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A Light in the Dark

May 10, 2019

In the never ending war between light and dark on Arrallon, there have been many chapters.  One of the longest running sagas in that eternal struggle could be the war between the light and dark elves.  In the beginning, there was only one Elven race.  They didn't even call themselves elves, for the languages of twelve thousand years ago were quite different.  However, two words have been passed down from those nearly prehistoric times; Delsian and Drovik.


Delsian meant "high ones".  Back then, the elves thought themselves the only truly sentient species on the planet.  Their isolation and arrogance remained, even millennia later.  When they discovered the continent they named Trellheim, their ideas of being alone in the world were challenged, as was their ability to fight a vicious enemy.  The True Trolls, now all but wiped out of existence, lived there.  They too were masters of magic, but more importantly, they were geneticists, creating mutations and monsters to do their bidding.  The so-called Dark Races were born; the Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls, Ogres and Battle Trolls.  The Elves had little choice but to learn how to fight,… fast, or face extinction.


The Troll Wars ravaged the continent of Trellheim, leaving it magically scarred and barren.  But more importantly, it gave birth to a split in the Elven race.  Those who had gone to war had seen the horror and the glory of it.  They would no longer be content sitting on their laurels and watching the sunsets.  When the Elven warriors returned home from across the sea, even their skin tones had changed.  The magics unleashed during the Troll Wars had marked them all as magic had died on what would one day be known as the continent of Hesterland.  They were darker.  Their hair had been bleached white.  The blue of the skies had been drained from their eyes.  They were called Drovik,… followers of the Dark One, Generals Mellikan Lolnivog and her half-brother, Treallar Mallabane. 


Naturally, their very existence was anathema to the gentle folk of the Elven homeland,… the First Elfkin Wars soon began.  Over the following centuries, as the Elven home was ravaged by war, the Elven flight began.  A half dozen new Elven subspecies would soon be recorded.  The Drovik, thought wiped out in the final battles on the distant shores of the primitive continent of Beotharn, all but disappeared.  It would be ages later that the Drow were first encountered, the descendants of the Drovik, led now by their evil, demon worshiping matriarchy and the fifth generation direct descendant of She who had ascended to become their Goddess, Lolth.


Needless to say, the war between the Drow and the surface elves rarely abated for more than a decade or two in the centuries that followed.  Strangely enough, the Second Elfkin Wars was not between the Drow and the Delsians, but between the Delsians and the other Elven races of the world.  Treallar had been rescued from His long imprisonment, and the three deaths of Lolth, long prophesied, were nigh.  Her reign finally ended for good not in a war between Dark and Light, but between Drow and Drovik.  And as Lolth returned to the Apos star system to destroy its star and end Arrallon once and for all, Her darkness was put out by a fluxstone enhanced nuclear weapon smuggled on to Her flagship.  The Drow Wars were over.  Lolth was no more.  Labellas, long the high wizard (the DelMage) of Delsia, had been killed by Kiriansalee previously.  Treallar simply vanished.  Some of the old Gods of the Drow and the Delsians were gone, yet others remained.


In Avandor, the Elven Heaven, the Seldarine mourned the loss of their family, even if they were the black sheep and trouble makers.  New Gods and Goddesses arose to assume control over their respective races.  Corellon, long retired, returned to the throne to rule over the Seldarine.  Eilistraee, most popular amongst the remaining Drow (and secretly Sehanine Moonbow, Corellon's wife), assumed the mantle of supreme Goddess of the Dark Seldarine.  Those who had hidden in the shadows returned to the light, no longer fearing Lolth's megalomania and psychosis.  Zhelvienne, the Cat of Many Tales; Ghuanadar, the Slimelord; Zinzerina, the Mad Goddess; Vhaeren, the Assassin; and now Tadilva, Goddess of Lust and Depravity; all came out to willing followers amongst the Drow.  Corellon, Sehanine, Erevan, Hanali and Rilivan reasserted themselves as the original Gods of the Delsians, Sylvisan and others.  What had once been a great rift between the Elven races, began to heal for good.


*****


It would be folly to assume that the church of Eilistraee simply sprung up out of the woodwork a few years before the fall of Lolth.  Indeed, the Dark Seldarine, those not under Lolth's direct control, but worshiped by the Drow and other denizens of the UnderDark have existed side by side with the Queen of Spiders since the beginning almost.  They were, however, outwardly outlawed until Treallar was freed and Lolth died the first time.  Then, only in the Drovikallum were any besides Lolth and Treallar worshiped openly amongst the Dark Elves.  And it was only Eilistraee that enjoyed that unique honor.  Needless to say, that laid the foundation for Her ascension to the throne of the Dark Seldarine upon Lolth's final destruction.  But elsewhere in the world, those Drow and Drovik that dared to worship any other God, did so in secret.


Between the great Drow cities of the Western UnderDark there are many hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of lesser caverns and hidden outposts.  There, mad cults worship insane Gods.  Undead horrors trap unsuspecting UnderDark travelers and feed their souls to Kiriansalee.  Lone arachnoid terrors wander the wilderness, seeking sacrifices to Selvatarm.  Blood orgies within the Red Keep serve the greater power of Tadilva.  And slithering nightmares pay homage to Ghuanadar in blasted and forgotten tunnels.  Even at the height of the Splinter Kingdom and the rule of the Matron Mothers, they could not find and wipe out all the remote, hidden factions.  But with Lolth dead for good, some of those on the lunatic fringe have reemerged.


Perhaps the strangest of the splinter factions of the Splinter Kingdom were those who followed not only Eilistraee's path, that of love and inclusion, but the worship of the Light Seldarine.  Followers of Hanali, Corellon, Sehanine, even Erevan and Rillifane, existed as a lesser minority amongst the fringe elements.  And if the worship of Eilistraee was cause for a death sentence handed down by the Matron Mothers, imagine what punishment would await a Drow girl child steeped in the ways of Corellon and the bringers of light.


Born to wealth and station, secretly instructed in the tales of the Seldarine and the surface elves, Sildrenyth Mryzwyn Baenreal knew she would have to flee her home in the lower reaches of the Western UnderDark when her true magical talent emerged.  Her greatest secret, and her family's greatest shame, was her true calling, that of Radiancemaster.  To find that she could not only stand the brightness that all her people fled from, but reveled in its warmth and beauty, immediately marked her for death.  It was a time of great uncertainty in the Splinter Kingdom.  The prayers of the Priestesses of Lolth were not being answered.  The Coven of the Spider was slowly taking control, their Black Witchcraft now more powerful than the Matron Mothers.  Everywhere there was chaos and unrest.  So, the Matron Mothers did the only thing they knew how to do, they sent soldiers amongst the dissident population to slaughter them to show they were still in control.  Her mother sacrificed herself getting the young girl out of the city and into the care of travelers passing through the UnderDark.


Months of grueling spelunking and several hops through the Webgate network and she was safe (as safe as a Drow female could be) in the mountains of a foreign land.  There, she experienced her first open sky, saw the sun and the moon, and danced naked beneath the stars.  She learned that the reason for the upheaval in the Splinter Kingdom was that there was another Drow Nation, one they were calling the Drovikallum, and it was there, in a great rebellion against Mellikan VII, that Lolth was slain by surface dwellers.  Sildren was now in the position of reaching out to others on the surface and joining their societies, as many others had begun doing.  But it would still be many more years, years of survival in the remote parts of the world, learning the skills of the Ranger and becoming an expert with a bow, before she met another with which she would feel connected.

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