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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2634267" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 465The story of the urdunnir upon—or more precisely, beneath—Faerûn was replete with tragedy.  If anything, this made the tale of Udon Oryx more tragic, both for the potential of what might have been, and for the darkness that he brought upon his people. The Thunder Blessing, the gift of Moradin, had been extended to all of the Soul Forger’s children.  It even reached the urdunnir in their homes far beneath the stones.  One of the sets of twins born of the Blessing were two males named Udon and Urok.  They were very different; Udon was strong and hale, while Urok, while slight of build, was possessed of agile limbs and a quick mind evident even in his earliest years.  The bond between the two twins was uncanny, a trait shared by many of the matched pairs born of that generation of dwarves in the annum of Moradin’s gift.  Their parents observed that often one would sense what the other was feeling, even when the two children were not in the same room. But life in the Underdark was as cold and unforgiving as the deep tunnels themselves.  As the twins neared their fifth birthday, a pestilence swept through the urdunnir community, a wasting disease that stole vitality and sapped the very life from the bones.  The disease resisted the calls of the urdunnir priests to the Keeper of Secrets.  Most of the dwarves, with their adamant constitutions, overcame the sickness, but the weakest succumbed, with over a dozen claimed by the illness.  One of those who fell was Urok.  The child’s parents were consumed with grief, and did not fully observe the change in their remaining son, Udon.  But something subtle happened to the surviving child; it was as if the disease had claimed a part of him as well. In a strange way, the disease helped prepare the urdunnir for what would come, for only three years later, the duergar penetrated the Shield Wall through dark treachery and foul arts, sundering the urdunnir community, slaying those who resisted, and enslaving the remainder.  Among those killed were Udon’s parents; his father at the Shield Wall, and his mother in a dark corridor, dragged away by sneering duergar warriors, never to return.  Many of the children of the urdunnir did not survive the dark raid or its aftermath.  The duergar were interested in securing slaves for their dark project, designed to restore the fallen dragon-god Tiamat to life.  Children were a burden, and only those that could be of use to the enslavers were kept alive.  Udon survived into adulthood for two reasons.  First, he was already stronger in his youth than many of his kin four or five years older.  Secondly, he found that he could curry favor with their masters by informing upon his own people.  Over the decades in captivity the dwarf did what he had to in order to survive.  Several of his people died at the hand of duergar torturers due to the words he whispered to the overseers, but his heart was dead, and he embraced the darkness that had enfolded his people.  He scorned the hope that some of his kin clung to as the years went on, and scoffed at promises of deliverance and of a messenger that the Keeper would send them, to shatter their chains and release them from their bondage. Freedom was long in coming, and many of the urdunnir perished in those long years.  But ultimately it was one of theirs who released them, an exile who returned with powerful allies and divine mandate to confront the duergar leaders and their malefic ally, the dragon-god.  Lok led his people back to their abandoned community, and led them in rebuilding their homes and their lives. While many of the urdunnir viewed the genasi as a hero, and to some almost a god himself, Lok’s leadership was not hailed universally within the urdunnir community.  Some resented Lok’s efforts to build a bridge between the urdunnir and the shield dwarves who lived closer to the surface.  Some of the younger urdunnir left their homeland to travel among the outsiders, sharing their talents and learning new skills.  These sojourners returned with strange ideas and alien philosophies, and in some cases with words about different gods, challenging the monolithic dedication to the Keeper, Dumathoin, the god of the chosen people who had dwelled within his deep halls.  The faith of many of the urdunnir had been weakened by their long ordeal, and many of those who could channel the Keeper’s power had been slain by the duergar, who had not wanted clerics stirring up their captives against them. Udon had long since left the faith of his people behind.  As the years after the Return passed, the misguided urdunnir again found his place in seeking personal advantage at the expense of his peers.  It was perhaps not surprising that he fell into the lure of a competing message, a new faith that had taken hold of a small but growing segment of his kin. Six years after the Return, almost to the day that commemorated Lok’s defeat of the duergar, Udon swore oaths to the cult of Abbathor in a secret chamber deep within the urdunnir settlement.  For a time the secret cult of greed flourished, hidden within the bowels of the urdunnir community, preying upon the deep dwarves and their surface kin, exploiting the cracks in the new arrangements to advance the personal ambitions of the evil group’s followers.  But greed often turns in upon itself, and in time the cult’s activities became known to those in power.  It was Lok himself whose axe sundered the mask of the cult leader (and the skull beneath), bringing low the corruption that had long festered within the dwarven community.  Udon escaped and fled into exile, traveling deeper into the dark expanses of the Underdark. The intervening decade passed swiftly.  While Lok fought to rebuild the lives of his people, Udon drifted, his anger and desires for revenge and power driving him, giving him the edge that he needed to survive.  He eventually ended up at the drow city of Asran Vok, where he served as a mercenary to one of the lesser Houses.  As an un-caste alien warrior his life was of little value, but Udon had long practiced the art of staying alive, and he quickly gained what passed for influence in that place of malice and deception.  The story might have ended here, with the dwarf living out the rest of his years as a thrall to the dark elves.  But his accomplishments and covert dealings led him to the service of a powerful drow wizard named Ebbar Thora.  Thora might have been an archmage in the colleges of magic in Waterdeep or another of the great cities of the surface world, but in the drow city his status was defined more by his gender and his low caste—his House was not one of the greater—than by his considerable talent.  This embittered him, and it allowed one such as Udon to get close enough to take advantage. The wizard’s most prized possession was a collection of ancient tablets that contained potent spells of elemental summoning.  Most of the tablets contained magical writings of a clerical, not arcane, nature, and Thora had long been maneuvering to use the tablets to gain advantage with the priestesses of Lolth.  The effort was probably doomed from the start, for the servants of the Spider Queen were not generally aligned to being manipulated by a male, no matter what magical tricks he knew.  But in any case Thora’s plans never came to fruition, for Udon, upon realizing the potential of the wizard’s cache, had struck him down from behind and stolen the entire collection. He had to flee the city for his life, of course, but he’d made preparations for that contingency as well.  Nor was his flight random, for when he’d made his decision to steal the tablets, he’d also set upon a destination.  In his travels, Udon had learned a great deal.  One bit of lore he’d stolen from its original owner was the secret of a great underground cavern, located several leagues from the drow city.  From what he’d learned, the place was a nexus, a rare site where the elemental planes overlapped with the Prime.  He made his way there, his urdunnir abilities allowing him to escape both the drow parties sent to hunt him down as well as the other predators of the Underdark.  Finally, he reached his destination, the elemental nexus. The dwarf felt a bit of humility as he entered the cavern; a feeling foreign to the selfish creature.  He encountered several xorn, creatures drawn to the node, but was able to bluff his way past them into the inner reaches of the cavern.  Here, the stone itself seemed to possess life, swelling and twisting as the very makeup of the place shifted before his eyes.  Udon did not dawdle long.  Even his own nature, so at touch with the powers inherent in this place, would not preserve him long from the shifting tides of elemental energy at work in the nexus.  Setting up wards to protect himself, he used the stolen tablets to work a calling of incredible potency, further amplified by the power present in the cavern.  The working of the spell took hours.  Udon did not call a mere elemental, even one of the potent elder entities that could tear down castles and crush dozens of warriors beneath their massive fists.  No, he called a being like himself; one of the sentient elemental lords, an organism seeped in malevolence and shadow.  Its truename was unpronounceable by mortal tongues, but it could be called Terror, for that was what it brought with it into the Prime Material. Udon was not intimidated by it; his spell of calling had bound it with invisible tendrils of compulsion; it could not harm him.  It filled the cavern, an amorphous thing of stone that flowed like a frozen wave risen up from the ocean floor.  Dark pools of utter black served it as eyes, and they shone with hatred as they focused upon the mortal dwarf. Why have you called me to this ugly place, it said, its voice an echo in Udon’s mind. The dwarf smiled.  Destruction, he thought. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he felt a tremor of pleasure pass through the entity.  Yes, they understood each other…  He gave his instructions, sensing the Terror’s resentment grow at being shackled, but knowing it could not resist the impetus of the magic that bound him here.  It would not remain long… but long enough, plenty, for the mission he gave it.  For destruction.The end shall be done, the Terror said to him.  Yours shall be the first.Udon felt a cold sliver of fear.  You are bound to my will! he shrieked in his mind.  You cannot harm me!The end shall be done, it repeated.  The urdunnir spun as he sensed the truth in its words, in time to see four xorn rise up from the ground around him, surging at him with their claws outstretched. Despite being caught off guard, he destroyed two of the elemental creatures before he fell, his lifeblood pouring from deep gashes torn in his flesh.  The last thing he sensed was the Terror, looming over him, eager to devour what his failing body would issue. And so it began.</blockquote>

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