I am delving into DM'ing a Drow campaign. Despite having read numerous novels and publications spanning from TSR to WotC to Paizo, I am now having trouble wrapping my head around the idea of their inherent light blindness and illumination within their cities.
Whenever I look at artwork, I often see a faint ambient glow and light coming from windows, such as:
Considering I can't really take an artists' interpretation as canon, what can I take this as? I am certain not all of their slaves have darkvision, not all guests have darkvision, or at least don't have darkvision as good as a drow.
I have read that Drow like to dress with certain colors, yet if there isn't adequate illumination the only colors they see are black and white with darkvision.
Does anyone know if Drow actually illuminate anything? I seem to remember from something I read that in one city (and forgive me for this horrific recollection) there was a central stone that would glow and not glow to give a resemblance of a day and night passing by.
If the drow do use illumination throughout their dwellings, how much light is enough to not interfere with their light blindness?
For sake of gameplay mechanics, this is a 3.5 campaign. However, the question is general enough that edition shouldn't matter as much.