DM INTRO

It has been thirty one yastins (months), almost three complete cycles of Narbondel since a strange series of events led members of this company into the depths of Deep Dark— a seething, unimaginably powerful place in the gut of the world where no creature is ordinary and no trek easy. However, something about those sordid days played harsh with your minds, and the details grew obscure with the fast-falling draws of Narbondel, so that now all which remains are memories of some vague urgency, some pending events which once drew you together but are now hidden within recesses of the mind and of history itself. Perhaps it was a bounty run, perhaps an errand of death-dealing, or perhaps a quest to reclaim a tribal artifact-sword. In any case, life (as one measures life in the gritty, trafficked, cutthroat bowels of Middle Dark) has continued. And so, two years later, we see where Fate has taken us.


SETTING BACKGROUND
A generation ago, dark elves came to these grim-hollowed tunnels, this gods-forsaken Night Below. And they came not as explorers, not as merchants, not as colonists, but as slayers.


Now, from this cavern Erehel-Cinlu, "the body of Lloth," spreads the eight legs of the Spider Queen. And down each leg a drow settlement has brought death, torture, and enslavement to a new Underdark people.


But the many tales of woe filtering across Middle dark are best left for another time. Tonight we weave a new tale of despair and killing: all focused on Erehel-Cinlu, the Body of Lloth and the First Settlement of the Drow. The current time period is so-called the Cycle of the Spider, an auspicious time marking the anniversary of the drow coming to these under-earthen bowels, a time measured by Narbondel once every 666 year and lasting merely two draws (tendays).
It is said that during the Cycle of the Spider, all destiny of the Mori'quessar are awry, and anything can happen.


Characteristics of City of Erehel-Cinlu:


Unlike any other civilization imaginable. This is a place of open, naked hate. Upon every street flows the blood of the poor and reviled. Three carved tiers, each the size of ten city blocks, cut like giant stairway steps up to the highest point of the city: Academe Arachtillith, Temple to Lloth. Day and night, the wails of the tortured of mind and the tortured body resound from this lofty site, which is not only the focus of the city's worship but also the center of all economic life: every merchant , merc, and ambassador who wishes to deal with Erehel-Cinlu must first offer tithe and penance to Arachtillith, and all marketplaces spread out from the base of this remorseless landmark.
Through winding, broken streets (at times so tight nimble drow urchins must scale vertically across wall spaces) hover regular processions of twelve-member bands of the priestesses, the tallest (by three feet) strongest, smartest, and cruellest specimens of the drow race. The priestesses represent the highest state of dark elf evolution. And not just of stature, but of physiology. Their bleached hair naturally stains charcoal black after witnessing so many atrocities (some say it a sign of abandoned souls). Their stomachs reject all food and drink that is not the blood and flesh of male drow or Lloth's sacrifices. And their personal store of magicks are haunting: ability to summon clouds of screaming, whirling blades; to control planar horrors; to corrode the minds of captives; and of course to enslaves the will of enemy races —which are ALL n'tel'quessar (non-drow).


A sunless, clawing metropolis of rot, perversion, spell-strength, screams, spiders, and endlessly, endlessly dripping blood. This is Erehel-Cinlu.
- posted by heavyweather @ 10:09 PM