The Summer or Drizzt is upon us: What do we have in store?

Welcome to the summer of Drizzt.

With the release of the animated short, Sleep Sound, written by the man who wrote both the old and new adventures of Drizzt, R. A. Salvatore, we have entered a stretch of nonstop capitolization on the D&D Drow superstar. And who can blame Wotc? Drizzt Do’Urden is the most celebrated and wrote about D&D character ever. Many see him as the perfect novelization of a Dungeon and Dragons player character; almost as if he were a fanfic from a running game. Others are not happy as his resendance rises on the back of the cancelled Dragonlance novels. This is has set two different generations into disagreement. However, for good or for ill, we will be getting the Drow ranger’s adventures with his celebrated party in as many different mediums as possible.

Announced last fall, the parent company of both D&D and Magic the Gathering, Wizards of the Coast, revealed that they were ‘crossing the streams’ by creating the first D&D inspired MTG set under the heading, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. This is, of course, the setting of the world of Faerun that Drizzt is also a part of.

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Along with an actual Drizzt Du’Urden playable card, the Spider Queen, Lotlth, makes an appearance along with one of Drizzt’s companions Bruenor Battlehammer (all pictured above). Also expect to see cards for his other companions from the novel series.

Also releasing August 3rd of this year is the much anticipated Drizzt novel, Starlight Enclave, by the afore mentioned R. A. Salvatore. According to press releases, this story is set two years after the last story which may or may not cause some continuity reader’s heads to spin.

The story is set up below in the actual press release. There is an enigmatic statement about Drizzt on a path to ‘salvation’ for his and ‘all souls’. Not sure what that means.

This story will take them north in search of a magic weapon, but also, probably, to a hidden city that will rewrite what we know about the Drow. Wotc in a recent article, revealed some new lore about the drow. This news informed us that there were not just one tribe of Drow, but three. And what we knew about them, in other words, that they were all evil and divotees of Lolth was WRONG!

The article introduced two new hidden cities of Drow, Callidae and Saekolath. Callidae, hidden in the north, is probably where Drizzt is headed as well as where this McGuffin sword is. The reason I think this is that Callidae are home to the Aevendrow aka STARLIGHT ELVES; thus the connection to the books title.

Secretive and ‘steeped in powerful magic’, the Starlight Elves have escaped Lolth’s ‘taint’ and Menzoberranzan’s oppressions. Wotc is selling that as having always been the case, but not known to any save themselves.

Another secretive clan of elves called Lorendrow have also stayed hidden in their city of Saekolath; unknown by, not only all other Drow, but every wizard and historian that ever lived on Faerun. Also called Greenshadow elves, these forgotten drow stay in the endless green where they ‘draw their wisdom from the environment’. Translated ‘Place of the Shade’, once again, it is relatively unknown.

This ‘course correction’ is hardly a surprise. For years now, Wotc has been given grief over their stereotyping of races. From as early as the eighties, D&D has portrayed one race or another as all bad. For the most part, the alignments of most ,if not all, Elves has been good while all Drow are automatically evil. This was, of course, started in the Gygax era. But even he should have realized the unsustainable model he was perpetrating. It was short sighted even during the eighties. To simply paint with such broad strokes is a real childish way of coming about the motives of any humanoid and any DM with any sort of wisdom or education would have been certainly seeing through this and simply bypassing it for more realistic storytelling.

Hitting the shelves before that Dark Alliance which also follows the adventures of Drizzt and his crew. I would assume that you could play as any of the company, but I haven’t seen anything official. But the video, featured below, is badass and the crew at the Magic Tavern are ready to buy in and stream it.

“In addition to videogames and novels,” wrote Wizards, “the Legend of Drizzt has action figures, Magic: The Gathering cards, Funko POP figures, Halloween costumes, t-shirts, replica scimitars and more.” And, when asked about the movie and live action TV show, they replied, “The D&D movie is not focused on Drizzt,” Wizards said in an email, “but there is a TV show in development that might be.”

I’m sure the new Drow lore that was dropped was mainly for Dark Alliance seeing that all the pictures of the places and people in the Wotc drop looked like they were straight from a video game. But I wonder if we will get an Unearthed Arcana to bring this lore into 5E?