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Piconsi15/05/2007 01:33:15Esto lo encontré con el Emule. Por desgracia, mi vagueza y mi nivel de ingles me impiden traducir el texto... Si algun buen linguista y samaritano se presta, podria traducir para no pasarme horas intentando comprenderlo...Ahi va... Predata: Si algo de la info no es correcto que lo digan los expertos... Creo que es de segunda edición. Menzoberranzan Book One: The City Drow Cities of the Underdark There is a world beneath the world humans know –a vast, lawless land under The Realms That See The Sun. It is a perilous wilderland of dark caverns, crevices, and labyrinthine passages: The Realms Below, the vast and mysterious Underdark. No surface adventurer has seen all its depths and corners. Beasts that no surface-dweller yet knows of lurk in its lightless depths -and surviving explorers say the known dangers are bad enough! To the unwary (or merely desperate) traveler in the Underdark, a city may seem a refuge from creeping doom in the darkness. It holds, after all, bustling life with food, tools, and perhaps aid. Perhaps not. Even the good beings of the depths, dwarves, gnomes, thaalud, and svirfneblin, tend to be (rightfully) suspicious of intruders. Other city-dwellers include (among merely nasty folk, such as jermlaine) the most evil and dangerous races of the Realms: kuo-toa, duergar, illithids, cloakers, and most far-reaching of all, drow, the dark elves. Menzoberranzan the Mighty 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 battle captives 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. A Walking Tour of the Dark Dominion. 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. The Cavern Menzoberranzan’s cavern is roughly arrowhead-shaped, with the pool of Donigarten at its tip, and two miles across at its widest point. The ceiling rises a thousand feet high, and its floor is studded with many stalagmites and lesser pillars (stalactites and stalagmites that have grown together, to fuse into an unbroken shaft of rock). The cavern floor is broken by three major rifts and many smaller ones, and two areas rise above the rest of the city: Tier Breche, the side-cavern occupied by the Academy that trains all drow citizens for adulthood; and larger Qu’ellarz’orl (House-Loft), a plateau separated from the lower city by a grove of giant mushrooms, home to many of the city’s mightiest noble Houses. From either of these heights, a drow citizen can look out across the city. The view is row upon row of carved, spired stone castles, their salient points and sculpted highlights lit by the soft, tinted flows of permanent faerie fires. Except for Narbondel, not a stone of the city has been left in its natural shape -everything has been worked into a smooth, unbroken, unjointed expanse. Adventurers bent on vandalism take note: unless one brings it along, there is no such thing in the better parts of Menzoberranzan as a loose stone, lying around to be snatched up as a weapon! Many of the city’s largest dwellings, especially the compounds occupied by noble Houses, were created by fencing stalagmites together with magically raised and melded stone. The grandest drow feats are the carved, worked, hollowed-out stalactites that hang over much of the central cavern and above Qu’ellarz’orl: “Overcaverns” linked to the main city below by a hundred leaping, railless, stone bridgespans, and by spiraling stairs and passages in the cavern walls. Donigarten At the smoothest, lowest end of the city’s cavern is a natural lake or pond, Donigarten. Its chill waters serve vital food needs for the drow, nourishing fish and eels (taken from the waters by fisher-goblin slaves), flowing into carefully irrigated dungfields (where orcs tend mushrooms and other edible fungi, renewing and expanding the fields with excrement brought in wagonloads from the city proper), and supporting two moss beds. The large bed on the shore holds moss eaten by drow as delicacies; the second bed covers an island, and feeds a herd of deep rothe (ox-like cattle detailed fully in Drow of the Underdark, FOR2) confined there by the waters of the pond and by the diligence of orc slave-shepherds. On the Isle of Rothe, rothe are reared for the tables of Menzoberranzan. Small pens on the shore nearby allow the orcs to tend other animals (notably captured or purchased surface-world delicacies such as mountain sheep, or edible monsters brought back by drow hunting bands), and to breed rothe away from the crowded isle. The slaves pole rafts about the pond. They are allowed to swim, and even to dive with spears or to tow nets if fish are needed in a hurry, but are forbidden to explore the pond’s murky, muddy bottom. Legends of lurking, water-dwelling ropers and worse make the rounds regularly, but most wise orcs suspect that any pond monsters are deliberately-placed guardians, and the real reason for the prohibition is to keep slaves from finding magical items and valuables lost to the drow in long-ago days, when two customs filled the pond waters with treasures. It was the custom in those times to consign the bodies of Matron Mothers of the eight ruling Houses, and drow heroes favored by Lloth, such as warriors who perished in achieving victories, to the waters of Donigarten. The corpses were dressed and adorned in finery (gems, magic, and all), then lashed to a stone spar of strong adamantite content and dweomer radiations. This made the bodies sink, and concealed the precise whereabouts of the magic from would-be thieves, masking the area with many flickering magical dweomers. The second custom was unofficially but much more enthusiastically pursued; ambitious drow who murdered friends, rivals, or kin would often sink them in Donigarten, in haste and with all valuables that could be identified as theirs, so that they disappeared tracelessly into the tangle of other corpses below. Something below Donigarten’s inky black surface devours drow corpses, and orc and goblin slaves do disappear from time to time, but the slaves who swim and dive do not fear attack; it never comes (at least, not in front of witnesses). Even drow children have heard persistent, age-old rumors of flooded tunnels that link Donigarten to an underwater kingdom, or a lost temple of a god older than Lloth, or a warren of watery caves inhabited by creatures more powerful than kuo-toa. No sane drow tries to investigate such tales; the magical chaos at Donigarten’s bottom hopelessly confuses all scrying attempts, and explorations must be made directly. Tier Breche The highest part of the city “floor,” this side cavern is home to the Academy that trains drow for adulthood and full status as citizens of Menzoberranzan. From the main part of the city, Tier Breche is reached by a stone stairway. Its upper end is flanked by two giant stone pillars. In the shadow of each, at all times, stands a male drow warrior on guard: last-year students of Melee-Magthere, the school for fighters. Here twenty-five-year-old drow come for training, and are not allowed to pass back down the stairs into the city until they have been graduated by a Master or Mistress of the Academy. A male whose aptitude for magic has not been demonstrated during his youth as outstanding (or greater than his battle prowess) goes first to Melee-Magthere, the largest and most easterly of the three structures of Tier Breche. This is the fighters’ school, and here the famous Drizzt Do’Urden, like countless drow before and after him, spent nine years training to fight -a schooling that involved many patrols out into the Dominion and beyond, into the lawless Underdark, but no visits to the city proper. The first half of Drizzt’s tenth year took him to the sculpted stalagmite-tower of Sorcere, the many chambered tower of wizardry, closest to the west wall of Tier Breche. Here, many of the most powerful drow males of the city dwell, hidden from much daily intrigue -or as fugitives from the deadly ways of House rivalries and politics, awaiting a chance for revenge. The northernmost and most impressive building of the Academy is spider-shaped Arach-Tinilith, where the priestesses of Lloth are trained. Males are housed here only for the last six months of their ten year training. Drow leave the Academy molded into the treacherous, vicious ways of Menzoberranzan, “The Spite of the Spider Queen” as other drow have called it. Those who fail their training die, or are transformed into driders or worse. More is said of the Academy’s dark work in other chapters of this book. The Dark Dominion Over a hundred tunnels link the city cavern with the surrounding Underdark notably with almost two dozen faerzress (magic power) spots, where adamantite laden rock gives off the dark radiations drow value in the making of their best armor, weaponry, and tools. The area around the city patrolled by the drow is known as Bauthwaf (around-cloak), or more grandly as the Dark Dominion. (The word “patrolled” is carefully chosen; only a fool ever refers to an area as “controlled,” or “safe.”) Monsters roam the Dominion despite regular drow patrols, and even venture into the city, following the ready food and guidance of merchant traffic. Most are quickly dispatched; such is the drow that strong guards are kept only over the single entrance to Tier Breche. Its sentinels are a pair of magical jade spiders (detailed in Drow of the Underdark, FOR2), over the several tunnels that open out of Qu’ellarz’orl (the guards there are drow with magical items such as wands of viscid globs, alarm horns to summon swift reinforcements, and servant giants) and on the Eastways. The Eastways are three tunnels that open into the eastern end of the cavern of Menzoberranzan, where no drow dwell and Donigarten’s precious water lies. Their mouths are all guarded by scorpion shaped, poison-shooting jade spider statues. The smallest of these tunnels leads to a chasm at the eastern edge of the Dominion inhabited by driders outcast from the city. They slay and devour all who stray into their clutches, especially hating and prizing the flesh of unaltered drow. Daily Life in Menzoberranzan 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 fanged headed whips of the nearest high priestesses. 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 mushroom clad 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 trade passages 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 spider shaped 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: £ 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). £ 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. £ 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). £ 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. £ 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. £ 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. £ 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. £ 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. £ 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. £ 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. Drow “High Life” The daily life of most drow may be dominated by hard drudgery and the wanton cruelty of superiors -but there is fun in the city of Menzoberranzan, for those who know how to find it. Among visitors from the surface world, the decadent things noble and wealthy non-noble drow do have become legendary. Among Menzoberranyr inhabitants, drow and non-drow (slaves, hireling troops, and trading agents) tend to keep separate in their leisure activities. Visitors with money to lose are generally welcome in drow recreational activities, but less so in non-drow gatherings (as they might be spies hired by the drow Houses). Parties Drow love parties -affairs of wild music and dancing, much drinking of exotic and powerful beverages, and the inhaling of scented smoke (sometimes primed with magical illusions) from braziers. Houses rent sumptuous open mansions as neutral ground in which to entertain, rather than risking the security of their own property. Drow love to score witty points in barbed conversation (while dancing or dining); a wise host hires wizards to entertain with magic, heading off any drunken (and destructive!) magical competitions among the revelers. Parties tend to last most of a day. Most end in wild fighting, vandalism, fires, and wanton debauchery, with party-goers being dumped unceremoniously into the street. Wise Matrons send escorts to carry helplessly drunken scions of Houses home. Drow of different Houses can also get to meet each other at more formal dances, or illiyitrii (“promenade”). Both stately and political, these affairs are places to be seen, in which drow of both sexes dress up in their finest garb. They are very dangerous situations for non-drow who are not conversant in the subtle intricacies of drow manners, House rivalries, and recent happenings among noble Houses in the city. In sharp contrast to illiyitrii are the nedeirra of the younger and wilder drow. Seldom attended by high priestesses, these wild, acrobatic ‚sweat dances’ usually leave young drow drenched in sweat, dancing to the syncopated, driving rhythms of drumming and piping music. A wizard or two is often hired to create fun: illusions, tickling and slapping cantrips, and so on. Massage For drow who live hard, always tense and alert for attack, the ultimate sensuous pleasure in life is a warm bath (or a perfumed oil soak), followed by a “deepstroke” thorough body massage, typically on a contoured couch (often in a room where others are receiving the same ministrations, so that all present can argue, chat, or do business). A talented bodystroker (masseuse) is a highly-valued (and highly-paid) artisan of drow society. The most popular leisure spots in Menzoberranzan are the massage houses. Massage is a common outlet for the passions of drow of different Houses, for whom courtship is too dangerous. Hunts Noble drow, alone of the inhabitants of Menzoberranzan, like to mount hunts out into the Underdark -either of monsters, or of slaves released into the tunnels with some sort of head-start. Although drow hunters may restrict themselves sharply in terms of weapons, equipments, and steeds used, to give the quarry a chance, it is rare to find a hunting party without a wizard and at least two (usually five or six) priestesses along. The hunters will almost all be well equipped with magical items useful in combat -just in case the hunters become the hunted, or a rival House is unable to resist a chance to strike at relatively unprotected enemies. For the same reason, it is rare to find a hunt (except those sent out to find and exterminate or capture intelligent prey, such as adventurers or scouts from other drow cities) composed of members of more than one House -except the rare “Dark Hunts” run by the Academy. Most of these are training affairs, in which the monstrous quarry is equipped with spells it can cast or magical items it can use against its pursuers. More than one captured adventurer has ended up as the doomed quarry of a “Dark Hunt.” Very rarely, one escapes, to die a lonely death, lost deep in the wild Underdark. The Pits Drow of all ranks are welcome in the city’s “drinking pits” where they must surrender all weapons as they enter, and can get as drunk as they want, shout, argue, talk, and have a good fight. Priestesses often use magic to eavesdrop in such places, listening for treachery, plans for attacks on Houses, or other business being discussed. The entertainment in such places is slave-versus-slave and slave-versus-beast fights, in pit-arenas. Establishment patrons wager heavily on these bloody contests. Plays Drow theatrical productions always involve slapstick comedy, singing, the use of masks and exaggerated costumes, the passing on (or invention) of sly gossip about city affairs, and imparting the latest news (bought from newly-arrived merchants, who have learned to charge for such news, and not offer it freely to any who ask) of the Underdark -or, especially, the wonders and events of the fabled Lands of Light (the surface world). They are typically the centerpiece entertainments at parties, but are also staged in rented warehouses near the Bazaar from time to time. At a party, a stage is often defined with a faerie fire- glowing rope laid in an oval; larger productions typically take place on a raised stage. Drow audiences always stand and move about during a performance, not sitting down. To discourage thieves, some playhouses hire an expert thief and a wizard. The wizard’s magic gives the thief extraordinary means of sight, and also animates a dozen or more glowing skeletal hands (used by drow directors to point out things during performances) above the crowd. If thievery is detected, the thief directs the wizard to bring a glowing, pointing hand down to indicate the guilty party. The crowd around tends to exact justice on the spot. Wizards At Play Drow mages like to play pranks (in massage houses and other places of recreation, where such things are expected, and most likely to escape retaliation or punishment) by creating small, harmless ‚oops’ spell effects. A favorite cantrip creates a “second pair” of hands, so a drow being massaged suddenly feels another pair of hands -or, the embracing hands of an amorous dancing couple are suddenly multiplied many fold. Wizards in search of more violent and powerful play sometimes fly out into the wild Underdark, to the rifts inhabited by driders, and get in some good “drider blasting”, with whatever offensive spells they can muster. This pastime always carries the spice of danger -one never knows when a drider will elude or break through barrier-spells, during a magical attack that disrupts these defenses, and be able to reach its tormentor. Menzoberranzan's Merchants The lifeblood of Menzoberranzan is its merchants -House agents and traders, and the more numerous independent commoners. These entrepreneurs (particularly those who travel the Underdark to other cities and trademoots) keep Menzoberranzan vital, important, and rich. Some are loners and eccentrics; others band together to form “companies” (such as Xalyth’s Company, or The Company of Three Black Rings), or cooperate in the use of facilities and in trade agreements as “fellowships” (such as The High Handed, The Black Claw, and The Brown Mushroom). A Merchant Career Menzoberranzan’s merchants are chiefly drow males (trade being one of the few outlets for aggressive and creative males), but a current star trader is “Nal” Xalyth (her nickname is an acronym for Not A Lady, a scornful boast she once made at a party, spurning a noble male flatterer). Non-drow traders are becoming more numerous, but tend to be relegated to “corner shop” or “lift and load laborer” roles. Merchant careers in Menzoberranzan are dangerous, and often short. To anger a Matron or even a proud young House noble is to court death or disaster to one’s trade through “accidental” destruction of one’s goods (or one’s home and family), by spell or “misdirected” House troops on arms practice. This, plus the restlessness of many merchants (who, at heart, are happiest when traveling), makes the city’s mercantile roster ever-changing. To the other dangers of merchant life must be added rivalries among traders. These tend to be fiercest among drow native to the city; visiting drow, duergar, and other races who don’t cause trouble tend to be left alone, by unwritten agreement. House Alliances Many merchants survive by alliances with noble Houses -but the dangers of angering nobles lead them to keep such relationships secret, except in the face of possibly-fatal threats. (“You should know, as Lloth is my witness, great noble, that to attack me is to attack House Baenre. Think on this, I ask you, before you act. If I fall, I shall be avenged.”) Hints of such alliances can be found in this book, on a case by-case basis -but only one is noted here: the relationship between House Baenre and the fellowship of The Black Claw. When merchant alliances and no-blades bared pacts began to be formalized as fellowships and companies, most commoners saw this as good -a counterbalance to the overwhelming power of haughty noble Houses. Most Houses didn’t agree. House Baenre, however, was crafty enough to secretly found and sponsor the most powerful and independent (openly defiant of Houses) fellowship of all, The Black Claw. It gained popular support as a rival to the nobles, but House Baenre controlled its policies and actions, and grew rich from it. Over time, Baenren control of the Claw became an open secret, and then common knowledge -until several other powerful houses, led by Fey-Branche, founded The Brown Mushroom as a deliberate counter to House Baenre (to get their own share of riches earned through successful trade). Goods In And Out Menzoberranzan is largely self-sufficient, if need be (most drow communities must be, or they soon fall under the control of another city, or are destroyed), but trades with others to gain rare goods (especially highly prized surface-world delicacies such as fruit and shellfish varieties), slaves (labor is always in short supply, in a place dominated by sadistic, whip-wielding priestesses), textiles, and anything that is offered at a lower price than it costs to buy or make oneself in Menzoberranzan. In return, Menzoberranzan exports skilled stone-sculptors, edible mushrooms of very high quality (grown in the rich farms near Donigarten), finely-made weapons, and obsidian carvings mined from nearby veins -notably “black glass daggers” favored for sacrificial uses in Calimshan, Mulhorand, and certain cults and brotherhoods of the North; the Zhentarim, for example, enspell such weapons to create magical death daggers, which they leave as their calling card at the scenes of assassinations. These weapons smoke when striking, burning a distinctive hole around the wound, for triple normal damage -and in the process, cause such wracking pains that the victim cannot concentrate to cast spells, and is -3 on all attack rolls. Menzoberranzan also sells water to long-distance travelers, and breeds and trains lizard-mounts in nearby caverns. Menzoberranyr hunting bands gain food for city tables, keep nearby training, radiation-strong, and lizard-raising caverns relatively safe, and keep the tradepassages to and from the city open (the city’s own exiled driders and natural predators of the Underdark would overrun all if unchecked for long). Wide patrols also raid svirfneblin, cloaker, and duergar holds occasionally, but the days of all-out war are past (unless Menzoberranyr want to harm their own success as a presently important trading center). At present, they don’t; the city is enjoying a wave of prosperity brought about by a time of relative peace among its ruling Houses (there have been few recent noble family extinctions, with attendant losses of all wealth, servants, talents, and contacts), and by the success of the city’s bazaar (The Bazaar has a chapter all its own, in this book). Priestesses of Evil It has been said that the true ruler of Menzoberranzan is the goddess Lloth; she is responsible for the city’s nature, customs, laws, and survival. This saying is correct, but it is also true that at least forty other drow communities in (or under) the Realms are known to worship the Spider Queen, and that her divine concerns, aims, and efforts often transcend her attention to mere individual mortal worshippers. In short, she can’t (and doesn’t want to) spend all of her time nursemaiding and spying on her Menzoberranyr faithful. Although she enjoys being feared and worshipped, and being in the midst of a place where her rule is paramount, spending attention on a “secure” holding is a luxury, when battles and intrigue elsewhere demand far more urgent attention. So Lloth comes to Menzoberranzan all too seldom to please her most dedicated faithful -her high priestesses -and much too often for the comfort of its every other inhabitant. Lloth maintains her rule over the city by means of those same priestesses; in Menzoberranzan, they speak her will, and act upon it. Through warring Matrons of rival Houses, Lloth sets the drow at war with each other, both for her own amusement and to prevent the onset of complacency, assertion of runaway pride, and a possible decadent turning to other deities. In truth, Lloth fears the underground worship of Vhaeraun and Ghaunadaur, which she knows to be present in Menzoberranzan, and can’t seem to eradicate. Her priestesses have firm, zealous orders to tirelessly seek out and destroy all traces of such treacherous, unholy faiths. At the same time, Lloth’s hold over Menzoberranzan is kept secure, and the whole community kept from a perilous plunge into ongoing, open civil warfare, by the overwhelmingly superior strength (and utter loyalty to Lloth) of the city’s First House, the family of Baenre. Lloth keeps a close watch over the minds of not only its aged ruling Matron, but over all of its high priestesses and wizards of note; she knows well that it is among the ranks of the lowly and ambitious -and especially among wizards of Sorcere -that loyalty to her is lowest, and open rebellion often kept down only by stronger fear. To a lesser extent, Lloth watches over the other Houses of the city for the same things. Though priestesses are taught early that “Lloth has a thousand thousand eyes,” it is usually true that she has more valuable (and interesting) things to do than to use them all constantly to spy over the shoulders of her every worshipper so she uses the vigilance and inquisitiveness of a ready-made network of loyal spies within each House to do most of her work for her: her priestesses. They do Lloth’s watching, and she keeps them in check by spying upon them, “watching the watchers“ to prevent any splinter faiths from emerging that might lessen her power, and to prevent any other deity from subverting one of her high priestesses to serve a different divine power. Rival Faiths In Menzoberranzan Many visitors -both willing merchants and unwilling slaves -come to Menzoberranzan with its passing days, and it is fair to say that almost all of the known faiths of Faerun have been worshipped by someone in the city at some point in time. This holds true for most trading cities of the Realms, and can be discounted in a look at “rival faiths.” Lloth’s commands make it a fatal offense to openly worship any deity but her within the city (swearing by another deity in a tavern, or during an argument or moment of great emotion, is frowned upon -and tends to get one watched -but is not cause for death; the prohibition is on rituals). In practice, Lloth’s priestesses tend to turn a blind eye to hired mercenaries of other races worshipping their own gods, such as orcs, bugbears, gnolls, humans who make offerings to Tempus Lord of Battles, and so on. They are after bigger game: the rival drow faiths of Eilistraee, Ghaunadaur, and Vhaeraun (all detailed in the sourcebook FOR2/The Drow of the Underdark). In Menzoberranzan, the worship of Eilistraee is practically non-existent, as is that of Ghaunadaur (a handful of Menzoberranyr devotees worship “The Eye” only on visits to other drow communities, and do not communicate with each other in any sort of organized, underground cult) and the smaller drow cults (not mentioned here). The real rival is Vhaeraun, The Masked Lord, who has a small but growing following in the city, particularly among drow who travel the Underdark (and therefore see things as they are outside a city ruled by Lloth’s dictates), and young drow dissatisfied with the society as it is or with their own lowly ranking within it. (They are likely to ask such questions as: why are things so cruel and divisive? why isn’t there more harmony, mutual enjoyment, and common growth in power? why, after thousands of years, are we still all stuck in this one cavern, at each other’s throats all the time -when we could be great, rule a vast part of the Underdark, and all live like surface-world kings?) The necessarily secretive nature of the faith of Vhaeraun in the city keeps it mysterious, and its worshippers hidden; little is said of them here, to allow DMs to better conceal who is and isn’t a devotee of Vhaeraun from searching PCs. The passages of the Underdark all around Menzoberranzan are studded with cleverly-hidden holy symbols of The Masked Lord, which are so constructed as to emit no betraying magical or alignment aura. Priests of Vhaeraun need only be within a mile of their holy symbol to use it in working spells given to them by Vhaeraun; it need not ever be on their person (except when they first wear it to become attuned or linked to it) or brandished in spellcasting or dealing with undead. Another chapter of this book deals with some of their important spells, and the chapter on the spells granted by Lloth herself contains one vital spell used by priests of Vhaeraun: conceal item. (They also, of course, can call on any of the “common to all drow priests” spells detailed in FOR2/ The Drow of the Underdark). To priestesses of Lloth, priests of Vhaeraun are “the enemy,” to be hunted down by any means possible -torture of suspected drow is a favorite tactic -and eradicated on the altars of Lloth, to earn the maximum glory of the goddess, and derive the most personal enjoyment out of one’s efforts. Serving Two Deities Very rare, but greatly feared in Llothfostered drow folklore, and amongst living priestesses of Lloth, is the traitor-priestess (or priest), who serves Lloth and another deity (usually Vhaeraun). It is for this reason that male drow who aspire to be priests in Lloth’s service seldom rise very far in levels: even if they overcome the hatred and resentment of any female drow clergy they must work with, the Spider Queen simply does not trust them -they tend to end their days quickly, being used as “temple enforcers” or guards. In this role they face many spell-battles with intruders (such as drow trying to settle grudges with enemies in the clergy), or priestesses who are rebellious, or feuding, or who have succumbed to insanity under the pressures of their station or contact with lower-planar creatures. There are priests, and even more priestesses, who serve Lloth on the surface, and Vhaeraun underneath. The reverse is almost unknown, though the destructive potential of such an individual keeps the idea a dark and secret dream that fires a glint in the eyes of many a high priestess. The glory for training and placing such a one would be very great, but finding suitable candidates and steering them alive through the perils of preparation without losing their loyalty to Lloth and to their handler is unlikely in the extreme -and so far, as far as it is can be told from the news of the Underdark, so unlikely as to be unknown. How can such treachery be tolerated by the Spider Queen? Surely she knows the heart of every worshipper, and could prevail over any influences of a god of lesser power, such as Vhaeraun? The truth is that Vhaeraun is not so much less powerful than the Spider Queen; he simply uses his power in subtle, hidden, behind-the-scenes ways, not in the tyrannical, exultant, and brutal-naked force manner so beloved by Lloth. He also watches over the drow in any place ruled by Lloth where he does have worshippers (such as the drow cities of Menzoberranzan, Tlethtyrr, and Waerglarn) often and attentively, looking into their minds for doubts and misgivings. If he finds great hatred or open rebellion against the dictates of the Spider Queen (or against her local high priestesses), and can find an opportunity for a ‚private audience’ with the wavering Lloth-worshipper, Vhaeraun manifests as a shadowy black face-mask, and telepathically speaks to the individual. If the individual is discovered or attacked by others, Vhaeraun typically leaves -after using spells to destroy the beings who discover or attack his intended faithful, as a sign of his power over Lloth, and to preserve the intended worshipper for another attempt at conversion later. Vhaeraun offers a faithful follower additional powers, typically as follows: access to all spells known to his faith (this includes the spells noted in the relevant chapter of this book, in Drow of the Underdark, and any desired spells from other rulebooks: notably, from Tome of Magic, the spells chaotic combat (which will work only when cast by the priestess on herself, or another faithful of Vhaeraun, regardless of class), create holy symbol , divine inspiration, mind net, reversion, and seclusion); the use of one additional, “free” blessing of Vhaeraun spell per day, in addition to the normal spell roster of the cleric; the use of one deceive prying spell at any time in the future, bestowed immediately and carried in addition to the normal spell roster of the cleric (but not replaced by Vhaeraun; if used, any replacement spell must be prayed for, by a priest of sufficient level, and gained as part of the usual, limited complement of spells); the favor of Vhaeraun, who richly rewards those who do well in his service (sometimes, he will falsely claim, with immortality -and he’s still looking for a worthy consort); the personal attention of Vhaeraun, in the form of useful information imparted to the priestess from time to time, in her dreams; and the ability to function without any penalties in full or bright light, in part because the eyes of the faithful are shaded with “the shadow of Vhaeraun’s power.” A double agent priest or priestess continues to advance in Lloth’s service, and to gain spells normally. If the individual’s loyalty to Vhaeraun is ever discovered, Lloth typically alerts nearby drow, and refuses to grant any further spells to the traitor but does not strip the drow of any presently-memorized spells. If the drow survives long enough to flee Llothworshippers and any community they control, he or she continues at the same priest level and spell-power, losing only access to spells specifically and only granted by Lloth (note that the conceal item spell is granted by deities other than the Spider Queen, and there may well be other Llothgranted spells that have been co-opted by rival deities). The double agent becomes a cleric of Vhaeraun (although the dress and manners of a Lloth-worshipper may be retained for use as a disguise), and typically travels to near-surface drow holdings or trading communities used by several races (such as Skullport). If a DM wishes to make known to players the existence of double agent priestesses in drow society, an effective way of revealing them is to have PCs witness the unmasking and furious destruction of such a priestess at the hands of priestesses loyal to Lloth, who will spit, snarl, lash with their snake-headed whips until one grows tired simply watching them, and afterwards trumpet their victory over “the evil Shadow, the treacherous Masked One,” as they parade the mutilated remnants of the traitor through the city. This grisly fate has befallen many a devotee of Vhaeraun, particularly before some of the concealment spells now available to his faithful had been devised by the Masked Lord: notably, in Menzoberranzan, the priestesses Ililree Cobranhree, Slylyndrath Dhree, and Myyrin Jalhuus, and the priest Narr Thuirbrynn. Drow tend not to speak the names or want to remember such traitors -their Houses disown them for safety’s sake, and other drow are urged by the yochlol not to remind people of treachery to Lloth by keeping alive names of those who have so sinned. Priestesses of the Spider Queen In Lloth-dominated drow society, priestesses of the Spider Queen are owed the hospitality of all drow including those of rival Houses, who may provide guest furnishings at a safe distance from their own residences without giving any offense to the visitors or to Lloth. Generally, under The Way of Lloth, it is death to any drow or lesser creature (i.e. non-drow) to disobey a priestess -and a punishable offense for any drow of lesser rank than high priestess to disobey a Matron of any House. There are recognized exceptions to this rule: guests have a limited immunity, masters and mistresses holding office in any community are exempt, and certain drow (such as mercenaries) are ‚outside’ The Way of Lloth. Be warned; when in doubt, most priestesses strike to punish first, and ask questions later. Alkarin15/05/2007 02:34:26Piconsi, no es necesario traducirlo exactamente,si no me equivoco este es un manual de D&D ,uno de los tres libros, casualmente he descargado los tres en perfecto castellano :P ,esta en un solo pdf y esta muuuuu pero que mu bien,quien quiera que se lo envie que me mande privi ;) |
