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Originally posted by combatmedic

It strikes me a funny that anyone would say FR had an " enormous" pantheon. I would say it has a mid sized pantheon by D&D world standards. Compare it with Wilderlands or Greyhawk (after the Dragon articles and/ the 1983 boxed set),


All these settings have small numbers of gods compared with the real world, natch.

Note that I am not counting gods from Al Qadim, Kara Tur,, etc. Those were all attached to FR, but they were their own distinct setting lines. I am referring to the gods of Faerun plus the various monster and demihuman deities.

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Originally posted by CorellonsDevout

IMO, the size of the pantheon doesn't increase or decrease the intimidation factor of the game. If that is something they were worried about, then they should have focused on other factors. For me, the hardest part of D&D were racial and class stats, understanding when to apply or take away certain points, how pointz are put into skills, how you set up a character. They should have focused on making the "this is how you play the game" simpler rather than going "too many gods, better kill some or it will scare off players."

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Originally posted by combatmedic



I have never thought that good drow made much sense, except as very rare freaks. And so I never saw much reason for Elistraee to exist. If I allowed a drow PC, the PC would have bog standard elf stats ( or something close). No special powers. The PC would be treated much like a goblinoid.

But I get that a lot of guys like the drow as something different than the classic evil monsters. The design team probably made a good choice in restoring Elistraee to the newfangled version of published FR.

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Originally posted by combatmedic

Right, she does fit FR drow lore.

The FR drow have a different mythos and background from the original GH drow, on which they are based. And that's cool.
Different settings, different drow.

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I like the Demon Queen of Spiders and the Vault and all that stuff. And yet I have never even tried to run the GDQ modules.

In my old GH game, I did not actually include real drow. Reports of drow sightings were based on confused accounts of valley elves in the Sulhaults and Hellfurnaces, their faces and hands covered in soot as they crept around at night spying on travelers. Drow were only a legend.

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Originally posted by Abeir

Eilistraee always seemed to me like she would make more sense as an aspect of Sehanine Moonbow. If you toss out the idea that Sehanine herself is an aspect of another Goddess (either Angarradh or Selune), they just have too many similarities.

Looking just at Demihuman Deities I see the following:

-Eilistraee is Corellon's daughter and Sehanine is known as either his daughter or wife.

-Sehanine favors bows as her weapon and Eilistraee did prior to the Sehanine war.

-Sehanine is also described as contacting worshippers through dance and having a strong alliance with Eilistraee.

-Obvious sharing of the moon.

-Sehanine had a Chosen named Aloevan who was directly compared to Quilue as she was a Chosen of Sehanine and Mystra.

It just seems superfluous to me to have had 2 archer moon goddesses prior to the Seldarine war. There are a few other things too such as the fact that Sehanine was temporarily imprisoned by Vhaeraun during the war which kindled their rivalry and could be used is Eilistraee was just her in disguise. Also since the Crescent Blade "separates" things her death could be described as separating that aspect from the larger goddess.

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Originally posted by combatmedic


Irennan:


Drow (dual wielding, no less!) have been in the game as a playable option since Unearthed Arcana came out.
That's 1985.

Drizzt does not appear until 1988.

So I imagine at least some guys were playing drow PCs before Drizzt.

I started playing around the time the Soviet Union broke up.

In all that time, I have seen a grand total of one drow PC. He did fight with two swords, but he was also evil. Not a ranger. And he spent most of his time disguised as a surface elf, before being killed and zombified.

That's anecdotal. My experience may signify nothing about the popularity of drow PCs.

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Originally posted by Joebing

Significance of Drow PC's in my home game:

There's ALWAYS one, usually a female spellcaster. Very rarely have there been male Drow PC's, none of which have been rangers. One in particular was a worshipper of Lolth, who switched to Kiaransalee during Lolth's silence, eventually becoming a Chosen, and saved Menzo during the siege in 1372-73, only to force worshippers of Lolth to change to Kiaransalee or die. (Yes, my world has changed quite a bit because of this, though Lolth's forces regained it during Kiaransalee's disappearance). This character is how I reintroduced Kiaransalee, as she was not on Faerun, but rather in the City of Brass at the time, so she remembered Kiaransalee.

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Originally posted by Irennan
That must have been a pretty interesting game.

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Originally posted by Irennan

[quote]

If we go by what is described in Evermeet, and by what we know from Demihuman Deities, there isn't much pointing to Eilistraee being an aspect of Sehanine in FR. Re: your points

-Eilistraee is child of Corellon and Lolth, a connection that Sehanine doesn't share (Idk if Sehanine is described as child of Corellon in the FR, though, it might be a ''core'' thing).

-They're deities of different things. The fact that Sehanine can contact followers through dance doesn't mean that she is a deity of dance. Sehanine is associated with the moon, death, mysticism, dreams and so on; Eilistraee is associated with dance, beauty, song, hunting and moonlight (compare to what is shared by Selune and Sehanine, that during the Spellplague era appeared were believed to be the same deity --even if now they are distinct again--: it's much more than that). They have very different themes, and stand for very different things (just look at their dogmas). The only overlapping is in their moon affinity, but in Evermeet it is said that this sharing is due to the fact that Sehanine taught Eilistraee that kind of magic during her training. Perhaps she also trained the Dark Maiden with the bow, explaining two archer goddesses. Even then, neither Eilistraee nor Sehanine are goddesses of archery, that title goes to Solonor Thelandira, AFAIK.

-During the assault on Arvandor, Eilistraee was struck by Aerdrie Faenya, and became unconscious. Sehanine managed to free herself while Eilistraee was unconscious. If Eilistraee had actually been Sehanine, she would have likely known about Lolth's trickery right off the bat, warned Corellon and freed her ''main part''

-The chosen shared with Mystra is a similarity, that I give you.

That said, I could see some followers of the two goddesses starting an ''heresy'' claiming that they are the same entity, and this could lead to interesting situations, as most heresies.

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Originally posted by CorellonsDevout

Androgynous. There are statues of him in both male and female form, though I think he more often appears in a male form, if androgynous male form, and the pronoun used for Corellon in all the novels/texts I have read have been male pronouns. He is often called the "father" of the elven race, and I think it's his "preferred" form, but he is not exclusively seen as one or the other. None of the Seldarine are seen as truly male or female by their followers, since gods are not bound by the same "gender boxes" as mortals try to make. But most deities do appear as one gender more often than they do another.

Okay, that was a bit of a tangent, but there you go lol.

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Originally posted by Abeir

I wasn't trying to imply that I actually think she is an aspect of Sehanine (being an aspect of an aspect would get kind of ridiculous). I was just saying that they seem similar enough that if someone wanted to they could rewrite it to be that way. Such a rewrite/homebrew would presumably change them enough to make it work.

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Hi, Zoe. First off, this is all unofficial. Yes, it comes from me, the creator of the Realms (including Eilistraee, Vhaeraun, and Mystra), but the first sentence below is there for good reasons…

Mortals in the Realms can rarely know the doings and specifics of the gods with certainty, because clergies and even the gods themselves sometimes avoid the truth, or the whole truth, or slant what they say so much. So it is with the “deaths” of Eilistraee and Vhaeraun. Vhaeraun entered Eilistraee’s realm and sought to destroy her, but perished there by her hand, and she subsumed his portfolios—or so the story spread among drow. Most assumed that meant she became the drow deity of thievery, but in truth, Eilistraee (who pronounces her own name “AISLE-iss-try-ee,” by the way) defeated Vhaeraun with Mystra’s indirect aid [Mystra IS the Weave, and it was the Weave that frustrated and drank Vhaeraun’s magics, but augmented those of Eilistraee] but did not slay her brother. Rather, she trapped his sentience within the Weave, leaving him in an “endless dream” engineered by Mystra, who enfolded him. In this dream, Mystra slowly convinced Vhaeraun to cooperate in a pact with herself and Eilistraee so that they could all survive what was to come: the Sundering, wherein both Eilistraee and Mystra would be “slain,” magic would go wild, and the worlds of Abeir and Toril would pass through each other and then be sundered.

Eilistraee emerged from her battle with her brother as The Masked Lady, and fulfilled her own portfolios of song, beauty, dance, swordwork, hunting, moonlight, and those of her brother, too: thievery, trickery, drow poisoners and poisons, drow males, and evil doings in the surface world. The death of Qilué Veladorn robbed her of some of her divine essence for a time (it leaked into the Weave, and only returned to her when Mystra herself recovered and could direct it back to its rightful home), but Eilistraee wasn’t slain, merely reduced to manifestations.

So from the end of 1375 to the summer of 1379, The Masked Lady has her “full” powers, and from late Flamerule of 1379 to the same month in 1489 DR, she is much reduced, being seen by mortals almost exclusively as her manifestation of a moving black mask outlined in a silver radiance and with two eyes of silver flame, that appears and silently guides (by pointing and touching and by imparting visions). After Flamerule 1489, Vhaeraun and Eilistraee are separate deities with the same powers and portfolios they had before 1375, but a new understanding, respect, and even friendship for each other. Some of their followers still war with each other, but the two deities do not. Thus far, Eilistraee’s teachings after the Sundering are the same as before the Sundering.

The Masked Lady: a 9-foot-tall long-legged, graceful, and dancing drow female surrounded by her constantly-swirling long tresses and a swirling black ankle-length cloak, her face always covered by a full-face mask. She has all the abilities, powers, and avatar specifics given in the 3e sourcebook FAITHS AND PANTHEONS, except that what she’s borrowed from Vhaeraun means her avatar does not lose her Extra Domain salient ability, and so retains all the things listed as being lost to her avatar on p25 of F&P. She carries the Moonsword, as noted, and the black cloak she gained from Vhaeraun acts as a second Moonsword (it can transform itself into one, and fly about to attack or aid her or others, as she wills, with her own movement rate and the best possible maneuverability) and can emit magical darkness as she wills, in extent and specifics, up to 90-foot-sphere about itself limits.

The Mask: an always-silent black full-face (brow to chin) mask that can absorb the energy of all spells into itself (including dispel magic) and be augmented thereby, and can heal or impart spells to mortals by touch. The mask can vary in size from as large as an adult drow’s fingernail to as large as huge castle gates, but is usually about double the size of a full-face mask a mortal adult drow might wear. It varies in visibility as Eilistraee wills, its silver radiance waxing or waning as she wills, and also in tangibility, from “not there” to velvety-soft to as hard as adamantine. As the Mask, Eilistraee never speaks, but can write words of fire in the mind of a mortal within 90 feet, and impart vivid and detailed mental visions (still images or “movies”) with the same range.

And there you have it. I hope this is of help in your campaign. As for the future, and Eilistraee? Well, I Do Have Plans...but we'll see. ;}


So saith Ed. Still spinning Realmslore daily, scribes!
love to all,
THO

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Originally posted by Brylock

I think at least to some degree drow are "programmed" before birth with things that make them have strong tendencies towards evil.
They retconned some stuff in those recent novels, but it's even the current explanation in 5e that certain races are nearly always evil not just out of nurture but because their deity cruelly created them with tendencies that strongly push them towards evil (orcs being biologically inclined to great fury and violence) because that nets them a steadier stream of devoted worshippers since they have less choice in the matter then normal.
I think that's as good an explanation as any for why the drow are so depraved, whatever Lolth (and that Wendonai demon in Faerun) did to them after they fell after the Crown Wars made them more or less genetically predisposed towards their twisted behaviors.
I think every once in awhile due to the influence of Elistraee one is born with true choice between good or evil like every other free race. This would nicely explain why guys like Drizzt were so different even though he went through the exact same nuture that other drow did and yet never really became as terrible a person. Sadly, I imagine that most drow who have free will eventually choose evil in the end because they aren't aware there's any better options in their horrid little culture rather then take the risky and dangerous route of trying to find a better way to live and abandon everything they know for an uncertain future.

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Vhaeraun wants his people to NOT be slaves to their nature, but the master of it instead.
Lolth would have the drow remain more or less as they are, but Vhaeraun would rather be like Bane or Bhaal; sure his worshippers have choice, but are they any less powerful because of it? No, in fact they are GREATER then Lolth in some ways and have constantly had more influence, specifically because their worshippers aren't automatically inclined to be evil but have to make the choice themselves.
Vhaeraun's like some sort of twisted emancipator figure; he want's his people free...admittedly free to go do the same things they do now, just to everyone else and not just themselves, but free nonetheless.
It's why I could kinda see Elistraee and him at a sort of mutually agreed ceasefire; they want the same thing in different ways, and both know Lolth is the biggest obstacle to achieving it.

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