Homeland (1990)
Homeland is a 1990 fiction book written by R. A. Salvatore.
Menzoberranzan is a city carved from cavern rock, ruled by dark elf houses that survive on treachery and the worship of a spider goddess. Into this Drizzt Do'Urden is born, a prince of a ruling house, cursed with a conscience his people have no use for. His weapons master Zaknafein trains him to fight and, quietly, to question everything around him. Salvatore opens the Dark Elf trilogy with an origin story about keeping your integrity in a world engineered to crush it. The Underdark is beautifully cruel, and the drama turns moral before it turns martial. The legend starts here.
Quick answers
What is Homeland about?
Menzoberranzan is a city carved from cavern rock, ruled by dark elf houses that survive on treachery and the worship of a spider goddess. Into this Drizzt Do'Urden is born, a prince of a ruling house, cursed with a conscience his people have no use for. His weapons master Zaknafein trains him to fight and, quietly, to question everything around him. Salvatore opens the Dark Elf trilogy with an origin story about keeping your integrity in a world engineered to crush it. The Underdark is beautifully cruel, and the drama turns moral before it turns martial. The legend starts here.
When was Homeland published?
Homeland was published in 1990.
Who made Homeland?
Homeland was written by R. A. Salvatore.
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Homeland in our writing
- Companion guide: Dungeons & Dragons on the PC: From the Gold Box to Baldur's Gate 3
A few thoughts on Homeland
Baldur's Gate III wanders the same drow-haunted Underdark and its city of spiders, ideal for readers who want to walk Menzoberranzan themselves. The morally cornered outsider recalls Dragon Age: Origins, another dark-fantasy tale of a hero judged by his kind rather than his character.
Origin stories about keeping your morals in a corrupt system
Homeland is Drizzt's origin, a prince of Menzoberranzan trained by Zaknafein to fight and, quietly, to question a society built on treachery. Dragon Age: Origins puts a player through a comparable formation, choosing who to become before the wider war starts. Planescape: Torment, The Witcher and Geralt's own introduction in The Last Wish all turn on the same question, how much conscience survives a corrupt world.
D&D CRPGs set in Drizzt's own city
Homeland takes place entirely inside Menzoberranzan, the drow city ruled by treacherous noble houses and a spider goddess's priestesses. Menzoberranzan the game drops you into that exact setting, and Baldur's Gate III, Baldur's Gate II, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Pool of Radiance, Champions of Krynn, Solasta and Dark Alliance all run on the same Dungeons & Dragons ruleset and party-based combat.
Drizzt's saga and the wider Dragonlance world
Homeland opens the Dark Elf trilogy, and Exile and Sojourn continue Drizzt's own arc before The Crystal Shard, Streams of Silver and The Halfling's Gem send him north with Bruenor's company. Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Winter Night and Spring Dawning, along with the Legends trilogy, Time of the Twins and War of the Twins, share the same tabletop-born D&D multiverse, just a different corner of it.
Fantasy ensembles for after a solitary origin story
Homeland is Drizzt alone against his own city, with barely an ally besides Zaknafein. These screen quests give that same D&D-rooted fantasy a full company instead: Vox Machina's mismatched crew, the shifting alliances of Westeros, the cursed thieves of Honor Among Thieves, and the friend group at the center of Stranger Things. Willow and Excalibur build their fellowships the same way.