[RPG] How do Drow make poison

dnd-5edrowlorepoison

I'm running a home-brew campaign for my family and I have them going into the underdark. They are fighting Drow and Deep Dwarfs but the settlements I made for them lack stone-working places and places to make poison. That made me wonder, do they just extract it from their spiders? Do they have some kind of deal with the demons to supply poison?

Best Answer

It is, so far, a mystery, but we know some things

The first information we got on Drow Poison from 5th edition is from the introduction to the drow in the Monster Manual:

Poison Predilection. Distilled from spider venom and the flora of the Underdark, poison can be found in abundance among the drow... Drow mages concoct a viscid toxin that leaves enemies unconscious.

It seems that while spider venom and other sources of reagents are necessary, there is also a process that the Drow mages know of. Of this process, we know only what the Dungeon Master Guide briefly mentions in the section on Posions:

This poison is typically made only by the drow, and only in a place far removed from sunlight.

So we know that whatever process is used to make the poison, it can be performed without sunlight. However, that is about it. I expected more information on the poison to be present in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes which expanded greatly on Drow society, but did not mention the poison creation process once.

In summary, the creation of Drow Poison requires spider venom, some sort of flora from the Underdark, and preparation via some unknown process which does not require sunlight.