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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 3580741" data-attributes="member: 2020">The elves of Haldendrea did maintain secrecy.  In this, you are quite right.  The elves also tried to reassert their culture, by disassociating themselves from the dark they had embraced (see below.)  There was, indeed, an attempt at food production.  It proved a little harder than the elves had hoped it would prove (see below.)  The elves were unable to build up a defense, other than those they already had.  All their effort went into finding food and water, and trying to survive in their new, hostile world.  Theirs, was a sorry state.  -  The first thing the elves did was appreciate the deities of evil had failed them.  Recognizing that the evil clergy among them would not quietly go, the elves struck first and killed them.  After that, the elves destroyed all the shrines to the evil deities they had turned to after the Solistari War.  The few drow amongst the elves perished in this assault.  The elves subsequently tried to return to the Seldarine.  They found no contact was possible.  They then attempted contact with other neutral and good deities.  No contact was possible.  It has been determined since that the Seldarine deliberately did this, foreseeing in it the only remaining hope for their surviving children in Delrune.  But the elves did not see it that way, obviously.  They were now bereft of the ability to cure wounds, cure disease, create food, or create water.  The now flooded (in 5 feet deep water) city of Haldendrea had a few weeks of food and fresh water on hand.  Safe water was only available otherwise through rainwater, and even that was tainted slightly by volcanic chemicals.  Safe food was not available.  The animals of Delrune were almost all gone, or mutated into abominations.  The birds were gone or mutated.  The trees and brush were sickly from the poisoning in the ground.  Blasts of snow and frigid cold alternated with blasts of furnace heat, blizzards and thunderstorms in turn, with near hurricane force winds.  Under this assault, the trees and shrubbery mostly perished.  -  But on one side, away from Haldendrea around 10 miles towards the erupting Yatils, it remained warm enough that the trees and shrubs did not die.  They remained, twisted and mutated, sickly and pale, affected by the blood shed and poisoning and rotting of the bedrock below, and the volcanic fumes above.  Between Haldendrea and this bonanza of possible food (bonanza???) was 10 miles of deadwood, poisoned water, slimy mud, black ichor, lifeless and broken trees and shrubs, and a few twisted, mutated green trees and shrubs that had magically adapted to the changes in air and climate.  Of these few, most were sentient and carnivorous, attacking anything that came near.  Yes, this was the world of the Haldendrea elves.    But if you pity them, consider what Vecna was doing to their kindred elsewhere.  Nation by nation, place by place, hiding hole by hiding hole, he found them.  He killed the lucky ones.  The rest were brought back for his entertainment and for magical experimentation.  Some elven nations, like Varnaith, fought back fiercely, and it took Vecna a long time to defeat them.  This, naturally, infuriated Vecna, who made *special* examples out of them to serve for all the others.  But nobody thought to look in the dead swamp, considered uninhabitable, and covered with choking volcanic smog or powerful storms.  And those charged with magically sweeping for elves with divination never bothered with the dead swamp ... with the Great Grungy Swamp, as they called it.  They were too busy, in any case, with the remaining elves, and with the drow of the Underdark, who fought to the bitter end against Vecna and all his allies (the illithid, especially.)  Several precious decades were bought, for the elves of Haldendrea, by the heroics of their fellows, and the mad desperation of the drow.</blockquote>

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