1:Just a quick thing, what is the most common Work in the UD? that non adventurers would possibly start as?

2: The UD is primarily run by females, correct? How is the 'list' of people exactly? from least cared for to heighest if possible.

3: Class wise, what is most common in UD(from least to most)?

and lastly 4: Can anyone toss any extra info that is vital to making a UD character?

I'll take my best shot, but I can't guarantee that I'll be 100% right on all of them.

1) There's mushroom farmers, Rothé herders, slaves, servants. If you're a drow there's Melee-Magthere and the wizards academy that I forget the name of. If you're a Svirfneblin you have gem cutters, miners, scouts. Gray-dwarves have miners, smelters, shop keepers and all of that.

2) Most Drow cities are Matriarchal, yes, however the mantra of the Drow cities is: Do whatever you want, just don't get caught. So there are some that have been Usurped and become patriarchal but I can't reference any specific cases. It's all about deceit, blackmail, misdirection and elimination of your enemies. Jarlaxle was about as influential a male drow as I've ever heard. The rest of the underdark is insanely dangerous, Svirfs are patriarchal I believe, same with Duergar.

3) Drow most common would be Female Clerics, Male would be Fighters/WM from Melee-Magthere or Wizards from the Academy. Duergar of course would be fighter/DD or some form of melee base champion. Clerics would be somewhat common as well though I'm not really familiar with their pantheon. Svirfs are pretty much just gnomes with an affinity for mining and the ability to blend in with the rocks.

Mind you this is all just off the top of my head from reading the Legend of Drizzt series and the War of the Spider Queen (personally my favorite RA Salv series).

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Rosie Adenney - The Smiling Red Hin
Dalur Illien - Hound of Justice
Tria Under - Blunt as Stone

Take all I have written with a grain of salt, as I am waist deep in design stuff atm and just very quickly jotted down some thoughts. What a few people tend to overlook is that the classical lothite drow society is not composed soley of the "academy branches", which is something dominated by the noblility, and those common families who can afford such. That means that you do not have only the female priestess, male wizard and male warrior groups. Large drow cities have what you would expect to find in any large evil dominated city.

These could be:

Slaves of various types, or
miners, smelters, builders (laborers), or
mushroom gatheres, rothe herders (farmers)
thieves, bandits, assassins (criminals / mercenaries), or
weavers, gold- and blacksmiths, jewlers, book binders, poison makers / alchemists (artisans), or
smugglers, merchants, (merchants) or
musicians, singers, painters, sculpters, tournament hosts, torturers (artists) or
scholars, archelogists, historians (intellectuals) or
masseurs, prostitutes, cooks and innkeepers (services).


The hierarchy of power is strongly influenced by favor you have with powerful individuals. As an example, a male cook that is so incredibly favored by a powerful matron mother for his exotic dishes, will likely have quite a pleasant life in comparison to the others of his station. Who would want to upset the matron by killing her favorite cook? While officially he would never be above the houseless mediocre female warrior around the corner, given his gender and lower job, the truth is that effectivly he is. At least as long as he enjoys the favor of the matron mother. As long as he is polite and respectful to those officially above him, few would dare to harm him. He might even get away with a few things without reprisal, such as sabotaging his competetion. The other resteraunt owner would be afraid to act against him, because the cook might be able to ask for a favor from the matron and have him dealt with.

Another example would be the first son of the first house, who is also the leader of the mage institution of the city. While officially he is beneath a first year priestess of the 10th house, unofficially he stands far above her. He should not disrespect her in an extreme manner or go act against her openly (as that would undermine the authority of the matriarchal and theocratic society, and hence would enrage his own family), but he has far more direct and indirect influence through his house, his station and his power. Should the priestess harm or act against him in any significant way, it is likely his mother or one of his sisters will simply humiliate or harm the young priestess in reprisal. Likely with some half-assed excuse, while everyone knows the true reason. That is, unless her own family will do so before them to avoid conflict with the first house.

So officially, it is a combination of profession (warriors and mages [wizards above sorcerers] being 3rd and 2nd place, priestesses 1st), gender (females above males), birth (nobles above commoners), family (lower houses beneath higher houses) and station (academy leaders above academy members, who are in turn above students). Then a lot of other factors come in, such as if you have a lot of contacts that secure you power.

The classical noble professions of the academy theme would be warriors as most common, mages and priestesses as less common. With mages and priestesses it is also a matter of not only talent, but coin. Training them is extremely expensive, even in comparison to warriors who do not come cheap either. Traditionally I think in Menzoberrazan a warrior train for 20 years, mages for 40 and a priestess for 50 years before they gratudate. It is also the reason wizards tend to be allowed to flirt with the rules of society a bit more, as cities benefit incredibly from them, and they are a rare commodity and expensive investment.

Just to be clear, are you asking for information on drow specifically or the UD in general? Even though there are more active drow players, this does not make drow affairs the only happenings in the UD. And frankly it would be a huge boon to have more player interaction with non-drow characters.

1) Just about all job system activities are represented in the UD. However not knowing anything about your particular character and background skills and talents, I cannot possibly even begin to point you in the right direction.

2) Actually only the two drow settlements are female run. There are duergar, svirf, and kobold settlements as well. As for a list, there is a book that can be obtained in L'obsul which has the order of rank in drow society, that might be the list you seek.

3) As touched upon already there are a few classic UD archtypes, but class wise it's fairly open ended. Anything goes, just be ready to IC'ly defend any choice made.

4) The Underdark forum is a great place to gleen lore and get acquainted with the current goings on. By far the best way is to create a very basic character and learn the society from interacting with the other players and asking questions about things as they come up in game. It usually seems like we expect new players to sink or swim in the deep end, but that only really happens when you don't ask for help, pretty much everyone except me is really nice and helpful.

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Thine taste in horrid footwear not withstanding, I did not say that thou were in fact an idiot, I merely implied that such things were self evident.

-Krrja

I started to write a big wall of text to answer your questions but I was beat to it so I will just answer your fourth question. One of the things I've noticed on Amia is that there is usually an underdark party. It seems to make things a little easier if you try to join the party when you are on your UD character. This will help you to get to know the players a little bit. Quite often the Underdark role play can be a bit brutal, The characters can be rude, mean and nasty. Being in the party helps to let you know that even though somebodies character is being a total prick to your character that it is just RP and you aren't being pushed away OOCly. It also makes it a lot easier to ask questions. The UD players have seemed pretty friendly and helpful in the party chat.

oh wow thats a lot of useful info!

Now to fine what i wanna play... this is always the hard part....

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