Drow

The Drow
(also known as Mori'Quessir)

The Drow Build

Drow vary in shape, featuers, and hair color as greatly as humans do. The only exception to this rule is their uniformly jet-black skin (the few exceptions tend to be bone-white albinos).
The majority of drow have snow-white hair from birth, yellowing (if female) or graying (if male) and thinning with great age. Rare drow have naturally silver or copper-hued hair, although there are those who deliberately dye their hair silver.
Most drow have red eyes. Others have green, brown, or black. Various shades of gray, even amber and rose-hued eyes are not unknown. All drow eyes tend to grow redder when they are hungry or upset. Yellow eyes usually denote illness, disease, poisoning, or the presence of certain detrimental magics.
Blue and purpel eyes (and all the tints thereof) are the most unusual eye colors, and usually denote human or surface-elven blood somewhere in the drow's ancestry.
Drow teeth may be black, white, or purple, and their gums, tongues, and throats pink, red, or purple.
Drow females tend to be bigger and stronger than males. Both sexes tend to be lithe, slim, and graceful in build, features, and movements, much as other elves appear to human eyes.

Driders - Misfit Drow -

In the dangerous societies of Lolth-worshipping drow, there are few individuals who openly defy the Spider Queen, or whose actions show a possible disregard for her will, aims, and the safety of her clergy and the drow community. These "suspect" drow usually perish throughtheir own actions, or are driven into exile, where they die at the hands of some predator of the Underdark.

A few, however, manage to escape the wrath of their betters. These drow are a danger to Lolth-particularly if they show signs of wanting to defy clerical authority, or change the balance of power and wreck the community (by ending House rivalries, for example, or allowing tolreance of the other drow faiths). All drow wizards are considered potential hazards, and must undergo The Test to determine their loyality both to the nobility and the Spider Queen.

The Test

The abduction of wizards conduct a test of their loyalities is a paramount duty of the priestesses of Lolth. (Loyality, of course, varies from being to being, at will -some say whim- of the Queen of Spiders.)
Testing always involves a thorough magical mind-reaming, so that no deception is possible. In rare cases, the individual must be magically transported to Abyssal layers controlled by Lolth, for her personal attention. Some die during The Test, or must be destroyed, but it is the intent of Lolth not to waste the energies of the "unfaithful."
Drow who fail the test are transformed by the will of Lolth into driders. In Faerun, the transformation involves a magical ceremony performed by a pristess and overseen by yochlol (a Handmaiden of Lolth).
The power for and control of the transformation comes from Lolth herself, through the yochlol. Permanent alteration of a drow into a drider cannot be done independently by the drow.

The Transformation

Briefly, they are magically alterated -in a process of incredible agony- into the form of a spider, retaining their own bodies from the waist up. Driders remain the memories, personalities and abilities of their previous form. They soon learn to bite down on their internal poison sacs, and spit their venom onto all the weapins they use (each application dries into a sticky covering and is effective for 3 strikes of the weapon).
Needless to they those abilities are formidable (60% being high priests and the rest are wizards). Also they are able like all drow to fight with two weapons. In their transformation driders become immune to all poisons, but lose most of their magic resistance.
There are some Driders that are able to spin webs. Each can cover a 10' square area. Only a drider that created such a web can use it; it i a danger to all other creatures.

Drider Life

Embittered by their fate, driders are driven out of drow communities, or penned in sealed-off or guarded areas of the Underdark to fend for themselves (and slay intruders who might otherwise go on to penetrate the drow community). Many are driven by the desire to die, preferably in battle with drow. All are driven by a spider-like thirst for blood.
This death wish, coupled with the rage and hopelessness most driders feel, results in a near-berserker fury in combat.
Driders are violant, aggresive, tireless hunters, governed by shame, hatred, and fear, who delight in nothing more than slaying drow. They rarely associate with drow ot other driders, though occasionally other outcasts or even drow communities will come to some task-for-reward agreements usually seem to end with the death of the drider, due to treachery or the impossibility of the task. A surprising number of driders take precautions that carry one or more drow down to death with them in these instances.
Most driders hunt alone, or in the company of a few huge spiders. They are tireless stalkers, for hunting is all that is left to most, to give purpose to their lives. Their blood-thirst and desire to do the maximum harm (especially to drow) leads most driders to arrange many traps, missle.caches (such as boulders that can be dislodged from the ledges), and ambush sidtes around their habitual lairs. These are to discourage drow hunting bands (drow youths often try to prove themselves, or enjoy a little sport, by drider-baiting or -beheading).
A lone drider can surprise opponents half the time by moving as silently as possible. Ist hearing, smell and sight are improved and it can flawlessly climb walls (although it is too heavy to cling to ceilings).
All elves take a dim view of driders. For drow, fear is paramount; in most elves of surface races, disgust predominates. Peaceful dealings with drow are therefore rare and precarious, at best.

Station and Rank

Drow society is stronly matriarchal, with females holding all positions of power and responsibility in goverment, the military, and in home. Males are effective fighters, and can become priests and wizards of minor power. Outside drow communities , they are rarely encountered without female commanders. Male-commanded drow groups are generally either streeakh, "suicide squads", or are dobluth (outcasts) who have rejected the traditional authority-structure of the drow.

Social station is the most important thing in the wolrd of the drow. Ascension to greater power is the ultimate goal in drow society. Assassination is the preferred tool in this job. It must be used discreetly in the city setting, for to openly murder or wage war (on a rival house) brings down the merciless might of drow justice (not because of the act itself, simply as punishment for the boorish act of fighting in public).

Outside the patrol-range of cities, however, might is right, and Houses and merchant clans often battle each other openly in the wild Underdark.

Dark Elven Dealings

Drow trust no other creatures, including (or "specially") other drow. The relations of such a paranoid race with others is uneasy, to say the least.

Possible equals (the drow admit no race as their superior) such as illithids and duergar are dealt with a mixture of armed truces, hard bargaining, subtle threats, magic, and mutual-gain pacts. Only exceptional drow individuals come to trust another being fully (and live to tell the tale!) in cities of Lolth-worshippers. Trusting drow are more common among the worshippers of Eilistraee, but even theirs is hard to gain.