The Descent of the Drow
As recorded in the Chronicles of the Age of the Elves
In the waning centuries of the Great Elf War, when the lands of Dragon’s Maw had been drenched in blood for more than a thousand years, the name Velhelsin Oreiner was spoken across the world with equal parts admiration and dread.
Once she had been a princess of Oreinerius, daughter of King Filverel, ruler of the northern state and the most brilliant arcanist of her age. But pride and ambition had turned sibling against sibling, and when the king named her brother Eilauver his heir, Velhelsin raised her banners in rebellion and claimed the throne for herself.
What began as a dispute between heirs became the Great Elf War, a conflict so long and brutal that entire generations of elves lived and died knowing nothing but battle. Cities burned, forests withered, and the once-glorious Kingdom of Oreinerius was scarred by centuries of ruin.
Velhelsin was a master of persuasion and illusion, and when victory proved elusive she turned her gaze beyond her own people. She traveled north and east and spoke with the goblinoid tribes—goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears who had long suffered under elven rule. With promises of autonomy and spoils of war she won their loyalty, and thus proclaimed the birth of a new realm: the Velhelsinese Empire.
With these allies her armies grew powerful, yet even this was not enough. The war remained a stalemate.
Velhelsin would not accept stalemate.
If she could not claim Oreinerius, she reasoned, then it should not exist at all.
So the Empress conceived a plan unlike any spell attempted before. Drawing upon her mastery of enchantment and illusion and the divine boons granted by Xokone, Goddess of Beauty, she would gather the power of her entire empire—every mage, priest, and devotee. Together they would perform a ritual so vast that it would tear divine power from the gods themselves and unleash it upon Oreinerius in a single, devastating strike.
Across the empire the ritual began.
Elves gathered in their thousands.
They chanted ancient incantations.
They danced beneath the stars.
They raised prayers and sacrifices to the very gods they intended to betray.
The air trembled with arcane power.
But something was wrong.
The magic slipped away like sand through open fingers. The sky darkened, the earth trembled, and a cold wind swept across the land. Fear spread through the assembled elves as the ritual reached its terrible climax.
Then the heavens split open.
The pantheon of Andórë descended in wrath.
For Velhelsin had not merely attempted to destroy a kingdom—she had attempted to strip the gods themselves of their power. And the gods would not tolerate such defiance.
Together the divine host pronounced judgment upon the Velhelsinese elves.
Never again would they walk comfortably beneath the sun.
But it was Xokone who was most enraged. Velhelsin had once been her favored champion, the most beautiful and devoted of her followers. Yet now that same disciple had turned against the divine in pursuit of mortal conquest.
So Xokone called upon the strength of the entire pantheon and laid a deeper curse upon the rebels.
In an instant the elves of Velhelsin’s empire were transformed.
Their radiant skin darkened to deep ash gray.
Their hair turned silver-white.
Their beauty—once the pride of their people—was twisted into something strange and unsettling.
Thus were born the Drow.
The curse was not merely one of appearance. The light of the sun burned their eyes and weakened their bodies, forcing them to shroud their cities in magical clouds to survive beneath a perpetual twilight.
Velhelsin herself fell to her knees before the goddess she had once adored, begging for forgiveness.
Xokone gave none.
The goddess turned her face away from her former champion, and their bond was broken forever.
Yet the gods did not leave the world unchanged in only one way that day.
For a small goblin tribe—one that had warned the gods of Velhelsin’s plan—Xokone granted a blessing rather than a curse. Their crooked teeth straightened, their blemished skin smoothed, and their forms became refined and graceful.
Thus were the Verdan born, a new people blessed by the goddess for their loyalty.
When the heavens closed once more and the trembling of the earth faded, the world had changed.
The Velhelsinese elves stood transformed.
The Verdan fled westward, hunted as traitors by those who blamed them for the gods’ wrath.
And the Great Elf War, after more than a millennium of slaughter, finally came to its end.
But the scars of that day never faded.
The Drow did not forget the gods who cursed them.
Nor did they forgive the kingdom of Oreinerius, whom they blamed for forcing Velhelsin’s desperate gamble.
And so the people of shadow remained loyal to the Empress who had led them into darkness— Velhelsin Oreiner, Mother of the Drow.
For though the ritual had failed, and the gods had punished her ambition, one truth remained:
The empire she had forged endured.
And the world of Andórë would never be the same again.