Origins of the Drow in Dungeons & Dragons

This article explores the mythological and literary origins behind one of the game’s most defining villains.

By R. Nelson Bailey

Drow, or dark elves, are among the most iconic monsters in Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). They first appeared in the Monster Manual (1977), where three brief lines in the entry on elves described them as such: “The 'Black Elves,' or drow, are only legend. They purportedly dwell deep beneath the surface in a strange subterranean realm. The drow are said to be as dark as faeries are bright and as evil as the latter are good.” [1] Their first true villainous role came the following year in the module G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King (1978), where they appeared as the secret masters behind the giants’ plots. The classic “Drow” series that followed — D1–2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth and D3 Vault of the Drow — expanded dark elf culture in depth, revealing a decadent subterranean society ruled by priestesses and devoted to sinister gods.

When they first appeared, the drow were the most fully realized monster-race in the game, combining environment, culture, religion, and hierarchy in a way not seen before in D&D. From the beginning, these sinister elves captured players’ imaginations, becoming a defining element of the game’s mythos. But this naturally raises the question: where did the idea of the dark elf originate?

Mischievous Dæmons

Gary Gygax himself credited Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology (1828) as the inspiration for the drow. In his From the Sorcerer’s Scroll column, he pointed readers to this book, which gathers fairy lore from across northern Europe. [2] Each chapter surveys regional traditions, collecting both written sources and folk accounts.

Keightley noted that the Eddas and sagas of Scandinavia distinguish between two kinds of elves: the ljósálfar (light elves) and the dökkálfar (dark elves). [3] Both were said to dwell in realms beneath Yggdrasil, the world ash. The texts describe them starkly:

“There is the city which is called Álfheim, where dwelleth the people who are called Liosálfar (Light Alfs). But the Dökkálfar (Dark Alfs) dwell underground and are unlike them in appearance, and still more unlike in actions. The Liosálfar are whiter than the sun in appearance, but the Dökkálfar are blacker than pitch.”

Some traditions also use the term svartálfar, or black elves. The sagas themselves provide no further detail beyond this contrast, but later folklore filled in the gaps: dark or black elves were said to be mischievous and malevolent, “an underground people who frequently inflict sickness or injury on mankind.” [4]

Dwarves, Trolls, and Trow

Beyond Scandinavia, Keightley collected continental and insular traditions that blurred the distinctions between elves, dwarves, and trolls. On the island of Rügen in Germany, tales speak of “black dwarves” who lurk underground. [5] Malicious and ugly, they shun daylight yet are master smiths, forging unbreakable blades and impenetrable mail. These motifs — underground habitation, enmity with the surface world, and mastery of magical craft — resonate strongly with traits later associated with D&D’s drow.

One linguistic link deserves special mention. Keightley never uses the term “drow,” but legends from the Shetland Islands speak of fairies called trow (sometimes rendered drow). [6] The word derives from troll, and these beings are small, mischievous, and fond of dancing. Their nature aligns more with folkloric elves than with the sinister dökkálfar, yet the similarity in name would not have gone unnoticed. Indeed, in different regions and sources, the boundaries between elves, dwarves, and trolls collapse almost entirely — size, temperament, and appearance shift depending on the teller. In some tales, dark elves are a kind of dwarf; in others, trolls and dwarves are synonymous.

From Folklore to Fantasy

What Keightley presents is not a single unified tradition but a tapestry of overlapping names and traits: the light and dark elves of the sagas, the malicious svartálfar and black dwarves of German lore, the mischievous trow of the Shetlands. Gygax wove these fragments into something new: an evil elven race endowed with a complete society, culture, and mythology. The drow — born of myth, mischief, and malice — have since become one of the game’s most defining creations. Yet folklore provides only the foundation; the fuller story of the drow lies in later fantasy literature.

Inhabitants of the Gloomy Fairyland

Among these later influences, the folkloric image of dark elves — subterranean, black-skinned, hostile to daylight, evil, and skilled in metalwork — proved especially fertile ground. But Gygax’s imagination did not leave them in this primitive state. He transformed these beings into something far more sinister, cultured, and powerful, crafting a decadent underworld society that far surpassed the simplicity of their mythic origins.

As described in the modules G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King and D1–2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth and D3 Vault of the Drow, the drow resemble surface elves but with stark differences: obsidian-black skin, white or silver hair, and eyes burning in hues of orange and yellow. They are intelligent and graceful, with thin, delicate builds standing between five and five and a half feet tall. Their temperament, however, is described as “selfish and cruel,” [7] a reflection of the depravity that pervades their culture.

The drow’s society is elaborated in striking detail, elevating them beyond mere mythic shadows. In their craftsmanship, they are unrivaled: they forge magical weapons from black adamantite — described as “very hard and very sharp” [8] — and wield exotic armaments such as hand crossbows, death lances, and writhing tentacle rods. Militarily, though prone to vicious feuding among themselves, they readily unite against outsiders, presenting a formidable front to any intruder.

In terms of settlement and servitors, the drow dwell in Erelhi-Cinlu, a city far below the surface, laid out as a maze of crooked streets and narrow alleys. This metropolis is sustained by countless monstrous slaves and allies, including trolls, bugbears, and troglodytes, who serve as their expendable enforcers and laborers.

Socially, their culture is characterized by matriarchal factionalism. At the top stand the priestesses of Lolth, beneath whom noble houses vie for supremacy, each led by powerful female rulers. Outside this aristocracy, common drow languish in squalor. Descriptions of the lower quarters emphasize their degeneracy: their inhabitants are “effete,” consumed by pursuits of “pleasure, pain, excitement, or arcane knowledge.” [9] Even so, the poorest drow possesses wealth surpassing that of most surface folk, underscoring the obscene excess of their society.

Culturally and religiously, Erelhi-Cinlu is a city known for its unrestrained corruption. Slavery, prostitution, pandering, drugs, gambling, poison shops, torture chambers, erotic art, and blood sacrifice saturate daily life. Many drow openly consort with demons and daemons, and although not all worship Lolth, the Spider Queen’s cult dominates the highest ranks of power. The chief clergy of her faith are exclusively female, reinforcing the matriarchal order that defines drow civilization.

In this way, Gygax reimagined the folkloric traits of the dark elves — subterranean, black-skinned, hostile to daylight — into a decadent, fully realized society whose cruelty and sophistication rival those of any villainous race in fantasy literature. What began as fragments of northern European folklore became, in Dungeons & Dragons, one of the game’s most enduring and iconic creations.

The "Drow" Series original module covers.

Appendix N Connection

The fantasy, science fiction, and horror works listed in Appendix N provided Gary Gygax with a vast reservoir of inspiration. Monsters, races, and magical concepts drawn from these books became, to varying degrees, some of the most quintessential elements of Dungeons & Dragons. The drow, too, can be traced to several of these sources.

The earliest example appears in L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s fantasy novel The Roaring Trumpet (1941). This story not only inspired the “Giant” series of modules but also contains one of the first literary depictions of dark elves recognizable as proto-drow. In G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King — the module where the drow first appear — many parallels can be traced to the Muspellheim chapters of The Roaring Trumpet. In the novel, the fire giant Surt dwells in a volcanic fortress strikingly similar to King Snurre’s hall. Likewise, the protagonist Harold Shea encounters the “dark dwarves of Svartalfheim,” described as having “licorice”-colored skin, laboring at a smithy deep within the giants’ dungeons. [10] Though presented as dwarves, their subterranean nature, blackened skin, and role as sinister craftsmen align them closely with the developing image of dark elves. While de Camp and Pratt drew heavily from Norse myth, their narrative and imagery significantly provided Gygax with a blueprint for weaving such beings into the framework of D&D.

Poul Anderson took the idea further in The Broken Sword (1954) and Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), both of which exerted a profound influence on the game’s development. In deliberate contrast to Tolkien’s noble and ethereal elves, Anderson returned the race to its older, darker roots in Norse legend and folklore. While he never calls his creations “dark elves” or “drow,” their qualities align far more closely with Gygax’s conception than with the benevolent surface elves of D&D — gray, high, or wood. [11]

Anderson’s elves are tall and slender, with pale skin, almond-shaped eyes, and high cheekbones. They are long-lived, steeped in magic, and move with uncanny silence and swiftness. Yet they are bound by ancient weaknesses: they cannot endure sunlight, the touch of iron, or even the spoken name of Christ. They forge weapons and armor from a “curious elf-alloy,” recalling the supernatural craftsmanship of Norse tradition. [12] Most striking is their temperament. Anderson’s elves are not kindly immortals but aloof, ruthless, and aristocratic to the point of cruelty. In the Faerie Realm, they inhabit castles of perpetual twilight, hunt with griffins and manticores, and keep goblins, kobolds, and other elf tribes as slaves.

Between de Camp and Pratt’s “dark dwarves” and Anderson’s aristocratic but amoral faerie lords, the foundations of the drow begin to take shape. From myth, they inherited their subterranean homes, dark complexion, and sinister craft; from modern fantasy, they gained decadence, cruelty, and the trappings of a twisted nobility. Gygax synthesized these strands into the drow: at once rooted in folklore yet strikingly original, their decadent underworld society stands as one of Dungeons & Dragons’ most enduring creations.

Echoes of the Dreaming City

While de Camp and Pratt’s and Anderson’s visions of elves undoubtedly influenced Gygax’s creation of the drow, even stronger parallels emerge in Michael Moorcock’s portrayal of the Melnibonéans. [13] Moorcock’s work was immensely influential in shaping many recognizable elements of Dungeons & Dragons — Elric is specifically mentioned in the preface to the original edition of the game — and Moorcock himself acknowledged that Anderson’s The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions greatly influenced his Elric stories. [14] [15] [16] It is little surprise, then, that the Melnibonéans bear a close resemblance to Anderson’s elves, both in appearance and temperament.

The Melnibonéans are not “true men” but an older, related race. [17] They are described as pale-skinned, fine-featured, with slightly pointed ears, slanting eyes, high cheekbones, and slender builds. Of their character, Moorcock tells us that they are “proud, insouciant, [and] cruel,” decadent by nature and innately evil. Their society, like their appearance, anticipates many of the traits later ascribed to Gygax’s drow.

Religiously and politically, the Melnibonéans are bound in service to the Dukes of Hell, summoning demons and their servants at will and even traveling into infernal planes. The royal line is especially devoted to Arioch, Lord of Chaos, whose patronage underpins the power of Elric’s family. Socially, they are an aristocracy of sorcerers who regard humans as inferiors, fit only to be dominated or enslaved. Nobles keep slaves in their households, revel in torture, and freely indulge every appetite, often heightening their pleasures through drugs. They possess fabulous wealth, rely more on sorcery than martial prowess, and wield advanced weapons of war.

Culturally, their capital city of Imrryr mirrors the contradictions of the drow city of Erelhi-Cinlu. Moorcock describes it as a place of towers and palaces of “fabulous magnificence,” yet one where “squalor lurked in many narrow streets.” Its “overcivilized” citizens, dulled by endless decadence, drift through life in a perpetual “drugged slumber.” Like Erelhi-Cinlu, Imrryr is a city of both splendor and corruption, its magnificence shadowed by cruelty and decay.

Moorcock makes the connection between his nonhuman races and elves more explicit in the third Corum novel, The King of Swords. Corum, an Eternal Champion, belongs to the Vadhagh, an ancient people who predate humanity, alongside their crueler kin, the Nhadragh. In one scene, a Nhadragh sorcerer summons the spirit of Yyrkoon, Elric’s cousin and rival, who is described as resembling a Vadhagh despite being Melnibonéan. Later, Corum journeys to Cornwall, where Lady Jane refers to a Vadhagh as “elf folk.” [18] Her companion then summons three “trolls,” identified as the Vadhagh’s ancestral enemies. This episode unmistakably echoes Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, with its struggle between elves and trolls, underscoring the continuity of motifs across Anderson and Moorcock.

By comparing their traits, it becomes clear that Moorcock’s Melnibonéans, Anderson’s elves, and Gygax’s drow share a striking number of physical, temperamental, and cultural characteristics. Moorcock transmitted Anderson’s vision of cruel, aristocratic faerie folk into his own decadent, demon-worshipping race, and Gygax, who admired both authors, reshaped those elements into the drow. Through this lineage, the drow in Dungeons & Dragons stand as heirs to a tradition of imaginative cruelty that extends from myth to modern fantasy.

Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Elves Go Underground

The most striking incongruity between Anderson’s elves, Moorcock’s Melnibonéan pseudo-elves, and Dungeons & Dragons’ drow is that the former dwell above ground while the latter live below. As the binary opposite of surface elves, the drow heighten the radical differences between the two races. Elves inhabit idyllic natural environments such as forests, whereas drow occupy sterile, lightless caverns — the inversion of a forest.

Norse legends of dwarves and the Svartálfar portrayed such creatures as dwelling beneath the earth. Early twentieth-century writers adapted this idea, imagining races of de-evolved little folk who preyed upon humanity. The roots of this tradition lie in Arthur Machen’s The Novel of the Black Seal (1895) and Robert E. Howard’s tales “Worms of the Earth” and “The Lost Race.” Both describe human offshoots driven underground, where they degenerate into grotesque forms. In “The Lost Race,” the devolved men, dwarf-sized, live in a vast cavern, while in “Worms of the Earth,” the repulsive “worms” occupy an underground town. At one point, Howard even refers to these twisted figures as “elves.” [19]

Margaret St. Clair’s The Shadow People (1969) carried this motif into the counterculture era. Its protagonist, Aldridge, discovers a hidden labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Bay Area, a complex known as the “Underearth” that connects with caverns worldwide. This idea clearly influenced the Dungeons & Dragons concept of the Underdark, first appearing in the “Drow” series of modules. St. Clair’s subterranean “elves” are descended from humans, but are uncivilized, cannibalistic, and incapable of speech. Like Anderson’s elves, they cannot endure the touch of iron. Yet they are also inhuman, boneless beings divided into three sub-races — white, black, and green — though the novel draws no meaningful distinctions among them. While The Shadow People helped shape the idea of a vast, lightless underworld, its savage “elves” bear little resemblance to the civilized and intelligent drow.

A more direct influence came from A. Merritt, whose novels of the 1920s and 1930s had an outsized impact on pulp fantasy. Although his output was limited, Merritt exerted a strong influence on H. P. Lovecraft and on early Dungeons & Dragons. [20] His tales often followed a set pattern: an American explorer in some distant locale — Alaska, the South Pacific, the Gobi Desert, the Himalayas, or the Andes — discovers a hidden race dwelling underground. These subterranean peoples typically wield strange technologies, magical powers, and monstrous servants.

The most striking parallel to the drow underworld appears in Merritt’s revised and expanded version of The Moon Pool. In it, the protagonist Goodwin descends into an underground realm inhabited by humans and dwarves in the South Pacific. The civilization he discovers echoes the drow on multiple levels.

The subterranean environment in Merritt’s tale is vividly realized and anticipates many details later found in the Vault of the Drow. A sprawling city stretches across a colossal cavern, its walls glowing with a rose-colored radiance reminiscent of the faerie fire that illuminates Erelhi-Cinlu. [21] The chamber is heavily fortified, with garrisons of blockhouses and ranks of soldiers. As in the drow city, society is rigidly divided: the upper classes dwell in a forbidden quarter marked by opulence and decadence, while the degraded, dwarf-like populace occupies the rest.

At the city’s center stands Yolara, a priestess described as “gloriously, terrifyingly evil.” [22] With white skin, blonde hair, and purple eyes, she recalls the otherworldly beauty of Gygax’s high priestess Eclavdra. Yolara wields both sorcery and advanced devices, including a writhing vine-rod tipped with paralyzing tendrils — an uncanny precursor to the drow tentacle rod. Her power is anchored in a vast temple dedicated to the Shining One, an evil god mentioned in the Greyhawk Supplement (1975), whose exclusively female priesthood directly anticipates the matriarchal clergy of Lolth. In a final echo, Goodwin refers to the city as “elf-land,” explicitly linking this subterranean realm to the elf tradition that Gygax would invert and transform into the drow.

Taken together, the echoes between The Moon Pool and Vault of the Drow are too numerous to dismiss. From radiant caverns to decadent societies, from female-led priesthoods to monstrous gods, Merritt’s vision clearly helped shape Gygax’s conception of the drow. Tracing this lineage — from Anderson’s surface elves, through Machen and Howard’s degenerate underfolk, to St. Clair’s Underearth and Merritt’s sinister priestess Yolara — reveals how elves were reimagined underground. In Dungeons & Dragons, this tradition reached its fullest expression in the drow: decadent, subterranean, and defined as one of the game’s most iconic creations.

Erol Otus' depiction of a drow priestess from the D3 Vault of the Drow.

Other Sources

Other sources beyond those discussed here likely contributed to the drow’s conception.

• Edgar Rice Burroughs’s black Martians in The Gods of Mars share numerous traits with the drow. [23] They are evil, arrogant, and decadent, preying upon and enslaving all so-called ‘lesser races.’ Their caverns glow with phosphorescent light, and within them stands the Temple of Issus — an unearthly fairyland hidden in a subterranean vault. Issus herself, their goddess and ruler, is described as an ancient, black-skinned hag with a distorted abdomen. [24] She is cruel, selfish, and fraudulent — a figure who may well have inspired the conception of Lolth.

• A. Merritt’s novel The Face in the Abyss introduces Kon, the spider-man, and his kin — creatures with humanoid torsos fused to spider bodies who fight with maces. They bear a striking resemblance to driders, the cursed drow hybrids who prowl the Underdark. In the same book, the character Regor is described as having ‘silver-white’ hair and clad in black chain mail — details that closely mirror the iconic image of drow warriors.

• The cinnabar eye cusps described in D3 Vault of the Drow appear to echo the violet cusps encountered by Cugel in Jack Vance’s Eyes of the Overworld. [25]

• In Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light, the character Sam wields a ‘lance of death’ that kills with a mere gesture — a weapon that strongly anticipates the drow’s death lance.

Doubtless, there are further, yet-unidentified connections woven into the tapestry of influences that gave rise to one of the game’s most iconic creations.

Conclusion

Beginning with Gygax’s casual remark about discovering dark elves in Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, we can trace the confluence of myth and literature that shaped the drow. The initial spark lay in the shadowed elves of Svartálfheim and their folkloric kin — dwarves and trolls — while Poul Anderson’s ruthless faerie nobles, Michael Moorcock’s decadent Melnibonéans, Merritt’s lost underground race was the crucial bridge to modern fantasy. Yet these antecedents only set the stage. Gygax’s true achievement was in weaving together these disparate influences, transforming them through imaginative synthesis, and adding wholly original elements: the dark subterranean fairyland, drow weapons and armor, the writhing tentacle rod, the demon-goddess Lolth, and the matriarchal priesthood. In his hands, the fragments of myth and fiction became something unprecedented. The drow emerged not merely as another monster, but as one of Dungeons & Dragons’ most foundational creations — a race at once rooted in tradition and uniquely its own.

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Works Referenced

Anderson, Poul. The Broken Sword. Ballantine, 1971.

Anderson, Poul. Three Hearts and Three Lions. Doubleday & Company, 1961.

Brown, Nancy Marie. Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Myths. Palgrave, 2012.

Burroughs, Edgar Rice. The Gods of Mars. SFBC, 2003.

De Camp, L. Sprague, and Fletcher Pratt. The Complete Compleat Enchanter. Baen, 1989.

Guerber, H. A. Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas. Dover, 1992.

Gygax, Gary. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. TSR, 1977.

Gygax, Gary. D1–2 Descent to the Depths of the Earth. TSR, 1980.

Gygax, Gary. D3 Vault of the Drow. TSR, 1978, rev. 1980.

Gygax, Gary. G1–2–3 Against the Giants. TSR, 1980.

Keightley, Thomas. Fairy Mythology. Ainsworth, 1828.

Leiber, Fritz. Sword Masters. Berkley, 1989.

Merritt, A. The Moon Pool. Avon Books, 1951.

Moorcock, Michael. Corum: The Coming of Chaos. White Wolf, 1997.

Moorcock, Michael. Elric: Stealer of Souls. Ballantine, 2008.

Moorcock, Michael. Elric: The Sleeping Sorceress. Ballantine, 2008.

Moorcock, Michael. Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn. Ballantine, 2008.

Moorcock, Michael. Wizardry & Wild Romance. Monkeybrain, 2004.

St. Clair, Margaret. The Shadow People. Dell, 1969.

Vance, Jack. The Complete Dying Earth. SFBC, 1998.

Citations & Footnotes

[1] Gary Gygax, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual (TSR, 1977), p. 39.

[2] Gary Gygax, “From the Sorcerer’s Scroll” (Dragon, Issue 31, Nov. 1979), p. 29. Gygax notes on p. 29: “Drow are mentioned in Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology, as I recall (it might have been The Secret Commonwealth — neither book is before me, and it is not all that important anyway).” The latter book contains no references to dark elves.

[3] Keightley, Thomas, The Fairy Mythology (Ainsworth, 1828), p. 135.

[4] Keightley, Thomas, The Fairy Mythology (Ainsworth, 1828), p. 108.

[5] Keightley, Thomas, The Fairy Mythology (Ainsworth, 1828), p. 281.

[6] Keightley, Thomas, The Fairy Mythology (Ainsworth, 1828), p. 262.

[7] Gary Gygax, D3 Vault of the Drow (TSR, 1978, rev. 1980), p. 24.

[8] Gary Gygax, G1–3 Against the Giants (TSR, 1980), p. 23.

[9] Gary Gygax, D3 Vault of the Drow (TSR, 1978, rev. 1980), p. 15.

[10] L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, The Complete Compleat Enchanter, (Baen, 1989), p. 91.

[11] The term “drow” itself appears rarely in mythology or fiction before its introduction into D&D. Anderson makes a passing mention of “drow” in The Broken Sword, though not in reference to elves. The only other Appendix N book to use the word is Fritz Leiber’s Swords and Ice Magic — again, only in passing, without elaboration.

[12] Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword, (Del Rey, 1971), p. 20.

[13] The name “Melniboné” is derived from the magician and “doctor philosophicus” Meliböe, a character in Fletcher Pratt’s The Well of the Unicorn.

[14] Michael Moorcock, Wizardry & Wild Romance, (Monkeybrain, 2004), p. 91. Michael Moorcock, however, attributes Anderson’s sophisticated elves not to Norse myth but to Spenser. See Wizardry & Wild Romance for a fuller discussion of Anderson’s work.

[15] Moorcock’s concept of Law and Chaos is famously derived from Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions.

[16] Moorcock’s Elric saga bears heavy debts to Anderson’s The Broken Sword. Anderson’s elves and Skafloc’s sword, Tyrfing, find close analogues in Moorcock’s Melnibonéans and Stormbringer. Even Skafloc’s tragic arc parallels Elric’s: guided by a supernatural patron, he seeks reunion with his beloved, yet is doomed by his cursed blade. Tyrfing itself is called a “demon” or “fiend,” murmuring and stirring of its own accord — behavior echoed in Stormbringer. Anderson may, in turn, have drawn inspiration from H. Rider Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes (1890). In that tale, Eric acquires Whitefire, a rune-sword forged by dwarves for Odin, which “hummed strangely in answer” after Eric unwittingly slew his love, Gudruda, with it. The motif of the treacherous sword, of course, reaches back into Norse myth. Keightley’s Fairy Mythology recounts the tale of “The Dwarf-Sword Tirfing:” King Suaforlami compels dwarves to forge a sword, and though they obey, they warn him — “This sword shall be the bane of a man every time it is drawn; and with it shall be done three of the greatest atrocities. It shall also be thy bane.” As foretold, all who wielded Tyrfing met a grim fate. The lineage of cursed blades is thus clear and continuous.

[17] Michael Moorcock, Elric: Stealer of Souls (Ballantine, 2008), p. 385.

[18] Michael Moorcock, Corum: The Coming of Chaos (White Wolf, 1997), p. 338.

[19] Robert E. Howard, Bran Mak Morn: The Last King (Del Rey, 2005), p. 176.

[20] Merritt’s impact is evident in the original D&D texts themselves, which reference the Great Stone Face from The Face in the Abyss and the Shining One from The Moon Pool.

[21] The portrayal of Erelhi-Cinlu as a pit of vice and corruption may also reflect Gygax’s contemporary environment. In the 1970s, American cities such as New York were notorious for crime, urban blight, and social decay. It is plausible that these real-world conditions provided additional inspiration for Gygax’s vision of the drow city — a decadent, perilous urban underworld.

[22] A. Merritt, The Moon Pool (Avon Books, 1951), p. 94.

[23] Gygax admired the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, with “Barsoom” even being referenced in the Original D&D game. The black Martians of The Gods of Mars are portrayed as arrogant, evil, and decadent, enslaving and preying upon all lesser races. Their goddess, Issus, resides in a subterranean temple illuminated by phosphorescent light — an exotic “fairyland” that echoes underworld imagery. Issus herself is cruel, selfish, and tyrannical. The parallels with the drow’s depravity and their goddess Lolth, are unmistakable.

[24] Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Gods of Mars (SFBC, 2003), p. 251.

[25] Jack Vance, The Complete Dying Earth (SFBC, 1998), p. 278.