drow

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game, drow ( or ) or dark elves are a dark-skinned and white-haired subrace of elves connected to the subterranean Underdark. The drow have traditionally been portrayed as generally evil and connected to the evil spider goddess Lolth. However, subsequent editions of Dungeons & Dragons have moved away from this portrayal and preassigned alignment, while later publications have explored drow societies unconnected to Lolth.

== Creative origins == The word "drow" originates from the Orcadian and Shetland dialects of Scots, an alternative form of "trow", which is a cognate with "troll". The Oxford English Dictionary gives no entry for "drow", but two of the citations under "trow" name it as an alternative form of the word. Trow/drow was used to refer to a wide variety of evil sprites. Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax invented everything about the drow in the game except for the basic concept of "dark elves". However, in the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson wrote about the black elves: "... the dark elves however live down below the ground. ... [and] are blacker than pitch."