In the core rulebook, drows are mentioned in an art and fiction piece at the beginning of the character's chapter, in languages, there is a poison named after them, and they are mentioned as being a possible starting race in the bestiary. So they are lore in 1e, and the pictures at the beginning of chapter 2 paint them as wicked, blueish-skinned dark elves. There is also a nice illustration of the city as well, and it is very evocative and striking.
With a small army of merciless dark elf warriors fast on their heels, escape from the drow city seemed unlikely. While the human Sajan and gnome Lini might survive as slaves, Seltyiel knew the drow would only keep him, a half-elf, alive long enough to boast over while they tortured him.
Cursing his mixed blood again, he sneered and turned abruptly, instantly summoning to mind the words of his most devastating arcane fire.
“Come on, you fungus-eating freaks!” he shouted at the relentless drow. “Let me show you how elves from the surface world dance!”
-Pathfinder 1e Core Rulebook, page 19
We next meet them in the Bestiary, where they do not have HD and use character class levels.
Although related to the elves, the drow are a vile and evil cousin at best. Sometimes called dark elves, these cunning creatures prowl the caves and tunnels of the world below, ruling vast subterranean cities through fear and might. Worshiping demons and enslaving most races they encounter, the drow are among the underworld’s most feared and hated denizens.
-Pathfinder Bestiary, page 114
Also, in this entry, it is said, "one of the many demon gods to whom the drow offer worship," so it is left vague. A "spider queen" could be in there, but it isn't laid out explicitly. It also says they are chaotic evil, so it would be demons they worship and not lawful evil devils. So, if we don't want to do a "Great Value renamed spider queen," what are our choices for who they worship?
This leads us to the Lords of Chaos book, and our drow will diverge from their D&D brethren. Let's say no spider queen, and we need to use the choices from this book. The choices we pick here will define our not-D&D drow in ways we might not expect and put a little more thought into who they could have been if Lolth-envy hadn't dominated the lore for them in Golarion.
I know, what? No spider queen?
Who runs drow like that?
First, we need to exclude demons that their enemies could follow, environments they don't like, and concepts where they don't have a frame of reference. Dagon, a demon lord of the sea, is an obvious example. Any demon that serpent-folk, frogs, troglodytes, or other natural enemies are out. Nurgal (deserts and sun), Shivaska (clocks and aberrations), Pazuzu (the sky), and Jezelda (the moon) are all out.
Who are the best ones left? I need to include entries where drow are specifically called out as worshippers. My top twelve are:
- Abraxas = forbidden lore, magic, and snakes
- Andirifkhu = illusions, traps, and knives
- Areshkagal = greed, magical and mundane portals, and riddles
- Cyth-V’sug’s = disease, fungus, and parasites
- Flauros = fire, salamanders, volcanoes
- Haagenti = alchemy, invention, transformation (drow flesh warping mentioned)
- Jubilex = ooze monsters, poison, sloth
- Mazmezz = bindings, driders, and vermin (spiders too, but not the same)
- Nocticula = assassins, darkness, lust
- Shax = envy, lies, murder
- Socothbenoth = perversion, pride, and taboos
- Zura = blood, cannibalism, and vampires
That is quite a rogue's gallery of demons and paints them as very dark and twisted kin. Seeing this list makes me sad that more effort was not put into them in 1e, and the team spent a little time creating their own drow flavor that had nothing to do with the archetypical "spider queen" of D&D.
I would put a few of these above others, but I would not discount some strange ones. Snake-themed drow and fire drow sound very cool. Vampire drow cults sound amazing.
Notice no Orcus and no undead except for vampires. So out is the drow who summons the dead. Other significant omissions are the four major evil gods of the setting, including Lamashtu. So, no drow that breeds monsters. No Baphomet so no minotaur allies. No werewolves. No hags. No winged creatures. No storms. No gargoyles. No troglodytes. We can start to see enemies appearing.
In the book that covers devils, drow is never mentioned as worshippers, so get that lawful evil drow society out of your head.
In fact, if you look at this list and put a little effort into it, they come out much better than D&D's dark elves. The mess of temples and beliefs in drow society is something akin to a horror movie of nightmares and sadism. These cults and vile sects of darkness elevate them as better dark elves than the monotheistic ones of Greyhawk, and the softer ones in the Forgotten Realms.
Drow priestesses that wield fire? Drow alchemists? A god of illusions and another of riddles? Drow vampires? Fungus and ooze clerics? Inventions? Flesh warpers?
We are coming out way ahead on exciting and varied drow here. These old-school dark elf baddies are amazingly diverse and can throw plenty of wicked magic at you - not just your typical spider magic. D&D drow? Webs, spiders, poison, assassins, stealth, and magic. These drow? Some may summon spore clouds to choke you with, while others throw poison gas, some are vampires, some are inventors, others summon insects, some can summon snakes, others throw fire, some oozes, etc.
By the time Pathfinder 2E rolls around, drow is as they were but renamed "cavern elves" in some lame way to include them without calling them out. They are monsters in the PF2 Bestiary called drow (a strange lack of consistency) and have turned blue-white. They weren't presented as character options in the base game, so you can tell they are already being pushed out the door here and deemphasized.
By the time the remaster rolls around, they get erased.
People like to paint this as "people angry they lost Drizzt."
If you know your lore, we lost so much more.
The drow are in the 5.1 SRD in the Creative Commons, so they are not owned by anyone.
Still, are the drow a "junk ancestry" if they can never be split from D&D, Drizzt, Lolth, and matriarchal spider worship? If the general public can' unsee this connection and view them in a new light, it may be time to step away. You get characters in comics like this (a few notable examples in the Batman mythos), where they just get so overused, sell-out, corporate, and tired that you can never get away from their toxicity.
Are the drow the Harley Quinn of roleplaying? Once incredible and iconic but leaned on so hard for profit, she became a sell-out Bart Simpson corporate counterculture character. Give her a rest and reboot 5 years from now. Honestly, give me a Joker without her.
Part of me feels D&D because they see Drow as 'product identity' - will always have them be one way, and they will never really change. But then again, they put them in the Creative Commons. Everyone owns them now.
Me? The dark elves are not overused. I can split the profit-minded corporate crap from the diamonds. The original Pathfinder 1e drow ancestry is fantastic, as long as you never use the spider queen. Lolth and the Spider Queen are tired and overused tropes. Give them a rest, too.
She never existed, or the demons saw how she ruined the drow. They killed her before she ever ascended. The drow ended up worshipping who's here.
And they turned out so much better once free.
Ironically, this backstory enables the goody-goody drow if you want. What inevitably happens, though, is the drow morph into "elves," and there is no real difference and no reason to keep them around.
The list of demons they worship, the inability of gamers to disassociate them from D&D, and people wanting to play them, yet every time they are mentioned, they are creatures from horror movies in the setting, created a toxic soup where Paizo probably thought it best to bin them altogether. Also, that list of demons is a laundry list of themes they want to remove from the game, so in addition to being highly messy to re-integrate into the lore, just putting the work needed to make them an essential part of the setting would have taken too much focus and effort.
But the Pathfinder 1e drow was cursed in the best possible way as the ultimate subterranean evil. You put a little effort into thinking how they could exist in Golarion, and you end up with something far better than the dusty cobweb worshippers of D&D.
Every time I do a little reading and research, I find another fantastic thing we lost with Pathfinder 2E. I still like 2E, but things like this make it difficult to leave the wonderful world of possibilities that Pathfinder 1e created.
3.75E is still a solid game and very playable. The designers on it are among the all-time greats.
Also, knowing all the above could help you integrate these ideas into a 2E game - but it is sad this all lives in history. At least we can still have the PDFs, and Paizo deserves praise for these earlier works. After all, they created the original world and maintained the books as PDFs for sale. At least history can be preserved, learned from, and recognized. I may disagree with the current direction of the 2E game, but the system is solid and fun. I thank them for all their beautiful creations and support.
Thank you.
It is essential that this article isn't all vinegar, and the ideas here can be used to craft a 2E game that uses the old lore with the new rules. However, all divorces are painful and have loss, hurt feelings, self-blame, and pain. Turning those feelings into a positive makes us human - and good people. Me? A lot has already been done in the old game, and it is still worth playing and exploring for ideas like this.
Otherwise, no one will ever know.
I can't blame Paizo for the censorship either; if they kept going with the triggering, edgy, 2010s content, they would be forced out of business by Twitter trolls. They do their best given the sad time we live in. I am a classic liberal. Artists should be free to create without fear.
The 2010s were one of the best eras of gaming, and Paizo was the reason why.
Today, we live in that era's shadow with all the fear, outrage, and censorship.
And we lost so much.
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