Is the Evilness of Drow part of their nature or a product of their culture?

Is the Evilness of Drow part of their nature or a product of their culture?

Mostly the latter, although the fact that any drow who exhibits kindness or trust gets murdered has probably taken a tole on their gene pool. Drow are functionally an extention for Loth. They exist as a society solely because Loth props up their horrifying shitshow just enough to keep it from collapsing in a single day, and they persist because Loth keeps poking the anthill to see what it does.

It's whichever one of those covers a bitchy goddess named Lolth deciding to fuck with an entire race.

Bump for interest. I'm running a game soon, and I was planning to include drow, and I'd like to make them at least a little fleshed out.

It's hard latter. If it were mature, there wouldn't be so many player character Drow running around.

Dependson the setting.

I don't remember which is which but in some settings drow only ever birth one child at a time because twins ect will strangle each other in the womb until only the strongest remains. In other settings it's 100% cultural but it self propagates because anything outside the norms ends in death.

So if I want to play a somewhat believable Drow I just need to have him raised by Elves or Halflings or something?

Or have him be a revolutionary who wants to gain and secure social power by amassing allies who he can trust not to stab him to death while he sleeps. It's a viable strategy, and if he's smart enough, he can think beyond the typical limits of his cultural preconceptions. Alternately, a slave who just values freedom above all else, and realizes that securing freedom fro everybody is one way to help prevent himself and his descendants from being slaves.

Essentially, be a pragmatic moralist or self-interested utilitarian. Or someone inspired by a more selfless individual they encountered from another race, or someone who a different god took an interest in (favoured soul of someone who'd like the drow to regain some measure of sanity?). You have options, but your character needs to be smart or crazy enough to have lucked upon some semblance of cooperative behaviour on their own, or to have had an outside inspiration.

That, or you can just play a drow only allied with their party out of necessity.

I want him to be a genuinely good aligned revolutionary that wants to bring freedom to "his" people. Would any Drow noble family be crazy enough to hide their offspring all over Faerun just so that no other family can end their lineage? Being raised with some decent moral guidance would just be an unfortunate side effect.

It's an innate product of the evil part of their culture's nature.

Depends on setting.

Say what you will about Eberron, it did Drow right.
You have three kinds of Drow in Eberron:
Tribal, Jungle Natives that worship Vulkoor, the Scorpion God. They have Scorrow, Scorpion versions of the Drider. They're generally Chaotic Neutral, and have a strong "Fight so we may honor our ancestors, die in battle so we can join them.
Drow that worship the extinct Fire Giants of old. The Drow Creation myth is that normal elves were infused with dark magic to make them Drow, and were elevated from slave status to Slave-driver status, so the Giants didn't have to micromanage. The descendants still loyal to this treat the elemental plane of fire as their sort of heaven, and believe their Fire Giant Gods and Masters live their and await the time when they can be summoned back to Eberron to rule over all. These guys have a strong Fire Magic tradition, and mold and use obsidian for everything.
Finally, you have the Khyber Drow, who live in Khyber, Eberron's version of the Underdark, which also happens to be the Abyss as well. These most closely resemble traditional Drow, but they worship various powerful Infernals, Aberrants, and corrupted Dragons in Khyber, which means you can have Drow worshipping anything from Tiamat to not!Lolth to a Balor Demon Warlord.

Not even that, you can have a Drow refugee who just didn't fit in. If it's a cultural thing, you'll always have those in societies that exhibit anti-social behavior. In the case of Drow, compassion is anti-social.

What do they taste like?

Both, I would argue. Lolth is part of their culture, but that culture has been in effect for so long that that evil would now be inherent, with good drow (i.e. Drizzt and his pops) a natural minority.

Part A, part B

What does it matter?

According to at least one book, something involving the aftermath of the war of the spider queen, any drow capable of goodness was ascended to the elf afterlife, leaving only those of absolute evil behind to be fought over by lolth and old mate whatsit the Big Elf God.

So in my view at least there should be no "good" drow left. Just ones born close enough to evil to take to the society

Not necessarily. There are good-aligned drow who have never been to the Underdark. They seem to mostly be cultists of Selune but still.

>Fuckloads of elves already
>Doing one subtype "right" means making 3 sub-subtypes
>mfw

How rare would half-drow be?

it's the climate

I would argue they'd be MORE common on the surface than regular drow. Still exceedingly rare but possible and probably far removed from the cultural evil as enforced by the clerics of Lolth.

Nah, they're all Drow, Ability-wise, it's just 3 radically different cultures of the same race seperated by Geography.
Something that, you know, happens in real life.

Incredible rare.

It's the culture. Drow don't have any kind of "evil liver" or "sadism pancreas" pumping pure malice into their brains. They just have messed up hyena spider lives.

>Hyena spider life
>Makes gnolls that ride giant spiders

Thank you for ideas. Now let's flesh out where they would live. I propose jungle as it's good environment for spiders and gnolls are hyena morphs so they could probably live there and feed on meat and fruits (seeing as hyenas are omnivore)

Culture. Any published setting with drow has made that clear.

>drow fetus strangling

It was one Dragon magazine article. That's it.

This is why you remove other elfs and just use drow.

It comes from worshiping a spider-demon-goddess. If they worshiped Pelor or Corellon, then they'd be good-aligned.