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Menzoberranzan Quotes

Browse 15 quotes about Menzoberranzan.

Menzoberranzan Quotes

“The truth is, you don’t know Menzoberranzan. Not even you, Jarlaxle, who has spent your life trying to figure it out. You cannot understand the hope that brought us to the great cavern those millennia removed. Yes, hope. It was not anger that brought us there, nor fear. It was hope. We fled a world of tyrant queens and insane kings, a place of unending war and injustice. We found a sanctuary, a deep cave, full of Faezress magic—though we did not understand that at the time—and easily defended. A sanctuary, I say, and indeed that is what the word ‘Menzoberranzan’ then meant in the ancient tongue of the drow. “A hundred families,” she continued. “Ten thousand dark elves. And each had a say in their family, and each family had a voice in the Plenum, and the largest families spoke those concerns in the Conclave, which you now—and only—know as the Ruling Council. We were not rulers then as much as servants, heeding the words of all the drow. And it was Lady Lolth that led us there, before she was called the Spider Queen.”

“Ah, yes, true that,” Jarlaxle agreed, feigning defeat. “It escaped me that you are without the strong sense of irony to go that delicious route.” Jarlaxle turned to the others. “So we have it, then,” he declared. “It was the illithids, a grand and brilliant plan! Or it was Lolth herself, ever making chaos for her enjoyment. Or it was one of her great rivals, then—perhaps Demogorgon!—blowing up the whole damned Lolthian world on Faerun.” “Or it was nothing at all beyond the epiphany of two women in position to make a difference,” Entreri said dryly. He sighed and shook his head, then looked up at Wulfgar, who stood beside him. “You see, my friend?” he asked with sarcasm exceeding that of the others. “This is why we can’t have good things, good thoughts, simple joy, or hope.” Jarlaxle laughed loudly at that, amused. But there really was a nagging doubt here, about all of it. The most important lesson he had learned in his desperate struggle to survive in Menzoberranzan was that nothing—nothing!—was as it seemed. Not ever. But how he wanted to believe that this time would be different.”

“Drizzt chuckled, but felt a pang within that honest laughter. This was the childhood he had never experienced, the carefree creation of giggles that too few got to enjoy. He wished he had played this game with Zaknafein, though he couldn’t even imagine the possibility of any such playfulness with his mother, Malice. Such a waste of life itself, he thought, given what he knew now, what Kimmuriel had helped the priestess Yvonnel and Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre reveal of the hopeful beginnings of Menzoberranzan before it had descended into its current, joyless reality. Before the way of Lolth, where the tension and excitement of chaos swirled away the pleasures of simplicity and love.”

“A beautiful drow woman. Too beautiful. Painfully beautiful. It was not an emissary of Lolth, she knew. No, no. It was the image of Lolth herself, reaching out to her from the Abyss. Sos’Umptu fell to her knees, as did every other drow in the Fane of the Goddess. “Many of my handmaidens have come to Menzoberranzan, my city,” Lolth said. Sos’Umptu wanted to look upon her, but dared not lift her gaze. “They brought me here, to you, in full confidence that you would be an acceptable and accepting host.” “I pray you found me acceptable.” “Indeed, Sos’Umptu Baenre. Indeed. Rise now, I command. Look upon me. Let me see the love in your eyes.”

“Tsabrak scoffed at her. “How long have you lived here? Freedom? You are free to do the best you can, based on your loyalty to Lolth and your inner strengths. On your physical, magical, and intellectual prowess. And, of course, your gender. That you, a noble priestess of a powerful house, daughter to one of the ruling matrons of Menzoberranzan, should—” “Suppose that is not what I want?” Saribel interrupted. “Perhaps my heart does not condone that which I see all about me.”

“A huge black tentacle snaked over the rim of the Clawrift, wriggling its way behind the Oblodran compound. Like a wave, dark elves fell back, stumbling all over each other, as the twenty-foot-thick monstrosity came around the back, along the side, and along the front wall, back towards the chasm. “Baenre!” Pleaded the desperate, doomed Oblodran. “You have denied Lolth,” the first matron mother replied calmly. “Feel her wraith!”

“Yes, and that they were not Lolthians, that their society was neither cruel nor unjust. Quite the opposite, for if what Freewindle told me in his rambling tales of these drow is true, we have come upon a society that is egalitarian and moral, a place where you survive because you can rely on others and where they survive because they know they can rely on you. Do you now understand what such a promise means to me, who had to survive Menzoberranzan?”

“He is drow,” Zak answered before Jarlaxle, who was now floating back down. “As are you—you cannot levitate?” The surrounding aevendrow stared at him as if they had no idea what he was talking about. “Now, this is an interesting turn,” Jarlaxle said, setting down beside them. “So it was the Faerzress all along, the barrier to the lower planes, which gave us this inner magic.”

“Zak thought of his homeland, Menzoberranzan, the city and the cavern that had stood for millennia. Every drow family tried to put their mark on it, be it with circling stairways flowing from stalactite to stalactite, highlighted with faerie fire of varying hues, but those were such little details, he thought. He was sure that the city looked very much as it had soon after its founding.”