absolutely nothing to lose.
So why the hell not just whip out the knife and see how many you can kill before the rest drag you down once things start looking down? Or just on a bad day, since you're doomed anyway? Just go nuts and do your best to die rather than get taken alive.

The short answer is "because you are a member of an alien species." Drow aren't human. They don't think like human beings. The "better to die on your feet than live on your knees" reflex you describe is bizarre to them. They will scheme and plot and maneuver to regain control in a dominance relationship, but they won't risk death to bring an end to the whole sordid affair.

Other answers:
-Any drow male who revolts dies horribly now, rather than a century or two down the line."
-The drow males are quite literally beaten into submission from infancy. Is it any more surprising that they don't revolt against their wives than it is that medieval women didn't revolt against their husbands?

[ArmorArmadillo]

According to DotU, Drow also differ from elves in that, although they live for a thousand years, they reach adulthood in about twenty, allowing them to breed fast enough to make up for their massive mortality rate.

Drow society still doesn't make sense, but at least now it makes a little less nonsense.

[Jayngfet]

-The drow males are quite literally beaten into submission from infancy. Is it any more surprising that they don't revolt against their wives than it is that medieval women didn't revolt against their husbands?

Submitting to you're wife is one thing, but not killing the slave who's physically powerless, threatening you're leader, and causing the last meatshield to mutiny because she happens to be female seems a bit stupid.

[Emperor Tippy]

Honestly. My biggest gripe about Drow society is why the guys take it so easily. Think about it.

You're considered disposable and treated like a second class citizen. You're also generally pretty well armed. They will kill you at a whim and make it hurt and draw it out horribly [I]anyway[I] most of the time just because they can.
You have absolutely nothing to lose.
So why the hell not just whip out the knife and see how many you can kill before the rest drag you down once things start looking down? Or just on a bad day, since you're doomed anyway? Just go nuts and do your best to die rather than get taken alive.

Your gripe comes from not understanding psychology. If you know what you are doing you can take a child and get them to believe anything and have that belief last for their entire life. To break that kind of conditioning requires either a truly shocking event that their beliefs explicitly say can't happen or years of continuous effort. Neither of those would occur in drow society.

Add in the fact that they are a might makes right society and that their god is trying to keep everything the same and it gets even worse.

[SolkaTruesilver]

:
-Any drow male who revolts dies horribly now, rather than a century or two down the line."
-The drow males are quite literally beaten into submission from infancy. Is it any more surprising that they don't revolt against their wives than it is that medieval women didn't revolt against their husbands?

A drow male isn't exactly like the Midieval women. After all, Drow males have a lot of power of their own, both magical and martial, and can stand their own against most.

But the thing is, I think the males stay in their place because.. THEY HAVE SOMETHING TO LOOSE. They aren't considered worms in that society, hey! They are on the 2nd and 3rd tier of a society that has about 6-7! Noble Males are of higher rank than slaves, commoners, female commoners, etc... Only the priestresses and the Noble Priestresses are of higher ranking, and the commoner priestress knows better than to upset a powerful male nobledrow.

[Jayngfet]

1. Ryld said that dispite being a high ranking weapons master can not give orders to a random female redshirt, a noble wizard can barley contemplate killing a slave because she's a priestess.

2. "and that their god is trying to keep everything the same and it gets even worse."

Lolth keeps calling herself a deity of chaos but we repeatedly find order in both her and her "chaotic" followers.

[ArmorArmadillo]

1. Ryld said that dispite being a high ranking weapons master can not give orders to a random female redshirt, a noble wizard can barley contemplate killing a slave because she's a priestess.

2. "and that their god is trying to keep everything the same and it gets even worse."

Lolth keeps calling herself a deity of chaos but we repeatedly find order in both her and her "chaotic" followers.

Yeah, I've never really bought the "Drow are Chaotic" thing. They live in this insanely rigid caste-driven society. They kill each other constantly, but even that is ordered: Drow aren't random, you can count on them to kill each other. They're very orderly about it.

They drow are like fidgety kids forced to dress up and pose for a Lolth's twisted Christmas card photo from Hell. (Well...the Abyss technically.)