Slightly
more than 20,000 drow call Menzoberranzan home. This is fewer than most drow
cities; most hold 35,000 or more. The bitter, violent rivalries of the city’s
noble Houses (perpetuated and fostered by the Spider Queen and those who
worship her) keeps the population from growing much - but also ensures that the
drow of Menzoberranzan are among the hardiest and most cunning survivors, and
deadliest fighters, of the Underdark. Most surface realms of forty times the
city’s population would be hard put to assemble twenty warriors who could hold
their own for long against twenty Menzoberranyr fighters.
Menzoberranzan’s
low population makes its ruling Council smaller than those of most drow cities
- eight Houses rule, rather than the more usual nine, twelve, fourteen or
sixteen. At least one drow city, Guallidurth (deep under Calimshan), has
twenty-one Houses in Council.
On the
other hand, Menzoberranyr are a more tightly-knit populace than most, because
they all dwell in one vast natural cavern. Most drow cities have inherent
prejudices and rivalries, as citizens grow up in various caverns and linking
passages, and citizens are judged or ranked by where they came from.
The worship
of Lolth (called “Lloth” in Menzoberranzan, as in some other drow cities, and
as she will be referred to in the rest of this set) dominates Menzoberranyr life.
There seems no higher purpose in the
lives of
most citizens than to rise in the service of the Spider Queen - until she
claims each life, in turn. Most drow develop a hobby or interest to call their
own (from mastery of a particular weapon to collecting certain gems or fine
boots), but these can be weaknesses if a rival can find a way to exploit them.
With
Lloth-worship comes female dominance. Males of the city tend to excel in the
few things they are allowed to excel in: fighting, wizardry, and dirty jobs
related to trade, building, and food.
Males who
enjoy home or the worship of Lloth turn their efforts to mastering the arts of
sculpture and design (and, if magically talented, glyphs and House defensive
traps), and to excelling at songs in praise of the Spider Queen.
Restless or
independent males tend to gravitate to study in Sorcere (which can involve
being cloistered away from most House politics for their entire lives), or
towards life as a merchant traveling through the perilous Underdark to and from
other cities and trademoots, sometimes on the surface. (Skullport, under the
city of Waterdeep, is one such trademoot. On rare occasions, it
is worth the long trip, and the destination’s great dangers, for the scarce and
wonderful wares - such as spell components - that can be bought there.)
Except for
individuals of great beauty, or who show great aptitude in the arts of war,
sorcery, or artisanship in a valued field, the preceding notes on choices in
life apply almost exclusively to drow nobles: commoners do as they are told,
forming the bulk of the drudge labor, Houseservant, and common soldiering tasks
as servants of the noble Houses.
No drow
citizen of Menzoberranzan is ever officially the “slave” of another
Menzoberranyr, but a great many drow are slaves in all but name. (Drow
battlecaptives won from outside the city can be held openly as slaves.)
The
commoners’ only avenues to freedom lie in escape from the city, or in
developing skill and reputation (and thereby, work) as hunters, mercenary warriors,
or traveling merchants. As all of these routes to a better life lead into the
dangerous wild Underdark, few survive long to enjoy any successes.
Commoners
with exceptional skills are usually adopted by the noble House they serve, or
(more rarely) by the first noble House to notice their skill and seize them.
They receive the House name, sponsorship, and a position - a precarious one,
based on performance and the whim of the ruling Matron of the House. In the
case of male drow of great beauty awarded the position of “patron” (consort to
the Matron), this is all too literally true. Some sadistic Matrons take new
patrons every night, having the twisted, disfigured remnant of the last consort
fed to House animals, slain out of hand, or put to menial labor to be slowly
worked to death.
Perhaps the
best road to independence for drow lies in sorcery. House wizards (and even
more so, House members studying in Sorcere, shielded from daily contact with
non-wizards) are treated with some respect by even the most aggressive females.
One can never be sure of the power of a drow mage - until it is too late. As
shown in Drow of the Underdark,
under “House Insignia”, drow wizards always look to their own defense first,
and are often able to hide powers and magical preparations even from watchful
high priestesses of Lloth.
Female drow
usually throw themselves with energy and zeal into the endless, vicious
intrigue and politics of the city. The bodies of many mark every twist and turn
in the fortunes of the Houses, and the everchanging favor of fickle Lloth - but
for every drow female who falls, fifteen to twenty males meet doom.
If life is
so dangerous, and drow forced into endless strife against drow, how is
Menzoberranzan “the mighty”? Why does it survive at all? The answer lies with
Lloth. If one believes her faithful, the cruel Spider Queen pits drow against
drow solely to improve and strengthen her people, making the survivors ever
stronger, wiser, and better able to serve her. Lloth also helps her people from
time to time (though seldom directly, especially in House-versus-House internal
conflicts). Matrons can ask information and aid of her dreaded handmaidens, the
yochlol (detailed in FOR2), but any
faithful Menzoberranyr drow who calls on Lloth in need may receive a one-time
cure light wounds, neutralize poison, or any spell-power possessed by drow even
if the supplicant cannot yet, or never will be able to, wield such powers or
has exhausted his or her daily ration of them. (There is a 10 percent chance per
level of this happening, minus 10 percent for each time in the last 33 days aid
has been called for.) Such aid is always temporary, and accompanied by the
arrival of some sort of spider. Lloth always exacts her price later: often a
difficult, dangerous mission or service. Alternatively, Lloth may send spiders
to attack foes of beleaguered drow; this form of aid does
not “cost” anything.
Menzoberranzan
the Mighty is a seething power-house of Lloth-worshipping, tirelessly evil
drow, striving for supremacy in the eyes of the fell Spider Queen. “An anthill
of arrogant evil” the archsorceress Laeral once described it. To map every room
and passage of a city so busy, and so worked into the stone (with many rising
and falling levels, secret ways, and miles upon miles of passages) is an
impossibility and a hindrance to the creativity of Dungeon Masters. Even a
dedicated, unopposed drow citizen would need most of a lifetime to walk every
stone of the city - so here is a brief tour of its highlights.
Menzoberranzan
is not a large city by drow standards; only 20,000 drow dwell there. It fills a
large cavern, formerly a giant spider lair known by its dwarven name,
Araurilcaurak (literally, “Great Pillar Cavern”), for a great natural rock
pillar at its center, that joins floor and ceiling in a massive shaft.
Narbondel
Known as
Narbondel, this pillar has been left unworked by the drow. It serves them, and
all visitors with infravision, as a gigantic clock. At the end of each day, the
city’s ranking Archmage (or a master of Sorcere, in the rare instances when the
Archmage is dead, otherwise occupied, or absent from the city) casts a fire
spell into its base.
The heat
created by the spell is conducted slowly upward through the stone, until to
infravision Narbondel glows red from top to bottom. Then it fades rapidly to
darkness, “the black death of Narbondel”. The time when the wizard casts his
fire spell anew corresponds to midnight in the surface Realms, just as the
cycle of Narbondel’s rising fire equals a surface-world day.
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