Do you think Drow get darker the deeper you go, or more pale?And does any setting do Drow better than forgotten realms? No
>>94913021bottom left
>>>/slop/
>>94913087>>>/sloppyseconds/
>>94913021I say they start out dark at the top levels and become more pale as you get deeper.
Drow society really does enable a lot of storytelling. They're not even evil. Lolth isn't about torturing and eating people, she's femininity taken to its extreme. She's created a civilization in one of the most dangerous and lethal places in the realm, and incessantly shit tests that civilization and its leaders. A constant churn of lethal drama begetting survival, revolution, counter-revolution, and redemption.The lowliest low and highest high is available to any in Drow society because they are encouraged NOT to accept their place. NOT to accept slavery or tyranny. It is the most meritocratic and lethal government in faerun.
>>94913021damn I genned one of those pictures. Personally I like darker. Pale can work, but I like some shade of grey, blue, purple or the like
How many times have your players pressed you to describe the precise skin tone of your drow characters?
>>94913021Drow have dark skin because it protects them from the radiationThe deeper you go the darker they getDrow who go to the surface are more light skinnedFun fact: they don't have melanin, so they sunburn more easily
>>94913791>underdark radiation is what makes drow equipment count as magical>if you take it away from the underdark, it loses its radiation bonusThis never really made sense as described in the books.
>>94913770The advantages of making threads about how elves look like is that it doesn't require one to ever play a single game.
Honestly there's actually very little artwork of drow with darker (especially coal black tier) skin
>>94913973oh yeah? name 1 thing evil about drow then
>>94913973Oh, and I forgot. It was also a jab at feminism saying a matriarchal society will become evil as fuck.
>>94913914
all drow skin colors can work
>>94914028
>>94914028>>94913914Thanks for the non-slop.
>>94913998Slaverycaste system (drow women >drow men>animals>dirt>other racespolitical schemes and backstabbings that makes game of thrones look like childs play.Debauchery, humaniod sacrifices, consorting with demons, etcThere's a campaign called "escape from the abyss" that you were fleeing from the drow...
>oh no an entire party of righteous surface men just as I'm completely defenseless and preoccupied with this ritual
>>94914084okay but ignoring all those things do drow do anything evil?Yeah I didn't think so
>>94914133
>>94913791I thought they had dark skin because it was a curse leveled on them by the king of the elf gods.
>>94914289Radiation is older D&D lore, being cursed by Corellon came later.Other settings tend to copy the curse part.
How Drow society really works:Reproduction is a controlled resource:Men aren't allowed to choose who they breed with, regardless of how strong or fit they are, they are always subservient to Drow women; having sex is a duty, not a reward for being the fittest male. Any Drow woman may choose to mate with any Drow male, but never vice versa. Competition between men is clamped down upon, their violence strictly controlled by the matriarchs so that it never consumes Drow society - men are not allowed to be competitors to each other. The matriarchs furthermore practice eugenic selection and carefully manage both the Drow population, and the traits passed on to their future generations.Magic and Technology offset physical labor needs:Drow civilization is innately adept with magic. They use it to create their homes, defend their fortresses, animate golems, and conduct mundane tasks, and in addition to this, Drow women are more physically and magically suited to physical labor and war than their counterparts in other races. Altogether this limits the reliance Drow society has on male labor to handle all important physical tasks.Lolth and the Priestesses harshly punish rebellion:Religious indoctrination, devotion, and divine punishment (plus punishment by the priestesses) maintain the structural order required to keep Drow society functioning. Men and women stepping out of their roles, refusing to be devoted to Lolth's ways, are harshly eliminated from Drow society. This oppression ensures disenfranchised men and rebellious women contribute to what Lolth has created for them.The Underdark is lethal:There is no room for Drow society to become so catastrophically full of internal strife that they collapse. Every Drow knows this. If their society ever becomes too mismanaged, too much in-fighting, then dozens of other races and monsters around would pounce and take advantage. Drow are all keenly aware that their moves and machinations must be balanced.
How Drow society really works, continuedThen Lolth gets bored:All of the above lasted about fifty years, and was fun for a while, but then Lolth decided "fuck it" and just declared that anyone who enforced the old rules (except the "women > men" and "don't hurt spiders" parts) should be put to death. Over a period. In an amusing fashion.
>>94913021>slelfsugh
None of these are purple enough.
>>94913021The best colour is all colours. I want a girl of each shade, up to pure black, in my drow harem.
>>94914033mmmmm.. nah.The bronze, pink, and cream colors don't work imo. The other 4 in the center are all fine I guess.
>>94913914It's hard to draw people with very dark skin.
>>94913021
Your slop can't carry a thread topic and your elf obsession couldn't either. Stop reposting this, retard.
>>94916777it's bedtime go to sleep
>>94915787>drow haremthis sounds unsafe
>>94916777If OP was truly obsessed with elves, he would make good threads with them.It's just an excuse for his slop, and his questions are dumb one-note garbage.
>>94913021Traditional games?
>>94918087Thanks for the bump.
>>94915808Original flavor Pirotess is actually the best
Feel like we have this thread every month.
>>94917474It's like keep Betta fish, you need a large enough palace so that each one can have her own territory or else they fight.
>>94918706You'd need them to fight though so they expend all their energy doing that instead of gunning for you. It's a delicate balance
>>94913021This is probably my favourite shade for them. They should, though, like humans, have varying subtle hue changes depending on environment, diet, general genetic drift, etc. IMO the lightest they should go is the bottom left of your slop.
>>94919256too earthy, I prefer a subtle blend of purple or pink
>>94917474If you wanted a safe elf harem you'd just get some wood elves or something. Part of the thrill with drow comes from the chance that they'll disembowl you if you're not careful.
Do dark elves like non-consensual ear rubbing?
I thought drow are player characters and enemies/allies in campaigns.
>>94919799I feel like the purplish stuff kinda misses the point. It makes them look more like evil woodland fey or night elf type creatures.
>>94920892it has to be subtle, not the color of the skin itself, but the hint of the color. Like how there's black blue and black brown
Drow skin colour is affected by the fungi they consume. Just like the colour and taste of their breastmilk.
>>94913021Very dark bluish purple or grey, depending if dark elf or dunmer.>B-but obsidian black!doesnt look as good as you think.
Im preferential to my head canon that drow skin is highly mutable due to the radiation of the underdark. If a drow stays in the underdark then their skin turns obsidian black. If they live on the surface but only come out at night, then their skin turns blue or purple. If they live on the surface but operate primarily during the day, their skin lightens up to grey.
>>94920723>drow are kept in check by being harder, stronger and meaner than them, otherwise they'll sense weakness and kill you>this means your entire drow harem occasionally tries to kill you and it's up to you to overpower and punish themdrow sure are fascinating creatures
>>94923114Drow harems are unnatural. Men don't own women or have harems in drow society; that puts men above women.
>>94923135that explains their behavior, clearly only the strongest and smartest can successfully keep a drow harem
>>94913021Either really dark grey or some dark blue or purple like on War of the Spider Queen covers.
>>94920892The purple is artists cheating. They want to give the impression of darkness, but they can't actually draw as dark as they want and still give detail. Using blue as a stand-in for black is a long-standing artistic convention; purple is just a variation.
>>94913021I like a mix, some are ebony black, others are lighter ash or grey. Bit of variety in there.
>>94918677Probably because we do. It'd be even more often if the jannies pruned this shit, though, so I guess it's a silver lining that you can just hide this piece of shit thread for the month that it'll sit in the catalog.
>>94913615Ebony, ash, grey, white, marble etc?
>>94915787>>94917474By harem he means doms.>>94920723This anon knows what's up
>>94920723
>>94923135I will make my drow wives live by human law. We shall have a hillside mansion near the coast in Calimshan, with brazier-lit halls and tall ceilings, and a throne where I shall sit, surrounded by cushions, on which shall lay my beautiful wives. I will read them stories and play boardgames with them all day, while my servants and viziers manage the estate.
>>94913021None of these. The ideal Drow color is pitch-black, like shadow. Their hair as white as spider-silk. Making them purple is woke bullshit, and less interesting visually.
>>94913021I don't really care. That's not relevant to whether they occupy a cool niche within a setting that makes me excited to use them.For what it's worth, mine are pure black skin. But that has nothing to do with whether or not they're used in a way that makes the game more fun to play. And that's the only thing that matters.
Drow are fascinating. I get that they eat mostly mushrooms, but how do they approach other needs? There is no wood, do they have metal or stone furniture? What about alcohol, I doubt mushrooms have enough sugar to ferment. Also there are no birds living in the underdark, what do drow stuff their pillows with? And the fashion style surely cannot be just spider silk and underdwarf hides. How do they wipe? On the surface, you have leaves, you could make paper from tree pulp, but in underdark, you would rely on dried mushrooms? Fur? Where do they bathe? Do they have hot spring spas? What is day to day life like for your ordinary underdark commoner?
>>94929423Well, fungi can produce wood-analagous growths, and there's relatively crude methods of making fungi paper, fungi wood, and fungi leather. Some of these processes are done by creating a 3D enmeshing of the fungi with 'food' for it to eat and grow into. The specific requirements probably need particular types of fungi, but it's not hard to imagine some alien-magical fungi species in the underdark that has 'bark' and 'wood' stems. Lots of fungi also contain fermentable sugars, so there's no reason they can't be used to brew alcohol, either.Then you've still got cave moss, stone, metal, spider silk, giant insects, and deep rothe to create materials from. Nevermind any rarer creatures.Plus magic, which can do anything and everything and solves all problems.Water we already know is very common in the underdark with entire oceans down there.So that covers all your basic materials and civilizational needs basically completely. In the worst case scenario you can just say magic does it and the problem is solved.
>>94929423I don’t know about the other stuff but drow clearly use bidets.
>>94929830because they're french?
>>94929785Yeah, wizard did it hand-wavium would be simple, but I am more interested in what a society formed with material limitations would be like. Thanks for the suggestions. If there are underdark oceans, then fishing could provide nice source of food too. I guess even if mushrooms couldn't be used for making an alcoholic beverages, the culture could be formed around shroom consumption, instead of drinking. Fungiculture could lead to cultivation of new varieties. Rothe could be nice source of milk, meat and wool, providing Drow with cheese, slices of steak and clothes. Water could be boiled, so no need to drink beer and wines, Drow could have fungi infusions, and recreationaly iingest mushrooms and other substances. Difference between drug and poison being in the dosage. Moss sponges would be useful in bathrooms and toilets. Maybe slimes and gelatinous cubes used for cleaning in the areas that don't have an access to hot spring caverns. Spiders, caterpillars and other creepy crawlies instead of doggies and cats as pets are given. Decorations in homes could be made with luminescent materials, for rgb aesthetic. Overall, life in Underdark don't seem that dark, might be comfy.
>>94930943the bigger ecological problem is that there's nothing for fungi to eat in a caveit's like someone realized plants need light to grow, but didn't realize fungi need dead shit to growyou can't just grow fungi out of rockapparently at some point someone decided to explain it away with "underdark radiation" lmao
>>94931030Maybe we could grow the fungi in rothe manure? Bodies of dead (or alive, for extra horror) slaves? Or dirt golems, like in Dungeon Meshi (but here we again get to wizards and shit).
>>94931181There needs to be an ecological cycle outside civilization or there wouldn't be fungi or anything eating fungi to begin withOn the surface you have plant and animal life everywhere dying and creating a detritus of dirt with a ready supply of energy from the sun.In the underdark there's far less life, it's practically barren, there's little dirt, there's no sunlight. Your energy sources are heat from deep underground and underdark radiation, but there's an entire ecology missing. There shouldn't just be fungi, there should be basically everything the surface has.
>>94929854No it just clearly fits with drow culture. There’s no way drow wipe. You can’t imagine a priestess of Lolth wiping, she would obviously have an elegant little spiderweb pattern bidet.
>>94931472>In the underdark there's far less life, it's practically barren, there's little dirt, there's no sunlight. Your energy sources are heat from deep underground and underdark radiation, but there's an entire ecology missing.I don't think this is true. You can take like the Underdark in BG3 as an example: they didn't invent all the stuff there. The Underdark has its own ecology which is highly predatory and more competitive than the surface ecology, but not necessarily too nutrient deficient to sustain a civilization.
>>94923135Vhaeraunites have them, but they're weird anyway and their harems aren't full DrowI'm starting to think they're a breeding cult
>>94929830>>94931967I was expecting "their toilet slaves clean them".
>>94913021AI Slop faggot, kill yourself you faggot ass loser.
>>94913021>What is the ideal Drow colorAqua blue.
>>94937345!
Bluish gray. It's actually a radiotrophic mold that lives symbiotically in their skin cells and protects them from radon gas and fissile mineral deposits in their underground home.
>>94937369Yup, that's the stuff.
>>94913021Fuck off, goyslopspammer.
>>94937483The mods allow it.This time. For some reason.
>>94914289That's the mythologized rationale. Earlier editions of D&D generally allowed competing explanations to exist simultaneously, and didn't just default to a singular truth decreed to all by divine fiat. This wasn't just D&D, either, you see this tendency in everything from Warhammer to Star Wars.I blame marketability and autism for the cancers of today.
>>94937495The mods are fucking garbage, does not even know what trolling means, and only act when personally offended.
>>94937523It's caused by guys like todd howard who don't want players "to be lied to"Good settings leave the explanations up to debate; it's the radiation, it's a curse, it's a blessing, it's evolution. You don't have any single explanation because each plausible one can be used by a DM and it leave room for authors to work when something they never considered calls an explanation into question, "But evolution selects for a lack of pigmentation in the dark, not more of it!". Which would otherwise beget some abstraction of a deus ex machina, "well because I said so", which the fewer you have in a setting, the better.Plus, with multiple possible interpretations, the ambiguity also gives room for the insertion of new explanations, as nothing is actually set in stone. This lets you incorporate fan theories that often explain things way better than you would've come up with alone (as fans will autistically debate for months with each other on drow AI slop imageboards, finely tuning their theories the whole way).
>>94937475
>>94938087he really ought lose the eyeslight thing and just wear a kettle helmet with a bevor
>>94937676>But evolution selects for a lack of pigmentation in the dark, not more of it!That's not strictly true. Real-world cave-dwelling animals lack pigmentation because they also have no or extremely reduced eyes, so coloration doesn't contribute to the ability to hide. However, deep sea fish also live in complete darkness, and while some of them do lack pigmentation many others are extremely black (IIRC a species of viperfish is the blackest animal known, with pigmentation that absorbs 99,99% of all light that hits it). That's because despite the lack of ambient lighting many deep sea animals are bioluminescent, so many actually have very good vision to see in the dim light created by themselves and other animals, and skin coloration that makes them harder to see in the same light.Considering the Underdark is often depicted with glowing fungi and crystals and most animals and humanoids we see there do have eyes, the evolutionary conditions are probably more similar to the deep sea than real-world caves. That's also supported by the fact that underdark ecosystem is full of predators of relatively large prey, instead of animals that only eat bacteria or tiny invertebrates.
>>94938189Here's an idea: Magically bio-luminescent chemosynthetic algae feed off underground thermal vents and hot springs (and maybe magic rocks) and in combination with the magic underdark crystals produce enough radiative energy for plants (and other stuff) to survive off photosynthesis and arcanosynthesis. This in turn provides food to herbivorous animals, and those provide food to carnivores, and everything that dies provides food to fungi, which with bacteria further release and excrete excess nutrients back into the ecosystem for algae, bacteria, and plants to re-use. (In fact, fungi form symbiotic networks with plants and 'trade' nutrients for sugars the plants create)Possibly the photosynthesis could be different from the surface by being more spread across the light spectrum (and arcanofrequencies), so it stays relatively dark in all spectrums, but the broad combination of spectrums enables a similar concentration of energy in the ecology as occurs on the surface. This way it stays fairly dark and maintains the aesthetic.Additionally it would provide a reasonable explanation (and rule change) for darkvision only working in the underdark and not the surface - it's a broad spectrum sensation, and outside the underdark away from the arcanofrequencies, infrared, ultraviolet, and whatever else life down there emits, it becomes much less capable.
>>94934802How can I get that job? I like my elves clean.
>>94938765We could even expand this further with fungi forming (like they do IRL) mycorrhizal networks. Basically fungi form highways between areas of dense energy like geothermal vents and hotsprings, magic crystals, and civilizations. Potentially even with some kind of large-scale myconid water/nutrient transport without the need of direct natural river connections, thus the fungi not only enable trade in nutrients and energy between isolated ecosystems, but also enable trade using boats or canoes between cities in the underdark AND this can be created by simply growing fungi between locations until they connect together.
>>94938189If the Underdark is analogous to the deep sea, does that imply that the drow should have the ability to use swallow whole on creatures of their own size category?
Page 10 bump.
>>94921137>picrelshe's so perfect bros...
>>94938187Some kind of lightweight design that doesn't block vision, hearing or gets in the way should be the way to go. It's not like a helmet is going to stop a musketball anyway
>>94944317She doesn't even look elven at all. She's a human with purple skin.
>>94944317She is, always makes me wonder how would drow feel about human simps, whether we would be seen as pathetic or we would be welcomed into Underdark as that kind of weaklings, with the upside is that you don't need to worry about daggers in your backside.
Damn.
>>94944787then just do a kettle helmet with bevor and no slitskettle helmet and bevor is already the best possible mix of maximum awareness and protection that you can get with armor
>>94913021Red. Due to them being covered in their own blood.
>>94944844>long knife ears and exotic elven skin colourlooks like an elf to me idk what you're on about
>>94946501i would go down there and one by one start fixing Drow babes with my PENIS. i would wake them up to the power of human male virility with my PENIS. i would become their king and lead my harem to depose Lolth and establish a new order in the Underdark, at the center of which I rule with my PENIS.
>muh
>>94946883
>>94946865Fapart tends to miss that and video games tend to tone it down a lot, but many elves from various settings (including Forgotten Realms) have a specific skull shape and specific facial feature that differentiate them from humans beyond just the pointy ears.
>>94946883Fix? Why do you think they need fixing? Drow cuties are perfectly fine, you should be member of harem, not have a harem!
>>94946955Elder scrolls does this. I've seen more non video game settings have normal looking elves than the opposite.>>94946960this is slavetalk. you deserve your fate. when I'm king of the drow you will be castrated and worked to death in the mushroom mines
>>94946992>worked to death in the mushroom minesMy sides
>>94948038mushroom farms and mycoteriums sounds like a better way to describe it than a mine
>>94948459only if you're a NERD, destined to die BITCHLESS ("sans Bitch" as the french in france would say) in the mushroom mines
>>94946992Mushroom mines are perfect for working to death. The dead bodies can sustain new mushroom growths.
>>94944317She's ok I guess. Nothing great.
>>94948877this guy gets it>>94948899to the mines you go
>>94946955Cool pic of a celt (black, pointy ears)
>>94946992>king oh no, who's gonna tell him?
>>94913021>And does any setting do Drow better than forgotten realms?Dragonlance, they don't even have them
>>94954884They have even better races - kender and gnomes!
>>94954841see >>94946883
>>94955235unfortunately rocks fell on your PENIS and you DIED
>>94931030That's why the superior drow don't live underground
>>94955514I'd be cool with this if it wasn't just racists projecting drow onto haitian blacks (with light mesoamerican mixing) and instead gave drow an interesting aesthetic and culture. Eberron is just drow but the opposite of cool.
>>94955442incorrect. i succeed because im good like that
>>94913839It was a balancing ass pull so you couldn't gank a bunch of drow and be awash in like . . . was it +3? . . . all kind of medium tier (in the sense of the scale going from +1 to +5) magical equipment.
>>94956787They should've just done limited charges or an alignment: evil requirement to use drow gear. No need for a lore asspull about underdark magic lol
>>94913021Drow should be "blacker than ink" as Snorri Sturluson wrote.>>94955574If anything drow should take material culture elements from Picts and other Celtic cultures, plus the Melniboneans.>>94946955The way I have it, elves not only have long pointed ears, but sharp aristocratic facial features and slanting eyes with large, luminous irises similar to cats. Drow particularly have creepy red eyes that glow in the dark.>>94959302You know, it would be fitting if drow arms and armor were cursed to prevent non-drow use, pick one up and the weapon turns against you or you go berserk against your comrades. Reminds me of Tyrfing from Norse myth, which I did use for a drow PC's weapon...
>>94959302Neither would've really achieved the design goal of keeping shit out of player hands.
>>94937888where are her nipples
>>94960958She sacrificed them to Lolth for power.
>>94913021dark elves should be brown
Coal black skin, as Gygax intended, as described in the original Fiend Folio.
>>94965945no and pirotess is literally the only example of where this looks good and it only does look good on her because of the all white outfit.Brown elves dont look good, only pirotess looks good
That bump from page 9 was filled with traditional games discussion.
>>94969833plenty of good looking choco elves out there, but you have a point they look really good in white
Drider are seen as failures in Drow society, so why does Lolth take the form of a Drider, like... ever?Is this some cry for help? Part of her bipolar disorder? Self harm? Does she actually despise herself?
Do drow really just... live around spiders like this? How are they not constantly getting eaten
>>94971306Corellon cursed herit is kind of ironic because for Lolth spiders and the female drow are the two most beautiful things in the world
>>94971452I think we should retcon corellon's entire existence
>>94971366Spiders are friends. They keep your house free of pests, you should be nice to spider. When you see spider, let it chill at your place, it will protect you. In many cultures around the world, spiders are considered symbols of luck.
>>94913021Picrel is peak drow design. The only argument I will entertain is white hair.
>>94973493she doesn't even have elf ears
>>94973093>Spiders are friends.There was a reason the episode of Peppa Pig about spiders got banned in australia, anon.
>>94971306Yeah, that form being a punishment made no sense to me either so in my game, the drider form is a reward Lolth can bestow to her heralds. (max of 3 full drider at any time, but lesser ones are drow women with extra spider appendages)
>>94913021White hair, red eyes, dark skins in grays, blacks, blues and purples.
>>94971306>why does Lolth take the form of a DriderShe doesn't outside of 4th edition where they made it a blessing.In all other editions she has - Spider Form- Drow Form- Spider Form with Drow Head only for taunting people, but she rarely does this.
>>94973493In one of the books (wotsq) two of the drow characters come across a pair of humans with drow ancestry, they can tell by the color of their skinIs imagine that's what they'd look like
>>94974084I always saw it as a punishment because youre not supposed to ask lolth for power unless absolutely necessary so this is what happens when lolth thinks youre weak and need a "power boost"
I don't care about the colour of their skin, I like them because of the role reversal culture. I would love to be owned by a woman, even if she owned other men.
>>94913021They should have regional variation like humans.
>>94913021Drow are simply terrible and make no sense in any setting with even minimalistic realism. The ideal Drow colour is see-through, erased from existence, so that these things will stop popping up in settings that would be better without them and the underground 'realm' they bring in with them, and we can get better types of Evil Elf arising without the suffocating 'Drow' blanket to suck them up before development.
>>94955574what the fuck are you talking about?i didn't think haitians were still using bows and spears>>94973631yeah, because while spiders are friends, australians aren't, and those spiders were unfortunately australian
>>94913753>i "genned" thisstay in your containment thread, proompter
>>94913021>Bottom rightI recognise this background
>>94987060I don't.
>>94987065It's the standard reaction of Bing to "character going down the stairs in a dungeon" prompts