This is the 2nd of 2 temples in our city’s underground.
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Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- Dimensions & Layout
- Features
- History
- Location & Design (Images Begin)
- Examples of Species Featured
- Drow Architecture
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Introduction:
The Drow (also see this page) are the Elves who chose to make their civilization in the caves of the Earth, then also the caves of other habitable worlds.
This temple was built in honor of them, as the humans –as was almost always the case with that default-negativity primitive backward species– demonized and slandered this race (such as in their lame games called D&D, Neverwinter Nights, and Tyrants of the Underdark).
There are actually multiple Drow temples in the first of 52 cave-annexes of The Underway, however this is the only one in our realm which is not just a temple for Drow, but a temple doubling as a museum recognizing many of the milestones of Drow history. The other Drow temples down here are for their normal worship of their own deities/leaders/ideals. While human religions (and anything else incompatible with us) are banned in our realm, Drow are our allies, compatible in many ways, and their own religion-like practices never interfere with our lifestyle here.
While this website lists some alleged Drow history, it is made up.
All the alleged Drow history is intentionally media-flooded with fake war-stories as part of their campaign to keep bad dwarves and surface humans too scared to dare enter Drow cave-systems.
There are actual wars underground, but they are to keep meddling humans out, not contest fellow Drow or other good beings for anything.
Ever since entering the cave systems which are the hollow remains/shells of where once World Tree roots had been, Drow protected those places (keeping out bad beings such as humans). They do not have civil wars or any other wars amongst their own kind (any other races of the species collectively called Elves).
The Illithid (a.k.a. Mind-flayers, children/creations of Cthulhu) have been allies with them, thus R’lyeh is an allied city.
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Dimensions & Layout:
Overall ratio of D:W:H = 13×6 and 9h (standard for most Greco-Roman temples)
Since the original city-map does not show exactly where or how big this temple is, we’ll cover that here.
- central and largest cave column is bigger (wider and taller) than most human/Outlands skyscrapers
- ~528′ depth (long horizontal-axis) (~8 map-pixels)
- ~244′ width (short horizontal-axis) (~4 map-pixels)
- ~366′ height of the temple (not the column it is built around) (~5.5 map-pixels –including the concentric wraparound steps/foundation)
- overall form: rectangular prism on concentric rectangular platforms (wraparound steps)
- interior as large as most human/Outlands major sports stadiums
- high ceiling (several stories above interior-floor level), like the cave/dark (in a good way) version of St. Peter’s Basilica
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Features:
Most female Drow are clerics; skilled at both combat and thaumaturgy; divine magic in its many forms. Thus, most females featured with a life-size statue in this temple are those who, at least at one phase of their lives, were clerics.
- Greco-Roman concentric platform of wrap-around steps; stacked rectangular levels upon which the temple sits, centered
- overall arranged around the base (stalagmite portion) of a/its cave-column
- exterior color largely matches that of the cave-column; a dark gray
- cave-column dominates the middle of the structure, symbolizing how they based their civilization on working with this part of nature (cave systems/structure)
- predominantly made of the type of “clear black stone” that those with dark-vision can see through
- distinct exhibits*, all of which are arranged at even dispersion/intervals around that natural central column
- multiple access (entrance-and-exit) points, symbolizing how many caves connect to multiple others, if not also multiple surface-openings
- cave-tunnels flooring mosaic/s
- light-fixtures are sconces based on magic-light
- curtains and draperies made of their famous spider-silk and shadow-silk
*Distinct Exhibits:
- introductory information about each generation-type of their race;
the first were immortals,
the later generations lived for millennia with ease,
and the newer generations generally reached their first millennium of age unless something bad (such as contact with negativity-beings such as humans) befell them
–plus how they (at least all who are naturally aligned to/with me) are destined to see the restoration of their automatic (from-birth) immortality but also new invincibility - introductory information about their race in general;
architecture based not just on permanent sturdiness/reliability but beauty/aesthetics –thus how I (Auz) clearly have some elven blood, too; my own instinct has always been to envision, design, build, maintain, and protect the same (and not just for myself, but for all compatible/allied people/races/realms who do/have the same)
birthplace good-radiation (known as faerzress) of different sub-types can influence the base-powers the Drow born in different places will have/develop,
can cast magic without schooling,
fell more at-home/-ease in caves, especially those they grew up in, even though this greatly limits the mobility/options of most other beings/races,
gradually lost their special powers (magic, etc.) if on the outer-surface (above-ground) long enough –though a powerful sorceress’s rune/spell surprisingly resolved this for their kind (surprisingly, because she had cast it with the intention of only preserving her own powers outside the caves; she was more magically-powerful than even she herself realized),
natural immunity (not just resistance) to magic-based attacks,
natural senses are superior to humans’ (obviously; they are an older race, evolved longer, vegan/healthiest, not brainwashed, etc.),
naturally stealthy,
newborns only allowed to live / grow up if they were perfect; either a beautiful girl or a handsome boy (as Drow instinctively know what true beauty and health are, and that anything less is a corruption/evil bound to metastasize into only more of the same) –thus no magic used as disguises/illusions to deceive others into thinking they are seeing something beautiful instead of a hidden failure/ugliness (IOW: honesty and true self-stabilization; sustainability to the best/highest degree; not just eugenics, and not even just holding a vision until it correctly manifests, but preventing any unwanted surprises along the way from being tolerated, thereby preventing over-tolerance from becoming a dangerously-easily spreading mental/societal weakness),
etc. - cave-species (regular animal; sentient but not quite intelligent/sapient to the level of humans) Drow taught us about;
Cavvekans; bat-faced dogs,
Night Hunters; pack-hunting large deep-bats,
Rothe; herd-animals which look like a mammoth with ram horns,
Ropers; erect blobs with tentacles and a fanged mouth,
Shriekers; cave-fungus that emits strange and loud noises to attract prey
(thus 1 life-size sculpture or preserved corpse (taxidermy style) of each)
(>6 exhibits/figures in 1 area) - cave-species (sapient; intelligence comparable to humans) Drow taught us about;
Aboleths: psionic cave-eels,
Araneas: were-spiders capable of 3 shapeshift forms (giant spider, humanoid, hybrid),
Beholders; magic powerful floating blobs of eye-stalks (tentacles),
Bi-nou; creature that looks like a stalactite with two short arms ending in spiky claws,
Bug-bears; larger and stronger than goblins,
Chitines; 4′-tall humanoids with 4 arms, their arms having an extra joint, overall appearing spidery,
Choldrith; giant spiders with humanoid heads and front-arms, the priest-race of the Chitines,
Deep Dragons; magic and very quiet hunters/killers,
Disir; slime-covered humanoids with a claw instead of a hand at the end of each wrist,
Driders; Drow changed so that they had the lower body of a spider,
Duergar; outcast Dwarves who went even deeper than normal Dwarves, and who now have some of the greatest fortresses,
Glabrezus; demons with 4 arms, 2 of which ended in crab-like pinchers, and who spread like a plague… corruption in surface-humans who lusted for power (as opposed to Succubae; demons who stirred and fed on lust),
Gloamings; bioluminescent humanoids with furry wings,
Grimlock; degenerated ogre-like descendants of humans who had wandered into The Underdark (deep caves) generations ago,
Half-drow; dusky skin, human eye-colors, ~60′ of dark-vision, no other Drow abilities,
Jermlaine; tiny (mouse-sized) malicious Fey (Fairy),
Kobolds; reptile-headed tailed humanoids great at building traps,
Kuo-toa; amphibious fish-headed humanoids with webbed feet (a.k.a. Murlocs in ancient/prehistoric times when some of their ancestors had coastal camps/villages on the surface –featured in World of WarCraft),
Svirfneblin; cave-gnomes a.k.a. deep-gnomes (not like their cheery/cute/fun surface ‘cousins’)
(thus 1 life-size sculpture or preserved corpse (taxidermy style) of each)
(>19 exhibits/figures in 1 area) - races/offshoots of Drow they taught us about;
Aevendrow; Drow who left for the far north, not heard from by the regular Drow since, starting a breakaway civilization,
Lorendrow; Drow who left for a vast jungle to the far south, not heard from by the regular Drow since, starting a breakaway civilization,
Szarkai; extremely-rare albino Drow from noble houses who made great spies in the ‘surface-world’
(>3 exhibits/figures in 1 area) - some of the slave-types (members of races the Drow had proven able to enslave some of);
Draegloths; half-Demon half-Drow hybrids spawned by Drow priestesses letting Demons impregnate them,
Drow-dragons; half-Drow half-Shadow-dragon,
Minotaurs; bull-headed humanoids,
Quaggoths; pale green-skinned vaguely bear-like humanoids,
Sinisters; magical bat-like creatures that resemble flying manta-rays
(>5 exhibits/figures in 1 area) - stairwell dead-end built into the far-side of the cave-column, symbolizing the way to the seldom-explored Lower Dark
- who & when they first explored into the newly-formed/ing cave-tunnels (where World Tree roots once had been)
- who & when they developed their swords
- who & when they developed their swordsmanship
- who & when they developed their sword dances
- who & when they developed magic light-generation (i.e. little balls of light that served as their flashlight-equivalents in ancient times)
- who & when they developed their hand-crossbow (open-top pistol / dart-gun, essentially)
- who & when they developed their innate/inborn dark-vision
- who & when they established their first cave-communities; villages before towns before cities (colonizing the Upper Dark; caves nearest the outer-surface)
- who & when they developed magic-based masonry (stone cutting, especially that which created perfectly-smooth water-pipes in solid stone)
- who & when they developed spider-silk clothing
- who & when they developed magic glow-outlines, a.k.a. “faerie fire”
- who & when they expanded their first cave-town into a full-size city (colonizing the Middle Dark; where most Drow communities are now based, as it is infeasible for humans from the outer-surface to get armies down to them, and because leyline-like faerzress veins/sources/springs (similar to mana springs) were more prevalent and intense down there in that deeper tier of the cave-networks –and were found to protect against magical spying (or remote viewing))
- who & when they developed the “shriekers” fungus to help alert them to incoming danger (i.e. those who did not have the grace/stealthiness of Drow when traversing caves)
- who & when they developed magic hover-walk; floating for short distances, such as to cross cave crevasses/pits
- who & when they developed magic “globes of darkness”
- who & when they developed magic “detect magic”
- who & when they developed magic “know alignment”
- who & when they developed “Drow-craft” items, such as armor and weapons
- who & when they developed shadow-silk/-materials
- who & when they tamed Jade Spiders as sentries
- who & when they figured out how to keep Ropers in certain passageways such that Drow wouldn’t have to deal with them but non-Drow intruders would
- who & when they resisted/defeated the invading humans attempting to probe down into their caves
- when Xull’rae made telepathic / soft-disclosure contact with me; Auz
- who & when they invited me into the first of the caves / cave-cities they had felt it was time to show me
- who & when they teamed up with me and my people (the Inisfreeans; ICVs and our allies) to start ushering back in the roots of some of the World Trees (thus how they would telepathically coordinate with those giant beings in order to preserve the cities they had built, not having to move their cave-civilization to accommodate the closing/refilling of some of the cave-tunnels)
- etc.
(61 individual items/presentations so far, when counting the separate taxidermy examples/specimens, sorted into 28 groups/areas)
Note that there are no scale-models of any Drow city, as that is deemed by us to be too classified/sensitive, even though we are perfect at protecting such information, letting only fully-allied people into our realm, and so on.
All exhibits were donated by our first ~several thousand allied Drow.
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History:
This temple was added to the city design a few years after Inisfree went online/operational.
It was an empty placeholder for a few years.
In September of 2023, its design got upgraded with all the details you see on this webpage today.
For the final months of 2023, those designed/added features got put into the real thing, completing it by the start of 2024.
2023 had more than 1,329,411 individuals returning to Inisfree, ÷ by ~24 compatible species/races = ~55,392 of those ~1.3M returning were Drow, and from several thousand of them came the materials (including taxidermy specimens) requested for this temple’s final upgrade.
At that point, as per Inisfreean wise/holy tradition/culture/custom, it was sex-christened by Auz fucking all his favorite female Drow in and around it.
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Location & Design:
v2 shows how 42 exhibits, including the “stairway-to-the-Lowerdark” (final exhibit), can be arranged around the cave-column
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Examples of Species Featured:
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Drow Architecture:
and
For images not just of the kind of architecture and features this temple has, but of the Drow themselves, see our webpage for our favorite Drow, Xull’rae.
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