Lagumbay.com Reflections on Love, Rage, and Fear

I had just about gotten used to the strange looks I got every time I walked into a new town.  The glowing red eyes, the maniacal grin, and the occasional aura of death I drag around while in lich form tend to draw the eyes of those who had never seen a wizard Pale Master before.  I was ok with that.  The town of Eveningstar, however, gave me the stink-eye for a very different reason: because I am of the Drow Elf race.

While it may sound like a hilarious scene from “Blazing Saddles,” the anti-Drow sentiment around town made me very uncomfortable.  Everywhere I went there was at least one knight following me around as if I were about to pillage the whole place.  All the NPCs seemed to have something disparaging to say about my race.  Even Elminster, the town cuckoo had a few bad things to say about the Drow.

Begrudgingly, I took a few quests in order to win the townsfolk’s trust.  A few yards from town, at the King’s Forest, I began to understand where the negative attitude came from: two Drow archers mugged me.  It was your classic Drow-on-Drow crime, except in Lich form, I happened to have a tremendous advantage.  Two dead Drow archers later, I immediately thought about pleading self-defense or some Eveningstar equivalent of the Stand-Your-Ground law.  I went back to town to turn myself in and the gatekeeper asked me how many I had killed.  After confessing to killing two, the guard smiled and said “you get a prize at ten.”  What the hell was that about?

After turning in a few piles of Drow bodies for experience points, that strange conscience thing kicked in again.  It came at around the same time I discovered that the Drow had enslaved a few of the villagers using mind-control collars to bend their will.  See, I have a very strict policy about these things.  Hirelings, yes.  Slaves, no.  Thus I went all Abraham Lincoln on those Drow Slavers…that is if Lincoln was Death incarnate and was a pretty good shot with necrotic rays.

The collars were relatively simple and I noticed quickly that I had enough skill to disarm them once the slavers were dispatched.  I recognized a couple of the slaves as townsfolk that had thrown rotten produce at me earlier in the week.  Their collars unfortunately malfunctioned as I was disarming them.

The latest quest I’ve been given involves infiltrating an underground Drow town.  The War Wizard that gave the quest said he cast a spell that activates at the appropriate time in order make adventurers “look Drow.”  Going Drow-face in this day and age, really?

Perhaps someday when the worlds have gotten past their ignorance and bigotry, we could have a Drow president.  Of course they’ll start unfounded rumors that he or she was actually born in Eberron.