Svirfneblin Favored Enemy
Devs - Why no Drow on the FavEnemy Multiselector for Svirfneblin?
Goblinoids and Reptilians is all well and good - Svirfneblin Lore would have conflicts with both types BUT....
The Drow and Svirfneblin have been at each others throats in D&D Lore for DECADES! The Drow would like nothing more than to wipe the Svirfneblin off the face of Toril! Drow absolutely HAS to be a FavEnemy of Svirfneblin!
From the AD&D 2nd Edition: Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings...
Quote:
"Svirfneblin? I loathe them--they are fit only to die on the tip of a Dark Elf's sword! They scurry about the sunless realms with tenacity. We kill them wherever we find them, and still they return! They show no fear of our Drow mages, even when dozens of them perish at a time. Even the priestesses of Lolth, while they slay the sniveling gnomes in mass, do not inspire enough terror to stop their malicious intrusion!
"And why do they come? The answer is gems. They thirst for precious baubles with a ferocity I have never seen. They will drive their tunnels into the farthest corners of the Underdark, and this is what makes them a threat to me and my people. "I give you a tale of Desselderekathe, a great cavern network not so very far from my own home. Its mere existence was naturally a threat to us, and thus--more than a century ago--we sent an army to destroy it. I myself commanded a company of lizardriders in the assault.
"Our Drow forces struck them from all sides. My own cavalry entered through the cavern ceiling and rode down the walls, striking into the heart of Desselderekathe before the foe knew they were attacked. Our mages cast clouds of poison gas that settled into the city's low places, and into these we drove the screaming little pests.
"Within a few hours it was over--not a single Deep Gnome remained alive within the walls of Desselderekathe! We withdrew in triumph, and I myself was decorated by the matron mother of our city's greatest house! Yet within a decade we heard reports that renegade Deep Gnomes had moved into the abandoned ruins. We set a garrison in the place, but they suffered ambush and other treachery--and it proved too expensive to station a full army in what was otherwise a worthless shell. Though there were in fact some gem-bearing rock formations in the region, the excavation proved too troublesome to warrant the return.
Seventy years ago we abandoned Desselderekathe, and now I hear that the place is again full of Svirfneblin! I suppose we'll have to do it all again, and I know these runts will not allow us to simply repeat our first attack. We shall have to devise a new tactic, one which may well be more costly in terms of Drow lives. And for what? Simply to insure our destiny, and our right to live in peace.
"You see now, I trust, why the Svirfneblin are fit only to be hated, loathed, and despised?"
--Fassyth Yssarial, Secondboy of House Twylleenimor, Imperial Drow City of Qaucium.
