In walking the streets of Callidae, in talking to the aevendrow, the contrast with Menzoberranzan could not be more stark. This was the answer, for me and for Jarlaxle, at least, and likely for the other companions from Menzoberranzan as well, although I do not know if Zaknafein, Kimmuriel, Dab’nay, or certainly Gromph had ever so directly pondered the question: Was there something within me, within all drow, a flaw in our nature, a predetermination, a damning fate, of all the evils of our culture for which the other peoples of Faerun cast blame and aspersions?
Certainly, I never felt such inner urges or demons or wishes to cause harm. Nor, I am sure, did my sisters—at least two—or my father. I never saw such natural malice in Jarlaxle, or even in Kimmuriel, though he often frightened me.
But still, even knowing that, it was ever hard for me to fully dismiss the opinions that the peoples of other lands and species and cultures placed upon the drow, upon me. Catti-brie once said to me that perhaps I was more constrained by the way I saw other people seeing me, and there is truth to that little semantic twist. But it went deeper, went to the core of who Drizzt Do’Urden truly was—or, more importantly, of who I ever feared I might be or might become.
The expectation of others is an often-crippling weight.
I lived under that weight. And as strong as I am, as much as I’ve trained my mind, body, and soul, I see now how it stooped my shoulders just enough to not be able to truly stand tall around my companions. To want to hide, if even in the secret part of my brain, all the things they might have perceived about me and other drow.
But now I have the answer. Now we all have the answer, even those companions who perhaps never directly asked the question, and it is a wondrous thing:
We drow are not flawed.
We are not lesser. We are not malignant by any measure of nature. I do not know how high the ladder of evil deeds such truth climbs, honestly. I have seen wicked dictators of every species and culture to match the vileness of the most zealous Lolthian priestess. I have witnessed truly evil people, from dwarfs to halflings to humans to elves to drow, and everything in between and every species or culture only a bit removed. So perhaps there are some individuals who have within them a natural evil.
Or perhaps even with them, even with the most wicked, like Matron Zhindia Melarn or the magistrates of Luskan’s carnival, who torture accused criminals with such glee, there were steps in the earlier days of their personal journey which corrupted them and brought them to their present state. That is a question that I doubt will ever show an answer, nor is that answer truly the most important factor, for in the present, in the moment, in their own actions, these folk, as with us all, bear responsibility.
The more important question to me in all of this, then, is how can an entire city—and nearly all within the city—be so held in thrall, be twisted to the will of a demon queen so completely that they lose all sense of what is right and what is wrong? Because surely that basic understanding is something that any reasoning being should possess!
In Menzoberranzan, I am coming to understand, there were far more akin to me than those gladly embracing the tenets of Lolth and her vicious clergy. Even Dab’nay, who long ago realized how much she despised all that was Lolth (and yet, remained a priestess and was still being granted magical spells from that being she despised!).
The answer, I now know, is fear. Of all the inspirations, the motivations any leader can give, the easiest is fear, and it is perhaps the most difficult to push aside. Dab’nay could secretly hate Lolth, but to proclaim it openly would have meant her death, if she was lucky. More likely, she would have been turned into a drider, sentenced to an eternity of unrelenting anguish.
Even the bravest would fear that.
Fear is a powerful weapon, and the tragic result of a despot is a tale too often told, and even easier to see in the more transient societies of the shorter-living peoples. I have seen kingdoms of humans taken to bad end by a lord with evil designs—we saw this with Lord Neverember and the Waterdhavian houses corrupted for personal gain. These are among the most predictable and saddest tales in the annals of the human societies, where one state or another decides to wage war, to steal land or resources from a neighbor. And also, thankfully, along with being the most common, such states are often the most transient. Kingdoms that were once avowed enemies are now grand allies and friends, sharing markets, intermarrying, prospering together.
The difference in Menzoberranzan, most obviously, is that the power there, the wicked lord with evil designs, was, and remains, not transient. A human leader will die—perhaps their successor will be of a better and more generous heart; if not the immediate one, then only a few decades down the road. Nor is the simple physical geography of the surface kingdoms conducive to any lasting and debilitating autocracy, for many of the people will come to know folk of other lands, and so will learn of the shortcomings of their society when placed against the aspirations and hopeful visions of their neighbors.
Such is not the case in the cavern of my birth. Not only is Lolth eternal and ever present, a dictator who will not unclench her talons, but the city itself is secluded. I am not unique in my desire to flee, nor am I the only drow who did run from Menzoberranzan through the millennia of Lolthian control. Perhaps I am not the only one who made it out of there, who somehow, with good fortune, survived the wilds of the Underdark, and with better fortune, found a home, a true place within a family. But for every drow like me who somehow escaped, I take heart in knowing that there are thousands who would like to escape, who see the wrongs before them.
Lolth’s method is lying.
Lolth’s inspiration is fear.
Lolth’s full damnation of the drow in Menzoberranzan is that she is eternal, clutching tighter at every generation.
Now, we have a chance to break that hold, to free the city, to turn the whispers of the drow into open shouts of denial.
That is why I could not stay in Callidae. That is why I could not stay in the comfort of my homes in Longsaddle or Gauntlgrym, my wife and daughter beside me.
Because now—and only now, armed with knowledge and light illuminating what has so long been hidden—we have a chance.
—Drizzt Do’Urden