TL:DR Is it possible for 2 high elves to give brith to a drow if an ancestor was a drow many years ago?
So i had this idea of a drow wizard who was raised in an orphanage his whole life and didnt really know he was a drow (just a kind of elf). He became close friends with another orphan and when the orphan was adopted, her and the drow would talk about how her new parents were magic users and how the drow always wanted to learn magic. So she started to teach the drow everything she could as she learnt it from the parents.
Fast forward a few years (havent came up with it yet)
He finds out that his parents are actually the king and queen (high elves) but sent him to the orphanage at a young age because they couldnt have a drow in the royal family.
Is this plausible for a drow to be born like this, i was going to make it so that many generations ago there was a drow in the family so it was a dormant gene? Does this make sense?
An old Forgotten Realms source states that one of the two parentage between Drow and any Elf would end up completely overriding the other ending up with 100% Drow or 100% Elf, no mixing.
Instead, a bastard is probably the better option with one of the royal family being the parent, but not the other - a bigger scandal.
Someone surmised that High Elves would more likely ostracize the offspring while Drow would likely kill the offspring without regard to which race the child ended up being. In other words, a High Elf born of a Drow parent in High Elf society would be just as ostracized as a Drow born of a High Elf in High Elf society while a Drow born of a High Elf in Drow society would be killed as if the child was a High Elf born of a Drow in Drow society. This sounds like Drow and High Elf society to me, but exceptions are possible.
A High Elf with Drow parentage in High Elf society could possibly hide in plain sight while always being afraid of being discovered (only considering if the High Elf is even aware of the parentage - too much of a scandal to admit and too risky to send the child to parts unknown).
There are many possibilities, but without knowing of a more-recent source, I can't state how the genetics over generations work between Drow and other Elf races in 5e.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Okay so I know next to nothing about the official cannon of the 5th edition Lore.
That said, I think it makes interesting story that you have the "good god we can't have THAT in the house" as a plot point for a character. It is a little on the cliche/ trope side but that's not a bad thing. It just means that it is an interesting enough story element that others have used it. The Hunchback of Notre Dame uses it in the way that Quasimodo is forced to live in the bell tower rather than properly adopted.
As a DM my concerns would be what your vision as a player how this backstory would affect the game. Do you plan to seek out the original parents? Do you want me to craft adventures around you "learning the truth"? Do you expect other players to treat you differently due to the elevated status? Those are conversations you would need to work out. A DM can work with this but it might not turn out as you intended.
From a genetics point of view it is possible with my genes that that two parents presenting dominant traits have offspring showing the recessive. That's how two people who are blonde can have a red-headed child. But mechanically Dark Elves have a bit more variety in the stat blocks than their high elven counterparts. Similarly I'm not sure how the parents would know it's a Drow baby but the infant would be raised in way they don't know who/ what they are. Seems if the baby presents enough as a Dark Elf, that during the formative years the child would also learn it was "different".
When you have a nebulous concept like the genetics of a fictional people, I'd say scientific plausibility comes is handily overridden by the needs of the story. Go with what works for your character background as needed. Just make sure your DM agrees.
Qilue Veladorn, the Seventh Sister, was a drow born from a high elf mother. Of course that required the intervention of Mystra and Eilistraee, but that might be a good route to consider.
Cool concept. I like the scandal approach I think that might be the best route to take. Then it would be easy to branch into how/why your moving into adventuring instead of living the "high elf" life.
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TL:DR Is it possible for 2 high elves to give brith to a drow if an ancestor was a drow many years ago?
So i had this idea of a drow wizard who was raised in an orphanage his whole life and didnt really know he was a drow (just a kind of elf). He became close friends with another orphan and when the orphan was adopted, her and the drow would talk about how her new parents were magic users and how the drow always wanted to learn magic. So she started to teach the drow everything she could as she learnt it from the parents.
Fast forward a few years (havent came up with it yet)
He finds out that his parents are actually the king and queen (high elves) but sent him to the orphanage at a young age because they couldnt have a drow in the royal family.
Is this plausible for a drow to be born like this, i was going to make it so that many generations ago there was a drow in the family so it was a dormant gene? Does this make sense?
An old Forgotten Realms source states that one of the two parentage between Drow and any Elf would end up completely overriding the other ending up with 100% Drow or 100% Elf, no mixing.
Instead, a bastard is probably the better option with one of the royal family being the parent, but not the other - a bigger scandal.
Someone surmised that High Elves would more likely ostracize the offspring while Drow would likely kill the offspring without regard to which race the child ended up being. In other words, a High Elf born of a Drow parent in High Elf society would be just as ostracized as a Drow born of a High Elf in High Elf society while a Drow born of a High Elf in Drow society would be killed as if the child was a High Elf born of a Drow in Drow society. This sounds like Drow and High Elf society to me, but exceptions are possible.
A High Elf with Drow parentage in High Elf society could possibly hide in plain sight while always being afraid of being discovered (only considering if the High Elf is even aware of the parentage - too much of a scandal to admit and too risky to send the child to parts unknown).
There are many possibilities, but without knowing of a more-recent source, I can't state how the genetics over generations work between Drow and other Elf races in 5e.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
Okay so I know next to nothing about the official cannon of the 5th edition Lore.
That said, I think it makes interesting story that you have the "good god we can't have THAT in the house" as a plot point for a character. It is a little on the cliche/ trope side but that's not a bad thing. It just means that it is an interesting enough story element that others have used it. The Hunchback of Notre Dame uses it in the way that Quasimodo is forced to live in the bell tower rather than properly adopted.
As a DM my concerns would be what your vision as a player how this backstory would affect the game. Do you plan to seek out the original parents? Do you want me to craft adventures around you "learning the truth"? Do you expect other players to treat you differently due to the elevated status? Those are conversations you would need to work out. A DM can work with this but it might not turn out as you intended.
From a genetics point of view it is possible with my genes that that two parents presenting dominant traits have offspring showing the recessive. That's how two people who are blonde can have a red-headed child. But mechanically Dark Elves have a bit more variety in the stat blocks than their high elven counterparts. Similarly I'm not sure how the parents would know it's a Drow baby but the infant would be raised in way they don't know who/ what they are. Seems if the baby presents enough as a Dark Elf, that during the formative years the child would also learn it was "different".
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Thanks everyone for your help with this :)
When you have a nebulous concept like the genetics of a fictional people, I'd say scientific plausibility comes is handily overridden by the needs of the story. Go with what works for your character background as needed. Just make sure your DM agrees.
Qilue Veladorn, the Seventh Sister, was a drow born from a high elf mother. Of course that required the intervention of Mystra and Eilistraee, but that might be a good route to consider.
Cool concept. I like the scandal approach I think that might be the best route to take. Then it would be easy to branch into how/why your moving into adventuring instead of living the "high elf" life.