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Drow
eyes can see heat patterns in air and rock thanks to their 120’ range infravision.
Against a dim gray “cold” stone backdrop, progressively warmer hues show
as subtle blue, purple, red, and warm yellow. The warmth comes from hot
springs, magma, seeping water, and
fissure-breezes.
Drow learn
to use the “shadows” of these varying hues for concealment when stalking,
in much the same way as a surface creature uses the shadows produced by
the sun, moon, and other light sources. Like surface dwellers, drow must
learn to “read” heat-hues; the meanings of various shades and patterns
become known to drow only through teachings or experience “in
the field”.
Near areas
of drow habitation in the Underdark, the varying heat-hues of the natural
Underdark are blurred by the higher ambient heat of many gathered, living
beings and their activities. Drow cities also sport magical glows, a few
actual lights (notably the sharp, foreign-to-most-drow radiances of the
candles of studying wizards and important rituals to Lolth), and the far
more common continual faerie fire glows that highlight drow sculpture.
Drow
are proud of the beauty of their designs, and usually outline the most
impressive works with this spell.
Drow hearing is highly developed. In
the Underdark, one learns to find water by timing the echoes of dripping
or running water, and to detect coming rock shifts or collapses by listening
for the natural grating and groaning sounds of unshaped rock.
Drow have long,
slender, sensitive fingers, and a highly-developed tactile sense. In addition
to their silent language of gestures, stances, and expressions, they are
able to read subtle, braille-like “secret signs” left on rock walls, message
stones, and other places by fellow
drow.
The drow sense
of smell, however, is not so acute. The all-pervasive smell of the rock
and damp air all around, tainted by ever-present mold and fungus spores
and the scent of drow and slave bodies, is a strong background. Most drow
have been exposed to strong incense and offering-burnings since infancy,
which further serves to dull the olfactory sense. Drow still enjoy
perfume, incense, and the like, but
their smell is only about as acute as that of most humans -- far less than
that of many native inhabitants of the Underdark.
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