Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion What exactly is a "Lolth-sworn Drow"?

They arent though, they are only getting different dialogue.

No?
His mother/sister think he might be blind at first when he's born, but that notion is quickly dispelled. It's treated as something of a novelty, somewhat attractive to other drow. His father and one of his siters also have the same eye color.

There's also multiple other drow with not-red eyes. Most notably within Menzoberranzan, Gromph Baenre and his daughter Liriel both had golden eyes, as does Vhaidra Usowiir (covergirl from Dark Alliance 2). There was also another noble house notable for their green eyes, iirc.

There's also Danifae, who had blue eyes, and later got absorbed by Lolth. So canonically, even Lolth has a blue-eyed avatar she can assume.

For outside the Realms, there's Eclavdra, with Violet eyes like Drizzt.

Notably, Liriel, Danifae, and Eclavdra were all chosen of Lolth at some point. To drive home eye color not being associated with worship of the spider queen.

So I repeat myself, all of this is a rather odd retcon on Larian's behalf. One I find rather uncomfortable, personally. It was revealed shortly before of all those sweeping drow retcons, and sounds rather similar to what the Dark Alliance reboot was going with (which the Drizzt artbook released in the past year went with) where drow grew tattoos on their body in accordance with how much Lolth favors them, and not having any tattoos shows to everyone that Lolth doesn't like you. WoTC really trying to have their cake and eat it too and make sure there's at least *some* drow you can massacre guilt-free on sight.

Jarlaxle is evil. Just because he's 'chsrismatic' abd 'charming' doesn't change that.

And, the drow innbg3 are their own race with two subraces. That's literally fact. It makes no sense. Drow are supposed to be to elves what duergar are to dwarves abd svirfniblins are to gnomes. Also, duergar has/had other god(s) to worship - most notably Deep Duerra(sp?). Like the Gith, she helped the duergar escape the illithid's slavery. It's why at least old school duergard could enlarge and go invisible.

I am just happy that the Drow get their Dancing Lights cantrip again. Will probably play as a LS Drow Sorcerer for my first run. Might go with Dark Urge for extra spice.

That's what more or less what I inferred from the game itself, though "Lolth-sworn" seems a bit off. I mean, a follower of Vhaeraun still adheres to most Drow values, though such a character would presumably chafe at matriarchal rule. Still, I don't think that Larian would consider such a character a 'Seldarine Drow.'

As to the surface Drow living in in long lost cities, I'm actually fairly interested in the idea if it's well executed. I've always been a sucker for 'Lost Civilization' stories, as seen in H. Rider Haggard, A.A. Merritt, and some of Edgar Rice Burrough's works.

The long-lost pre-drow like, aren't drow?
It's only the drow who followed Lloth underground and were cursed who got the dark skin, white hair, centuries of suffering to create their unique culture?
If lost civilisation pre-drow were around, they'd just be normal elves who live in jungles, have black hair, dark brown skin and memories of a fallen empire? I feel they'd be an elf sub-ancestry not a drow one?

I'm pretty sure subsequent (and prior) authors have avoided that particular element for some very good reasons. Even R A Salvatore addressed that on his twitter a few years ago basically 'absolutely not'. The Seldarien Drow of BG III certainly aren't them. The violet eyes thing is kinda obnoxious though.

From what I can gather, these 'other' Drow still got the curse when the other Drow did, but chose not to head to the Underdark when relations got sour with the rest of the elves and the elven pantheon.But I'm hardly an expert on the lore of Faerun.

To start I'll just say I'm not super familiar with the lore. I love this game and the old BG games and even played a few of the really old D&D computer games like the Eye of the Beholder Trilogy when I was really young. And read a couple of the books many years ago. But it seems the devs have really contradicted themselves here.

I've mainly played a Tiefling and not got very far as either type of Drow but in my Seldarine Drow playthrough the Tiefling kids have a line about how horrible and scary the Drow are and you get a dialogue option to the effect of "Do you see red eyes? I'm not scary, only the red eyed Drow are evil, if you see red eyes run."

And yet in character creation whether you pick Lolth-Sworn or Seldarine you can pick from both Red and non-Red eyes as options even when not ticking the "All Eye Colours" button implying all those possibilities are canonically available.

Weirdly I have noticed they do have different options though available though: both Lolth-Sworn and Seldarine get Black, White, Purple and Red options but Lolth-Sworn also get a few Pink options that the Seldarine don't.