Are there any Drow in Birthright?

[Lifesbane]

I have never really thought about using drow in birthright simply because there is so much antagonism between Sidhelien and humanity anyway. You can use Sidhelien as enemies for human adventurers without the need for drow.

You could certainly have a group of malicious elves who retreated underground after losing their lands to the humans and introduce them that way but to be honest they wouldn't seem much different to 'good' Sidhelien other than skin colour and location.

If you went further back in time they could even be elven rebels from losing a civil war. Again though given how divided elven society is they would probably just seem like a different elven realm but with a chip on its shoulder against other elves.

Tuar Anwyn and Rhoubhe's followers might be options as well but as Deathknyte has said they again lack religion and Rhoubhe is too male to lead AD&D drow.

A better alternative might be to have a cult of Sidhelien who took to worshipping Kreisha after Deismaar and got banished from elven society from worshipping a human god. That way you would get the elven outcasts, matriarchal society and evil goddess into the mix. You could throw an awnshegh or two into the mix as well if you felt like it.

[Deathknyte]

A better alternative might be to have a cult of Sidhelien who took to worshipping Kreisha after Deismaar and got banished from elven society from worshipping a human god. That way you would get the elven outcasts, matriarchal society and evil goddess into the mix. You could throw an awnshegh or two into the mix as well if you felt like it.

Here is a thought, a tribe of elves that remained loyal to Azrai retreated to Aduria instead of going north with the rest of the Elves. I wouldn't make them black or give them anything that regular elves wouldn't have, other than access to clerical magic of Kreisha's priesthood. You would however, have to come up with WHY they worship a human god when their original culture rejects the whole idea. One way would be that an avatar of the ice-goddess visited them or convinced a respected elder to begin worshiping her.

I don't think this would really be a good idea though, because what would stop the other gods from doing the same thing to gain a following amongst elvenkind? I wouldn't change their skin color though, it would be simpler for them to infiltrate other elves and the more tolerant human cultures if they could pretend to be from a known elven kingdom.

[Deathknyte]

no Underdark? omg... I've been using Duergars a lot in my campaigns... -_-

I gave it some thought. A way around this is to have the "powers" of a Duergar be generated by clerical items from Laduguer or Abbathor (depending on who will be your dwarves patron) in the form of a stone tooth for each power. They could have learned how to ride the spiders by trial and error or by dominating them with magical tokens.

I would make the teeth unable to be removed without destroying their power so that adventurers could not smash out the teeth and implant them in their own jaws. Or you could simply make them not work for non-dwarvish people.

[AndrewTall]

Just to throw more fuel on the fire.

Drow are dominated by the clergy of their religion. In Birthright, the Elves had no concept of gods and had no idea of how to counter priestly magic. To me this would make a Lolth dominated elven society highly improbable, otherwise the surface elves would have had to face clerical magic from the Drow priesthood.

I don't actually see this as a problem, you just replace the god (in this case Lloth / Lolth) with a powerful sidhe spirit / awnie / ehrshegh (think of the Brecht ehrshegh in Truecht). This guiding spirit is revered not worshipped but that's purely semantics in practice if they set out a strong philosophy. The guiding spirit could use the Serpent's reputed power to grant spells to its followers and voila, a talinir order which can cast clerical magic and has a guiding entity. As has been noted before, a sidhe has plenty of time and capability to get a 100+ bloodline, the sayer could do it in 20-30 years without breaking a sweat if she wanted to do so and trusted her fellows so it isn't even particularly far-out as a concept.

Sidhe I note are fully aware of what a god is, they understand the concept just fine, they simply don't see any reason to worship them - man sidhe are, afterall, older than the human gods, and thousands watched the former bunch die at Deismaar while sidhe love of freedom doesn't fit the "think as you are told" core concept of a religion.

The matriarchy thing can be quietly set aside in my view, the game is wider than lonely nerds huddling in libraries nowadays and the risk of misinterpretations arising from the "photo-negative elf" suggests that the appearance should be kept the same as the regular sidhe as well

[Deathknyte]

I don't actually see this as a problem, you just replace the god (in this case Lloth / Lolth) with a powerful sidhe spirit / awnie / ehrshegh (think of the Brecht ehrshegh in Truecht). This guiding spirit is revered not worshipped but that's purely semantics in practice if they set out a strong philosophy. The guiding spirit could use the Serpent's reputed power to grant spells to its followers and voila, a talinir order which can cast clerical magic and has a guiding entity. As has been noted before, a sidhe has plenty of time and capability to get a 100+ bloodline, the sayer could do it in 20-30 years without breaking a sweat if she wanted to do so and trusted her fellows so it isn't even particularly far-out as a concept.

Sidhe I note are fully aware of what a god is, they understand the concept just fine, they simply don't see any reason to worship them - man sidhe are, afterall, older than the human gods, and thousands watched the former bunch die at Deismaar while sidhe love of freedom doesn't fit the "think as you are told" core concept of a religion.

The matriarchy thing can be quietly set aside in my view, the game is wider than lonely nerds huddling in libraries nowadays and the risk of misinterpretations arising from the "photo-negative elf" suggests that the appearance should be kept the same as the regular sidhe as well

Well, the Serpent is more than just revered, he is actually worshiped by his people as a god. I think this level of belief would grant spells of up to 3rd level. I think that number comes from Planescape though. Anyway, Elves revere their elders too, but the elders cannot grant clerical spells. I would argue that the level of reverence necessary to enable a spirit of some sort to grant spells would be well beyond what a Sidhe would be willing to give. Elves are pretty flighty in most settings and it is suggested that they are kinda flighty in BR as well. After all, they fought humanity for centuries and didn't get very far in driving humans into the sea. Considering that both males and females would fight, and how well they were reputed to fight, they should have been able to shove the humans out of the forests at least. But they did not. I would say this is because they lacked the attention span to keep at it for more than a year or two on an individual basis.

Anyway, I am way off topic now.

[Birthright-L]

I would stay well away from having actual populations of drow in a BR
campaign. The drow are a fun race to use in OTHER settings, but they
just don`t smack of the dynamics of BR for several reason, most of
which have already been described by other posters. I would only add
that including the drow would, in a few ways, vitiate the role of the
sidhe in the setting. The sidhe already are "dark elves" in the
sense that the drow are in other campaigns. Or, at least, several of
the elven realms are "dark" in a way that is comparable. Rather than
replacing an existing BR dynamic with one from GH or FR, I think one
should just go with the things that already exist in BR. Adding drow
isn`t quite as egregious as gnomes, orcs or ninjas, but it is
problematic for many of the same reasons.

With that said... an awnsheghlien or small group (less than a
population level) of degenerate beings that are, effectively, a BR
version of the drow could be interesting if implemented the right
way. There are small pockets of races that exist like that in
Cerilia: the sahuagin with the Kraken, a race of lizard men who are
descended from the Hydra, the Itave (not really a new race, but an
isolated pocket of slightly different tribal characteristics.) It
seems sensible to me that there might be some sort of degenerate
races of Cerilian elves who physically looked like drow, but had many
characteristics that differentiate them from both the FR/GH/standard
D&D race, and made them more "BR-like" in flavour.

Gary

[Muaadeeb]

If we are talking about incorporating clerical magic with elves - I think the main reason why elves are not clerics is because they truly are immortal. If you do not kill a BR elf - then that elf will never die. This concept made the need to worship a deity much less than other races.

Now if we as a DM are looking for a reason why in their campaign Elves has access to divine magic - perhaps saying that certain elves were druids or shamans might not be a bad stretch of the imagination. To me the idea of xenophobic elves who want to reclaim Anuire for the forest seems like a well fitted match.

[Deathknyte]

If we are talking about incorporating clerical magic with elves - I think the main reason why elves are not clerics is because they truly are immortal. If you do not kill a BR elf - then that elf will never die. This concept made the need to worship a deity much less than other races.

Now if we as a DM are looking for a reason why in their campaign Elves has access to divine magic - perhaps saying that certain elves were druids or shamans might not be a bad stretch of the imagination. To me the idea of xenophobic elves who want to reclaim Anuire for the forest seems like a well fitted match.

Good point. What need for an afterlife would an elf need if he or she will live forever? Which brings up the question of inbreeding and an elf's reproductive cycle. Why isn't the world overrun with immortal elves?

[Edonel Bladesong]

Now I didn't dig in my boxes to look for the book but I remember something in Heroes of Light and Shadows about the Elves and the Faeries once being a united race and that they wielded both priestly and wizardly spells (and that now only the Faerie Queen can do so...).

But if using that split the Drow were to be the "elves" that still manipulated priestly magic, I would say that in BR I would maybe bring in the interesting twist that while they manipulate priestly magic, they would have lost arcane/wizardly magic...

Not sure though that I would bring in Lolth, as in my mind, having her present without Corellon seems "unnatural".

[Lee]

I'm in the camp of "BR doesn't need drow, sidhe are scary enough." Same for the Underdark, we have the Shadow World (which looks more like Ravenloft than the Faerie realm to me).

A "reverse negative elf" element that I have used, though: when a party that included sidhe and half-elves crossed into the Shadow World, they found that their skin glowed (faintly, in the case of the half-elves), and that when wounded, their blood glowed even more brightly. THAT really freaked out the players!