Drowtales
Drowtales: Moonless Age is a fantasy manga-style webcomic that has been running since 2001.
Drowtales had had many iterations, from it's original shitty MSPaint-tier art to dozens of artists collaborating on what is now unarguably one of the best looking webcomics on the internet. Whether the story has likewise improved at all is open to debate. Drowtales is a skub topic on /tg/ that causes massive levels of autism from both it's fans and anti-fans. /tg/ has had several raids of the site's roleplaying forums, with neckbeards attempting to fight the drow Mary Sues with their own dwarf Mary Sues. The only thing most anons agree is about the art, which, admittedly, is pretty fucking badass.
Story
A long time ago there were two elven nations at war. They used a magic spell to break the fucking moon apart and opened a giant portal to the netherworld so that demons flooded the surface of the planet and ate everyone.
What few elves survived this clusterfuck of a war went underground and turned into the drow. They built a giant city and then started fighting each other.
The empress's daughters betrayed her and locked her in her throne to starve to death while they took over the city, some people starting tainting themselves with demons intentionally, the daughter of one of the clan leaders went to a magic school where she pretended to be a boy and then killed a bunch of her friends, a cult tried to summon a demon god into the underworld, and one of the empress's daughters made a magic flower bioweapon and rode around on a magic airship. Blah blah blah.
Factions
- Sarghress: The clan the main character belongs to and thus the default "heroic" one. They are a clan of mercenary commoners focused on strength, the rights of commoners, and so on. Boring as all fuck.
- Sharen: The aristocrats of the city who all wear beautiful outfits and act haughty. Their clan is split into multiple bloodlines who constantly plot against each other. These are the most D&D-like drow in the setting.
- Sullisin'rune: Essentially the Brave New World society in drow form. They wear a lot of blue, use empath abilities and have regular orgies in their glowing dome fortress. One of the more interesting factions in the story.
- Vloz'ress: Anarchist demon worshippers. Generally useless and self-defeating.
- Beldrobbaen: Emo goths who live in an inverted castle built on the cavern ceiling. They dress in all black and mope around. Needless to say, they are by far the most popular clan among the fanbase.
- Nal'sarkoth: Surface merchants who dress in all green. They barely show up in the story and nobody gives a flying fuck about them.
- Illhar'dro: The other merchant clan. Slightly more interesting in that they have a form of magic based on singing. Biggest exporter of drow pop stars in the underworld.
- Kyorl'solenurn: Fanatic crusader assholes. PURGE THE HERETIC
- Jaal'darya: Female-only clan who use biotechnology. They create artificial life forms and transform their bodies into all kinds of weird shit.
So What's Wrong With It?
The main complaint /tg/ has is that the characters are all Mary Sues.
Are They?
Well, kind of.
The drow are OP compared to every other race. Some have cat ears. All are bisexual. The main character pulls out any imaginary power out of her ass when cornered. There's faggotry like the drow getting high on chocolate (seriously). The drow are shown to be mostly cute, animesque and angsty nerdy teenagers who bitch to each other about their lives while hordes of slaves are brought to be used in the underworld. The drow are so OP in this setting that a couple of children who are competent magic users defeat an entire human settlement with walled fortifications and a brigade of armed guards. At first you think that it is like an examination of the conflicts that arise from putting a bunch of Mary Sues in a cavern that is too small for them, but then you realize that it is about a bunch of Mary Sues.