Other Dark Elves We Like: Dier Drendal

In our efforts to move on beyond drow, we’ve been sure to praise reinventions of the drow archetype, such as Keith Baker’s take on Eberron’s drow. Now let’s look at some other dark elves that we think hit the mark.

The inhabitants of Dier Drendal, from Sword & Sorcery's Scarred Land setting, are not drow per se. But subterranean elves forced to serve an evil, lead golem-bound god on a slowly trundling city beneath the earth?—wow, that rethinks the drow concept in some great ways. (Does anyone know if there was ever a sourcebook? Was it any good?)

While we’re at it, we should note that the Scarred Lands setting did a pretty good job with elves of all kinds, and anyone looking to cast elves in a new light in their campaign should try to dig up these books. Some of Scarn’s elves were the noble forest-dwellers of Tolkien, while the forsaken elves were the chaotic child-stealers of European folklore, and still others were truly decadent and debauched hedonists.

In fact, we should take this time for giving props to Sword & Sorcery in general. They were among the first out of the box to really tap the potential of the Open Gaming License. Their Creature Collections combined the stats of 3rd Edition with the well-rounded monster ecologies of 2nd. And the basic concept behind Scarred Lands—which one could easily and too hastily write off as blatant rip-off of Greek mythology (gods vs. titans)—blossomed into a truly interesting setting. Almost every monster had a reason for being, good’s victory was by no means certain, and many often overlooked building blocks of the D&D system (especially druids) got new vitality and breadth. A fine world that, while I never played it in it, I could never get enough reading about.

(Though explain to me again why gnomes in Scarn only appeared as psionic-addled pygmies? Oh right, because no one knows what else to do with them. Say what you like about the silliness of tinker gnomes in Dragonlance, Spelljammer, and the Known World/Mystara, but at least machinery gave them a defined character. Eberron’s elementalists and information-brokering bards was an interesting take…but I guess it didn’t (take, that is), since gnomes didn’t make the leap to 4th Edition as a playable race.)