The Journals of Drizzt Do'Urden

[Halsyon of Cyrodiil]

I'm thinking about compiling all of his journals into one place. I have been thinking about this for some time, and will do so if there is enough interest in it. I have every book in what I like to call "The Life of Drizzt Do'Urden" and would be happy to share his insightful journals with those who would like them all in a place that is easy to find.

[Halsyon of Cyrodiil]

So despite the community's complete disregard of this thread, I'm going through with this project. I've got enough people that know me in person who are interested in this undertaking that it seems worth it. I'll be posting these (with the appropriate recognition to Mr. Salvatore, of course) on the Forum as I complete them. They will most likely be a single book at a time, though I'm not sure where to post them on TFF. Any help as to where I could post them would be much appreciated.

[Timothy Guilt]

With all due respect to Mr. Salvatore, I'd say he completely loses the plot in Book 2 & 3 of the Dark Elf trilogy. I remember putting down the 1st book and salivating over the prospect of Drizz't getting to the surface and maybe continuing his feud with his family. But what followed was a complete farce. I don't think that I have ever been so disappointed. Ever.

[Halsyon of Cyrodiil]

With all due respect to you, Timothy, this compilation has almost no relevance to your enjoyment of the plot. Other than Drizzt's journals following his emotions and changing points of view throughout his journey, there is no actual storyline present in the journals. I appreciate your voicing of views, but create your own thread for words that are irrelevant to presently existing threads.

[Halsyon of Cyrodiil]

I'm going to be regularly posting the Journals one this thread for any who wish to read them. I'd like to preface my sharing of these by saying that none of these words of my own, not even the punctuation. I even left the typos in Mr. Salvatore's and his publishing companies exact ways. These are his pearls of wisdom, and he is to me commended for them. For final empasis, this is the work of R.A. Salvatore and all who helped him to write it, if in fact there were minions. None of it is mine and I do not claim ownership over them.

[Halsyon of Cyrodiil]

(Preface to “The Life of Drizzt”)

Never does a star grace this land with a poet's light of twinkling mysteries, nor does the sun send to here its rays of warmth and life. This is the Underdark, the secret world beneath the bustling surface of the Forgotten Realms, whose sky is a ceiling of heartless stone and whose walls show the gray blandness of death in the torchlight of the foolish surface-dwellers that stumble here. This is not their world, not the world of light. Most who come here uninvited do not return.
Those who do escape to the safety of their surface homes return changed. Their eyes have seen the shadows and the gloom, the inevitable doom of the Underdark.
Dark corridors meander throughout the dark realm in winding courses, connecting caverns great and small, with ceilings high and low. Mounds of stone as pointed as the teeth of a sleeping dragon leer down in silent threat or rise up to block the way of intruders.
There is a silence here, profound and foreboding, the crouched hush of a predator at work. Too often the only sound, the only reminder to travelers in the Underdark that they have not lost their sense of hearing altogether, is a distant and echoing drip of water, beating like the heart of a beast, slipping through the silent stones to the deep Underdark pools of chilled water. What lies beneath the still onyx surface of these pools one can only guess. What secrets await the brave, what horrors await the foolish, only the imagination can reveal – until the stillness is disturbed.
This is the Underdark.
- - - - -
There are pockets of life here, cities as great as many of those on the surface. Around any of the countless bends and turns in the gray stone a traveler might stumble suddenly into the perimeter of such a city, a stark contrast to the emptiness of the corridors. These places are not safe havens, though; only the foolish traveler would assume so. They are the homes of the most evil races in all the Realms, most notably the Duergar, the kuo-roa, and the drow.
In one such cavern, two miles wide and a thousand feet high, looms Menzoberranzan, a monument to the other worldly and – ultimately – deadly grace that marks the race of drow elves. Menzoberranzan is not a large city by drow standards; only twenty thousand dark elves reside there. Where, in ages past, there had been an empty cavern of roughly shaped stalactites and stalagmites now stands artistry, row after row of carved castles thrumming in a quiet glow of magic. The city is perfection in form, where not a stone has been left to its natural shape. This sense of order and control, however, is but a cruel facade, a deception hiding the chaos and vileness that rule the dark elves' hearts. Like their cities, they are a beautiful, slender, and delicate people, with features sharp and haunting.
Yet the drow are the rulers of this unruled world, the deadliest of the deadly, and all other races take cautious note of their passing. Beauty itself pales at the end of a dark elf's sword. The drow are the survivors, and this is the Underdark, the valley of death – the land of nameless nightmares.