Is it possible to make the prospect of an immanent Drow invasion fresh and exciting?

>What do the humans have to gain from aiding the invasion of an extremely xenophobic race?
Hatred for their own people? Or maybe they're just self-loathing cucks, like in the real world.

Rework Lolth. She's no longer the Spider Queen of the Demonweb Pits, she's the Queen of the Demonscale Deep. Drow are now fish-themed rather than spider-themed, and their invasion is an amphibious one.

>amphibious drow

A frightening prospect if they can breath the upper air.

The drow society has been convulsed by a fundamentalist jihad against Loth and her followers. Many of the Drow noble houses lent them support in secret, intending to direct them against their opponents before the inevitable collapse. Each thought that the movement survived only by their support, and would die off swiftly once they'd accomplished their aims. Unexpectedly, however, the aid granted them was sufficient to establish a foothold, and by the time anyone realized they'd actually become a power in their own right it was too late.
Following their success, they turn their eyes to the surface, looking to expand their religious hegemony. Their views of altruism and "good works" are twisted and brutally utilitarian collectivist, their intent total subjugation.

Unknown to all, Loth started the whole damn thing.

Make it super erotic

Drow are willing to work jobs the native populations are not, furthermore the gnomes insist that aiding a desperate people is the righteous thing to do, as they themselves were once persecuted ages ago.

This of course leads to segregation and the kingdom noticing the immigrants do not work the jobs the natives aren't willing to do, as the jobs Drow are good at have long-since been rendered unnecessary by magic and technology.

>>They are being aided by human traitors
Depends on logic of the traitors anywhere between a 0/10 and an 8/10

>>They are being aided by beings from another world
A bit Eh... on it's own but workable, 6/10

>>They are fleeing a greater evil
Interesting, and sets up future plot hooks
7/10

>>The Drow are actually the good guys
Gonna have to explain this, 4/10, MAYBE 8/10 if done well

>>The Drow have lost the ability to breed with their own and are enslaving male humans for breeding purposes
10/10, also Go on...

Military invasion or mass immigration?

Wouldn't it be far, far more effective to enslave human females for breeding purposes?

>What do the humans have to gain from aiding the invasion of an extremely xenophobic race?
Money

>What do these beings have to gain?
Power

Drow are matriachy yo

You know that stuff that you don't think is fresh or exciting?

Don't do that.

kaiju

Drow aren't blacks though

Make it blatanly about Eurape like the Angry Birds movie

>Humans invade
They're going to enslave your children, rape your women, and murder your men!

>Drow invade
They're going to enslave your men, murder your women and rape your children!

>Gnomes invade
They're going to enslave your women, murder your men, and rape your children!

>Gnolls invade
They're going to enslave your children, murder your women, and rape your men!

>Orcs invade
They're going to enslave your men, murder your children, and rape your women!

>Dwarves invade
They're going to enslave your women, murder your children, and rape your men!

>DROWED.COM

The delicate balance that drow society was in finally reached a tipping point. The Matriarchies are collapsing under their own weight and inability to work together, the Wizards are in open rebellion, slaves even more so or are fleeing in droves, and basically every drow city is becoming a battlefield.

The "invasion" isn't an organized army, it's a flood of drow commoner refugees. With nowhere safe to go in the Underdark, they've come to the surface. They're malnourished, undereducated, and stuffed full of millennia of propaganda and lies. They're not evil, they're just trying to survive the only way they know how. Some of them are even desperate enough that they're appearing in surface elf lands, begging for aid.

Basically imagine if North Korea broke down into massive civil war, and Nork refugees started flooding into South Korea, China, and Russia. A few to Japan, too, via rickety boats.

Oh, and the whole thing was decided *not* according to Lolth's plan, and she's pissed, but too much is going wrong too quickly and she's just finally lost control of the whole thing.

If we could sorta negotiate on the whole "Murder your Women" part, an invasion by either the drow or gnolls seems to have it's merits...

Yes.

None of the tropes you think are played out actually are.

When was the last time you played a game centered around an impending Drow invasion? 1997? What year did Menzo come out from STI?

Because that's the last time I played it. It's like the "dwarves are drunken louts" trope that everyone has been trying to avoid for so long that none have showed up in a decade.

>kaiju drow invasion
We Felarya now

...

Watch Tremors. Replace worms with drow.

I'd play it
Only online and with no voice chat, but god help me I'd play it

This is some hilarious mental imagery

>There is something forcing the drow up from the underdark.
>The sun is about to go out (or be permenatly eclipsed or something), meaning no light sickness.
>The faction(s)/force(s) tasked with keeping the drow in the underdark have become complacent or corrupt/abandoned their duties.
>The non-elected dwarven officials in charge of running the coalition of elf and human kingdoms are allowing thousands of drow to swarm into the land and have their way while making it illegal to fight back in any form or fashion.

>>The non-elected dwarven officials in charge of running the coalition of elf and human kingdoms are allowing thousands of drow to swarm into the land and have their way while making it illegal to fight back in any form or fashion.

/pol/ pls go

Everyone expects "drow in the shadows of the night" and dark-eldar style raids. Everyone expects the evil priestesses in skimpy clothing wielding their bondage whips, maybe the leaders of which are riding a giant spider.

No one expects colossal anthills exploding from dirt roads in the middle of a city, disgorging swarms of giant fucking ants like they're the fucking Ravagers

Medieval EDF.

Trump's not going to build that wall, the mexicans aren't going to pay for it, but you'll still end up paying for it with your taxes despite all this. Go back to bed, no one cares that you think anything less white than you's "a nigger".

...

He is, many countries already have their own (Mexico included)

They will, whether directly or indirectly through a cessation of remittance payments sent to Mexico

You're a communist nazi Jew

>Ants
I hope you mean spiders user

Please take this to a relevant board, like /pol/ for instance

idk seems pretty relevant.

>They are fleeing a greater evil
It's bigger, blacker Drow

>immanent
Imminent, user.

I think it would be cool if the Drizzt were the good guys and the uplanders were the bad guys. too many modules make them evil for no reason.

The moment you mention Trump it stops being fantasy
Unless you think Trump has no chance in hell of becoming the president, otherwise it ceases to be Veeky Forums related

>The non-elected dwarven officials in charge of running the coalition of elf and human kingdoms are allowing thousands of drow to swarm into the land and have their way while making it illegal to fight back in any form or fashion.

I don't see the word "trump," do you? are you saying that it can't happen in fantasy becasue it's happening in real life or are you saying that it's not happening in real life? because if it's not realistic than it's fantastical and Veeky Forums related.

Isn't that happening to Europe right now?

Wait, that's more like an orc invasion.

rather than a traditional invasion, tons of drow refugees and immigrants start moving into town, shifting the demographic of the town.

How about
>You play as drow and other underdark races
>Humans are flooding into the underdark to steal your land, kill your men, rape your women, and indoctrine the children to their culture

Why are humans coming into the underdark though?

Cultural invasion of pop music and aerobic exercise via illusion spells.

resources, gold, oil, arcane laylines.

Unless it's dark sun world where everyone is level 5-6 the underdark is going to chew up the invasion force before it gets to the drow

The Gods are playing Othello to settle some metaphysical/philosophical dispute or (ad reason.)

youtube.com/watch?v=Puch83HSvZM

The (world map) becomes the board.

White = Surface World
Black = The Underworld

The Surface World is blissfully unaware of this (until things start to happen.) The Underdark is tipped-off by some extraplanar gossip, and prepares to use this world shattering event as an opportunity for conquest.

As the gods play the game, the (world map) changes to match the board. Every time black takes a white, the Underdark springs up, spilling forth horrors of the dark. The displaced surfacers find themselves (and their houses, shops, taverns, etc.) deep under ground - the horrid laughter of the Derro in the distance. The Underworld folk, simultaneously, painfully encounter sunlight for the first time, their mithril goodies decaying like ashes, and scurry into the crypts, sewers, and (not so deep) dungeons and await the night's return.

Pandemonium!

(I know it's silly, but what the heck?)

They aren't invading the surface world, they're collapsing it, sinking it down to the underdark where they hold the advantage, on top of most defenders being out for the count due to their city vanishing from underneath them.

Bonus points if they're doing this WITH A GIANT WORM

Oh god yes.

They have a ritual that grants them invulnerability, immortality, and mind control based on how fab they are. Only those who can rival their fab can oppose their invasion.

They could be abducting women as a secondary thing to give the males some incentive to keep this war going.

This does mean that the entire "pure" Drow race will go extinct in a single generation.

I would play the shit out of that.

As a Drow.
As a Drow coming back to the underground kingdoms at the head of an army to burn the shit out of what's left and utterly destroy any trace of old Drow culture.

As a drow paladin. Of what god? Any god. You are a paladin of which ever god hates Lolth the most at any particular moment because fuck Lolth and any who still worship her.

The incentive for males to keep on fighting is the scary Drow lady who will fucking kill them if they don't keep fighting. I'm not even sure if their warrior ranks are mostly filled with men, the dudes might all be stay at home or some shit.

They are an evil race, they don't give a fuck if everybody in their society is perfectly happy and equal

Not to mention savage rap battles where motherfuckers get served and don't come back to this hood

Why waste the lives of women when you can just end a bunch of expendable men to the surface.

Only problem with that is the desertion rate once they get the ability to bolt for the horizon.

The desertion rate tends to be less when there is something worth coming back for. In this case a society that has their of multiple personal sex slaves held to ransom.

If memory serves Drow society goes Priestesses >>>Male wizards>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Drow women>Drow men>>>>>>>>>>>>>>EVERYONE ELSE
For the most part unless you're a priestess or wizard, drow are about equal, women are higher on paper, but both the men and the women are viewed as the same plebeian shit to the higher ups so the army is likely to be about an equal mix of the two

A group of outsiders lead by an eccentric figure has seized power by fermenting belief that all other nations are controlled behind the scenes by a malevolent cabal of dwarfs.

Although they never intended to actually pursue this in a meaningful way, they are inexperienced with actual power and have created far too many true believers to avoid taking action against the Dwarfish menace.

The Drow launch an all preemptive war on the surface fueled by paranoia and misinformation, massacring any Dwarfs they come across.

The drow have muskets and cannons and fight in a Thirty Years War fashion, but with portals from the underdark... massive units of drow show up out of nowhere

>applying desertion rate logic to fantasy race

Dude...cmon, at this point it's just about what you want to do with your setting.

I think the drow do cannonically have a smattering of higher tech than the rest of D&D land, some of it bordering on early modern, they just don't trust each other enough to set up large scale manufacturing

That sounds like a good idea.

Even in forgotten realms where almost everyone is a dirt farmer, drow have cities with lights and standardized houses.

Everything they need for a evil society they lack the ability to create, they supplement with magic.

Actually the way I usually see it working is that the surface realms kind of faff about in disunity, each doing their own thing and as a result not getting much shit done on a large scale.

With no true prospects, the commoner drow finally just rebel against the wizards and the clerics both. Lex urbis fex orbis comes into effect, and the next thing you know every drow city basically resembles Revolutionary France, with a Directorate, a Reign of Terror, a tendency to attack all their neighbors to spread their Revolutionary ideals, etc.

Of course, the next step after that is the rise of Drow Napoleon...who might actually be your Paladin or another like him, to keep the whole metaphor going (given that Napoleon was born on Corsica, not in France, and all that)

And latex, don't forget they somehow have latex

Huh, didn't know they had standardized houses, but yeah, drow are quite a bit advanced compared to the rest of the world, they're just too batshit to apply any of it

They are trying to turn the world inside out, bringing the surface down to the inner side of the hollow sphere, leaving the underdark still in a cave, but as a part of a layer *above* the old surface
this must be done slowly, by mass magery, causing mountain ranges to become like mobius strips and exposing parts of the underdark to the surface world, thus allowing more drow and other spooky monsters to rise

Lloth is a goddess of peace shitlord

>Undermining the surface
Why don't more underdark races do this?

It's hard to do.

Gears of War did this, I think. It was pretty cool.

That's not in her domains though

Assuming they share the same immunity to sleep of the other elves, make them go full Maleficent and spread a sleep plague that slowly consumes the whole invaded kingdom/country/etc.

Maybe they could even use dark, forbidden magic to make all the sleeping people become their puppets, essentially creating an army of undead-ish sleepwalkers.

Huh, looking at the SRD, they don't actually

In 3E and 5E they do. Which SRD are you looking at?

The 3E SRD, they have Drow traits instead of elf and those don't include sleep immunity

Another race ruined

They get their drow abilities, plus normal elf abilities unless otherwise stated.

It drives me up the wall as well, but apparently they believed they could save space in the books by putting that disclaimer in in each racial sub group block instead of putting in their stats as a whole.

Then again, I just went through all monsters in dnd 3.5 that had stats for player characters and ones with level adjustment to make a super character creation book. I hit 25 races before getting out of core and established setting books. Fuck that shit.

>It drives me up the wall as well, but apparently they believed they could save space in the books by putting that disclaimer in in each racial sub group block instead of putting in their stats as a whole.
That is stupid as hell

The drow's grudges against the surface elves have some justification given the atrocities perpetrated against them in the distant past.

The invaded society has serious governance issues of its own. At least the drow function, and there are some moderates in their ranks who, given power, might be the best available option.

The drow are supported by local cultists and radicals.

The high elves respond with magic tactical WMD (plagues of locusts, rains of colorless fire) without much regard for the indigenous human population.

Drow shamans instigate volcanic activity as part of the siege.

The defenders turn to blood magic as things become dire.

>Are the horrible tales we hear of torture and spiders just propaganda then?

Spider divinities don't have to be evil. Consider the Ojibwe take on it.

You could run it like traditional Iroquois cultures where the women have the political power precisely because the men are off fighting.

The drow are entering a lolth-mandated period of no killing other drow, after a period of violence and backstabbing like no other.

The few surviving drow all have levels in Tome of Battle classes. They don't have numbers, but they got quality, and are working to get other groups on their side.

A few ideas;

> Rather than total invasion of the surface, they're taking surface entrances to the Underdark (mostly dorf fortresses). Dorfen refugee crisis.

> A conjunction of stars and planets is approaching, at which Time the drow can finally kill the hateful sun and moon if they can arrange a ritual in X number of locations mostly corresponding to major surface cities

> Another adventuring party failed to stop a great ritual. Now every spider is a potential enemy spy or assassin. The drow know that the keystone holding this effect in place is vulnerable and want to press their advantage while they can in order to seize certain strategic sites.

> The drow have lost a war with the aquatic elves, who tunneled into the Underdark and flooded most of their great cavern-cities. Fleeing drow must seize new homes, choosing those near reserves of the right sorts of resources to allow them to survive and act as a power on the surface. They have an uneasy alliance with the svirfneblin and other underdark races, and perhaps some surface orcs.

> The new drow queen is a polymorphed high elf agent provocateur. She has faked the signs of a prophecy signalling a successful invasion of the surface. While the other noble houses suspect treachery and are plotting to kill her, she nevertheless has instigated an invasion of dorf and human lands for the time being as a way to thin the drow numbers. Players ultimately will discover her secret and decide how to react to this elf treachery against both drow and human/dorf.

>The drow are entering a lolth-mandated period of no killing other drow, after a period of violence and backstabbing like no other.
This does sound like something she'd do, but it seems so out of character for the drow
I actually really like this idea

>The few surviving drow all have levels in Tome of Battle classes. They don't have numbers, but they got quality, and are working to get other groups on their side.
Those are not overpower though