The dark elves (also known as drow) are evil cousins of the other elves. Driven beneath the surface long ago by the light-loving elves, these sinister beings have made a home for themselves in what they call the Underdark, the niche they have brutally carved in the underground caverns. They have become the masters and mistresses of dark grottoes, and any intelligent creature shuns them.
Originally the drow were simply elves who held more with the tenets of might than those of justice. In their quest for more power over life, they inevitably began dealing with the forces that would one day corrupt them. Their elven brethren, dismayed at the initial change in their formerly peaceful kinsmen, sought to reason with them. The drow, seeing this effort as aggression, responded by slaying emissaries and invading elven cities. Convinced of the evil of the drow, the other elves banded together to drive them from the land.