Read chapter 5 (“Ssinssr’ogglirin”) here.
Chapter Summary
Light take him, Jorlan knew now what was troubling him. This feeling was familiar; it had quickened his hand on the prison door at Velkynvelve.
Sssinssr’ogglirin. Or, more crudely, vith’ogglirin. Sex rivalry.
Jealousy, in Undercommon.
In which we meet a druid who wants to devour Mavash in more than one way, Jorlan once again uses murder to solve his problems, Lux is reunited with their own waifu, and oh yeah there’s an important library or something.
Chapter End Notes
Here’s where I tweeted along with this juicy session full of pent-up jealousy.
Gaze upon Mavash in all her glory. I commissioned Kii Weatherton to do this art, and it made me love Mavash even more.
I have SO MANY notes about my inspirations for this chapter:
- Of fucking course Jorlan is wary of possums. Have you seen them? They really are beneficial little creatures — they eat so many ticks! — but I still wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley.
- Sladis describes a mushroom similar to genus Cantharellus, i.e. chanterelles. They are easy to identify (due to their bright orange color and false gills) and delicious, which is all I needed for ficcing purposes.
- The creatures we fought here were core spawn out of the Wildemount book (as is the moorbounder, for that matter), which are technically aberrations, and thus don’t show up on a paladin’s Divine Sense. (Even though they do with Detect Evil and Good? *shrugs*) Creative license!
- The Drow word for “jealousy” I wove together from two words from my faithful Drow Dictionary: “ssinssrigg,” for “love, lust, greed” (or “vith,” for “sex”), and “ogglirin,” for “rivaling.” The word sssinssrigg comes directly from canon, though the others are fan-created. I suppose I suppose I could have used that word to encompass “jealousy” in its meaning, but it’s already pretty overloaded.
- I realize this is the first time I’ve switched POVs mid-chapter. I hope it was clear enough. I generally subscribe to the idea that the viewpoint character for a given scene should be the one with the most to lose, and oh hell that is Jorlan for that bit in the middle. Given the popularity of omniscient POV on AO3, I don’t think it’s so bad here.
- I totally stole the whole “scrambling the brains of pack animals to make them docile” thing from my other favorite murder elves, the Dunmer of TES, who are known to do as much to their giant sand-flea mounts for much the same purpose. The Dunmer are notably less terrible than the drow, so if they do it, I can only imagine the Ilythiiri do something similar. Seems much less complex than fucking around with House insignia like you see in the Drizzt books.
- Apropos, I discovered I can borrow the ebook of Homeland from my library, so I am enjoying rereading it and indulging my inner 15-year-old girl. I’m a couple of chapters in, and lawd, I will never apologize for being melodramatic in this fic ever again. Pages of maudlin Jorlan maunderings are still not “Zak going out into the wilderness to deliver a Shakespearean monologue on the hell of Menzoberranzan.”
- Also interesting to note how the seeds of Out of the Abyss were planted hundreds of years before, with the destruction of House deVir — which happens in the first chapters of Homeland. We’ll find out more about that later on in this fic, when we reach the Tower of Araj, but man that is some good worldbuilding. Unfortunately I felt like a lot of that went to waste in this adventure.
- Jorlan being Vizeran’s son is definitely not in RAW.
- WotC, gimme a call, I’d love to write drow for you. I need to ruin some fanboys’ childhood.
- I guess follow me on Twitter if you want to hear me talk about mushrooms and drow? Or make a comment and I’ll reply with a random fact about this chapter. You do you.
ETA (much later): holy shit I just realized I’ve been spelling “Neheedra” wrong this whole time. I’ve been going by the name on her token in roll20, but let us say, our DM does not excel at spelling.