Huldrow

Huldrow look very much like drow, except for glowing white eyes and skin that may be anything from pale brown to jet. They can alter their looks to pass as humans or other demihumans, yet a faint trace of what they really are always shows.

Long ago, three drow came to live among the shadow fey and drew some of them into a cult of the spider goddess. The more those converts acted like drow, the more their bodies changed, until they became this lesser breed. Most were later slain and turned into undead shades when a wailing, haunted domain came into being; only a few remain.

They still cling to the lessons of their long-dead drow mentors, but because those leaders were assassinated early, the huldrow never fully grasped drow ways. The other shadow fey consider them renegades for breaking their people's law and worshiping the spider goddess, so the survivors hide, and some have even left the hidden shadow realm to roam the heartland domains.

Like the drow they copy, huldrow are ruthless fighters who blend spells and weapons, and they nearly always ambush or trap their foes in bands of 3 to 8. Sunlight inflicts 3 damage per round, or 3 per turn if filtered. Only magical weapons or cold-forged steel can hurt them, stone weapons cannot even if enchanted, and spider venom of every kind has no effect.

Huldrow inhabit caverns in the hidden shadow realm or elsewhere in the misty dread realm, decorated in their notion of drow style; the caverns of the undead shades are a fine example. They keep refining their imitation by capturing drow and surface dwellers to learn from, but whatever they dislike about real drow society they dismiss as a lie and redesign to taste. Small clans are led by the strongest female, sometimes a 6th-level cleric of the spider goddess.

Living apart and allowing their young little room to change, they always raise huldrow children. They can still breed with other shadow fey, but those children are seldom raised by huldrow and usually become other breeds. As would-be drow they raid by night and kill in their goddess's name. Other shadow fey shun them, but their law keeps them from killing huldrow except rarely.

There are no true huldrowkin, but a few huldrow have bred with real dark elves. The children are drow who can assume shadowform three times a day and take human or demihuman shape twice daily. They look like huldrow and suffer the same sun vulnerability as their shadow fey parent, and with the DM's approval they can be player characters.