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Menzoberranzan: A Perfect Unjust State

Matt Hummel

We can all probably agree that Menzoberranzan is very near the bottom on the list of must-visit fantasy realms (worse than Mordor and the ninth circle of hell combined!). Menzoberranzan is the primary setting of R.A. Salvatore’s Homeland in the Dark Elf trilogy and home of the evil race of dark elves known as drow.¹ Even the prospect of visiting Menzoberranzan as one of its natives, therefore lessening the chance of immediate demise, does not improve the attraction of the most wicked city in the Underdark because drow life operates on one rule: “You may do whatever you can get away with … that is all that matters.”² That rule creates a very hostile situation where one can never turn one’s back on anybody, not even close relatives (just ask the former first son of House Do’Urden, Nalfein, viciously and literally backstabbed by his power-thirsty brother Dinin).

But so what, right? Doing whatever you can get away with seems to have an upside so long as you are VERY good at getting away with things. Perfect crimes are silently applauded in Menzoberranzan – a House that completely annihilates another House of higher rank without a trace thus improves its rank, no questions asked. In a city where rank means everything from greater wealth to favor from an evil deity, being bad can result in a pretty sweet deal. It’s only when someone gets caught that severe punishment is doled out, and we’re talking utterly cruel and unusual here (a dozen piercing crossbow arrows, three bolts of lightning, and then savagely eaten by a hideous monster from some horrible plane of existence … for starters).³ What does this say about justice or the importance of being a moral person? If being bad brings about a better life so long as no one knows it was you, why be good? To answer this question we’ll move from Menzoberranzan to Athens in order to consult Plato (c.429–c.347 bce).

The Myth of Gyges

Plato’s Republic features characters at a feast discussing the topic of justice (not all dinner conversations can be about how much the highest-ranked House Baenre sucks).⁴ Glaucon, one of the conversation partners, decides to play devil’s advocate, putting forth the idea that justice is one of those pesky things we have to deal with to live in a peaceful society, arguing that if there were a way around it, no one would be just or moral.⁵ Glaucon declares, “wherever anyone thinks he can be safely unjust, there he is unjust.”⁶ To illustrate, he tells the story of Gyges, a shepherd in Lydia, who finds a ring that when worn and turned inward toward his hand makes him invisible, his presence unknown. Using this power, he is able to seduce the queen of Lydia, kill the king, and take the kingdom for himself with no one ever suspecting him.

What the drow wouldn’t give for a ring like that! A sphere of magical silence to eliminate the sound of an approaching army is good. A spell to conjure up warm air to hide an assassin’s body heat from the infrared sight of fellow drow is even better. But a ring that makes one invisible and undetectable about takes the cake, especially when plotting a raid on a powerful House. House Do’Urden’s raid on House Devir would have been much simpler with the Ring of Gyges. Weapons master Zaknafein could have just walked right into the mushroom grove, levitated over the walls and into the prayer room, slaughtered all of the nobles capable of accusing him and his House of attempted murder, and walked out a hero, no casualties. The eight other higher-ranked houses would be dumbstruck by the event, and the drow’s evil deity Lolth the Spider Queen would have to bestow good graces a-plenty on House Do’Urden (or maybe not … she is pretty vile and has some angst about Houses becoming too powerful).

Injustice served, right? Too bad it’s just a myth. Wait, what am I saying?! It’s a good thing no such ring exists because the consequences are terrifying! Doesn’t a scene like this make justice more valuable than an annoying restraint against doing whatever we want? How could we ever live peacefully if a device like the Ring of Gyges was real? What’s Glaucon’s deal exactly?

“Creatures of survival, not of principle”

Glaucon is making a statement about people in general. He reasons that a person is only just because he or she fears the threat of retribution, but if that threat didn’t exist then no one would behave justly. Suppose, as Glaucon does, that two Rings of Gyges existed, one worn by a perfectly just man and another worn by a perfectly unjust man.⁷ Glaucon expects both men would succumb to the temptation to steal, kill, and commit any number of atrocities because they have no fear of retribution. We could argue fear of retribution is the only reason a city like Menzoberranzan still stands. Without it, its citizenry would be at each other’s throats constantly until the whole race of dark elves eliminated itself. In fact, fear of retribution is the reason the drow maintain their power over all of the other creatures in the Underdark.

For example, on their way to see “justice” done against a house that failed to complete its raid, the Do’Urden party encounters some dwuergar, gray dwarves, who have blocked their path in the lane.⁸ When the matron of House Do’Urden approaches, the dwarves initially turn on her angrily, but they hush up quick when they realize that a big mistake – crossing a high-ranking drow like Matron Malice – could result in an agonizing end. Thankfully, the dwarves have some resources, “crates of giant crab legs and other delicacies” they meant to trade in Menzoberranzan (you know you’re poor when …), which they could use to appease the powerful drow matron before her daughter Briza uses her six-headed serpent whip against them. The dwarves pretty much knew they would be kissing half of their stock goodbye without a decent sale. Clearly, the drow wield the power of fear of retribution in the most wicked way to keep lesser creatures in line. It’s a means of survival in a harsh world (more like a means to greedy ends, but what else could we expect from evil creatures?).

So is fear of retribution really the only way to think about justice? What about morality and being good-natured, living for something more than survival and “station”? Where’s the love? It doesn’t really exist in Menzoberranzan save for two individuals, and oh what lives they lead …

“I forgive your foolish thoughts … this time!”

The only two drow who seem to have a moral center are forced to hide it in the hell of their homeland. Zaknafein, weapons master of House Do’Urden and father to Drizzt, is haunted by living his double life of moral mass murderer. He takes great pains to conceal the reasoning for his true lust of killing drow – because they’re evil. And of course Drizzt, the famous protagonist in the Dark Elf trilogy and much of the Forgotten Realms series, possesses an innate moral nature. Like father like son, it seems. Zak keeps a careful eye on his son and weapons protégé, worrying like crazy whether Drizzt will turn out evil like the rest of his kin (parents, right?). He almost decides to kill Drizzt during a sparring match the night before Drizzt is to go to the Academy to train as a fighter.⁹ The thought of Drizzt, someone he has grown to care for deeply because of his similar moral nature, turning out just like the rest of the evil-spirited drow he has trained causes Zak severe pain. Drizzt feels similarly at the thought of his teacher’s long list of kills and dishonorable methods of killing during raids. Drizzt feels the disappointment so strongly that he too considers murdering Zak in order to “remove himself from the wrongness around him.”¹⁰ (You know the old moral code: if you can’t stand them being bad, take ’em out … hmm, something wrong there. Makes for good drama though!)

The fact that Zak and Drizzt live with such mental torment about the cruelty of drow society seems to prove Glaucon’s point about justice being annoying. Since Zak and Drizzt have moral natures, that annoyance turns into a churning despair. Glaucon argues that truly just people are doomed to live wretchedly anyway simply because most people live otherwise, being just for the sake of appearances and not because they truly want to.

Let’s say Zak and Drizzt stay in Menzoberranzan all their lives. Even if they could stay true to their principles, the tell-tale sign of a truly just person in Glaucon’s perspective is a horribly wretched life. The test of the truly just man is to “let him be thought the worst (most unjust)”¹¹ and still retain his moral composure. In Menzoberranzan, the “worst” is flip-flopped such that being good and wholesome is “worst.” If Zak and Drizzt showed their true nature, the fury of their family would descend upon them to beat it back down, even to the point of death. Zak and Drizzt manage to skirt around the “worst” by keeping it hidden, but they do bear the burden of watching their ruthless race behave so maliciously without calling foul. Drizzt’s resolve is strongly tested when he learns that on the night of his birth “House DeVir ceased to exist” at the hands of his own family, and his own brother Dinin became the firstboy of the house by murdering Nalfein.¹² In a way, Drizzt’s life is the result of the unjust nature of his race. He would have been sacrificed to Lolth as is customary for third-born sons were it not for Dinin’s perfect execution. Unfortunately Zak and Drizzt have to learn to hold their tongues and accept the stinging reality of their surroundings – when it comes to clean kills and annihilation without a trace, “it never happened.”¹³

The just person is an idiot for choosing justice, especially in the world of the drow. Compassion has no place in Menzoberranzan, and whenever Matron Malice, Briza, Dinin, or any of the members of House Do’Urden catch a hint of it from Zak or Drizzt, they become suspicious and agitated. During his first grand melee at the Academy, Drizzt completely embarrassed his brother Dinin, a master at the school, when Drizzt proved himself “a good fool”¹⁴ by trusting another competitor, only to be turned on toward the end of the battle. And when Drizzt suggested using reason to handle a potential raid on the house, Matron Malice violently responded to his insolence.¹⁵

Moral people may also threaten a House’s good standing with the evil Lolth, so they are especially dangerous. On a surface raid, Drizzt, horrified and outraged by the massacre of unarmed surface elves, not only hides a young elf from the slaughter but also maims a drow warrior in an instinctive reaction of disgust.¹⁶ Drizzt covers his actions well, but the Spider Queen apparently sees everything and loses all favor for House Do’Urden, alerting Matron Malice. Suspicions about Drizzt and Zak lead Malice to spy on the two to learn once and for all their true natures. Shocked and angry, Malice resolves to kill Drizzt and later Zak, who elects to take his place.

Despite the violence and the twisted visions of reality (because those things can so easily be tossed aside …), perhaps the warped vision of “justice” does work to some degree in Menzoberranzan. The people manage not to kill each other to the point of a ruined society. When they do kill they make sure no one finds out, or “justice” really is served. All manner of beings are kept in their place through fear, and morality is silenced from the start or eliminated if it ever appears. If it ain’t broke, I suppose … Still, Menzoberranzan is such an unsatisfactory vision of a just state that something must be missing.

“What do you see that the rest of us cannot?”

The trouble with flat-out calling Menzoberranzan the most unjust state imaginable is that it has some qualities befitting a just state. In the Republic, the philosopher Socrates is depicted as the good-guy character. He responds to Glaucon’s and others’ disbelief in the goodness of justice by directing their attention to the bigger picture, the state. He thus envisions what a perfectly just state would look like. Notably, Socrates says that “one man should practice one thing only, the thing to which his nature was best adapted.”¹⁷ Drow society is all about keeping things in their proper place. Initially, Matron Malice desires to prepare Drizzt to become the House’s new wizard to replace Nalfein. But Zak intervenes and demonstrates Drizzt’s unbelievable skill at coin-flipping, a sign he should train to be a fighter.¹⁸ The same rule applies across the genders in Menzoberranzan – females are trained to become high priestesses to the Spider Queen while the males typically focus on fighting and magic for battle purposes.

Socrates also says that justice in the ideal state involves doing one’s own business and not being a busybody – in other words, there would be no meddling in affairs that were not one’s own in a just state.¹⁹ Meddling in stuff one has no business meddling in is a quick way to earn a sharp glance or worse in Menzoberranzan. Consider an example involving the fake Faceless One, Alton DeVir. In order to learn of the guilty House that destroyed his, Alton dips into some evil divination, a practice reserved for high priestesses. He contacts another plane to speak to his dead mother, Matron Ginafae, but he does not realize that her soul is in the hellish torment of the Abyss.²⁰ Before he acquired the name of the guilty House, a hideous yochlol, handmaiden to the Spider Queen Lolth, appeared and spewed forth a wave of hungry spiders at the deformed mage, forcing him to drop a fireball at his own feet (what, no magic spell to concoct a cloud of Raid?). Alton’s fiery lesson-learned is an extreme case, but it drives home the point of sticking to what you’re good at and not meddling. The drow are very concerned with staying focused and ensuring others are as well. Drizzt is regularly admonished to learn his place, usually as he his engaging in some backtalk or raising questions. Questions are a form of meddling and therefore taken quite seriously, not just as a social breach but as an endangerment to the structure of society.

In addition to justice, Socrates calls for the ideal state and its citizens to embody the virtues of temperance, wisdom, and courage. Maybe the drow do have a well-disciplined society, but it in no way effectively creates or preserves temperance, wisdom, and courage (reasonable resolve).²¹

“His companions … viewed their surroundings through tainted eyes”

Temperance is definitely out. Even though the drow manage to stay their weapons long enough for the right moment to strike, they are still driven by their lust for power. The drow live forever unsatisfied – even the first-ranked House Baenre has to concern itself with remaining well fortified against the lesser houses. And the whole task of fine-tuning their greediness is enhanced with balancing favor with the Spider Queen. The city itself is an incubator of intemperate souls engaged in a vicious game of king of the mountain.

Wisdom is lacking in Menzoberranzan. Since questioning is taboo, there is no impetus for self-realization. None of Drizzt’s siblings give a thought to their place in Menzoberranzan, let alone within the greater universe of the Forgotten Realms. The Academy does nothing to encourage otherwise. Drizzt gives a scathing account of what exactly the Academy is: “the propagation of the lies that bind drow society together, the ultimate perpetuation of falsehoods.”²² The master of lore Hatch’net delivers sermons about the evils of the faeries and the surface world, the merciful grace of the Spider Queen, and other “hate rhetoric” designed to convince the drow of their superior nature and encourage their belief that the world must be conquered. Hatch’net is even prized for it by House matrons! In sum, wisdom is not cultivated in Menzoberranzan because the goal is station, not understanding.

Lastly, courage is hardly a sustainable virtue in drow society for a number of reasons. Traditionally speaking, the drow have nothing heroic to say of themselves. They live to survive and thrive off the kill. They demonstrate a certain chutzpah when they attempt to bring down a whole House, but the raids are well calculated to the point where bringing it down is almost an inevitability, and in the event of failure it is more of a gamble, not a matter of courage. Plus, the drow are pretty much the masters of the Underdark; when they go patrolling, we wouldn’t really ever say they were in any kind of danger (unless we were talking about a complete klutz on the battlefield).

But to really have a mind for why courage dies in Menzoberranzan, we have to realize how courage works in tandem with wisdom. In reference to courage in the state, Socrates compares courage to a kind of “salvation,” meaning a preservation of the opinion of things to be feared.²³ When the patrolling drow raid the surface, they are commended for striking out some of the evils they believe to exist against them. They are also well lauded for staying out until dawn to have their retinas seared by a sun they have never seen (like coming out of a movie theatre, only ten thousand times worse!). Still, to call their acts courageous loses some luster when we know those acts are guided by a well-ingrained ignorance of both themselves and their world. Menzoberranzan raises some extremely powerful creatures, but none of them preserve the virtues of temperance, wisdom, or courage. Well, save for the weirdo with the purple eyes.

“How I wish that one had learned his place, his values”

It is a wonder someone like Drizzt could ever come out of such an unjust home as Menzoberranzan. Despite living in a city packed with beings fueled by selfish desires who kowtow to an evil Spider Queen, Drizzt maintains his core values right up to the point of challenging his own family. Just before making his escape into exile, Drizzt demonstrates the core values sustained by a just state. He shows great character by temperately sparing his family the wrath of his scimitars (let’s just agree the unsuspecting members would not have had time to react to Drizzt’s lightning attacks; he managed to knock off two wizards before facing his family after all …). His wisdom is seen through his ceaseless resolve to question. As he makes his way to face his family, Drizzt is intent on uncovering the true nature of Zaknafein by suggesting they both escape from Menzoberranzan, not knowing Matron Malice had killed him. Thus, in order to learn of Zak’s “tormented soul” and ultimate sacrifice to save him, Drizzt interrogates Malice about Zak’s final moments. He gains a full understanding of the evils of his family, his race, and the utter injustice of his home. Finally, he shows courage by facing the biggest threats to his existence, yet he does not blindly attack them – quite the opposite really, tossing down one of Zak’s orbs of light to sear the eyes of his brethren in order to make an escape!²⁴ Drizzt preserves the opinion that his family is truly evil, an opinion guided by reason and consideration of the actions and characters of Matron Malice, Briza, Dinin, and the rest.

By cultivating the virtues of his character, Drizzt does an injustice to his homeland (which is to do justice!). He proves that out of something so grievously unjust, a just being can spring. But he cannot stay there. To live in such a hellish place as Menzoberranzan while at the core possessing a strong sense of justice would be a nightmare and eventually lead to death. Drizzt is the exception, not the rule. So as the only moral dark elf leaves the pitch-black city of his birth, it is safe to assume Menzoberranzan continues on as a perfect unjust state.

Notes

1. R.A. Salvatore, Homeland (Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2004).

2. Ibid., p. 148.

3. Ibid., p. 113.

4. Plato, Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004). It is crucial to note Plato’s writing style here. He writes in dialogue form, like a play, usually with Socrates as the primary speaker or lesson-giver.

5. Ibid., pp. 39–41.

6. Ibid., p. 42.

7. Ibid.

8. Salvatore, Homeland, pp. 109–110.

9. Ibid., pp. 126–129.

10. Ibid., p. 236.

11. Plato, Republic, p. 43.

12. Salvatore, Homeland, p. 166.

13. Ibid., p. 168; the ability to fabricate reality and simultaneously live according to truth is pretty twisted, but it raises a strong question about the nature of reality. For instance, who is the real Dinin? The one who murdered his older brother and became firstboy? Or the one who ascended to the position because of Nalfein’s untimely demise during a raid? The choices are twisted because, essentially, they are the same! Yet one condemns Dinin while the other doesn’t. So as far as drow society (chooses to) believe, the latter choice is the real Dinin, but he isn’t really.

14. Ibid., p. 146.

15. Ibid., p. 197.

16. Ibid., pp. 227–228.

17. Plato, Republic, p. 132.

18. Salvatore, Homeland, pp. 71–73.

19. Plato, Republic, p. 132; we need to frame what Socrates says here within the context of the rest of the Republic. In creating the perfect state, Socrates ultimately fashions one ruled by philosopher-kings, people who consigned themselves to the love of wisdom and the search for truth. The philosopher kingdom ousted all others, including recognizable governments of today, and one of the reasons is because in those other governments average people have the authority to meddle in state affairs and in the lives of citizens. This criterion sort of grows out of the first one: Socrates affirms to the common people: stick to what you’re good at.

20. Salvatore, Homeland, pp. 82–84.

21. A really good breakdown of how the virtues figure into Socrates’ perfect state is up on the web via Dr. Tobias Hoffmann, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. Available at http://faculty.cua.edu/hoffmann/courses/201_1068/Plato-5%20Republic.4.pdf. Accessed March 23, 2014.

22. Salvatore, Homeland, p. 133.

23. Plato, Republic, p. 128.

24. Salvatore, Homeland, pp. 319–320.