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Text:

[We did not die. I will admit I may have over anticipated my own demise. The landscape has changed and we are truly in the heart of the red desert. The difference over the last few days I will note is the change of air, it feels thicker here. Suffocating almost. The rock-like structures that keep me company are so angular they look like they could have only been carved by the most nimble of fingers. Yet I know that to be impossible. Life here is minimal and the only way Itunal and I have gotten this far is by the common water weevils that seem to plague every province. Yet even still they seem to carry less water than the usual plump ones from home. They are probably the most pathetic creatures I have ever seen. Despite their shortcomings they will suffice in aiding in my survival for now.

Here I have attempted to capture their mediocrity:

Pale and sad

Pathetic water pouch

Unappealing grey

Ugly

Smaller water sucklers

Thin]

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Very special post today. I was given permission from the 'NATIONAL ARCHIVING FACILITY (480k)' to share a few pages from a recently restored journal they've been keeping on hold. There's a possibility we may even get to show off some archived artefacts later down the line. So fingers crossed. Again a big thank you to the 'NATIONAL ARCHIVING FACILITY'.

TEXT [I have taken it upon myself to begin a personal account. I find my chances of survival slimming the further I and Itunal walk through this wretched desert. If I am to perish under Lepidos cruel yet gracious wing I may as well have something to show for it, even if just a mere papyrus journal. The sand is hot and my tarsi wraps do little to ward off the heat. I am fairly certain that the account of remnants of civilization before the purge was a farce to begin with. Even the most primitive of creatures would stay away from wastelands. Itunal is running out of nectar to give. She is unhappy, I am unhappy. We are going to die.]

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Let's analyse the drow!

Quick history on the drow: The drow have been historically characterised as ‘evil’, especially in earlier editions their alignment was always on the evil spectrum. Even Drizzt Do’urden for example was a story that essentially circles around one ‘good’ drow who managed to rise above the rest of his kin and become ‘one of the good ones’. I think we also need to acknowledge that in the earlier editions drow definitely had racist implications around them intentionally or not. With the drow initially being described as ‘completely opal black aside from their white hair’ and essentially just existed as the ‘evil’ elf counterparts to their perfect blonde cousins. Now in recent years wizards of the coast have started to rectify this. As of right now Drow have been described as being more purplish grey in colour and are steering towards being implied not to be 'completely evil'. There's no doubt about it that the drow have had a rocky history and being overtly over-sexualisalised by the early writers definitely didn't help much either. But I still think there's something very interesting wedged into this unique race of elves. 

Lolth's role: Their main goddess is of course Lolth who even in modern renditions is always depicted as a chaotic evil spider demon. You could argue she’s currently the main reason why the surface folk still don’t like these dark elves. Even in Baldur's gate three which came out last year the writers make a point of emphasising that the ‘good drow’ are the ones choosing to rebel against this goddess. Now obviously this ‘good’ and ‘evil’ thing has always been a core part of DND, which makes sense given it was inspired by Tolkien who consistently made a point about there being two sides, good and evil. And it's still a very common theme in modern fantasy but I think when we look at Lolth and her connection to the drow from a more contextual standpoint this insistence of ‘evil’ isn’t nearly as interesting as exploring the greyer implications of how this Goddess came to be. Being viewed as ‘evil’ in the dnd universe is natural as Lolth is written as a chaotic evil being, encouraging violence, the sacrifice of first born sons, and general betrayal among your fellow drow isn’t very appealing. It's enough for anyone to wonder why the drow worship her in the first place if they aren’t evil. However I think it's also important to remember in real life when we create gods they almost always reflect our world, the good and the bad. Let's take Zeus for example, he was a pretty shitty guy, cheating on his wife, kidnapping women and punishing people for petty reasons. But he was still worshipped, he just reflected power and kinghood. And kings aren't perfect or benevolent, they can abuse their power and take what they want. People are complex and imperfect and so are their Gods. So a similar sort of argument could be made for Lolth. 

How the environment shapes a culture: The underdark is almost always described as a harsh environment, with creatures like hook horrors casually wandering around, mushrooms that explode when touched and let's be honest probably not a lot of food in a place with little sunlight or stability. Earthquakes happen often here killing many and flattening villages. The underdark is without a doubt an unpredictable chaotic and cruel hellscape where death is a guarantee and often occurs for little to no reason. It's not hard to imagine how competition could become everything here. That means that every creature living in the underdark, even every other drow clan is just another competitor for those sparse food and resources in an already barren and harsh climate. In an environment so unforgiving and competitive you can imagine how a Goddess such as Lolth would be worshipped. Because Lolth, like most Gods, reflects the environment her worshippers live in, she is characterised as being as cruel, violent and chaotic as the underdark is. And the teachings of violence, sacrifice and betrayal that she encourages of her followers might not actually be such a bad thing but rather the key to the drows continued long term survival in such an impossible climate. Traditions and culture almost always stem from a purpose, in this case how you survive. The cutthroat nature of drow culture mirrors the underdark in such a way that it ensures that the strongest survive (although it's important to note when I say ‘strongest’ I don't mean it in a literal sense but rather those who possess the qualities best suited for survival in that environment.) The strict hierarchical structure also ensures this, with female drow being favoured as they are naturally larger, stronger and more robust than their male counterparts. Which in itself is most likely because larger stronger women generally lead to a higher rate of survival in offspring especially in harsher conditions where a single misstep can be certain death. This physical and social difference lends itself to the spider metaphor of their goddess both literally and figuratively where spiders eat their males. But as unfair as this rigid hierarchy based on sex seems, it can be argued like many cultural phenomena to be a curated survival method in itself. After all you need fewer males than females to maintain a stable population which is an important detail when living somewhere with a natural lack of food. Even sacrificing your first newborn son as gruesome of a tradition as it is, in a way makes sense. It selectively ensures that the male population is lower meaning less overall resource demand in an already scarce environment will be lower while still being able to maintain some semblance of genetic diversity.

Solutions to these dilemmas?: Now of course it goes without saying all these things are horrible, sex selection, strict hierarchies and encouraged violence to decrease competition are all bad. However in an extreme dystopian sounding scenario such as this one it does at the very least make sense. And I think what we can gather from this is that despite all the terrible things, at least terrible to us living in the world we are, drow aren’t really evil. Not even their society despite its depiction is ‘evil’. Calling them evil is kind of like if lions from a zoo who get fed everyday started calling wild lions evil for eating zebras. We may not like it of course but it's not fair to call it evil, it’s survival. In the same way Lolth isn’t even an ‘evil’ Goddess, she's just a cruel and unfair one, made to reflect the natural violence of the underdark and the lived experiences of those worshipping her. When debating the drows morality it's just about context. It brings some questions to mind. Like if the ‘good drow’ drow who are against Lolth did manage to rebel and forcefully shift the culture of the drow to be more like the surface elves for example what would really happen? Would the drow stop all their violent habits and competitiveness to live happily ever after in a more equal world? Or when all of this ‘evil’ behaviour was ‘corrected’ would it lead to a ripple effect causing famine and death anyway? Who are the surface dwellers to determine what’s wrong and right when they’ve never had to survive in such an environment? Perhaps instead the culture of the drow would just naturally change over time anyways if the need for those more violent and extreme traditions subsided because there were more ways of accessing resources and building a stabler environment. Either way I don’t know the future of drow society, but what I do know is that it’s far more complex and grey than we give it credit for.

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Ummm... this was Frankenstein right?

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Do I understand it? No. But it has my full support nonetheless.

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Merethic Era Falmer (snow elves)

I was thinking of doing a mini project about Merethic Tamriel and a documentation of the people that were living there in a sort of semi-historic way.

Of course most of it would probably not be entirely lore accurate and there will be a lot of headcanoning but it's fun regardless. So enjoy the first addition to this series.

Falmer: The falmer during the Merethic era were the tallest mer race on Nirn growing on average between 6 - 7 feet. They were also the hairiest and bulkiest on average due to the cold climate. Their culture and practices during this time were very similar to modern day nordic ones due to the cultural overlap and assimilation on the atmorans end when they first arrived to Skyrim.

They valued strength and honour. Their original gods are long lost now however historians speculate the modern nordic gods could share traits with the Falmer's old gods.

In the early Merethic era the snow elves invaded and seized what is currently the Summerset isles. This is how it is assumed Auri-El (An Altmeri/Aldmeri God) was introduced to Skyrim and later would become the primary god in the snow elven pantheon.

Furs, beards, and long hair was the norm in terms of falmer fashion for a long time due to the extreme weather however the shorter hair and beardless look though impractical in such weather was popularised in later years. Again influenced by the fashion trends on the much warmer summerset isles.

Generally speaking when the Falmer weren't invading distant lands or declaring wars with other clans they were a prospering civilisation and in the early days were much like the nords not particularly interested in magic. This was partly due to the fact Skyrim has large iron deposits meaning smithing and weaponry were the most practical but that didn't mean there was no magic at all.

Healers generally could manipulate the weave and tell or even change the future. But when Auri-el was popularised magic become a much larger part of the Falmers lives being combined and assimilated into what they already had. For example enchanting among smiths and manipulation of elements specific to Skyrim (Ice magic mostly).

These changes didn't come fast of course, the falmer were quite stubborn. But over time a cultural shift did happen going from axe-wielding barbarians (As the Aldmer called them) to a slightly more tame society that we know a little bit today.

This didn't come without its challenges however as while the falmer were changing the Atmorans living there were not and in fact had taken on a lot of the cultural aspects or even gods of the traditional falmer. This inevitably was the beginning of the end as tensions got higher with these cultural and religious differences it ended the only way it could, in a war. And well, you know the rest.

Currently the ancestors of the Merethic snow elves thrive in cave systems below ground. While the nords toil above ground, the nords frost resistance of course being a product of falmer and atmoran ancestors. Regardless both societies still hold the values the early Snow elves held. Strength and Honour.

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Hear me out about the drow...

Okay I know this isn't my usual stuff but it has to be said. Stop giving the drow british accents in your campaigns. Give them Australian accents.

Instantly 10x funnier and also thematically appropriate because the drow's entire backstory consists of bunch of criminal elves being shoved into a harsh and unfamiliar land full of giant spiders by other slightly more british elves.

They're quite literally down under...

In the underdark.

I'm so sorry.

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Okay hear me out. What if the Falmer were culturally far more similar to the modern day nords rather than the altmer or the ayleids?

Like if the Falmer's culture was a more intense version of what we see of the ancient nords in Skyrim. Because the nords kind of just integrated their own culture into the falmers. Maybe the Falmer were originally far more similar to the vikings and other ancient Scandinavian cultures rather than just being the altmer but pale.

Or maybe even towards the end of their reign they started to shift cultures to a more altmer influenced lifestyle and religion making Auri-el a more prominent God figure in their pantheon. Sort of similar to how Scandinavia got christianised.

It would explain why tensions between the Atmorans and the Falmer suddenly became so high when they were previously living peacefully together.

It would also be fascinating to consider the fact the nords could actually be descendants of both the atmorans and the Falmer. Sort of like the bretons. It's very difficult to completely wipe out an entire country worth of people. And not every Falmer wanted to go underground with most being opposed to the idea. So it would make more sense for those who didn't join the Dwemer for protection to be slowly "integrated" with the atmorans which would explain the entire disappearance of the rest of the Falmer. It also gives the modern day Nords a new context which I really like because its sort of poetic irony the nords themselves would be another small part of what was left of the ancient falmer.

Also there's no way a bunch of people living in freezing cold temperatures aren't going to have beards. Bethesda is lying to me.

Anyways it might not line up with canon but it's an interesting thought. Also brings some funny scenarios to mind.

For more details go here

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More likely than you might think

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The small red boy is back.

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‘I don't like it when you do that’

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'woah guys... that was a little fucked up actually’

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“Which one are you?”

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missed drawing this lil dude

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and now you cant unsee it

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Behold... Brian

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I drew this while my friends aggressively played Cluedo-