The Drow!

March 13, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

Dark Elves so the drow are the elves who in the ancient days listened to lulls call as all elves did but they were the elves who remained faithful to her right as wolf’s betrayal of coral on the creator of elves right as that betrayal was almost complete the other elves listening to the call of the other elf gods pulled back and they realized that even though coral on was a distant God still coral on was their parent and they decided we will be faithful and so they then turned their back on wolf the drow were the ones who stayed with her and they along with their God were cast even further away from the grace of Arvin door than the rest of the else were they were cast literally into darkness and they became a people wholly dedicated to wolf and her scheming and from many many centuries were viewed in the multiverse as a people of evil and in fact the society influenced by law is indeed evil I mean it is it is a wretched thing filled with slavery and very dark magic involving demons it’s highly gendered society where in contrast to some of the darkly gendered societies on the surface which I’ve often been patriarchal there it’s matriarchal and where the male drow have a subservient role that said as we know from our most famous drow Drizzt it is possible for that one of the Dark Elves and and even many of the Dark Elves to break free of lulz influence they still free well many of the drow keep going because they have power because within that society a society that in some ways gathers together elven magic better than many other elven societies do they are able to marshal great might and build these these mighty houses with soldiers of various species monsters at their beck and call and they are able to rule over vast portions of the Underdark and so like any mortal many drow are drawn by power and their God feeds it to them and they many of them are tangled up in this web of deceit and betrayal where the whisper of loathe is constantly encouraging them to backstab each other to get just a bit more powerful I often think of one of the best portrayals I’ve ever seen of what I imagine drow society to be like was the old miniseries I Claudius showing a lot of the terrible scheming that went on in the Roman Empire of all the people poisoning each other and lying to each other and committing adultery with each other it’s sort of like that that series is sort of like a snapshot of what drow society is like but there are drow like Drizzt who walk their own paths who even if they don’t know it intellectually know that like all other elves they are descended from coral on and like other elves have the opportunity to start getting hints that maybe coral on isn’t quite as mad at them all as it always seems and so some of them they begin to respond to the call of the light within themselves and not that often for me is one of the most interesting stories you can tell with the drow is the story of a person who is raised up in a totally corrupt culture that that proudly tramples the downtrodden that enslaves other people’s yet you are a person who stands up against it who says no more and so I think I think the drow actually have a lot of great storytelling potential when you start going down that path and I think that’s also part of why Drizzt has so much appeal that then in a way and it’s far more heroic when a person stands up against their society that is doing so much that is wrong and says I will not be a part of this and that’s really his story and I think that could be the story of a lot of really interesting drow player characters now Morton Canaan’s toma foes also introduces in its bestiary section a number of new drow stat blocks they’re also a ladrón stat blocks they’re also shadow Chi stat blocks so that the DM gets to have some new elf toys to play with just as players get some new elf toys to play with the new drow stat blocks hope flush out the spectrum of drow options that we introduced in the monster manual and specifically focusing on higher challenge ratings so like we have the really powerful stat block for a drow matron mother watch out if you go up against her we have a drow Iraq no man sir we have a drow favored consort which is a really powerful mage who is dedicated to a matron mother we have drown quiz’ ters not a whole lot more about dry ters but they’re there the book goes to a lot of depth about the drought Pantheon as well as going into greater depth about all of the other elf gods it goes into detail on you know the fact that drought Society has this various houses that vie against each other the book also talks about the fact that drow society has developed differently in some D&D world so we talked a little bit about the drow and ember on there a mention of the fact that the Dark Elves of crin actually looked different from drow and other parts of the multiverse they do not have the charcoal or purplish skin that many drow have in other worlds again none of this should be a surprise once a person reads all of the elf storytelling and Morton Kane and some of those because a big part of the elf story is originally they were mutable originally there were a people who could assume almost any form and that helps explain why there are so many different ways that elves look you know from not only these variances among Dark Elves but even think about variances among high elves some some high elves in D&D worlds are very pale others like the Sun elves can have a golden cast to their skin the moon elves can almost have a violet quality to it yet they’re all they’re all high elves wood elves have a variety of different appearances and so again even drow can have various appearances and so the book the book touches on that a bit that this the elf story is a fascinating one and it extends through the DND cosmos in a variety of really fascinating ways we also talked a bit about the fact that on some world’s wealth the name of wealth is not even known it’s just as the name Corwin is not known yet there are sort of it’s almost like echoes in the blood where even if even if and this is true in our world too even if you don’t know the name of your parents you still bear your ancestry with in your blood and so even you know even those Dark Elves who might not know the name of wolf they they still have been shaped by her influence and all just as all elves including drow are originally descended from coral on now one of the neat twists to that we talk about in in Morton Canaan stoma phos is the going back to this notion of changeability is we talk a bit more about something that was discussed in the players handbook and that is there are certain elves who are blessed by coral on because one thing we also hint at is that even though coral on was upset with the elves for turning on him there is also some love in coral on for his children and some of these children are seen to be particularly blessed and one of the signs of this blessing is they are able to change their sex and so when when these elves awaken from their trance at the end of the long rest they can decide whether they are male or female or neither depending on the elves choice now one thing we talk about in the book is this blessing is horrific to the drow it is viewed as it is viewed as a blessing of coral on if it appears in one of the drow it is considered to be extremely subversive because unlike other elves their entire society is gendered and so the ability for a person each day to act will be male or female to drow is considered to be an amazing form of resistance and and of potential anarchy and so the elves who have this blessing are often ones who will then become heroes who will seek out peace with other types of elves and will despite the animosity that other elves have for the drow these blessed drow will often then be permitted to seek sanctuary in the temples of coral on because the other elves cannot deny that if if a drow bears this blessing they cannot deny that the blessing of coral on is upon them and so this is another neat storytelling twist that the book introduces that I think could lead to some really interesting storytelling in people’s campaigns you can learn a whole lot more about the drow

Later today we are talking with @JeremyECrawford about the Dark Elves in D&D. pic.twitter.com/Jo8LyhsapY

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) March 13, 2018

In our latest D&D video, @ToddKenreck and I chat about the story of the drow in "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes," out this May: https://t.co/Rs9bb3kzvq via @YouTube @DnDBeyond @Wizards_DnD

— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) March 13, 2018

Dwarves!

February 15, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

Dwarves in Dungeons & Dragons with @mikemearls https://t.co/lBiOlBZaf3

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) February 14, 2018

Learn about the Blood War in ‘Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes’

February 9, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

Devils demons are chaotic evil and Devils are lawful evil now you’d think hey they’re both evil they share something so maybe they’d come together but now one of the key traits of evil is this sense that I come first and so it’s very hard for evil factions to work together at least for a long period of time so maybe at one point they work together now they definitely don’t and then you have law in chaos which very much the devil’s would love to control the demons if they could the demons just want to tear apart Hell and claim it is their hunting ground and then we also have the further complication that demons and Devils unlike other plainer creatures don’t have the freedom to use magic to just teleport or gate themselves from Hell to anywhere else they are much more restricted they have to be called they need someone outside of the abyss or the hell over the nine hells to call them forth now if someone was to foolishly just build a gateway that was open they could just walk through but they don’t have anywhere near the same flexibility that other plainer creatures have to travel with one exception I mentioned they could just walk from place one place to another someone built a gate that stayed open well in the lower plains that gate is the River Styx the River Styx went through a variety of the lower planes including the abyss and the nine hells so demons naturally travel along the banks or try to sail along the Styx which it’s very treacherous but you can manage it if you’re powerful enough or clever enough and they naturally attack every when they come across and he’ll the nine hells is a very tempting target for them so the demons and devils fight all along the Styx any plane that touches it in the areas around it the demons just simply seek out Devil’s for the three of destroying something else and claiming more territory the Devils are primarily interested in defending the nine hells defending their realms but and when they can making forays into the abyss to just try to you know burn out the infection at its root now that just seems like a very simple two sides that don’t get along fighting but what Morden Kanan would tell you is that this is the root of the balance that evil is obviously a very powerful force in the cosmos of D&D right three of the nine alignments are evil opposed by the three good alignments with a three neutral ones in the middle Morden Kanan in his study would tell you that if one side the demons the Devils one of them was able to win the blood war that would be an apocalyptic end to the universe Asmodeus would be so powerful claiming to entire basically to entire plains in the entire planar structure and so many resources and so much power that no one would be able to stand against him he would impose the hierarchy and bureaucracy of hell on everything the outer Plains and the inner planes demons other pan if they were able to overrun Hell and claim it as their own would similarly the demon princes would grow so powerful that as they just bashed against other Plains and sawed pathways into the inner planes and other and to other outer Plains they would overrun the universe so in some ways it’s a cosmic luck that these two factions are locked in combat but neither one either has the organizational capabilities to say let’s stop fighting like the demons are chaotic all it takes is one Demon Lord to decide he wants to try to invade hell or just demons wandering down the sticks and attacking things which then puts hell which would sue for peace potentially if they could but they can’t because they who would they that they could create a peace treaty with Orcas that doesn’t have any and nothing stops a demagogue in or anyone else from attacking so the locked in this endless struggle and the universe is all the better for it now what this means though is that this struggle spills over everywhere you’d think a two evil factions fighting this is great it’s going to keep them busy it makes things easier for the good guys Beck has the opposite effect because anywhere you have demons you’ll soon have Devils trying to thwart them and vice versa and on top of that since both demons and Devils are really driven by claiming souls the Material Plane of mortals both of them have very aggressive cults in the inner plan and Material Plane on various worlds of D&D that seek to subvert mortals claim artifacts claim secrets if someone could find a secret that allowed the demons or Devils to move freely across the plains that would end the blood war in one side vapor or the other so just the broad gresham that both sides brain means that every world every world of D&D is is in danger and that demons and Devils would happily scour them looking for an advantage because they they know the stakes are that high and they want to win and they’ll do anything to achieve victory it’s ranged back and forth I mean it’s the history’s as old as the cosmos and so it’s raged into accident Lane but it’s always been there and in some ways it’s become such a monotonous part of the cosmos that many sages just feel it’s just part of the it’s just part of the mechanism of the world of the plains that there’s it’s always going to be the stalemate and we’ll never change but that’s where Morden came in other adherents of the balanced to them the blood war is the centerpiece conflict of the cosmos it’s the most important one it’s the one that if it fell it fell out of balance would spell doom and so he and his associates and his allies who are interested in the balance very much very much keep a careful watch on how the blood war is progressing because luckily we haven’t had any decisive moments yet you can learn a whole lot more about the blood war

Orcs!

February 1, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

Want to learn more about Orcs in D&D? Mike Mearls has answers for you! https://t.co/V1J6pK5bCJ pic.twitter.com/kbSfnNuoap

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) January 31, 2018

Tiamat: Goddess of Evil

February 1, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

Tiamat: Goddess of Evil Dragons in Dungeons & Dragons https://t.co/Bnp6eqfGTF with @mikemearls and @toddkenreck

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) February 1, 2018