Description
Ruhn-Shak is an underground city with streets and slave markets. Countless tunnels and caverns wind throughout the Stormcrest Mountains, with hidden entrances riddling the Dreamseep Marshlands to the east and the darker regions of the Verdant Expanse to the west. Some entrances in the slopes of the Stormcrest Mountains are characterized by carved arches and steel gates.
Society
Many drow societies are characterized by endemic political scheming and infighting to win Lolth's favor, and the encirclement of Ruhn-Shak by insidious aberrations has heightened their paranoia to the point of tearing apart their society.
As shambolic as the situation in Ruhn-Shak was in 812 PD (see History below), the drow of that society still posed a danger throughout the region. The drow only came to the surface under cover of night in hunting and raiding parties that slaughtered many, enslaved the rest, and took the spoils as gifts to Lolth. Drow druids called Pit Witches specialized in molding earth and stone to open and collapse passages at will, allowing them to set up ambushes and making it impossible to give chase.
As of that time, some hundreds of drow had fled the chaos of Ruhn-Shak, but every dark elf in Tal'Dorei knows the dark whispers of the aberrations. Unsurprisingly, adventuring drow in Tal'Dorei tend to hold a violent hatred of aberrations.
Demographics
As of 812 PD, Ruhn-Shak was only a small city, with a population of 6,670. Fully 92 percent of the population was drow, another 5 percent was deep gnomes, and the remainder belonged to other races. These numbers may not count the slaves taken in surface raids, who are numerous enough to keep slave markets running.
By 836 PD, the population was the same, but only 80 percent of the population was elves, another 12 percent were dwarves, still 5 percent were gnomes, and 3 percent were other races.
Notable people
- Unidentified drow assassin: The adventure hook A Lesson in Tropes in the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, set in 812 PD, centers on a drow from Ruhn-Shak who is pretending to be a refugee but hopes to get close to the Wardens of Syngorn.
- Ry'denyan: A dark elf who broke free of Ruhn-Shak's social brainwashing thanks to the telepathic powers granted by an unknown aberration. For this, he was exiled to the tunnels at the mercy of monstrous creatures such as driders, prompting the drow to send psychic messages for help.
History
When Lolth was banished early in the Calamity, the suddenly leaderless drow were driven from the surface world and forced to rebuild their empire underground. Following the Divergence, Lolth's children could feel the lessening of their banished god's influence.
The dark elves of the continent that would come to be called Tal'Dorei found that carving out a new life underground exposed them to new dangers: as Lolth's influence waned, Tharizdun began whispering to the drow nobility, and their servitors found themselves surrounded by shapechanging and mind-manipulating aberrations, causing mass paranoia. By 812 PD, the aberrant corruption had been devouring their society for centuries, and the underground drow of Tal'Dorei were on the verge of collapse. Neighbors slaughtered each other in the streets. The drow elite turned increasingly authoritarian and ordered the royal guard to violently quell the mass riots. Some drow commoners, desperate to end their suffering, offered themselves over to the aberrations and were transformed into doppelgangers. Some drow nobility reacted to the chaos by devoting themselves even more utterly to Lolth, willingly seeking out the Blood of the Spider Queen to transform themselves into half-spider hybrids called driders.
By 836 PD the Kryn Dynasty of Xhorhas had taken an interest in their kin in Tal'Dorei, even sending agents there looking for new followers for their religion, as well as new Luxon beacons, sometimes with the help of local elves from Lyrengorn and Syngorn. One of the missions of these drow from Wildemount is to use the light of their god to save the inhabitants of Ruhn-Shak from Lolth's influence, requesting escorts for those priests who enter said territory.
