['cause there can never be too many contradictory explanations for how it all began...]
In the dawn of days, the Father of Elvenkind, Corellon Larethian, stood hand in hand with the mother of our people, Lalithil Araushal. Where he was bright and a whirlwind of activity, with eyes like the sky and short hair that shone like the sun, she stood dark and serene, always showing an economy of motion, with her simplest gesture conveying volumes to those with eyes to see, if they were not distracted by her hair, which was meticulously arrayed and fell in a lustrous black waterfall down her back or her eyes, the color of mahogany and hinting at many secret things, both amusing and profound.
The Father was a joyful blur of activity, the Mother stood in gentle restraint, observing all from the soothing embrace of the shadows that draped about her like gowns of insubstantial silk. Where his exuberance and energy sometimes carried him to excess, her quiet strength pulled him back, and ensured that he would never become swept away and lost to his great passion. To some it would seem that she was passive and inactive, but indeed, she was the weaver of fates and the arbiter of elven destiny. Corellon’s blood had spilled, and life had been engendered into the elven people, but it was a bright and glorious life without purpose, and Lalithil ensured that every elven life had meaning and significance, not to pass unremarked into the darkness of history.
It was in the action of casting her sight forth in this manner, exploring the many twists and turns of individual elven destinies that she became aware of an increasing number of elven souls whose fates did not lie along paths that her kind and loving husband would find acceptable. Curious, and yet also concerned, at this shadow she spied in the future, she plumbed ever deeper into its mysteries, unsuspecting that such an action could have dire consequences. She peered into the shadow of the future, and it peered back into her questing and innocent soul, finding purchase there. In her naïve compassion, she grew convinced that these elves were no less children of Corellon than any other, and that she must carefully watch over them, to ensure that they did not lose their way, wandering so far from home, and in so justifying her actions, she grew enmeshed in a web spun by another.
A dark presence, nameless and full of spite, had reached out to the hearts of many elven people, whispering darkly in their dreams of their superiority to the ‘lesser’ mortal races of men and dwarf and orc alike, and of their ‘glorious destiny’ to provide enlightened rule to these backwards savages, giving their lives purpose and meaning. The message was carefully crafted, to appeal not only to the kind and paternal nature of many otherwise good-intentioned people, but indeed, to the goddess who similarly gave their lives direction and purpose as well. And so it was in the church of Lalithil that these elven supremacists began to subtly find home, and listening ears. Centuries passed, with ‘acts of charity’ turned into demands of fealty, before the wars began, and elven nations attempted to impose ‘civilization’ upon these ‘ungrateful savages’ who would accept their benevolent favors and yet spurn their ‘guidance.’
Looking so far into the future, Lalithil had found herself, dark and twisted by a nameless force belched up from the depths of the Lower Planes, and like some self-fulfilling prophecy, her future self took steps to ensure her birth…
Twisted hopelessly, until the last remnants of Lalithil Araushal was but a distant screaming voice within the stern-faced goddess that now stood at Corellon’s side, the last betrayal came when Corellon and his allies attempted to put a stop to this madness, only to find his beloved wife at his throat, seeking to bind him with dark forces, while the children she had seduced over to her dark and glorious future fought their brothers and sisters on her behalf, buying her time to act. She had clearly foreseen it all, Corellon kneeling beside her thrown, herself the Dark Queen of all Elvendom, an Elvendom that ruled over the entire world, with the gods of the lesser races allowed to approach and pay favor on bended knee. But her visions had tainted by her own dark ambitions, and the less she was Larithil, and the more she became the Dark Queen, the less truth her visions contained.
Corellon allowed her to lay her bindings upon him, while he plunged his arms deep within her body, drawing forth the last remnants of his beloved wife, and leaving behind only the bloated demonic form of her corrupter, who was forced to flee to her new home in the Demonweb Pits, as so much of her power had been torn from her with the last untainted shreds of Lalithil’s divine essence.
Her children, fighting a stalling action, were shocked and dismayed at her defeat, and the ones now known as Eilistraee, the Sword-Dancer, Vhaerun, the Laughing Shadow, Kiaransalee, the Twice-Reborn, and Selvetarm, the Storm of Blades, all fled through the opening gateway to the Abyss, for various reasons of their own. The other child who had fought his kin on her behalf, the archer known as Shelvarash, of the Black Bow, favored student of Solonor Thelandira, was on the verge of firing a killing blow at his mentor, when the form of his mother tore apart, and he saw his father pull her essence free, revealing a bloated monstrosity in it’s wake. Already releasing the string, he shifted his aim ever so slightly and closed his eyes, awaiting his fate, as both betrayer and betrayed. Solonor also unleashed his arrow in that fateful second, feeling his favored students arrow displace his hair in it’s passing, and knowing in an instant that he had trained Shelvarash too well for this to be a simple error. Unable to draw back his arrow, Solonor called upon his divine will and caused the slaying missile to sunder in mid-air, shivering into fragments inches before striking his student. Shelvarash still bears a scar, which he wears as mark of both shame and pride, from the adamantite fragments of his teachers arrow, and his hatred for the creature that destroyed his mother, and turned him against his honored teacher, burns with the eternal fury that only an elven soul can bear.
On the mortal plane, the worshippers of Lalithil found their prayers unanswered, and the church of the Seldarine, led by Corellon’s paladins, seized their temples and ended their plans for dominion over the mortal world. Elven civil war followed, and the outcast children of Larithil were forced to watch their worshippers fall, unable to leave the Abyss to provide aid, as their own kin stood ready to smite them down if they dared leave, and the wounded being that now called itself only Lolth, who bore only passing resemblance to the mother they remembered, lacked the strength to retaliate. Instead they seized power and secured their position in the Lower Realms, forcing demons and older things to acknowledge their new position of strength in these Demonweb Pits.
Again, centuries passed, and there came a time when the elven servants of these dark elven deities numbered in the dozens, having been hunted all but to extinction, and concealed only by the cunning works of Vhaerun, always a clever boy, eager to impress his mother. Sequestered away in the Abyss, only eight of these followers were elven females of breeding age, along with two score males. Aware that they could not easily repopulate their race with such numbers, Lolth, now strong again after feeding on the blood of demons, smiled a dark smile, the answer to her dilemma dripping from her lips.
And so the remaining elves took to interbreeding with demons, to create a more potent strain, and a more fertile one, while Vhaerun found secret places within the earth for them to hide until they were strong enough to rise again. While the few females bore strong half-demon children, the males were not spared their duties in rebuilding the strength of the dark elven people. Raiding parties took entire human villages, slaughtering the males and taking the females away, and within a short time, by elven standards, cities grew in the Underdark, composed of half-elven slaves, serving their elven parents, who in turn served half-demon ‘nobility.’ Interbreeding regularly with their own half-elven get, to try and ‘breed the human’ out of them, the dark elves succeeded in mere centuries in creating vast numbers of what were essentially full-blooded elves, thanks to human and half-elven fecundity, and increasingly with supernatural powers from their thinning fiendish blood. Even the lowest class of ‘dark elf’ was fiend-touched, as the last of the old pureblood elves perished (and some say it was no accident, and that the new fiend-blooded ‘royalty’ wanted no reminder of how far they had fallen). Even so, some sages insist that these ‘dark cities of the dark elves’ are predominantly inhabited by half-Drow slaves and underclasses, with the full-blooded fiend-touched Drow serving as captains and rulers, sorcerers and priests. As with so many things ‘known’ about these dark folk, the truth is obscured. It is known that there is no ‘waste’ among these cold people, and that Vhaerun was not the only child of Larithil to find ways to ensure the survival and success of their few remaining mortal servants. Through extensive developments in Necromancy, the earliest dark elven cities were raised by those blessed by Kiaransalee’s teachings, and human slaves continued to toil long after the breath had passed from their bodies, only to be used as fertilizer when their unliving services were no longer required.
And what of the goodly elves and the Father of Elvenkind himself? At the moment he drew forth the last dregs of his dying wife, Corellon knew that she could not exist in such a state, fragmentary and bereft, and yet his passion was always stronger than his reason, and he railed against the inevitability of this injustice. Had she been able, Lalithil would no doubt have reassured him, as she so often had in the past, that this too was inevitable, and written, and the natural order of things, but she lacked strength to comfort her love, and he made a noble, and some say, foolish, choice, but a choice made out of love nonetheless. He drew her within himself, and made room for her by surrendering part of his own being, making her a home within his own flesh, within his own soul. And so the muscular and energetic and passionate Father of Elvenkind changed and shuddered, knowing a peace that he had never known before, as the quiet strength of his wife became a part of him, along with her wisdom and her patience, her farsightedness and her compassion. As his children gathered around their kneeling father, he looked up with mismatched eyes filled with tears of joy, one as blue as ever, the other dark, like their mothers. His once strong-jawed face had grown slender, as had his muscular frame, and his hair now flowed long and over his back, darker than before. Where once was Father, the Warrior, now too they saw their Mother, the Sorceress, and they rejoiced at the strange bounty that they had received through their fathers sacrifice.
Some sages claim that Corellon remains so even today, androgynous and strong in both the way of Blade and Spell, part and parcel of his amalgamate nature, in himself, the eternal ‘perfect marriage’ of body and soul, neither male, nor female, neither fish, nor fowl. Others insist that he has re-married, but the names vary. One will say his bride is Angharradh, herself a tripartite diety, composed of three other goddesses, which is perhaps fitting, given his own dual nature. Another will insist that a new goddess, Sehanine Moonbow, has recently appeared and taken his heart, but yet others will note that ‘Sehanine Moonbow’ is not a proper Elvish name, in either component, and does not follow the naming convention of the other elven deities (or any tongue spoken by any known elven people, for that matter), darkly suggesting that she, like Larithil / Lolth, may be some imposter, or other creature masquerading as an Elven diety. One sage insists that after the wars, Corellon took solace under the gentle ministrations of Hanali Celanil, and in her sacred pool of Evergold healed wounds of both body and spirit. Human sages point out that this could not be, as Hanali is known to be daughter to Corellon and Larithil, and it would be terribly inappropriate, although it has been rebutted that it would be hubris to assign mortal mores to the gods, and foolish besides to apply *human* standards to elven deities…
In the dawn of days, the Father of Elvenkind, Corellon Larethian, stood hand in hand with the mother of our people, Lalithil Araushal. Where he was bright and a whirlwind of activity, with eyes like the sky and short hair that shone like the sun, she stood dark and serene, always showing an economy of motion, with her simplest gesture conveying volumes to those with eyes to see, if they were not distracted by her hair, which was meticulously arrayed and fell in a lustrous black waterfall down her back or her eyes, the color of mahogany and hinting at many secret things, both amusing and profound.
The Father was a joyful blur of activity, the Mother stood in gentle restraint, observing all from the soothing embrace of the shadows that draped about her like gowns of insubstantial silk. Where his exuberance and energy sometimes carried him to excess, her quiet strength pulled him back, and ensured that he would never become swept away and lost to his great passion. To some it would seem that she was passive and inactive, but indeed, she was the weaver of fates and the arbiter of elven destiny. Corellon’s blood had spilled, and life had been engendered into the elven people, but it was a bright and glorious life without purpose, and Lalithil ensured that every elven life had meaning and significance, not to pass unremarked into the darkness of history.
It was in the action of casting her sight forth in this manner, exploring the many twists and turns of individual elven destinies that she became aware of an increasing number of elven souls whose fates did not lie along paths that her kind and loving husband would find acceptable. Curious, and yet also concerned, at this shadow she spied in the future, she plumbed ever deeper into its mysteries, unsuspecting that such an action could have dire consequences. She peered into the shadow of the future, and it peered back into her questing and innocent soul, finding purchase there. In her naïve compassion, she grew convinced that these elves were no less children of Corellon than any other, and that she must carefully watch over them, to ensure that they did not lose their way, wandering so far from home, and in so justifying her actions, she grew enmeshed in a web spun by another.
A dark presence, nameless and full of spite, had reached out to the hearts of many elven people, whispering darkly in their dreams of their superiority to the ‘lesser’ mortal races of men and dwarf and orc alike, and of their ‘glorious destiny’ to provide enlightened rule to these backwards savages, giving their lives purpose and meaning. The message was carefully crafted, to appeal not only to the kind and paternal nature of many otherwise good-intentioned people, but indeed, to the goddess who similarly gave their lives direction and purpose as well. And so it was in the church of Lalithil that these elven supremacists began to subtly find home, and listening ears. Centuries passed, with ‘acts of charity’ turned into demands of fealty, before the wars began, and elven nations attempted to impose ‘civilization’ upon these ‘ungrateful savages’ who would accept their benevolent favors and yet spurn their ‘guidance.’
Looking so far into the future, Lalithil had found herself, dark and twisted by a nameless force belched up from the depths of the Lower Planes, and like some self-fulfilling prophecy, her future self took steps to ensure her birth…
Twisted hopelessly, until the last remnants of Lalithil Araushal was but a distant screaming voice within the stern-faced goddess that now stood at Corellon’s side, the last betrayal came when Corellon and his allies attempted to put a stop to this madness, only to find his beloved wife at his throat, seeking to bind him with dark forces, while the children she had seduced over to her dark and glorious future fought their brothers and sisters on her behalf, buying her time to act. She had clearly foreseen it all, Corellon kneeling beside her thrown, herself the Dark Queen of all Elvendom, an Elvendom that ruled over the entire world, with the gods of the lesser races allowed to approach and pay favor on bended knee. But her visions had tainted by her own dark ambitions, and the less she was Larithil, and the more she became the Dark Queen, the less truth her visions contained.
Corellon allowed her to lay her bindings upon him, while he plunged his arms deep within her body, drawing forth the last remnants of his beloved wife, and leaving behind only the bloated demonic form of her corrupter, who was forced to flee to her new home in the Demonweb Pits, as so much of her power had been torn from her with the last untainted shreds of Lalithil’s divine essence.
Her children, fighting a stalling action, were shocked and dismayed at her defeat, and the ones now known as Eilistraee, the Sword-Dancer, Vhaerun, the Laughing Shadow, Kiaransalee, the Twice-Reborn, and Selvetarm, the Storm of Blades, all fled through the opening gateway to the Abyss, for various reasons of their own. The other child who had fought his kin on her behalf, the archer known as Shelvarash, of the Black Bow, favored student of Solonor Thelandira, was on the verge of firing a killing blow at his mentor, when the form of his mother tore apart, and he saw his father pull her essence free, revealing a bloated monstrosity in it’s wake. Already releasing the string, he shifted his aim ever so slightly and closed his eyes, awaiting his fate, as both betrayer and betrayed. Solonor also unleashed his arrow in that fateful second, feeling his favored students arrow displace his hair in it’s passing, and knowing in an instant that he had trained Shelvarash too well for this to be a simple error. Unable to draw back his arrow, Solonor called upon his divine will and caused the slaying missile to sunder in mid-air, shivering into fragments inches before striking his student. Shelvarash still bears a scar, which he wears as mark of both shame and pride, from the adamantite fragments of his teachers arrow, and his hatred for the creature that destroyed his mother, and turned him against his honored teacher, burns with the eternal fury that only an elven soul can bear.
On the mortal plane, the worshippers of Lalithil found their prayers unanswered, and the church of the Seldarine, led by Corellon’s paladins, seized their temples and ended their plans for dominion over the mortal world. Elven civil war followed, and the outcast children of Larithil were forced to watch their worshippers fall, unable to leave the Abyss to provide aid, as their own kin stood ready to smite them down if they dared leave, and the wounded being that now called itself only Lolth, who bore only passing resemblance to the mother they remembered, lacked the strength to retaliate. Instead they seized power and secured their position in the Lower Realms, forcing demons and older things to acknowledge their new position of strength in these Demonweb Pits.
Again, centuries passed, and there came a time when the elven servants of these dark elven deities numbered in the dozens, having been hunted all but to extinction, and concealed only by the cunning works of Vhaerun, always a clever boy, eager to impress his mother. Sequestered away in the Abyss, only eight of these followers were elven females of breeding age, along with two score males. Aware that they could not easily repopulate their race with such numbers, Lolth, now strong again after feeding on the blood of demons, smiled a dark smile, the answer to her dilemma dripping from her lips.
And so the remaining elves took to interbreeding with demons, to create a more potent strain, and a more fertile one, while Vhaerun found secret places within the earth for them to hide until they were strong enough to rise again. While the few females bore strong half-demon children, the males were not spared their duties in rebuilding the strength of the dark elven people. Raiding parties took entire human villages, slaughtering the males and taking the females away, and within a short time, by elven standards, cities grew in the Underdark, composed of half-elven slaves, serving their elven parents, who in turn served half-demon ‘nobility.’ Interbreeding regularly with their own half-elven get, to try and ‘breed the human’ out of them, the dark elves succeeded in mere centuries in creating vast numbers of what were essentially full-blooded elves, thanks to human and half-elven fecundity, and increasingly with supernatural powers from their thinning fiendish blood. Even the lowest class of ‘dark elf’ was fiend-touched, as the last of the old pureblood elves perished (and some say it was no accident, and that the new fiend-blooded ‘royalty’ wanted no reminder of how far they had fallen). Even so, some sages insist that these ‘dark cities of the dark elves’ are predominantly inhabited by half-Drow slaves and underclasses, with the full-blooded fiend-touched Drow serving as captains and rulers, sorcerers and priests. As with so many things ‘known’ about these dark folk, the truth is obscured. It is known that there is no ‘waste’ among these cold people, and that Vhaerun was not the only child of Larithil to find ways to ensure the survival and success of their few remaining mortal servants. Through extensive developments in Necromancy, the earliest dark elven cities were raised by those blessed by Kiaransalee’s teachings, and human slaves continued to toil long after the breath had passed from their bodies, only to be used as fertilizer when their unliving services were no longer required.
And what of the goodly elves and the Father of Elvenkind himself? At the moment he drew forth the last dregs of his dying wife, Corellon knew that she could not exist in such a state, fragmentary and bereft, and yet his passion was always stronger than his reason, and he railed against the inevitability of this injustice. Had she been able, Lalithil would no doubt have reassured him, as she so often had in the past, that this too was inevitable, and written, and the natural order of things, but she lacked strength to comfort her love, and he made a noble, and some say, foolish, choice, but a choice made out of love nonetheless. He drew her within himself, and made room for her by surrendering part of his own being, making her a home within his own flesh, within his own soul. And so the muscular and energetic and passionate Father of Elvenkind changed and shuddered, knowing a peace that he had never known before, as the quiet strength of his wife became a part of him, along with her wisdom and her patience, her farsightedness and her compassion. As his children gathered around their kneeling father, he looked up with mismatched eyes filled with tears of joy, one as blue as ever, the other dark, like their mothers. His once strong-jawed face had grown slender, as had his muscular frame, and his hair now flowed long and over his back, darker than before. Where once was Father, the Warrior, now too they saw their Mother, the Sorceress, and they rejoiced at the strange bounty that they had received through their fathers sacrifice.
Some sages claim that Corellon remains so even today, androgynous and strong in both the way of Blade and Spell, part and parcel of his amalgamate nature, in himself, the eternal ‘perfect marriage’ of body and soul, neither male, nor female, neither fish, nor fowl. Others insist that he has re-married, but the names vary. One will say his bride is Angharradh, herself a tripartite diety, composed of three other goddesses, which is perhaps fitting, given his own dual nature. Another will insist that a new goddess, Sehanine Moonbow, has recently appeared and taken his heart, but yet others will note that ‘Sehanine Moonbow’ is not a proper Elvish name, in either component, and does not follow the naming convention of the other elven deities (or any tongue spoken by any known elven people, for that matter), darkly suggesting that she, like Larithil / Lolth, may be some imposter, or other creature masquerading as an Elven diety. One sage insists that after the wars, Corellon took solace under the gentle ministrations of Hanali Celanil, and in her sacred pool of Evergold healed wounds of both body and spirit. Human sages point out that this could not be, as Hanali is known to be daughter to Corellon and Larithil, and it would be terribly inappropriate, although it has been rebutted that it would be hubris to assign mortal mores to the gods, and foolish besides to apply *human* standards to elven deities…
