D1-2-3: Drow Trilogy

This article or section is about something oldschool - and awesome. Make sure your rose-tinted glasses are on nice and tight, and prepare for a lovely walk down nostalgia lane.

The Drow Trilogy, also known as the D Series due to its official coding (D1-D3), or sometimes Depths Trilogy or Descent Trilogy - are an Adventure Path for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition in which the party Descends into the Depths (of Greyhawk) to confront the machinations of the Drow. They are canonically a sequel to the Against the Giants trilogy, and have their own sequel/conclusion in the module Queen of the Demonweb Pits. The entire Adventure Path has been published in the form of the super-module Queen of the Spiders.

The word "Underdark" isn't used here but it will be. It will be.

This [part of the] adventure path consists of three modules: Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Shrine of the Kuo-toa, and Vault of the Drow. Confusing things, Descent and Shrine were also republished in a combined format, also named Descent into the Depths of the Earth.

Plot

The plot of the three modules places a party of player characters (PCs) on the trail of the drow priestess Eclavdra through what we're now calling "the Underdark": a vast subterranean network of interconnected caverns and tunnels, battling various creatures on their journey.

If teeing off from Hall of the Fire Giant King, M5-138 on the Greyhawk map: the PCs were supposed to have discovered that the drow had instigated the alliance between the races of giants and their attacks on neighboring humans. The drow that survived the party's incursion have fled into tunnels leading deep into the earth. The adventurers will have arrived at the bottom of the dungeon below the cave-castle of King Snurre. That, campaign-pending, is optional. Quite a lot of the following is intrinsically optional ...

... but the D series doesn't let you cheat on those options. Drow (and Gygax) aren't retarded. They don't let any asshole rules-lawyer just teleport their party ahead on their route. "Pressure" and "powerful magnetic forces" disable all teleporting short of a wish down in the underworld. You're going to walk it.

The basis of the trilogy - especially "D1-2" - is the Gen Con Tournament, XI played at 1978 to be exact. This explains the linear and three-step waltz format, fractally arranged in three steps of module: different parties get different encounters, meet back up, compare notes, then split off again. D3 at the end goes full sandbox.

The network is a hex-based flowchart, one mile per hex, with three types of cavern. Single hex is a 130' x 130' map - basically just an "area of interest". Doublehex is the endgame for D1 and D2, a map to fill a 1970s-era cover and (here) nowhere near 5820' x 10560'. Six hex is the Vault. There's a "Sunless Sea" off to the northeast, from Coleridge; sporting the only fourhexer, an island. But if you're there you have traveled too far to be playing this series, or blown an encounter in D2 so hard your character's probably not rejoining the party.

DMs up for saving trudge time and don't care about muh canon can rule that a hex is only half a mile. The Vault would then be 24-hex but feh. There's a plot here and the Vault is off on the northwest corner. For the canon-conscious DM, boots / potions of Erythroxylum cocaspeed might work on some of those longer stretches on tunnel.

The players get a Player's Map of the network, with only the relevant part of the route, but with pretty icons to hint at what they're to face. The Queen of the Spiders remake editors took the icons away, those bastards. It's still on the mimesis-stretching hex plan though.

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

Players with an ounce of sense will grasp that if one hexes are small, and two hexes are big; that last six-hex area should be... important. They'll be seeking intelligence on the Vault. The drow all bear medallions usually in brooch form, and their servitors have nightvision goggles; the PCs will want some, to avoid a confrontation with what drow laughably term "the law". DMs who bypass the caverns mentioned in the printed text will need to think up means to get medallions into the party's hands (or necks).

D1 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth

The PCs seek the home of the drow by traveling through an underground world of caves and passages. At hex D3 (not to be confused with the module) just before the intersection the drow have posted a patrol - so the PCs can't avoid this, and might not be able to avoid a fight. The patrol is sex-segregated: male from house Aleval, female Despana but led by Lolth clerics. Both sides are directed from the Fane itself; one wonders how Eclavdra got past them. Module D3 will inform us that Despana are rank 3 over Aleval at rank 8.

The next encounter on the main road - if the party wants it - is at hex M12 with a raiding party of mind flayers and wererats, who have halted their patrol long enough to "question" their male drow merchant prisoner of the silver [crescent] clan. As of module D1, Gygax knew that drow merchant society works on the clan system; the Merchant Villa in D3 will inform us which clan aligns with what Drow house (Aleval again, here). But unless the party got speak with dead you will probably not save this poor guy to question him, either.

The illithids subsequently absent themselves from the D1-2 narrative, next showing up as mere random emissaries in the Vault. But we did get that lovely Willingham illo on the D1-2 back cover out of it! And we shall admit, hex M12 is a decent hook to foreshadow a (major!) expansion of the scope if the DM is up for it - that is, a supra-genius him/herself. (The GDQ compilation book will hint at their city, the plot-blasting Dra-Mur-Shou.)

Module D1's centrepiece is a grand cavern containing drow soldiers loyal to the Spider Queen, purple worms, Asberdies the max-level party-wiping lich, a clutch of undead, a giant slug annoying the undead. Also gargoyles wandered in from the main-passage encounter-table, who "fear" the drow but are not on their side; likewise two hieracosphynges who serve Eilservs (dissident) drow who aren't here. The trolls, bugbears, and troglodytes in the warrens east of here with their pet wyverns all work with the Lolthian faction; the trogs tend a massive fungus patch at the eastern edge. While it is possible to forge an alliance with the Lolthian drow - thereby the ghouls, trogs, trolls, and bugbears - by demonstrating you've killed the mind flayers (saving the prisoner is virtually impossible); the module doesn't really account for this. There's a lich skulking the module D1 and D2 tertiary-passage encounters both; maybe that's Asberdies.

The tournament map of the Caverns And Warrens Of The Troglodytes only allowed three exits, and all on the west bulge of the two-hex network: the south way in, northwest out, and northeast to the bypass (more on that anon). As D1, two more exits / entrances connect to the wider DM (and players) map. These never made it to the published Caverns map. Instead, we got "NOTE: There are 2 entrances to area not shown on this map. DM should assume secret entrances are around area 4 and 30/31." Area 4 would actually head to a full-on highway and 30/31, to a tertiary - not secret.

First appearance of the Jermlaine therefore, really, the gremlin. They're noted in tertiary passages only, so are there for the DM to punish PCs for not playing hex M12. By the book, they're met in packs of 15-30 (d16 + 14; yes, sometimes d16 do appear in early AD&D) but there's a 60% chance they're operating from a lair within 60'. So, if their number is 21 on up: plan on a lair and add some rats to the total.

Much of this can be bypassed; the Players Map even shows how not to play M12. Such bypasses are great for tournaments... or just for players who don't want to dick around with mostly-irrelevant encounters before getting to the Vault. Other DMs may be saddled with players who know most of the printed content already because it's all just that famous, and would rather roll their own encounters. So, on to the big whale in the room, module D2:

How Not To Play D2

The deadites are "on their way northwest to serve the Drow" - by way of a bypass that end-runs the whole damn D2 module, northeast, currently obstructed. If the party clears their way for them, they'll get a horde of stinky rotting travel-companions on their way right to D3. If the party fights the ghoulies off, they now own a map to the doublehex ST-17 presumably their home - how very Lovecraft Dreamland. Not that the ghoul-kingdom (or -baronetcy) has anything more to do with the plot than, er, D2 does. And Gygax probably should have mooted this at the first encounter of D1, by way of hex O10. BUT ANYWAY

The Player's Map like it did for M12 shows part of this bypass too - but only the start of it, so PCs won't naturally dare it. If the DM wants to cut to the chase, as it were, s/he can have someone hint at this route instead. Although probably not Eclavdra herself since she's not a spider-worshipper anymore. The ghouls are an option.

For an encounter-table north to hex S20's intersection you may as well stick with module D1's. Beyond, use D3's except - at the last tertiary - you'll have to omit or at least explain the Deep Gnomes (they can't teleport, remember). Maybe the svirfs got spies at intersections S, K², and/or T².

DMs who dislike kuo-toa, are creative, and have time on their hands, can consider another end-run. That's through W22 and then F²29; doublehex I²J²-34/35 sits out on the latter sideline as optional-to-that-option. Since the ghouls don't take this path we may assume it is not ghoul-friendly; the DM gets to decide why, and where to put the obstruction. The Queen of the Spiders appendix 3 has ideas.

D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa

If the party pursues the drow directly the encounter-tables shift. Yes kuo-toa and (tertiary only) gnomes; no jermlaine or beholders or wererats or illithids. Reading between the lines, the DM may presume the secondary route from A²30 to be gnomish also.

First the party encounters at W27 a kuo-toan rogue monitor (thus introduced to D&D for the first time). He helps the PCs cross a large river "Svartjet" for a fee, assuming they have an interpreter or magical means of understanding his language, otherwise he beats their asses and summons a gigantic gar. A party of Svirfneblin (or deep gnomes - also new here) approaches the player characters on the other side, and the party has a chance to convince them to help them fight against the drow and kuo-toa in exchange for gems. As the party travels, signs of the drow are all around; the drow are allowed to pass through these subterranean areas, even though they are hated and feared by the other local intelligent races.

The party then moves through kuo-toa territory, or not, to the eponymous shrine ruled by the Priest-Prince Va-Guulgh. Although statted as neutral-chaotic evil, the fishmen behave more like neutrals although, yes, with a sliding scale of chaos. The party learns that the drow and kuo-toa trade with each other openly, but the kuo-toa hate and fear the drow, resulting in frequent skirmishes between the two peoples. If the PCs appease the kuo-toa and respect their customs, they are not openly hostile to the party. They will attack if... they go crazy (there's your chaos) or if the party gives them a reason, which may or may not include accidentally violating their weird customs with no owner's manual.

At least this map's exits correspond to those marked in the wider map of the Depths.

This whole module is, as noted, technically optional. Within this module, from W27, the party can get on the barge and head off to B²24 - which although a river-junction is not an encounter area - and to the Sunless Sea beyond. Based on the map, this text probably means to dock you at E²24. Once there, um. I guess you go through that sixhexer J²K²-26-28, thence find your way to that aforementioned bypass. It doesn't look like Gygax thought much of this through himself.

Contains major write-ups for both svirfneblin and kuo-toa, some of if not the first sources of extended information for these races.

D3 Vault of the Drow

If the party didn't play D2 they fight through the spider-lair in U²48. Either way after that, the party get a choice. The main route goes to Q²49 / VII standing in for the Black Gate of Mordor, so good luck with THAT. Otherwise the Players Map guides to a straight route down a tertiary through the "nondescript" R²47 crossroad but SURPRISE there's some vampire / succubus ecchi there, map VIII. Here the two lovers try to charm the party to stay for lunch, and get bonuses to fight if combat starts because, in the vein of the Graz'zt/Iggwilv relationship, they do love each other despite being depraved and horrible people.

The gargoyles and that lich don't come down here; instead, expect Type I-IV demons. The encounter tables' tertiary does preserve the deep gnomes from D2's table (how did they get here??).

At last the adventurers come upon the Vault, the vast subterranean capitol of the drow; and its slum Erelhei-Cinlu. The adventure is written in a very open-ended fashion, giving the Dungeon Master (DM) free rein to script any number of mini-campaigns or adventures taking place inside the drow capital. An extensive overview of the drow power structure is given for just this purpose. The book also notes the party will hopefully have accumulated enough medallion-passes from prior modules to get through this one with minimal fuss and muss just from walking around; the chaotic dark elves will not organize to stop them for anything short of a major slave uprising.

May as well list the Drow Houses, in descending order: Eilservs, Kilsek, Despana, Noquar, Everhaite, Godeep, Tormtor, Aleval. Lots of stupid-obvious METAL puns which get even worse when the GDQ compilation drops the i from D2's "Everhaite". Kilsek will show up again in Chainmail '02.

Eventually, the players may discover an astral gate leading to the plane of the Abyss, leading into the Q1 module, by exploring the Fane of Lolth.

Legacy

As intimated above, Gary Gygax designed these encounters as pearls in a string (or glass beads if you're a skeptic), for Tournament play. As a unified story the series has some Problems: over-powered rival monsters who certainly pose more of a problem for the surface races than the drow themselves, alternative routes meandering well out of scope, and at least one cavern hinted at (ST17) too late to be any use. As we speak Aristotle is berating Gary for all this in the next world. The DM must prepare in advance. And the GDQ "edition" fixed nothing of this.

Despite all the flaws, the impact of these modules cannot be overstated; they literally defined the existence of the Underdark (now called) and many of its most notable denizens. These were the first ever printed stats for the drow, who had prior to that simply been mentioned as an evil, underground-dwelling counterpart to the elf race; as well as the first ever revelation of lore for their goddess Lolth. The modules also provided stats for other Underdark creatures, most notably the svirfneblin. And the narrative Problems are fixable: replace M12, plot out a jermlaine (or wererat) lair, do some modest preparation and you're golden. Compare the tangle that will be Q1.

The hex map, as an unholy union between a flowchart and a real caver map such as Carlsbad will sell to tourists, has been deemed a Sin Against Mimesis so is no longer employed for Underdark maps, like those in Douglas Niles' Dungeoneers Survival Guide and then Carl Lynwood Sargent's Night Below. The choice between one, two, and six hexes is, arguably, limiting; its 2-D layout fails if we're designing a full ecosystem with caverns overlaying caverns. But here (as in Night Below) - who cares? You're going from point 1 to point 3, and you're on the clock.

Novelization

Paul Kidd wrote a Descent Into the Depths of the Earth novel in June 2000, part of a series of crawls through "Greyhawk Classics" - dungeons for the nostalgia-market. This one is a sequel to his own novelization of White Plume Mountain here; also featuring the Justicar, Cinders, Polt, Escalla, and to an extent Enid the Sphinx. Because there isn't much plot behind any of this beyond GUH SMASH SPIDAH, on the way to SPIDAH the book concentrates on banter between the lead character and his feisty faerie sidekick.

Also, because Against the Giants was getting its own novelization with its own set-up in an entirely disconnected book, Descent comes up with its own plot hooks to get the cast descending into the depths. First, as part of her shitty faerie family's politicking, Escalla has been accused of murdering her arranged husband, and they need to track the real culprit, who is plotting with the drow to empower Lolth and free an ancient and evil faerie queen, into the Underdark to clear her name, and second, trogolodytes've been raiding and kidnapping huge numbers of innocent people and herding them into the Underdark as human sacrifices for said empowering. Unlike White Plume Mountain, it's more a retread than a sequel to the original modules, though all the experienced adventuring characters already know about the Underdark and drow so clearly they've had a bit of first contact.

Since it's got three times as many modules to adapt in the same timeframe, the cuts're pretty ruthless compared to White Plume Mountain. This usually takes the form of one or more characters pointing out adventures that would've showed up in the original (such as the mindflayer segment in D1 or most of the drow city in D3) and "NOPE!"ing their way around them, while other party members grumble about it. There are still a few fun easter eggs, like the corpses of the poor svirfneblin from D2 chained to the wall in the kuo-toa temple because the party skipped their encounter and they tried to raid the shrine alone. The massive troglodyte warren that's the major centerpiece of D1 is also reimagined as a huge boss fight, and the incredibly random lich that's just there as a screw-you to overconfident tourney players is now the dark master of the blent monster colony and an ally of the drow. Ironically, despite being technically optional, D2 is one of the more completely adapted modules, right down to Escalla accidentally triggering the portal in the statue of Blibdoolpoolp in the middle of a huge fight they started because they didn't want to watch the kuo-toa carve up a buncha human sacrifices, but also because Escalla tries to pose as the evil fairy, only for the one kuo-toa who has met said fairy to call her male, because she's flat. Hee.

Speaking of which, Paul Kidd continues to not only flex his sense of humor and wit, but shows off a real talent for horror and gruesome imagery. It's a weird thing to type out, but the man writes some of the best human sacrifice scenes in the business. He also does a good job of writing about dimly-lit caves and an adventuring party having to survive off water-drip and monster carcass along the way. And the major new character of Henry, a young soldier who accidentally gets teleported along on their adventure but resolves to be as useful as possible and mostly-succeeds through luck, pluck, smarts, and judicious use of his crossbow and a willingness to steal a sick svirfneblin repeater when they happen across it. Benelux, the other, spoiler-y new character, retreads a lot of the same ground as Polt, though she has her own twists on things, mostly by being a lot more bloodthirsty than he is. Escalla gets most of the development of the existing characters, mostly regarding her growing up a bit and obliquely admitting, to herself and others, that she wouldn't mind sampling some of the Justicar's "steely justice," though Polt continues to prove bizarrely-indestructible and weirdly useful, right up until the spoiler-y end, and beyond.

Also, unlike White Plume Mountain, where more than half the novel was over before they even started on the trip to White Plume Mountain, the gang's descending into the depths of the earth by the one-third mark.

That said, it's not perfect. Enid the Sphinx, despite being awesome and doing useful things, is more or less repeatedly told "Enid! Go hang out over there far away from the action and do absolutely nothing while we go have an adventure!" and does it. For no reason. Seriously, this happens like twice, and constitutes maybe 90% of the book. Escalla, though she has a bit of character development and a few excuses (desperately wanting to believe the Justicar has been secretly leaving gifts for her because she's fallen in love with him gets her a bit of a pass for failing to spot the warning signs that her shitty family is on her tail), is also even more split between her funny and annoying sides than before, and the author lets her get away with murder far too often. Special mention for that time her pride and lack of discipline gets the Justicar's beloved signature black sword eaten by a rust monster, leaving him unarmed going into the troglodyte warren boss fight, only for the literal next scene to be the DM relenting and having a buncha ghouls show up with an even-better sword they throw down a hole where only she can retrieve it so she can use it to go save the day semi-single-handed. (Henry helps out.) And the finale takes an effective and epic horror setpiece and... has the heroes succeed through literally getting Lolth drunk. Complete with psychic fields emanating off her and getting all her followers also drunk. It's a weird choice to end the boss fight with slapstick, is what I'm getting at, though it leads into the next novel, which is Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

All in all, a pretty-good novel, and a good sequel to its predecessor. Those who bought it generally liked it, based on Amazon and Thrift Books user reviews.

Gallery

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  D1 cover

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  D2 cover

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  D3 cover

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  D1-2 cover

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  D3 cover