Drow knockout poison

Drow knockout poison, also called drow sleep poison or simply drow poison, was a poison often used by the drow.

Description
The drow sleep poison was a black, gummy, and heavy substance like molasses.

Powers
The drow poison was delivered by injury and was used by smearing it on ranged weapon like crossbow darts or javelins, other weapons, or&mdash;in extreme cases&mdash; with the bare hand. It was a potent poison but reactive to air and sunlight. Its reactiveness to air caused it to lose potency in 60 days, keeping it in a sealed packet kept it potent for years. Its reactiveness to sunlight was extreme. When exposed to sunlight, it lost its potency in an instant.

The poison was delivered by injury, or in the case of delivery via bare hand through hitting nose, eyes, mouth, and naturally injuries. A weapon could be used twice with the same dose smeared on it, albeit the potency lessened on the second strike. Drow on assassination missions applied this poison on garrotes or fingernail polish. Slave holding areas or drow camps outside of civilized Underdark environment were secured with tripwire traps that were poisoned with this.

When the drow poison was delivered into a creature's system, the creature felt weakness and lassitude before falling unconscious for two to eight hours. Sturdy people woke up after one minute. Even when one did not fall unconscious from it, the victim had often problems to cope with subsequent detrimental effects. Once that happened, dispel magic or physical attempts to awaken the victim did not work. An application of neutralize poison, a potion of sweet water or vitality perfectly worked.

One secure way to wash off a poisoned weapon was to apply alcohol on it.

It took four days to create the drow knockout poison when the creator had access to a functional laboratory.

History
As the name suggested, drow knockout poison was a poison associated with the drow. They often used it on subterranean ambushes but it was also standard equipment for surface drow rogues.

Reputation
The production of this poison was a closely held secret among the drow. Therefore, it was hard to find a source of it on the surface and in the Underdark where the drow were not in power.