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As well as being a battleground for warring drow of rival Houses and a cauldron of willing and unwilling followers of the cruel Spider Queen, Menzoberranzan is a place where people live, laugh, love, and die - arrogant, cruel drow, but people nonetheless.

What, then, is daily life like in Menzoberranzan? This chapter and the one on “Drow High Life” attempt to impart the general “feel” of the place; DMs who plan to use Menzoberranzan as a setting for campaign play are warned that it is on the “bare bones” furnished here that most of their development work must be built, to make the city come alive.and to be truly their own, with secrets that players who read these pages cannot steal before play begins.

The Streets

A typical street scene in Menzoberranzan is dimly and weirdly lit, by the vivid phosphorescent hues of fungi, magical fields of various sorts, and deliberately-placed faerie fires. Except for a few ambulatory, slowly-oozing fungi, plant growths tend to be pruned and trained by slaves, to grow in pillars, arches, or shaped clusters, rather than spreading wildly. Underfoot, rocks are similarly scarce (to deprive thieves, rebellious slaves, or angry visitors of ready weapons); adventurers expecting to “just pick up a handy rock” are likely to be disappointed.

Spells have also been applied to the outer walls of House compounds, to prevent their being readily chipped, breached, or defaced. An adventurer who determinedly attacks such a protected area will either discharge a House defense glyph directly (see Drow of the Underdark, FOR2), or will eventually trigger a roving “backlash” spell that protects the entire wall. These spells typically unleash a 6d4-hit-point damage lightning discharge the first time around, and if attacks persist, manifest in the attacked area(s) as an equivalent to Evard’s black tentacles (duration and precise damage left to the DM, as they vary from House to House with the wizards who applied them).

These comments on wall defenses, lack of rocks, and tidy gardening of fungi are less and less true as one travels toward Donigarten, into the hovels and alleyways of the commoners, and the lodgings of non-drow. There, in the worst areas, shadows a-plenty lurk between the soft radiances, rubble-piles can even be found here and there, and the fungi grow wild. Drow nobles take care never to go drunk or lightly armed into such areas - more than one grand drow has been torn limb from limb by inhabitants who saw a chance to overwhelm a lone target and take out their anger, resentment, and frustration over the cruelties of House rule.

In Menzoberranzan, edible mushrooms for internal House use are grown within compounds (for safety, to avoid poisoning and theft), and the fungi for general consumption in the farm fields near Donigarten. The fungi that remain in clumps along the edges of streets and between houses tend to be guardian shriekers if they flank gates or doors in compound walls, or otherwise inedible (at least to drow) mushrooms.

Typical sights in the streets include slaves, commoner servants, and visiting merchants struggling with many-wheeled carts. The conveyances of those too poor to afford levitate- related magic tend to have many independently-sprung axles, to cope with the always uneven rock, mud, and scree floors of the Underdark’s passages. In Menzoberranzan, the streets are of solid, smooth rock - never paving stones. Almost all such carts are drawn by subterranean lizards, although the occasional slug-drawn cart can be seen. The giant spider-carts (and belly-pack carrying spiders) used in the southern Underdark are never seen in Menzoberranzan; to so treat an arachnid is to earn a painful and immediate death, under the fangedheaded whips of the nearest highpriestesses.

Around these knots of carts and their tenders stream many drow on foot, as well as small bands of bugbears, orcs, gnolls, and other hirelings.

In the poorer areas of town near Donigarten, non-drow bands tend to be armed and unsupervised, and the drow move about in families (commoners going shopping or to work) or in armed groups (nobles and House servants with business in the area, such as visiting one of the heavily guarded House warehouses).

In the city’s better areas (Qu’ellarz’orl and the streets nearest to the mushroomclad slope that marks its boundary), nondrow are fewer, and tend to be accompanied by a drow overseer or guide, and the drow on foot tend to go singly, in pairs, or in small, unconcerned groups - lingering to talk, shop, or look about with little fear for their personal safety. Street patrols (detailed in the Bazaar chapter) are common, and open attacks in the streets, as well as the firing of darts and the hurling of spells, except in self-defense, are crimes that demand restitution in the form of very stiff fines, a period of (dangerous, of course) servitude, or worse (see Drow Justice, below).

Through this street traffic, parting it in the same way large ships cleave through many small, moving barges and boats in the crowded harbors of the Sword Coast, are nobles. Male nobles tend to ride lizards, and females either to use lizards with couches instead of saddles, or enclosed litters carried by slaves, depending on their rank and age (litters carry a grander status, can be furnished more luxuriously, and, unless one's slaves are attacked, provide a much smoother ride).

The rarer out-of-doors trips made by House Matrons tend to be by stately and silently drifting drift-discs (detailed in Drow of the Underdark, FOR2), flanked by heavy escorts of House troops and high priestesses on foot, if the Matron wishes to make a show - and by heavily-guarded, closed litter (borne by House troops, not slaves) if she doesn’t.

Non-drow are very seldom seen in Qu’ellarz’orl, where they are not wanted, and are more likely to run afoul of some arrogant drow noble or other, and be punished or slain out of hand. Near the small, unobtrusive entrance to the Cavern of the Ruling Council, and in the entire Tier Breche area, slaves, commoners, and nondrow are not permitted except by the special invitation of a Master, Mistress, or Matron, and under escort in any case. These restricted areas have their own guards, typically drow warriors who can call on a backup wizard, who in turn can alert a high priestess by means of a sending, and/or jade spiders (detailed in Drow of the Underdark, FOR2) to keep unauthorized folk out.

The streets of Menzoberranzan tend to be rather hushed.and yet always noisy. This is not the contradiction it seems at first. The echoing of all sounds made in the cavern could form an endless cacophony, so many, many long-term silence spells have been placed on various stalactites, spurs, and hollows on the ceiling (drow who know where these are sometimes use them for sleep or study). These have the effect of reducing the noise in the city to an endless murmur, formed by the impact noises of movement on stone, the drip of water, and the hissing and chatter of speech, highlighted here and there by the soft pipings of drow music - and the occasional high scream of pain.

The great cavern that houses Menzoberranzan tends to be damp at the Donigarten end, and dry elsewhere. The decay of rotting plants and fertilizer tends to create pockets of warmth in the moss bed, rothe-isle, and fungi-farm areas - and the gatherings of warm, living drow bodies, augmented by magically generated warmth and the heat created by various work activities, create a larger pool of warmth at the other end of the cavern. As a result of these warm and cold imbalances, gentle breezes usually waft around the cavern, and the main tradepassages impinging on the main cavern allow large-scale air transfer.

Visitors tend to find Menzoberranzan pleasantly damp (“alive”, as opposed to the many drier, “dead” stretches of the Underdark), cool but not chillingly so, and its air scented with the spicy, strong but not unpleasant musk of fungi spores.

Spells prevent violet fungi or other harmful spore discharges from remaining “active” longer than 1d4 rounds after their release into the air of any part of the city’s great cavern. Any spores that attack, transform, or enter into symbiosis with drow lungs are automatically neutralized - and the lungs of elves, dwarves, gnomes, orcs, humans, and almost all intelligent air-breathing mammals are sufficiently protected by the magic. Violet fungi are not permitted in Menzoberranzan, and have been eradicated from the city’s great cavern and from the surrounding Dominion, although the wild Underdark around the patrolled Dominion contains a lot of it.

Drow Justice

Menzoberranzan is governed by The Way of Lloth, a code of behavior known in detail to every high priestess. It is administrated by the ruling Council of the Matrons of the eight most powerful noble Houses, who meet in a natural cavern heavily guarded by a ceremonial guard of priestesses and wizards from the Academy, bolstered by jade spiders, and the bodyguards of the attending Matrons.

When the Council is in session, the cave is lit by hundreds of sweet-smelling candles placed around its edges.and only two guards per Matron are permitted inside (non-magic-using warriors, who do not bear any magical items). The rest of the bodyguards must remain outside the closed ironbound doors of the cavern.

The Matrons meet around a spidershaped table, sitting in grand chairs. Four plain, smaller chairs can be drawn up from the cavern walls, to seat guests of the Council.

Any member of the Council can call a meeting of this governing body. Typically, Matron Baenre calls the Council together to deal with important business and overall emergencies, and to disseminate the public directives of Lloth, and the other Matrons call meetings only to settle disputes.

The Council is a grand sham; House Baenre has so much power, and controls so many of the other Houses in the city through alliances, agreements, blackmail, loans, and financial guarantees, that it controls life in the city. (The exception is when one House attacks another; and even then, such attacks are often caused by Baenren manipulation, and their outcomes are decided by Baenren aid or betrayal.) Bregan D’Aerthe exists only at the favor of House Baenre; both Jarlaxle and Matron Baenre know that House Baenre, of all the noble Houses in the city, has the might to hunt down and destroy this mercenary band.

This tension and subterfuge underlie the harsh code of Lloth. It is too long and complex to quote here, but its general tenets are as follows:

1) There is no true god or goddess other than Lloth. Any who follow or bow to the dictates of any other power or faith (or its representatives) are to be utterly destroyed, preferably in sacrifice to Lloth: their names forgotten, their works cast down and broken into rubble, and their spawn eradicated (unless such descendants have already served Lloth well, or joined her formal service).

2) Ritual worship of any power other than Lloth is forbidden within the city’s great cavern. Non-drow who violate this – once - are merely fined heavily, and expelled from the city. They may return on another occasion. Second offenders, those who scorn Lloth, or drow worshippers are slain. Merely uttering another power’s name is frowned upon, but no cause for punishment.

3) In practice, any drow suspected of following Vhaeraun will be interrogated magically, and if such worship is proven to occur, they are executed (even if they.ve never performed any act of worship to the power in Menzoberranzan).

4) Anyone who mistreats an arachnid, or any creature (from slave to beast of burden) of a House, is fined and whipped by priestesses of the Spider Queen. Those who kill spiders must die.

5) For a slave to refuse any order of a drow of the owning House is a fatal offense. The treatment of slaves is totally the affair of their owners. Slaves have no rights, and there are no strictures on punishments or duties that can be set for them.

A commoner citizen who refuses to follow the order of a high priestess can be punished as the offended priestess sees fit, up to and including instant death. The exception to this requires the commoner to be the property of another House, and a noble of that House must be present and object to the punishment. In this case the priestess and the House Matron must agree on a punishment: usually a flogging delivered by the offended priestess.

A student of the Academy who refuses a Matron or Mistress anything can be punished as the offended officer sees fit, up to and including instant death.

6) Any drow who falsely wears the colors or insignia of another House (except by the express permission from that House), or who deliberately alters his or her hairstyle or attire to appear as a rank different from his or her own (except by the express permission of the owning Matron), must die.

7) The penalty of death also awaits any non-drow who uses any means to adopt the disguise of a particular drow, or a drow of noble rank or of a House other than their own.

8) If one House attacks another House and fails to utterly exterminate its noble line, the House that perpetrated the attack is itself obliterated, by the gathered might of the city including the Academy.

9) If two or more Houses combine to attack another House, all of the Houses who participated in the attack are to be destroyed themselves. House Baenre holds itself exempt from this rule, apparently with Lloth’s support.

10) Any House attacking another that has just survived an earlier attack (within the same year) loses the favor of Lloth. This means their priestesses lose the use of their spells during the attack and thereafter, until a great deed or service has been performed to regain Lloth’s favor; the House is unable to defend itself except by diplomatic and purely physical means, and is surely doomed. Other Houses may attack it with impunity.

Drow law, as Drizzt Do’Urden so clearly saw is but a cruel facade to cover the chaos of ruthlessly-striving, ambitious drow fighting each other: a mockingly ironic set of rules in which the only ones to be punished are those who get caught.

Drow law enforcers can imprison drow and non-drow alike in cells, the “pitwarrens”, roamed at times by carrion crawlers and cave fishers, near Donigarten’s moss beds.

The patrol strength of such police is detailed in the chapter on the city’s Bazaar. Duty guards are posted at major intersections and trouble areas, such as slave pens and the entrances to tunnels used by merchant caravans, where the possibility of a surprise attack on the city is highest and predators are most likely to follow the trail of a caravan into a cavern crammed with ready food.