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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 3581032" data-attributes="member: 2020">Finally, Vecna threw the first Legion at Haldendreeva.  The first epic challenge was presented to the elves.  They smashed the Legions, routed it, sent the remnants fleeing in all directions.    The elves had so overturned reality with stasis clones, clones, simulacrums, contingencies, wishes, extraplanar hideouts, and epic magic, that they no longer existed within a recognizable D&D reality.  They no longer existed within any recognizable reality.  They lived, instead, inside a cocoon created by the epic rules and the standard rules maximized.  Within this cocoon, their madness grew to epic levels also, and the very name Haldendreeva was synonomous with War.  So when Vecna himself attacked, and leveled Haldendreeva and everything around for miles, and killed many of the elves, it was useless.  The elves just fled to the four corners of the multiverse, resurrected their fellows, and ultimately returned for a second round.  Vecna came with all his legions and wiped Haldendreeva out again, this time pursuing the elves with a vengeance, spreading war throughout many worlds and planes of existence.  Again, the elves dematerialized into the ether, and rematerialized in the Swamp.  Vecna destroyed Haldendreeva again and again.  He found it rematerialized like magic, so long as a single elf from this hideous place survived his attack, and some elves always managed to survive.  A vexed Vecna used his most powerful soul killing magic, so that resurrection was not possible.  The elves had hid their souls, so that didn't work.  A vexed Vecna used Epic Wishes, but the elves had already used Counter Epic Wishes to prevent them from working.  A vexed Vecna decided to literally blow the Great Grungy Swamp off the face of the planet, and did so.  The elves put it back.  Then the elves blew Greyhawk off the face of the planet, until Vecna put it back.  Vecna finally opened Gates to Places Unspeakable, and let forth beings that frightened even him.  The yeth hounds and minions of Cthulu hunted the elves through space and time ... but it was the elves who won.    Then the Elves of Haldendreeva returned the favor.  By now they were hundreds of thousands strong, and all 40th level or higher.  But Vecna was not so easily unseated, and killing Vecna was beyond even the power of the Elves of Haldendreeva.  So the war continued to rage, both sides escalating, artifacts and relics in play, titanic magics and psionics at work, a war throughout the planes, space, and time.  And all of it a meaningless child's game.  For to the elves it was simply ever escalating fun, and to Vecna it was an ever more challenging and interesting puzzle for a jaded old lich.  The war went on for decades.  From the point of view of both sides, it went on for centuries.  Then Vecna decided he had better things to do, and simply left Oerth.  As simple as that.  Recognizing a lost cause, he gave it up and returned to his plan for Sigil elsewhere.  When Vecna left, the war ended.  When the war ended, there was no further purpose in existence, and most of the Elves of Haldendreeva simply faded away.  Those that remained were the weakest of their kind (still quite strong, but not epic) and newest to the madness.  And the madness relaxed.  War as the sole purpose to exist ceased to be so.  The surviving elves of Haldendreeva smanaged to reclaim all the Swamp, smash all their neighbors, and establish a great realm, in spite of their greatly lessened power.  Then the madness weakened further.  Perhaps the Ritual was fading (although it's prohibitions still stood) in power as the need for it was past.  Perhaps the Seldarine were intervening.  Perhaps the elves themselves were, no longer beset, reverting to their true selves.  After a few more lesser wars and skirmishes, the elves abandoned further warfare, considering it to be too costly, too painful, and unnecessary, ideas they would never have considered before.  In the subsequent peace, the elven children born were nearly normal elves, albeit with agnakok abilities and a great will to live.  But with that came a great love of all life, something quintessentially elven.    With the children came renewed joy, merriment, and a semi-normal mentality.  The descendants of Haldendreeva all continue to have special abilities, all continue to eat leaves and bugs and sometimes fallen foes, all have an adamant love of life and will to live, and all are willing to be resurrected.  Still rather different as a people, these descendants live in the new Flanaess today, two hundred years after the destruction of old Delrune.  Haldendreeva remains as a symbol of what was, what could be again, and the necessity of community, vigilance, and readiness.  Because what happened, will happen again.</blockquote>

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