Page 18 - D&D - Player's Handbook

and warred upon each other. Those were the Days THE DESCENT OF THE DROW
of Thunder. Corellon interceded in the Crown Wars and cursed the
The age of the creator races came to a sudden end dark elves so that they might never dwell comfortably
some thirty thousand years ago. Perhaps their wars under the sun. Now finding themselves pained by ex-
reached a terrible and inevitable crescendo, or they tam- posure to daylight, the drow-in a mere two months'
pered with forbidden forces. For whatever reason, the time- retreated from the sunlit lands of the World Above
world changed, and their vast empires vanished. All that into the Underdark. They abandoned all loyalty to the
remains of them are ruins and the scattered lizardfolk, elven gods who betrayed and banished them, turning
bullywug, and aarakocra tribes, barbaric descendants of instead to Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders, as their
those who once ruled the world. patron. Wars soon began between the drow and the un-
derground cities of the dwarves.
THE FIRST FLOWERING
From the ruins of the Days of Thunder arose the first THE AGE OF HUMANITY
nations of the Proud People- the elves and dwarves- in For millennia following the end of the Crown Wars, hu-
the region. mans spread and settled throughout Faert1n as the elven
The elves raised up the nations of Aryvandaar, and dwarven nations stagnated and then began a long,
Ardeep, and Ilythiir. They settled Illefarn along the slow decline. Deep in the Underdark, the drow fought
Sword Coast, from the Spine of the World to the River wars of survival and conquest in their new domain.
Delimbiyr- its capitol Aelinthaldaar in the shadow of
what is now Mount Waterdeep. Wood elves and moon THE RISE AND FALL OF NETHERIL
elves founded the kingdom of Eaerlann in the Delimbiyr More than five thousand years ago, a group of human
Valley and the High Forest, and separatists from Ary- fishing villages on the shores of the Narrow Sea joined
vandaar settled Miyeritar in the lands of the present-day under the rule of the shaman-king Nether, becoming
High Moor and Misty Forest. known as the empire of Netheril. The Netherese learned
The dwarf clans united as the nation of Delzoun, the use of magic from the Eaerlanni elves and became
named for its forge-founder, with dwarfholds built on renowned wizards. Centuries later, they discovered the
sites ranging from the Ice Mountains to the Nether arcane texts known as the Nether Scrolls in the ruins of
Mountains and the Narrow Sea, and settlements and Aryvandaar and subsequently abandoned the practices
halls westward to the Crags and the Sword Mountains. of the Eaerlanni in order to procure even greater mag-
The Proud People regularly defended their homelands ical power.
against ore hordes that arose from the mountains of Netheril grew to become an invincible nation of magic
the Spine of the World and surged southward to attack and wonders, dominating much of the North for three
and pillage. thousand years. Then the power-mad Netherese arcan-
ist Karsus attempted to usurp the role of the goddess of
THE FIRST SUNDERING magic. The resulting disruption in the fabric of magic
Thousands of years after the rise of the great elven sent Netheril's floating cities crashing to the ground,
nations, hundreds of elf high mages united to cast a destroyed a host of other wards and enchantments, and
spell intended to create a glorious homeland for their brought about the end of the great empire.
race. The spell succeeded, but it rippled backward and
forward in time, and the land was sundered, changing THE GREAT CITIES
the face of the world. The largest continent of this new In the decades and centuries following the collapse of
world is now called Faert1n. Far from its western shores Netheril, many cities of the Sword Coast and the North,
rose the isle of Evermeet, considered a part of Arvandor, such as Illusk and Citadel Sundbarr, took in refugees
the home of the elven gods on the plane of Arborea, and from the fallen empire, and new settlements made up
a bridge between worlds. entirely or primarily of human survivors from Netheril
and their descendants were established throughout the
THE C ROWN WARS North and in the Western Heartlands.
Some thirteen thousand years ago, war broke out be- Nearly fifteen hundred years ago, the human settlers
tween the elven nations of Aryvandaar and Miyeritar, of the Dalelands and the elves of Cormanthor pledged
beginning a series of conflicts known as the Crown their alliance in an agreement known as the Dales
Wars. Lasting some three thousand years, these con- Compact. A monument called the Standing Stone
flicts culminated in the Dark Disaster, in which terrible was erected to mark the occasion, and the advent of
storms engulfed Miyeritar, turning it into a wasteland Dalereckoning was decreed, beginning with the year 1
within a single season, leaving behind the area now DR. This method of numbering the years in Toril's his-
known as the High Moor. The high mages of Aryvan- tory has spread across Faert1n and is commonly under-
daar are blamed for the destruction, although no proof stood (if not universally accepted).
was ever produced. The city of Neverwinter- called Eigersstor when it
The vengeful dark elves of Ilythiir turned to corrupt was a mere settlement-was founded in 87 DR. On the
and demonic powers, unleashing them against Aryvan- banks of the River Raurin, the humble community of
daar. In the centuries of destruction that followed, elf Silverymoon Ford came into being in 384 DR, and less
priests and high mages fervently prayed to Corellon Lar- than two centuries later it had grown to become the city
ethian and the gods of the elven pantheon for salvation. of Silverymoon.