Heroes of the Mist

I've been busy studying, chasing down Unseelie Fey, researching, and being, well..., distracted these past couple of years such that I haven't been very good about updating the journal.

I've decided that discretion is the better part of valor, with so many people now looking for me, or the Selu'Kiira, or who knows what. So I've feigned uninterest in the House of Pleasures, my brothel, and as far as the law is concerned I've sold it to a human named Aidan Sloan who now runs the place. In fact, this is just a persona that I've created, and indeed I reside in a series of rooms hidden above a false ceiling in the brothel.

My daughter Starfall attended the wedding of her friend Seyla, a witch who receives her mystical powers from the Fey, and dragged me along. I immediately loathed Seyla's husband-to-be, an Unseelie Fey by the name of Chasmyr, but unfortunately found myself having to track down and take down Chasmyr's arch-rival and nemesis. That will unfortunately have to be a story that I elaborate on later.

Aerin came looking for me regarding a mural that she had found in Myth Drannor, depicting over a hundred elves of various professions -- craftsmen, scholars, leaders, warriors -- all congregating in a sacred grove. Though it was not magical, there was something that tugged at her elven senses that made her believe that there was something more to it. She had already recruited the aid of another sun elf, an arcanist named Sidney, and between the two of us we were able to recognize the mural as actually being a map to the Elven Court, long thought lost.

We headed towards where the Elven Court should be, but after days of searching we could not locate it. We were positive that we followed the directions correctly, so Sidney began to cast legend lore, a spell that can take weeks to complete, in order to give us a clue as to where we had erred. Two days after he began, Avielle appeared along with a half-elf named Bryll, a human gallant named Brigit, and a young human sorcerer named Conner. I thought Avielle dead, so it was a bit of a shock for me to learn that in fact Aerin had killed him for stealing the Selu'Kiira. Though he was eventually resurrected, Avielle had been in hiding ever since.

In any case, the matter at hand had convinced him that it was worth risking Aerin's wrath. He and his compatriots had come looking for me, as the sorcerer Conner had been having dreams of a necropolis over which a black cloud hung menacingly. His dreams appeared to show what occured at the time of Karssus' ascent, and subsequent fall, from godhood. Due to Karssus' attempt at godhood, the land of Faerun had been briefly awash with chaotic magic and then completely robbed of it, which in turn triggered the fall of the Netherese Empire. The Netherese were powerful wizards, perhaps the most powerful this land has ever seen, who primarily dwelt in cities on large floating mountains.

According to what Conner had witnessed in his dreams a number of Netherese wizards had been able to make it through a portal before the magical cataclysm occured. These Netherese wizards it is now believed threaten to return once again. Putting aside the quest to find the Elven Court, and now joined by two female elves (Alainna and Bazil) whom we suspect were actually sent from the Elven Court to dissuade us from trying to find said Elven Court, we decided it would be wise to first investigate the more urgent issue of the Netherese necropolis.

With the aid of divination magic we were able to locate what are now the ruins of the necropolis, and we shadow walked there. We headed towards the black ziggurat at the center of the city, the tip of which actually touched the giant dark cloud above the city. On our way there we encountered hordes of undead, most of which were merely skeletons and zombies, and finally confronted two liches whom we dispatched.

We discovered that a large egg-shaped blue stone at the top of the spire of the ziggurat was in fact sentient. Via telepathy he told us he was glad someone had finally come to rescue him. He introduced himself as Darssovel, a blue dragon that had lived long ago during the Time of Dragons, before even the ancient elven civilizations had formed. He told us that he was one of 5 dragons that had taught the human ancestors of the Netherese how to use a powerful artifact called the Hideous Idol. In time, these ancestors to the Netherese sought to use the Hideous Idol against the dragons, and in the ensuing conflict that decimated everyone the Hideous Idol had been shattered into 5 pieces: what is now known as the Pentarch of Tiamat. Over many years, each of the souls of these five mighty dragons gravitated towards and became part of one of the five pieces. But the dragons were dormant in these stones, and to this day most are likely still so.

Darssovel told us that he knew how to put an end to the black cloud above the city, which was actually a portal of sorts to a timeless pocket plane. During Karssus' attempt at godhood, the surge in magic had awakened Darssovel. He saw the ritual that the Netherese wizards were opening to the Ethereal plane, and he sought to redirect it to the Dreaming Gyre (apparently some kind of Dream plane). Instead, a mirror of this city in a pocket and isolated dimension was created, and the Netherese who had attempted to flee have been stuck there ever since (over 8000 years now). Darssovel informed us that should he be reunited with his "other self" in this mirror plane that he would then be freed, and that it would cause the pocket plane to be shut down, killing or stranding the Netherese there for good.

Relunctantly, we decided to aid Darssovel, and after putting the stone (and hence him) in a portable hole, we touched the black cloud above the ziggurat which instantly transported us to the mirror city in the pocket dimension. All about us we now saw the necropolis as it had been back then: instead of ruins we now saw tall majestic buildings decorated with elaborate frescos. We didn't move at first, and eventually a contingent of three humans came out to greet us. We learned that they claimed to be Itarans, who were once the human slaves of the Netherese. We met with their leader Pedryn, and we agreed to help the Itarans in performing a ritual that would transport this entire city back to Faerun without releasing the ancient blue dragon Darssovel that was trapped in the stone. At the climax of the ritual, Aerin took out the stone from her portable hole, and when Darssovel quickly figured out what was going on it shrieked for us to stop. But it was too late: Aerin touched both stones together, and the ritual completed.

Little did we realize that in fact we had just been lied to, that these humans were indeed the Netherese who had fled, and that we had just released them back to Faerun. As soon as we were back on the Prime Material Plane, most of the Netherese teleported away. Pedryn and his bodyguard, as well as Pedryn's pet three-headed fang dracolich, stayed behind to finish us off however. The battle was extremely brutal, but eventually we took down the dracolich and the two Netherese. We are now left with the knowledge that we have unwittingly unleashed roughly 20 powerful Netherese back on Faerun. Of Darssovel or the stones we saw no evidence of, and we are unsure what became of him.