Essay: Why play a Drow?

To survive the sleepless nightmare.

An Essay on playing Non-Human Species

"Picture that you are a Priestess of Lloth, The Demon Queen of Spiders and the ONLY diety openly acknowledged by the drow -- you are 145 years old -- not a High Priestess, which are an elite sect ... but a Priestess; and respected as a member of a noble house. You are pregnant. Your mother frightens you; she was alive, murdering and torturing her rivals for over one-hundred years before you were even born. She is not a High Priestess either -- she, like you, has two living sisters. One older, and one younger with their own children. Your Grandmother -- a terrifying individual whom you are not even allowed to speak in the presence of -- is a High Priestess; and she is one of four living daughters of The Matron Mother.. who is a blood-thirsty, sadistic, dark and evil predator whom was ritually sacrificing those whom even casually displeased her for over four-hundred years before you were even born.. masterfully playing her daughters and their families off against eachother and her own enemies to keep her own power intact for centuries. Drow? Being elves .. are not biologically required to sleep, and typically will keep themselves in a constant frenzy of productive enterprise and planning."

This is the Call-of-Cthuluesque shit Drow deal with in the Underdark!

Most people whom play an elf or a drow.. or even a vampire, demon or half-celestial often anthropomorphize their character. While most people online, because of the internet stereotypes don't know what that word means, I'm going to draw on the dictionary definition of the word and explain:

"Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, and intentions to non-human entities and is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology."

Basically, anthropomorphism is the tendancy to lie to ourselves and assume other objects or creatures in the world ( such as your dog, or the tree under which one's parents are burried, or the restored car you love ) do or should naturally think and feel how humans do about events in life. While confronting the absurdity of this tendancy in one's self can initially be unsettling, overcoming it opens up an entire world of self-expression within the fantasy genre.

Why should drow be like us? Or orcs? ... Tieflings? Doesn't it hurt the narrative Vampires fill if they are friendly? Aren't they - and every species in fantasy - motivated by different instincts, impulses and body chemistry them a human could ever be? They're alien. What makes them evil isn't that they're sexy and misunderstood ... it's that things about their alien point of view is otherworldly, abhorrant and even horrifying to us.

Vampires viewing humans as sheep to be singled out and preyed upon. They feed on us how wolves feed on sheep and are cold, undead monsters representative of death and decay. This is Canon in the majority of established fiction! They're evil.
Drow are basically Nazi-Elves, who's zealous religion is violently intolerant of other religions, encourages purging the weak and helpless, taking advantage of slave labor and even ethnic cleansing of other elves, and killing children born with birth-defects in order to breed the purest, most beautiful and terrible drow race to serve the Queen of Spiders. Their society has been in the grip of this viscious religion for thousands of years. This is canon in every Dungeons and Dragons setting except Eberron! They're evil.
Orcs are a war-like society of typically dim-witted brutes whom constantly raid and make war on their neighbors, choose their leaders from amongst the physically strongest and even more frequently then humans in every setting they're apart of use war to claim resources and land. This is canon in almost every fantasy setting ever. They're evil.
Demons are ancient, malevolent or michivous spirits that sometimes manifest in the mortal world with physical bodies or through possession of mortal forms or souls that they have 'tricked', subsume or dominate. These entities exist within our reality in order to tempt, coerce, or pervert mortal creatures or works into actions that suit their own plans or agendas and subvert an established natural order for their own benefit. This is canon in almost every religion, mythos, and fantasy setting with very but few notable exceptions. They're evil in almost all established fantasy settings, which is why they are called 'Demons'. They're also ancient to the point that it's virtually impossible for them to put any long-term value on a single mortal life simply because it's impossible for something that exists on that level of awareness and age to relate to a limited mortal creature; making mortals incredibly, incredibly expendable in a way that we see our digestive stomach microbes as individually expendable for the greater goal of fueling the machine of our bodies and minds. 40 years is a long time. Try a thousand.. you'll have trouble relating to that 19 year-old who doesn't share your point of view. The older the demon, the more ridiculous the exercise in trying to properly roleplay it actually gets.

Keeping this information in mind you have some understanding of the subtlties and thought processes of my characters. Nayleen, and the things she may believe and is experienced in. I do not believe that something as dark, wicked, and careful as a drow is capable of being represented by something human that only lives for a handful of decades given the vast amounts of time that pass in each generation of drow: and each generation overlapping and being capable of living together with a dozen other generations of drow. You only get this kind of intrigue and plotting amongst Drow or White Wolf's Vampires.

I created Nayleen to be creepy. To be ancient. To be careful. I created her to give you a view of something Cthuluesque; something alien and past the cliched stereotype of 'a sexy BDSM elf'.

I hope that you enjoy her.

Sincerely,

- The Dominant Drowess