Underdeep Character Creation Thread

[Steerpike]

Underdeep players: post your characters here!

For those who haven't yet created a character, here's what you need to do:

1) Select a Race from the list found here.  As of this thread 8 out of 9 races 10/12 of the races are finished (if not totally polished).  Feel free to customize your race in some fashion - though if you want any variant units or rooms, let me know beforehand and I'll stat them up for you.

2) Write a description of your particular Faction's history and background.  This can be as brief or lengthy as you like.

3) Write a description of your character.  This is perhaps more important than your Faction's description, as you'll be roleplaying this character in the game, so you want to invest them with some personality.  This can still be as brief as you want, though - I want to cater to all levels of involvement, and some people will be more attracted to the wargame aspect of Underdeep than the roleplaying aspect, so don't feel you have to write their full biography or something.  At the very minimum, your character should have a name and some kind of back-story, though, even if it's fairly bare-bones.  A physical description is also a good idea, if only so I can render a portrait for them that at least aproximates your image of the character.

I do highly encourage a somewhat developed story, of course - complete with particular goals, even - as it'll make the roleplaying much more fun, and guide your strategic decisions as well.  Consider playing against type - maybe you want to play as a cautious Orc or a reckless Dwarf or the bravest Goblin of them all, or a Dark Elf with a compassionate streak (just please don't let him wield two scimitars, for the love of Lolth!).

4) Pick your starting Dungeon location, in any of the Cavern spaces (not the narrow "Corridor" spaces).  The maps can all be found in the main Underdeep thread alongside the Races.  Make sure to check your race's "Starting Dungeon" information, as every race has a different set of parameters about starting dungeons.  You can change this at any time before the game officially begins.  I'll be posting more rules on terrain and dungeon-building soon, so your choices at this point should be tentative, or you can leave this part of your post blank until all the information is up.  Also, make sure you're not starting in a location that's already been claimed.  If really want a location but it's already snagged, PM me and I'll see if I can find you an alternate location that suits you.

5) Post your starting purchases in spoiler tags.  Remember that all rooms/defences/traps purchased have 2 weeks construction time already complete (and Fungoid units have 2 weeks maturation time complete).  Again, these can be changed anytime up to the start of the game, so don't feel your purchases are graven in stone.  Remember to think about any Upkeep costs you might be incurring by hiring troops - you might have enough gold to hire a big army, but not enough Food-producing structures to feed that army, for example.

Your character can be a work in progress.  Don't feel you have to post an entire character right now.

If you have any questions, post them to the Discussion and Interest thread, here - I want this thread to just be for characters, not to serve as an extra discussion thread.  Also, feel free to PM me with any questions you like.

You may also want to participate in the game, but not as the leader of a Faction.  Maybe you want to play as a monster, an adventurer, an exiled elf-prince, an assassin for hire, or something else entirely.  This is also just fine - post your idea in the discussion thread  (or in a private message) first, and we'll hammer out the details of your character there before you post here.

The game is due to begin on February 1st, so please try to have your character posted by the 31st.  Latecomers are welcome, but they will have to begin at least 1 week later into the game.

[LD]

[ooc=Cleversmart Kobolds][spoiler=Misc Intro Information]Music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueuIvEihOSE  (Grieg's Puck... or the Kobold Song) [Greeting Prisoners]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9lAVcyncis (Sugar Plum Breakdown) [Marching]

Photoshoot
http://images.wikia.com/dungeonsdragons/images/e/ec/Kobold.jpg

Inspirations
A Kobold's Quest: http://www.bytejacker.com/blog/help-fund-kobolds-quest-an-indie-game-about-feeding-babies-to-monsters

[ic=Human Tales of Koboldkind]
   Salamander shall kindle,
   Writhe nymph of the wave,
   In air sylph shall dwindle,
   And Kobold shall slave.

-Faust, by Goethe, a human bard[/ic][/spoiler]
[spoiler=Introductory Tale]
[ic=Cleversmart Kobolds]
Blackness is all she sees. Then she opens her eyes and turns her head; allowing her ears to slowly unclog. Waxlike liquid spills out of them and she flails, caught in a typical Kobold honeytrap. Then she hears and feels the pokes; ten foot poles pricking from aloft, down into the hole. She thinks she can understand their wielders. She speaks their language.

"Eik! Eeek! Eikitikkk! Prisonerpoke we will! Swee-smell Prisonercook we will! And prisonertale we will spin; traditional tale we spin- of vim vigor vin!"

Other spear toting koboldkind heft their spears to the air. "Vin! Vin! Vin!"

"You in land of CLEVERSMART Kobolds, yes you are, DUMBHAUGHTY Elf!"

The crowd went wild. "Dumb Haughty! Dwelf! Elf! Fail! Failelf!"

"EPIC! Tale we spin!" Another kobold corrected the first speaker.

The crowd repeated. "Epic Failelf! Epic! Pick! Puck! Poke!"

The first speaker, voice higher pitched and peeved, continued. "Epic tale go like this. Cleversmart Kobolds find this land and big bad good kobold serve stupid fat old dwarf as slave."

"Noooooooo!!!" The crowd screamed in anguish.

The first speaker waved them down. "Not for long! Not for long!"

"Cook it now!" One in the crowd suggested.

"Then he trickses the dwarvesesis. Dwarvesesis not know what to do and he eatses the dwarveseis. At least partseses of the dwarveseis not consumdesis by lavaseis. Then rebellion!"

"Hellion!" The crowd cheers.

"And now his great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great"

"Great! Great!" The cheering crowd continues.

"Grandniece's tribe is gonna eatses you!"

Spears descend.
[/ic][/spoiler]
[/ooc]

[ic=A History of The Cleversmart Kobolds]
The Cleversmart Kobolds have been ruled by a mostly unbroken line of descendants from Hye-Mun Cleversmart the First, Master of the Universe That Is Under the Ground, who cobbled together a nation from disparate groups when the Koboldfolk revolted from their Ceremorph slavemasters and fled from the Underdeep to the Middledeep. The Cleversmart Kobolds consider themselves quite bright for having escaped the vile Ceremorphs, when so many other thralls have failed to have done the like. They hold exceptional hatred for Ceremorphs and races that use thralls and they believe in freeing mind-slaves wherever slaves may be. Of course, there is a distinction between physical slaves and mind slaves and kobolds often will then eat the freed slaves or enslave them in Kobold traps or kobold dungeons; still, othertimes, the Kobolds have been glad to ally with former slaves for a greater purpose.

They enjoy dining on human babies and make raids to the surface from time to time to partake of the delicacy.

Cleversmart Kobolds have a particular distrust of undead, given the questionable reign of the kobold Usurper-Emperor-King, Skyl-Dor, Who May Have been a Lich, Who Should Not Be Glorified.
[/ic]

[ic=Shee-Ra Cleversmart the Sixteenth, Queen Mistress of All That Is Under the Ground]

-Forked tongue and spines of ivory.

-Eyes wide and glazed with vision receptors to see in dark, and quadruple-eyelids primed to shut and shutter light at different levels. (could be depicted with narrow eyes, but with quadruple-adjustable eyelids)

-Shee-Ra Cleversmart the Sixteenth, Queen of all That is Under the Ground ("Shee-Ra"), was the twelfth of her litter. After eleven mildly suspicious deaths involving stabbings, drownings, hangings, chokings, food poisoning, and one mysterious case of fungoid addeling, Shee-Ra became next in line to the throne of Hye-Mun Cleversmart the Fifth, Master of the Universe That Is Under the Ground, who promptly died the day after Shee-Ra became his next legitimate successor.

Shee-Ra rules the Cleversmart Kobolds with a mailed fist and an iron-ruby-encrusted tail, sweeping aside all challengers and punishing dissent by the bite of her Myrmidions' diamond-studded 'grilled' teeth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grill_%28jewelry%29), or in special cases, by the bite of her own interchangeable Wyvrenstone incisors.

Shee-Ra is known for her ambition and planning. She makes use of the long-forgotten Mystery Chamber, created by Skyl-Dor Cleversmart the First, Advisor to King Ryen-Dor the First, Master of the Universe That Is Under the Ground, and briefly his successor during the reign that is known as the reign of Skyl-Dor, the Evil One Who Is Not Related to the Masters of the Universe by Close Blood Lineage But Who Seized the Power By Killing Someone Who Was Not a Second Cousin Or Closer and by Ignoring Intermediate Relatives Thereby Snubbing the Proper System of Succession. The Mystery Chamber includes such interesting creations as a "strategic planning table", a "obfuscatory truthtechtable", which contains all known kobold knowledge of traps and dungeon rooms, and an "occluded saviorsystem", which calculates probabilities. All this technology was lost when Skyl-Dor Cleversmart the First was overthrown in the great upheaval by an alliance of kobolds, forty seven ronin goblins from the court of Kira Kozuke-no-Suke Yoshinaka, and one lost minotaur- The Great Old One Who May Not Have Intended to Help, But Who Aided Our New Ruler By Mauling the Evil One Who Trafficked with Ceremorphs and May Have Actually Been A Lich and likely did Fungal Drugs, and Certainly Had Intercourse With Orcs, and Who Trafficked With Dwarves, and Who Had A Dumbelf Concubine! Eww. (All Good Cleversmart Kobolds Must Hiss At Mention of This Name).
[/ic]

[spoiler=Songs]
[ooc=Songs][ic=Trap-Working Song]
What do the bigginses know about digginses and wrigglinses- Nothing! Sillybeasts, Frillybeasts fungus head or tendril dread, caverns crush and make them bend and beck and twist and crawl... Trapspring catch and Dead-Dead-Dead-All-All-ALL!
- Traditional Kobold Trap-Working Song
[/ic]

[ic=Anti-Fungoid Song]
Cut the trees and burn the weeds. Pitch, pail, sap, and puss. Rake and scrape and dig and waste. Gus gus gus, Fungus break to muss, clipper and clapper and stomp it up. Wicker and whacker and snort it up. Up up up. Snot it out, blot it out. Knock it out.
- Anti Fungoid song[/ic]

[ic=Anti-Dwarves Song]
Blackened mold upon their face, stout and strong; always digging wrong. Beer and broth always froth. Poison the keg and trap the gold; wreck the rubies, claim the copper, defile the diamond. Wreck them all and then they'll fall.
- Anti Dwarf song
[/ic][/ooc][/spoiler]

[spoiler=Kobold Argot]
Kobold Argot- Koboldwords. Most are Portmanteaus.

Ceremorphs, also known as: Nastydreams
Deep Gnomes, also known as: CacaphonyMakers, ShrillSounders, Evil Songs, ArrogantGnomes

Nastybaddreams- bad dreams.

[/spoiler]

[ic=Dungeon]
Starting Dungeon ; Middledeep  65

[ic=Flavor Text]
Shee-Ra's life was bitter, without even flavor text as a seasoning.
[/ic]

[spoiler=Construction Projects]
Region: Middledeep 65

[spoiler=Production]
Cleversmart Caverns - Middledeep 65

Mushroom Patch: (20 food, not this turn)

Resource: Mushrooms  (25 food)
Resource: Pool (10 food)

Total: 35 food
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Upkeep]

Slingers (1g/1f) x 4 = (4g/4f)
Skulkers (2g/1f) x 5 = (10g/5f)
Blunderdigs (3g/1f) x 2 = (6g/2f)

and

Slingers (1g/1f) x 7 = (7g/7f)
Skulkers (2g/1f) x 5 = (10g/5f)
Blunderdigs (3g/1f) x 1 = (3g/1f)

Total: Net Loss/turn -(40g/24f)

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Construction]
Midden (125 gold/3 weeks- one week left to go)
Workshop (65 gold, 25 metal/ 3 weeks- one week left to go)
Spiked Moat (25 gold/ 3 weeks- one week left to go)
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Recruit]
N/A No recruits this turn because is starting turn.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Wealth]

Spent 180 gold on Midden, Workshop and Mine
Spent 90 gold on Palisade, Spiked moat, Pit Trap, Pit of Rats
Spent 75+80 gold on units.

Spent 30 metal on Workshop and Reinforced Gate
Spent 14 metal on Skulkers and Blunderdigs

Gained 35 food due to Resources in square and no upkeep costs this turn.

289 gold
107 metal
135 food

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Dungeons]
Middledeep- 65

Mystery Chamber (scry if in the region)
Burrow (build slingers, skulkers, blunderdigs)
Mushroom Patch (20 food, not this turn)
Kobold Mine (150 gold, 15 metal, not this turn)

Palisade (20 gold) (1 week)
----->also a reinforced Gate UPGRADE (15 gold, 5 metal)
Pit Trap (25 gold)--->UPGRADED to Pit of Rats (12 gold)

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Armies]
GoodyGarrison
Commander: Mya-He, the Unmentionable
Slingers (I) ("Undefeatable Eggguards") [Mya-He is attached to this unit]
Slingers (II) ("Unutterable Ovumguard")
Skulkers (V) ("First Pokeypokes")


SmartyScouts
Commander: Shee-Ra Cleversmart the Sixteenth, Queen Mistress of All That Is Under the Ground
Blunderdigs (I) ("Underfeet Underdeep Squadron")
Blunderdigs (II) ("Backdoor Blundering Boffins")
Skulkers (I) ("Beaterpokes")
Skulkers (II) ("Basherpokes")
Skulkers (III) ("Bastercooks")
Slingers (III) ("Tossythrows")
Slingers (IV) ("Lubberdubs")

Deepguards
Commander: Ho-Dor, the Stable (who eats rocks, carries around his lame nephew on a howdah, nephew shoots and slings from his back)
Skulkers (IV) [Ho-Dor is attached to this unit]
Skulkers (V) (Achi-Lees, the unkillable)
Skulkers (VI) (Isil-Dur, the unmentionable)
Skulkers (VII) (Vor-Keth, the massive)
Skulkers (VIII) (Ai-Ur, the Greater)
Skulkers (IX) (Ai-Ur, the Lesser)
Skulkers (X) (Tro-Jan, the unbreakable)
Skulkers (XI) (Ay-Jax, the warrior)
Slingers (V)  (Ro-Dan, the belligerent)
Slingers (VI) (Fush-Rodah, the shouter)
Slingers (VII) (Hus-Roh, the loud)
Slingers (VIII) (Aaa-Hha, the fearful)
Blunderdigs (III) (Kili-Fili, the stout digger)

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Orders]
-(3 Speed) Send SmartyScouts army to conquer #71 with extreme prejudice. If we succeed, found a new dungeon there (100 gp).
-(1 Speed) After founding SmartyScouts dungeon, then entrench or garrison.

-(1 Speed) Send DeepGuards army to conquer #66. If we succeed, found a new dungeon there (100 gp).
-(3 Speed) After founding dungeon with DeepGuards, forage then scout (If I don't do it automatically), then entrench or garrison. That should net +13 food (I don't know if I can do this on turn one so I haven't yet added the food to my totals)

- Note; before I invade the neighboring regions, my SCOUT ability from my units should notify me of what is in those regions and what sort of resistance I should expect. After I conquer the regions, I also SCOUT the neighboring regions automatically, at least that's my understanding.

-(1 Speed) If I don't scout neighboring regions automatically, scout neighboring region with GoodyGarrisson.
-(2 Speed) Forage with GoodyGarrison, should be +6 food (I don't know if I can do this on turn one so I haven't yet added the food)
-(1 Speed) After foraging, Garrison GoodyGarrisson +1 food
[/spoiler]

[/spoiler]
[/ic]

[HippopotamusDundee]

[ic=The Abject]
Exiles and renegades locked and shackled in thrall to a blaspheming and heretical master, the Abject are a downcast and debased breed of Ceremorph refined and brought close to the distilled and perfected nadir of all lifeforms – the horrifyingly elegant non-Euclidian symmetry of non-carbon-based alien life melded through fell and godless necromancy with the arrested perfection of rigid sinew and cold undying flesh.

Forged in the heat of the deathless tower's deathless innards and incubated in the many womb-caverns of the unliving Altar that is Yuddarath, the Ceremorphs unquestioningly serve the deranged enlightenment of the Cerelich Khan-Ydheel, called the Abjected – they are born and exist and will enter the eternal sleep until their eternal fleshy prisons are recycled and birthed once more so they may undying live again should He command it.

The abjection of all that is – mindless, lifeless, deathless or slowly-expiring and mortal alike – is their only goal – to cast off, reject, degrade and debase – corrupting and polluting all that is so that like them it too can be cast out beyond the meaningless limits that mortals call life and death and even reality to join them in the perfected nadir of all existence, where order and even meaning break down along with the sanity-preserving illusion of separation between the Self and the great unknowen abjected Other.
[/ic]

[spoiler=Of Abjection]
A wound with blood and pus, or the sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death. In the presence of signified death—a flat encephalograph, for instance—I would understand, react, or accept. No, as in true theater, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live. These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being - Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror
[/spoiler]
[ic=Ktan-Ydheel the Cerelich, called the Abjected]

Architect of the Altar Yuddarath, Ktan-Ydheel the Traitor carried and bore the seed that grew to become Yuddarath after many long years of heresy and desecration – entwining and grafting together the psionic heritage of his too-proud forebears with the tainted magics of the mortal cattle. In the antediluvian oblivion of the vast unconscious sea from which wash up the personality and skills and memory of a new-spawned Ceremorph was the Altar seeded, a piece of the Abjected cast off and made abject Itself to become infused in hither-unforseen shapes of unlife drawn from the deepwater graveyards of species long dead and species that would have been had the flood never ebbed and seceded the world to breathing life.  

Blasphemous misshapen life become unliving through foul ritual and dark purpose, the Cerelich sits enshrined in the cerebral throne-room of Yuddarath studying the echoes left by mortal will-working within the ancestral ocean of dreams – an unliving and independent brain dwelling more by habit than necessity within a hollow and decrepit skull (as much as the Altar could be said to possess skull or brain) – and lying beside it slumps the emptied 'skin' of the lobotomized Overbrain long-ago consumed to fuel the transformation beyond life and into the great Other beyond but still enslaved in deathless servitude to the Altar and It's Architect.

Through hollow eye-sockets as dark and deep as the further chasms of the artesian sea Ktan-Ydheel watches the world, withered and wizened tendricles the off-white of cancerous bone writhing as  the Cerelich's fell will drives the Spawn of Yuddarath off in search of supplies for its 'experiments' and food for their parent.
[/ic]

[ic=The Altar That is Yuddarath]
There is a cavern in the deeper parts of the Underworld, it is whispered, where rises from the barren rock something unwholesome and unnatural – like a twisted spiral tower built or a many-forked taproot grown upon a too-fertile foundation of rotted meat and still fouler things. Of bone and chitin are Its stones and sticky flesh and sinew Its mortar – or something as like to such mortal tissue as can be found in the deepest dreams of the oceanic void. Alien are the materials of this lifeless sense-ripping geometry; ever-digesting the mortal remains from which Its feet spring to fuel the imperceptible but unceasing growth of a mindless life that cannot be – for that which is not born and does not die cannot be said to live – and yet it does.

It breathes, the tower; It moans and sighs and mouthless babbles out the tale of Its sleepless ancient dreams as It with terrible and inexorable sureness blindly quests – seeking, ever seeking the life of the World Above to reshape into a more fit and pleasing mould for the future It knows is to come. Already it gestates within the womb-cells that line the outer stair the imperfect and unrefined substance of the Underworld; an alchemist passing dross to leave the purest distillation behind – things that cannot and should not be, both unliving and undea, cast in the mould of the prehistoric rulers of the world but remade to serve It's Architect.
[/ic]

[ic=Dungeon]
Starting Dungeon; Lowerdeep 56
[spoiler=First Turn Orders]
[spoiler=Production]
Yuddarath

Thrall Pen: +20 Bodies (not on starting turn)
Ceremorph Mine: +185 Gold, +20 Metal (not on starting turn)
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Construction]
Yuddarath (Lowerdeep 56)
Under Construction:
None

Beginning Construction:
Synapse Chamber -150 Gold, -15 Metal, 2 weeks - COMPLETE
Chamber of Obscenities -125 Gold, -15 Metal, 3 weeks - 1 week remaining
Uncanny Architecture –60 Gold, -20 Metal, 4 weeks - 2 weeks remaining
Amplifier Node -20 Bodies, 2 weeks - COMPLETE
Zombie Wall –20 Gold, -50 Bodies, 2 weeks - COMPLETE
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Recruitment]
Yuddarath (Lowerdeep 56)

Recruit 5 Unhallowed Larvae Spawn: -60 Gold
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Wealth]
Gold: 385
Metal: 0
Food: 0
Bodies: 50
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Dungeons and Outposts]
Yuddarath (Lowerdeep 56)
The Altar That is Yuddarath
Synapse Chamber
Spawning Pool
1 Thrall Pen
1 Ceremorph Mine

Zombie Wall
Amplifier Node
[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Armies]
Ktan-Ydheel - Garrisoned at Yuddarath (Lowerdeep 56)
5 Unhallowed Larvae Spawn - Garrisoned at Yuddarath (Lowerdeep 56)
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]

[Humabout]

[ic=The Red Tide]

Countless in number and endless in their hunger for gold, power, and slaves, the Red Tide is a kingdom of goblins in the Upperdeep ruled by Dâgalûr,
Scourge of Men, King of the Red Tide, patriarch of the Blood Clan, the Future Lord over All the Sun Sees.  Desperately jealous of the riches enjoyed by the topworlders, the Red Tide seeks nothing less than the enslavement of the surface - a task they hope to one day accomplish amidst a sea of elvish, dwarvish, and human blood.[/ic]

[ic=Dâgalûr, Scourge of Men, King of the Red Tide, patriarch of the Blood Clan, the Future Lord over All the Sun Sees]


Dâgalûr is a vicious, brutal leader who seeks to overwhelm his opponents with his countless hordes - a great many of whom he has sired himself.  He is not adverse to friendly relationships with other goblins, or even other inhabitants of the Underdeep, but he will not stand for threats to himself or his people.

Dâgalûr stands a tall four feet among his less royal kin, and his face is covered in distinguished warts and pockmarks.  His large, piggish nose is keen of scent beneath his prominent brow-ridge, and his long, pointed, floppy ears are deft at hearing.  Even his royal butt is crowned with a small, vestigial tail, which only rests on the Throne of Enemies, a large chair and dais constructed from the bones and skulls of the Red Tide's foes and laquered in their blood, when war is not at hand (and it always is).  Otherwise, he leads his sea of green in scavanged bronze mail and helm with a sword large enough for a man and a pike that rivals the lances of the surface-scum.[/ic]

[ic=Dungeon]
Upperdeep 43

[spoiler=Resources]
Starting Resources
Food:  100
Gold:  45
Metal:  130

Upkeep
Food:  0
Gold:  0
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Base]
Hall of the Goblin King
Goblin Mine
Mushroom Patch (x5)
Goblin Lair
Goblin Armory

Pallisade
Reinforced Gate
Spiked Moat
Escape Tunnel
[/spoiler]

[Spoiler=Recruitment]
Goblin Warrior (x50)
Goblin Archer (x50)
[/spoiler]
[/ic]

[Ghostman]

[ic=Kirr Dark Elves]
At first glance, Kirr-Godna with its eerily coiling walkways and domed spires appears no different from any other city state of the infamously decadent Dark Elves. Yet this labyrinth of organically gothic architecture houses a population of reviled heretics, the House of Kirr, whose thrice-accursed name has become synonymous with blasphemy and wretchedness among their kinsmen.

Millennia ago, the Kirr, already versed in the craft of summoning and binding demons, turned away from the traditional ways of Dark Elves to further their ambitions. Over centuries of experimentations and bargaining they had become intimate with the fell denizens of the nether planes, and discovered new tempting avenues to power. They recognized and embraced the potential in cross-breeding with summoned fiends, augmenting their lineages with diabolic essence. In so doing, they abandoned the dogma of Dark Elves' racial supremacy, and the devil-blooded ones used their fell powers to establish themselves as overlords to their pure-bred kin. In the turmoil of this social upheaval the traditional structure of Bloodlordy also crumbled, brought low by the clandestine schemes of the first Bloodlords.

The early centuries of the magocracy were perilous, assaulted from within by embittered conservatives who plotted its downfall, and from without by zealous armies from other Dark Elf cities that made unholy war to stamp out this heresy. Through their cunning, sorcery and unspeakable demonic pacts the Bloodlords and Bloodladies of Kirr-Godna prevailed, consolidating their position as undisputed masters of the city. They had ushered in a new era, albeit at the steep price of forever alienating themselves from the rest of their race.

Due to their position as outcasts, the Kirr have no hope of pursuing alliances or trade with other Dark Elf city states. The very best they can hope for in terms of diplomatic relations is an awkward "peace." This state of affairs has made them somewhat more eager to parlay with other races, although they have just as few qualms about treachery when it suits their interests.
[/ic]

[ic=Dalashinn, The Onyx Prince, Dark Elf Bloodlord]

The current ruler of Kirr-Godna is the ancient sorcerer Dalashinn of House of Kirr, known also by his moniker 'Onyx Prince'. The blood of an archfiend flows in his veins, and a hundred demonic servants tend to his whims as he wanders the halls of black-veined marble in his ornate palace. He rose to power in the meritocratic manner – by masterminding the death of his predecessor and eliminating competitors to the throne – and has now held it in his grip for longer than anyone before him. Under his ruthless governance the city has prospered, and is now greedily looking to expand its sphere of influence. The Bloodlords and -ladies fear his power as they should, while his ability to negotiate favourable bargains with devil-princes has ensured that the infernal forces will take his side against any attempted coup.

Yet for all his might, Dalashinn has a problem: the lack of an heir. In an ironic twist of fate, the very demonic heritage that lends him much power has also rendered him androgynous and infertile – a curse so potent that even the blackest of magics can offer no remedy. His siblings are long dead, slain in bygone days by his very own machinations, and he has been unable to find a worthy adoptee from amongst the multitude of fawning sycophants that flock around him like corpse-flies about a rotting carcass. With the unstoppable march of time, even the sorcerously extended lifespan of Dalashinn inevitably grinds toward its ultimate conclusion, heralding a bitter end to his glorious lineage. Such matters would not have bothered him when he was younger and still able to find contentment in the jubilant delights of decadent life, in the thrill of political intrigue, and in the intoxicating rush of raw magical power. But even diabolic sorcerers must grow weary of these things, it seems.

As he broods gloomily on his jewel-encrusted throne, the Onyx Prince realizes that if he cannot produce an heir, then he must instead forge a legacy – something that will outlast the clash of vultures that is sure to follow his death. The answer lies clear in his mind's eye: Kirr-Godna itself shall be his legacy; the destiny of the city one with his own. By elevating it's majesty to unprecedented heights, by carving an empire in the Underdeep, he will have made his mark.
[/ic]

[ic=Dungeon]
Starting Dungeon: Middledeep 13
[spoiler=Purchases]
This City begins with a Bloodlord's Spire, Slave Pens, War Spire, 1 Lichen Garden, and a Dark Elf Mine.
* Starting resources: 800 Gold, 250 Metal, 200 Food
* Crystal deposit in the cavern adds +20 Gold/week (1st week included)

[spoiler=Building/Trap Construction]
* Improved Mine: -225 Gold, -20 Metal (4 weeks, 2 of which already done)
* Profane Temple: -75 Gold (3 weeks, 2 of which already done)
* Lizard Pen x1: -40 Gold (3 weeks, 2 of which already done)
* City Wall: -50 Gold
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Recruitment]
* Slave Soldier x25: -125 Gold
* Swordsman x15: -180 Gold, -30 Metal
* Crossbowman x10: -120 Gold, -20 Metal
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Production]
On the 1st week:
* No production from buildings, only the +20 Gold from crystals.

On the 2nd week:
* Lichen Garden: +20 Food
* Lizard Pen: +35 Food (this building is completed after 1st week)
* Dark Elf Mine: +175 Gold, +15 Metal
* Crystal deposit: +20 Gold
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Upkeep]
On the 1st week:
* No upkeep.

On the 2nd week, assuming no casualties during 1st week:
* Slave Soldier x25: -25 Food
* Swordsman x15: -30 Gold, -15 Food
* Crossbowman x10: -20 Gold, -10 Food
[/spoiler]

Total resources left after initial purchases: 5 Gold, 180 Metal, 200 Food
Total resources on 2nd week after production & upkeep: 150 Gold, 195 Metal, 205 Food
[/spoiler]
[/ic]

[Xathan]

 
[ic=Dtoulth, The City of Madness]Deep within the world in realms where sunlight has never shown is the decayed city of Dtoulth, a hive of Ceremorphs as foul as the next. Once one passes through the Mobius Gate the city of Dtoulth sprawls before them, a realm lit by a sickly color that can only be described by the Dtoulthi Synthestians as the color made by the sound of a dream breaking.

Once one becomes accustomed to the light, however, the city holds more unreality. Gravity and normal laws of connection hold no sway, and a Ceremorphs entering a building on the ceiling by walking up a path that should stretch horizontal will exit through the same buildings rear door on the western wall - or at least, the wall that is western from this vantage, as from another that wall is now the ceiling but passing through a door puts that same back door on the floor beneath. The paths all twist to the point where the flat surfaces only have one walking edge or perhaps have three, and it takes the sane mind some time to adjust and begin categorizing. Soon, if it does not break, their mind adjusts and lays the city flat before them.

And what a city it is. Made of pale green stone that can only be found in these unholy depths, the entire city is drowned in a near-perfect silence, with only footsteps and the breaths of the thralls providing sound. The entire city is built like an amphitheater - excepting the thrall larders build upon the tops of the stalagtites that adorn the cavern, given them a position that for surface dwellers would be revered but for the beings that live below is the most insulting home to have. However, only visible are the larders of the thralls and the structures of the ancient empire that they maintain through their masters telepathic commands as well as the Thralls themselves. It is rumored that deeper, living in alchemically created stones warped from the discarded bones of Food (for Food's brains are for the Ceremorphs and their flesh is for the Thralls) are true tunnels of the Ceremorphs and their Overbrain...but none has ever entered those depths and returned to report.

Until recently Dtoulth has been completely isolated from the mortal, sane world - save for raids to replenish the Larders and occasional excursions that make no sense to the rational mind - but that has changed with the birth of the Queen of the Ceremorphs, the Exalted, a formerly beautiful elven warrior who was warped and twisted into something with a disgusting beauty of her own. For you see, one Ceremorph did the unthinkable and began to worship one who was not the Overbrain: the renegade Ktan-Ydheel began to pray at the blasphemous Altar of Yuddarah, and the Inquisitors failed to detect or find his renegade thoughts until it was too late and the Cerelich was free to begin to spread his blasphemy. As a response, the Inquisitors were exterminated en mass, their severed heads to never rejoin the Overbrain, saved to be stitched into the first of a new weapon of war. And so the Overbrain that is Dtoulth begins to plan to bring his renegade Child to eternal destruction, creating its new weapons of war, the Exalted, in the likeness of his Beloved Daughter...a woman part elf, part Ceremorph, part something...new and old at the same time. And now Dtoulth turns it's minds outwards and prepares for war.[/ic]

[ic=Llitul]

My name doesn't matter. I don't know if I remember it anymore. I once had one. I think. Back when I walked under that bright orb of light that showered the...something. The grind? That sounds close. That showered the grind with light. The orb. The...gods, what was it called? The Shun. Yes. I had a name when the shun gave light to the grind and I sensed it with the orbs that adorn my face. The orbs itched once. I used to do something to keep them from itching, from drying. I blanked. That word seems right. Blanking my orbs in the light of the shun from the drought of the grind.

And then the Masters came, and I was one with the Masters, a Thrall. And the Masters never commanded that I blank, so I did not, and my orbs grew scarred and white and scratched and useless which does not matter for the Masters gave me their sight, the mindsight, and I do not need my orbs.

So I keep faced to the edge of my cell, though that word is only a echo, an echo with words like room and shun and glow and day and hope. An echo that makes me odd to the Masters, for I should not have echos, I should not have I. I should only have the Masters and the Will. But I also have I and the echos, and that makes me of interest to the Masters.

I am to be exalted. I did not know this until just now, but now I know I am to be exalted and I do not question for that is now I how know things. The Masters make it so for me, it is now known, and I know I am of interest because there is a me to make things known to. I rise because I am to rise. I walk for I am to walk. I see in front of me a pit, and I the part of me that is me begins to pray to somethings. They had a name once. Gones. I pray to the Gones though I know the only beings to hear my prayers are the Masters and I know now that they find it amusing the same way I knew to rise and knew to walk and now know I must kneel at the edge of the pool before me. I know that I am about to experience terror.

And then I do. My Masters leave my mind and for moments, simple moments, I am Llandri the Brightstar again, champion of the Elves of Thylassisl, and I am blind and the captives of the Ceremorphs who are forcing my head into their breeding pool and I know what awaits me but my head is submerged and all I can do is thrash as I feel them, little inch long worms poking at my face, looking for an orifice. I clamp my mouth shut but my nose and ears and scarred, pitted, and useless orbs that once were eyes offer no protection and I can feel them begin to bore into me when suddenly there is a Voice. The Voice. There are no words, not free of my masters, and no understanding or knowledge, but the tadpoles comprehend and flee from my face. I wonder for a moment if maybe they'll just kill me when I feel more, feel tentacles the width of my fingers affix themselves to the sides of my head and feel a mass, a pulsating, wrinkled mass push itself against my mouth, and I know I must open my mouth as the masters reassert momentary control and my mouth is open and it's entering.

Then they release my mind and I try to bite, to kill whatever new horror is happening, but I am paralysed by those tendrils drilling into my temples and the mass is in my throat and in my stomach and then there is only pain.

Pain. Pain that I cannot describe, pain that words do not exist for, not in any of the tongues I know. It is eating me but not my brain, it is eating my stomach and lungs and liver and heart and veins and replacing them with it's horrid mass and suddenly Llandri the Brightstar is dead and Llitul is born. I house a portion of the Overbrain. I am its Amygdala, and with my physical body is reborn I am the Exalted, the Mind, but Llandri mind is free to live and pray and do almost all it could do in life and Llandri uses those brains at first to beg with then curse and then revile her gods. The gods have forsaken him. The gods have no mercy, they have no goodness, they have no love.

If they did, they would allow her to scream.

But now my Beloved Children tend to me as the Overbrain, my father, commands them further. I am the Queen of the Ceremorphs, the first of their kind, a fusion of elf and Elder. My body retains its elven sleekness of form and mobility though it is far different, gray and soft, bones replaced with tentacles. My feeding mouths are in my hands, my fingers are tentacles like those that adorn the face of my Beloved Children. My ruined orbs are masses of nerves now, dendrites and axions so tightly packed that they sheen silver and give me telepathic sight. I am stronger and faster, able to move along ceiligns and walls as smoothly as I once did the trees see you remember trees you know that word you loved the trees why can't you remember trees of the grind, using four limbs or two or six as easily as I once merely used two.

I silence Llandri. I can see myself now, through my Beloved Children's eyes, and I realize that despite the long tentacles, twice a long as I once stood, that jut in a pair from the base of my spine and three each from my shoulders, despite the hungry starfish mouths that ring them, despite my once golden hair replaced with tentacles coated in the color of spilled oil, I am Beauty, true Beauty, and I am to lead the City of Madness Dtoulth into glory, for Food is going to War and we must be ready. I am the Queen of the Ceremorphs and Queen of Thralls, and I will lead Dtoulth in the Wars of Food. I know from the Beloved that I was born this way for the Ceremorphs do not understand the thinking of Food and need a Queen with enough of a Food brain so She can think as Food does, but who's Beloved nature comes from the Overbrain itself so none can ever doubt that She is Not Food.

I give Llandri her wish. I push back my head and scream, and the part of me that is her can only weep because my scream is not of terror but of joy at being Exalted.
[/ic]

[ic=Llandri]The woman that became the Exalted, Queen of Thralls.
[spoiler=BUNCH OF BACKSTORY][ic=Llandri Brightstar]

House Galewind has an unsual history in Thylassil. While the House was, for over three thousand years, one of the Eleven Golden Houses, it fell into distrust four reigns ago when the first of the Crystal Galewinds was born, Alessi Quartzleaf. At first thought to be a sorcerer, Alessi showed no aptitude for magic whatsoever – in fact, it seemed the more he attempted the words and gestures needed for arcane magic, the more he failed at them. He seemed to need no aids at all – his magic was simply a part of him, but strange from all other known magics. It was began to be rumored the Galewinds had trafficked with demons or devils or other beings of the Abyss and Hells Below, for the elves did not, nor still do not, know what a psion was or could be. And so house Galewind was cast from the Eleven and became a minor house, distrusted and shunned – though they did all they could to prove their innocence, all they managed was to avoid being sent to the Duskwind Guard by force – though many chose the route to regain honor.

The Duskwind Guard are a force of elves from Thylassil dedicated to hunting down the worst and most dangerous of the dark creatures faced by the Kingdom. For some elves, it was a way to gain honor. For those convicted of the worst crimes, they were placed under compulsion and sentenced to serve the Guard until death – which made captains view such criminals as disposable and therefore were sent on the most dangerous missions. Because House Galewind avoided mandatory sentence among the Duskwinds, they were not put in harms way so deliberately – but they were disgraced enough that, for four generations, the Galewinds were viewed as any other members of the Guard.

That was changed by Elossi the Northstar, the first Galewind to rise to command of a regiment of the Duskwinds, and Llandri the Brightstar, her second in command. Sisters separated by only ten years, they hid their crystal power and focused on the martial arts, Elossi favoring the bow and Llandri twin swords. Together they lead the Southglade Band, reaching their position at only age sixty, and the Southglade Band became the most respected Legion of the Duskwinds in Thylassil – so much so that they drew the attention of the Eleven Golden Houses, who sent Prince Saerid the Shining Flame, Lord of the Mithril Tower, and First in Line to the Throne on a mission to observe the Southglade band and see if perhaps some of its members should join the regular army.

A drow arrow made the difference between what would have been a lifelong friendship and love. Elossi, the day prior to Saerid's visit, took a drow bolt – and while the poison would not be fatal, she was unfit for the battlefield for at least a week. As her second in command, it was to Llandri to show Saerid the Band. The Prince's visit was carefully planned – according to their dwarven allies in Murvod, there was some slight necromantic activity under the graveyard in an abandoned human town within Thylassil's borders. The Prince would be taken with the Band to investigate, likely see some action but be in no great danger, and perhaps elevate some of the Duskwind Guard to the regular army...and secretly, Elossi and Llandri hoped restore their fallen house. The plan was worked on for weeks in advance, and even the drow poison did not deter them.

Unfortunately, two other things did not go according to plan. First and foremost, as the story goes Saerid fell in love with Llandri the moment he laid eyes upon her, and while he claimed it was her golden locks and emerald eyes and other typical romantic tripe, the truth was she looked at him and, by reflex, assessed him as she would a new recruit before showing the requisite deference. She looked at him and saw him as a person first, his numerous titles second, and for that he loved her. The second was that slight necromantic activity was much greater than anticipated – the graveyard collapsed, having been stripped of all bodies by the undead below, and a great host of the beasts welled up from the ground beneath them – lead by a Vampire Lord, Ralum.

The Southglade Band repelled the undead, holding them until the sun's rising forced them back into the Underdeep, and the Prince did manage to impress his new and unaware beloved in that he fought alongside them and did not expect to be protected – though his station allowed him to demand it. Ralum was not defeated, however, and swore vengeance on the Band and Llandri in particular for leading them.

Their courtship was the gossip of the Eleven Golden Houses. House Galewind was restored to a High House, though not to the Eleven, and the details of his wooing her are details for bards and gossips, not worth relating in detail. In the end, they were betrothed to get wedded. Llandri would have to leave the Guard, of course, but she found the schemes and stabbings of elven politics to provide their own sense of danger – and admitted to herself that the risk was to her reputation and not her life was a refreshing change. They began the Eleven Day Ceremony, which precedes any Elven weddings, for such long-lived creatures put great stock in elaborate ceremony, culminating in the Vows of Undying Love – a promise that, no matter what the future may bring, even if the couple is torn asunder, their love will weather any storm and they will forgive each other for any past misdeeds on their wedding day.

Then came the Indulgence. An elven ceremony that humans ape in a debauched mockery without realizing from where the tradition of the Bachelor's Party comes, the Indulgence is a sacred ceremony where, for 5 days, you engage in an act you wish to do and that you know your beloved would despise, so long as it breaks no law of the Realm. The more your beloved would despise the act, so goes the tradition, the more you show the strength of your love for them. It was remarked how much this couple must love each other by the courts when how they would engage in their Indulgences became known.

Saerid, declaring his first, announced he would spend five days in the private company of Llandri's chief rival in the court, Ellisandra (a proper wizard who had long desired him.) Llandri, for her part, would rejoin the Duskwind Guard for those five days...as a common soldier.

Saerid, by all accounts, enjoyed his Indulgence as Ellisandra did her best to woo him away from Llandri, though he returned unwavering his devotion and awaiting to see if the Duskwind's would woo his beloved. On the sixth day, he began to worry. On the seventh, one of Llandri's unit returned. What happened is still unknown, and the man's raving madness provided no answer other than mention of horrific beings of brains and tendrils dragging the entire unit into the Underdeep.

Thus was the death of Llandri the Brightstar, the Birth of Llandri the Thrall, and the Genisis of Llitul the Exalted.[/spoiler][/ic]


[ooc=Dungeon]
Starting Dungeon: Dtoulth Lowerdeep 74
[spoiler=Initial Build]
(includes Starting Package)
Rooms
Overbrain Chamber
Spawning Pool
Ceremorph Mine
Thrall Pens 4
Mushroom Farm 3
Grafting Workshop (1 week left)
Mutation Chamber (1 week left)
Inquisition of the Exalted (2 weeks left)

Defenses
Amplifier Node
Slime Moat (1 Week Left)

Gold	Metal	Bodies	Food
405	80	10	100

[/spoiler][/ooc]

[Raelifin]

[ic=Dr. Robertson, Professor Immortal]

"Perpetual Peace is only found in the graveyard" - Immanuel Kant

"There's a purity in mathematics.  A transcendent truth.  Unlike the soft green hills, and the warmth of flesh, math does not change.  It does not grow old, sicken, or die.  It is in the patterns of numbers that we are free to find that which truly matters.  That which extends infinitely, as a line.  That which is both irrational, yet repeating.  It is with this purity that we should surround ourselves, so that we might free ourselves from the fickle fantasies of youth and embrace more fully the fantastic truth of reality."

Expectant silence greeted the end of the speech.  A baited breath and ready hand, waiting for yet another word to scrawl in a notebook.  A notebook that would be set on a shelf, consulted infrequently and then restored to its dim nest.  Robertson knew this.  He knew that real understanding of his work was beyond these poor youths and he resented their freedom.  Their ability to lie in the sun, to feast on the delicate flesh of birds, and to lie in the sun without worry.  He could not do that anymore, for he had made the ultimate sacrifice for his work, and with that sacrifice came enlightenment.

The tired hero of this tale rested lowered himself heavily into his seat.  
"Class dismissed."
Almost a whisper, but certainly not a breath.

He might be dead but he was not gone, and soon the old professor would demonstrate the wisdom of the depths to them all.  The perfection of a well-made angle could change the world, and it was for that he quested.  Life was just an impediment to reason.  And as with any impediment, it would be overcome given enough time.  And that, he had plenty of.[/ic]
[ic=Markus Ashton, Servant of Madness]

Markus Ashton, eldest son of Archmage Gwendolyn Ashton, had an easy life. Taught from a young age in the magical arts, Markus showed great promise. Thanks to his mother's influence he sailed through the most prestigious of schools without ever really applying himself. Despite a quality education and a wealth of talent, Markus never found it necessary to apply himself and thus slipped into mediocrity later in life, eventually assuming an ornamental position at a wizarding college. Markus married a younger daughter to a duke but never loved her or the three children he sired, instead treating them mostly as trophies to be shown off. In life Markus was self-centered, hedonistic, apathetic, and often depressed.

As an old man, Markus was approached by Professor Robertson, a teacher of nonstandard mathematics on sabbatical at his college. Robertson explained that he had made a major breakthrough in magical perception and its intersection with mathematics, but needed others to work with him on refining the discovery. As Markus was dealing with the recent death of his mother and distressed by his utter lack of accomplishment in life (at least compared to her) he leapt at the opportunity. Two of his fellow wizards, Philip Amorn and Howard Kunst, were also invited to Robertson's estate. There, over a couple weeks, Robertson explained a new kind of mathematics and taught the three a spell for unlocking one's mind to new possibility. Deep in the expansive basement of the old professor's mansion the four mages spent hours in meditation, using the new spell to see what others could not.

It was there that the visions came. Visions of shapes that could not exist and of spaces without light or heat. Over time the visions became more ghastly, involving flesh melting off of bone or of rotting piles of squirming bodies. Markus was transfixed. For the first time in his life he stepped outside of his myopic self-absorption and glimpsed something beyond himself. Howard and Philip expressed doubts and fears with regard to the visions, Howard claiming that they were seeing things that should not be seen. Over lunch one day, Philip proposed that this discovery should be classified as black magic and banned. Markus grew furious. The small-minded fools couldn't see that there was a new frontier of understanding, or perhaps even a way of knowing the truth of existence. They were going to shut it down! Markus killed Philip.

Fleeing to Robertson, he explained what he had done and begged for guidance. Robertson revealed that the visions were speaking to him; calling him deeper into the earth. The old professor explained that they showed the truth about mortal life, how it was an accident, a cast-off mistake of greater powers and was an anathema to them. Devoid of common sense (and perhaps some sanity), Markus pledged his life to Robertson's vision and work, seeing it as visionary and profound. Roberson accepted the pledge, but chastised Markus for stabbing his peer to death in his sleep. Robertson explained that he was a lich, magically disguised to appear human, and that over the long years he had tried many times to find wizards who might assist in the great plan. Whenever suspicion grew too heavy he was always able to lie low for a few years and avoid detection.

Because of the murder the college soon sent investigators to the estate. Outnumbered and outmatched, the lich and his new servant fled into the basement to the meditation room where the visions were strongest. The deathless master explained that he had created a magical portal to a system of caves beneath his land and was working on a way of traveling deeper. He sealed the portal behind, severing his connection to his wealth on the surface and instead started anew in establishing a foothold in the dark.

Soon thereafter Markus completed the ritual ending his mortal life, and for several years the two necromancers slowly and safely gained a foothold in the caves. Robertson taught Markus the art of patience. The kind of patience only capable of an immortal, and so they sat and waited and watched for the time to be right...

In time an intellectual rift grew between Markus and his master. Though he still reveres the older wizard as a prophet, he believes that it's not actually necessary to eliminate all life. Instead, Markus sees life as needing to be broken and shaped to serve the great plan. Despite this, Markus takes his vow of servitude very seriously and sees Robertson as the only other being with any merit.

In death, Markus is devoted, idealistic, dispassionate towards the mundane, fanatically obsessed with the unseen, and somewhat insane, generally. He dresses in simple black robes more apropos for a monk or a slave than a wizard. Around his neck is a large iron chain wound many times into a loose necklace; a symbol of his devotion to a greater power. He is not physically imposing, being short and gaunt, with a small beard of wispy, white hair.[/ic]
[ooc]Numinous and I will be co-controlling a single Undead faction.
We'd like to start in Upperdeep 85.

[spoiler=Starting Purchases]We'll be starting with:
* Catacomb (1 week to go)
* Arcane Library (1 week to go)
* Teleportation Circle (2 weeks to go)
* Spiked Moat (1 week to go)
* 18 Zombies
* 15 Skeletal Archers
* 7 Skeletal Warriors

This leaves our starting resources at:
0 gold
110 metal
60 bodies[/spoiler]

[/ooc]

[Polycarp]

[ic=The Glow – Fungoid Variant]The Glow Theme

The Glow is a the dream of an ancient Rotqueen, touched by the otherworldly whispers of the Ceremorphs.  Though the dreamer, amorphous and insensate, now lies in a pool at the bottom of a lake deep within the earth, her children live – and the unreal dreamscape upon which her mind wanders has twisted them into something new, hauntingly beautiful and profoundly alien.

The creatures of the Glow appear as what fungoids might look like to someone on acid.  They are bizarre-looking even by fungoid standards, with various fleshy fronds and protrusions sprouting haphazardly from their bodies.  They are splotched with garish, mismatched hues, some iridescent, some pastel-like, others softly glowing and pulsing.  Though the Glow is capable of producing less colorful spawn for infiltration purposes, an army of the Glow ordinarily bears a passing resemblance to a horrific, slimy Mardi Gras parade.[/ic]

[spoiler=History of the Glow]The first elves who saw it named it yellow, and then it was yellow, a sallow, sickly light that seeped dimly from below.

The first dwarves who saw it named it green, and then it was green, a deep algal emanation that crept through the tunnels from deep within the earth.

The first orcs who saw it named it red, and then it was red, a carmine radiance that seemed to slowly pulse in the darkness.

None were mistaken, for the light from below was all these colors and none.  The hue, the richness, the character of the glow were all fluid as water, changing, growing stronger, dimming again, sometimes flickering like distant flames and sometimes glowing like half-dead embers – and so, in the languages of half a dozen races at least, the queer light from below is known simply as the Glow.

Only the few scavengers and raiding-parties that camped by the nearby lake ever saw the Glow, and often it faded so that it could not be seen at all, and so to most in the Middledeep who had even heard of it, the Glow was a strange tale and nothing more.  The Glow was old, even by the counting of the dark Elves, and in the rise and fall of cavernous empires the strange light was nearly forgotten.  There were far more dangerous things to worry about, after all, and when the very occasional party chose to delve down into the cavern by the lake, their subsequent disappearance was attributed to any number of terrible things already known to lurk in the lowest reaches of the world.

Yet in this lonely darkness, there was still the Glow.  The Glow slept, and dreamt, and forgot the world as the world had forgotten it.

In an ancient time, the fungoids penetrated far into the Underdeep to a place of eternal rain, where the water of some underground channel seeped through the thick rock and fell through blackness into an even greater lake.  Whatever race had once made this place home was wiped away, and in their flesh the fungus-men planted their spores and sowed the seeds of their empire.  Their queen had many progeny, and over the ages they sought other realms and other flesh, and the rainy lake was a bastion from which many plagues of fungoids burst forth into the upper reaches of the world to bedevil the races of flesh.  In time, however, the queen of the lake turned her attention from the world above.  She began to sense a strange and alien presence, for more than just water seeped through the rock.

Though other races feared the Ceremorphs, who too lurked deep below, she could feel the psychic ripples emanating from their distant minds.  She began to sense their nature and the inconceivable essence of their thoughts.  She drank the whispers like they were sweet water, and her mind wandered to strange visions and ineffable things known only in dreams.  The queen forgot the real and grew lost within the unreal, growing more and more detached from the workings of the world, until one day she slipped beneath the cold waters of the lake and knew the waking world no more.

Her servants grew quiescent as she slept.  The fungoids of the deep lake drove forth no more consuming progeny and drew back from the world, content to lurk in the forest by the lakeshore.  A light began to grow in the deep waters, and then within the mushroom groves, and as the ages passed it crept up the chasms and tunnels until it glowed ever so dimly and fleetingly in one solitary corner of the Middledeep.  The Glow was the reflection of the queen's dream, and as she drifted between realms out of space and time, the Glow shifted and flickered.  She was the Glow, and the Glow was her, and there would be no end to the dream.

But something would one day rouse the Glow.  Above, in the Great Mushroom Forest, a queen called Blackrot – a distant progeny of the dreaming queen from her waking past – was hewn unto death by the Prince of the Mhaldûlne, and her hordes decimated by the fury of his dwarves.  Yet the spores of the fungus-folk are many, and a Queen's multitude surpasses all.  Something drew the few survivors of her brood down into the faintly glowing pit and beneath the cold waters of the rainy lake, and they shed the fecund spore-dust of Blackrot upon the ancient dreaming queen who had long since devolved into a stew of radiant protoplasm on the lake's murky bottom.

After a time, a creature emerged from the waters – a new queen, not the dreamer and not Blackrot, yet born of both.  The Dream would be made real.[/spoiler]

[ic=The Child of the Glow]

Deep in the bowels of the earth, where the mushroom forest meets the lake, the Heart of the Glow lies in psychedelic splendor.  Spires like fluorescent fern-fronds glisten in the eternal rain, hanging above the congealed mass of structures and spawn below.  Even the mushroom "trees" here are changed by the dream, covered in quivering polyps and blotched with neon hues.

The new scion moves among them all, a queen even more strangely beautiful than her subjects, glowing and shifting with colors never before glimpsed beneath the earth.  Silently still lies the dreamer, the genesis of the Glow, a shimmering pool beneath the waters; if her psyche still endures at all, it wanders more distantly from the world than any mind could comprehend – save, perhaps, for the Ceremorphs themselves.

The Child of the Glow is a Rotqueen formed from the spores of Blackrot, the Rotqueen slain by the Dwerim of the Great Mushroom Forest, but remade by the alien mind of the dreamer, the Glow's original queen, who lies in an amorphous pool beneath the lake at the Heart of the Glow.  It is uncertain to what extent the Child is truly autonomous - perhaps she is merely a puppet of the dreamer through which it acts in the waking world, or perhaps the dreamer lost all meaningful and conscious thought many centuries ago, and the Child is fully in command of the now-resurgent colony in the Underdeep.  Regardless, the Child displays a personality unusual among Fungoids - in the sense that it's unusual for them to have a personality at all.  Where most Rotqueens see the propagation of their spores as a biological imperative, seeing no point to existence but growth, the Child of the Glow is absorbed in Truth and Beauty - albeit an unknown "truth" known only in the transcendent dreams of the Glow, and "beauty" as manifest in the bizarre and resplendent forms of her servants.  The Child is whimsical and creative in her pursuit of an alien aesthetic, constantly changing the elaborate forms of her colony and minions.  Her curiosity extends to the creatures of flesh as well - she often slides gracefully through the skin farms of the Heart, wreathed in otherworldly phosphorescence, to taste the strange dreams and waking visions of the Glow's thralls.  The fleshlings kept within the Heart of the Glow are not merely pacified by soporific spores, but kept in a constant unreality of the Child's choosing, unable to break free of the dream (or perhaps not even knowing that they are in one).

The Child values beauty and hates destruction, but this should not be understood as pacifism.  The dreams of the Glow that color her mind are strange, and she does not truly recognize reality in the way that other races do.  For the fungoids, after all, life is not truly "destroyed" when slain, but remade - and who is to say that its new fungal form is not more beautiful, more wonderful, more true to the dream than before?[/ic]

[ooc=Setup]
Starting Dungeon: Lowerdeep 31
[spoiler=Starting Purchases]
Starting Structures
Heart of the Glow
Fungal Nursery
1 Skin Farm
1 garrisoned Sporemother
1 garrisoned Child of the Glow

Starting Resources
250 Bodies
35 Food (From mushroom forest and adjacent pool)

Starting Purchases

Rooms (205 bodies total):
9 Skin Farms (135 bodies, 1 week remaining)
1 Maturation Bulb (8 bodies, on Nursery, complete)
1 Regeneration Bulb (12 bodies, on Nursery, 1 week remaining)
1 Cultivation Bulb (20 bodies, on Nursery, complete)
1 Toxic Cluster (30 bodies, 2 weeks remaining)

Units (37 bodies total):
1 Sporemother (12 bodies, complete)
25 Fungoid Warriors (25 bodies, complete)[/spoiler][/ooc]

This should leave me with 8 bodies.

[TheMeanestGuest]

[ic=The Dwerim]The Dwerim, known to their close kin - the Dwarves - as the petty folk, are prideful and acquisitive. The Dwerim were driven into the Middledeep centuries ago, but delve their mines and stoke their forges much as they did before. They are guarded and secretive, but welcome trade with other peoples of the Underdeep - when they see an advantage, of course. They are not a numerous race, living either in small and scattered houses, or the sole remaining mansion of their people: Mhaldûl-Nem. Dwerim are gaunt and appear half-starved, though they are as strong as any Dwarf. Their flesh is pale and milky, and flushes easily. Their hair and beards are deepest black, or rarely fiery red, but fade to silver or gold in old age. Dwerim are fierce and implacable warriors, fighting in good order and close formation. They wear well-crafted mail and fearsome masqued helms into battle, and bear shield and axe. They will fight to the death to defend their homes and will give no quarter to their enemies. Thought not as advanced, Dwerim smiths and craftsmen routinely exceed those of the Dwarves in technique, and their jewelcraft is unequaled in the Underdeep. Their houses and mansions are strong and well-defended, and harken back to an earlier age aesthetically. Above all things the Dwerim cherish wealth, and guard their hoards jealously. Their mines are among the deepest in the world, and grow deeper yet each passing year.[/ic]

[spoiler=Of the Dwarves and the Dwerim][ic=Of the Dwarves and the Dwerim]Before the sun rose in the sky in the world far above, before the Elves woke beneath a starlit sky, and before even the fellowship of the Angels was broken by hubris and strife, there was life. Warmth blossomed deep within the earth, and so nourished by this warmth grew the first folk: the Dwarves. Vibrant and keen, the Dwarves spread through the endless caverns that lie beneath. They brought with them their passion, their knowledge, and their light. They carved out their mansions and their cities, and bedecked them with all the splendor of their craft. It was the Age of the Illumination, and for many long years there was peace. But whether on or below this earth, all things must pass.

The whole of the earth shook, as if seized in a violent rage, and fire came from below as water flooded from above. The great cities were destroyed, the grandest works thrown down in ruin, and the people decimated. Few of the first folk survived this cataclysm, but those who did persevered, striking out from those mansions that remained. Much of their craft had been lost, and their tribulation had made them a harder and grimmer folk. They built new cities in memory of the old, though they were only as faint echoes of those that had come before. But the fragile tranquility of this Restoration could not endure. In the sundering of the earth, cracks and fissures were formed, and things wicked and cruel crept down from the world above. Goblins, Orcs, and creatures far worse. Lonely mansions and houses fell silent, and travelers far from home vanished on the roads. The first folk whispered of fell beasts in the darkness, and a Watch was declared by the great Thanes. But it did not save them. Emboldened by ever-growing numbers, the beast-folk made war upon the Dwarves, and wrought much slaughter and ruin. The Dwarves turned their craft towards axe and hauberk, and toiled in their forges and delved deeper in their mines. And for the first time there was war in the depths. Neither Orc nor Goblin could stand before the fury of the gathered Dwarvenhost, and in bloody battle they were thrown back to the far corners of the deep.

It was thus that the great city of Rhaud emerged foremost among the dwellings of the Dwarven race. Their warriors - the fiercest in battle - had borne the brunt of the fighting, and had driven the beast-folk from the halls of their kin. Those displaced by the war settled in Rhaud, and it grew, and became the greatest city since the Illumination. Rhaud thrived as the centre of Dwarven craft and art. Its Thousand Halls gilded and lit, wrought with carvings and monuments of the glory of the first folk, and the destruction of their enemies. The smiths of Rhaud were without peer, and their Masters sought only the brightest students. It was so that the greatest smith to grace the world with Dwarven craft, Andacer, was born. With a mind sharper and hands cleverer than any other, his creations would come to rival those of ages past in the beauty of their form and function. Though his rivals struggled to best him, none brought so much pride and glory to their clan as did Andacer to the Mhaldúlne. But his triumph brought ennui, and Andacer grew tired of Rhaud, and quit the Thousand Halls for depths unknown. For his absence, Rhaud was the poorer, and the city did not seem quite so bright as it did before.

Though the city did not forget its greatest son, it perhaps grew comfortable in his absence. But all things must pass. It had been forty years and more, and Andacer had returned. The Mhaldúlne rejoiced, and Rhaud groaned under the weight of celebration. Andacer brought with him many treasures, and the Dwarves marvelled at his ingenuity and skill. But Andacer did not rejoice with them, for he was troubled and restless. For a year he secreted himself away in the lowest hall of the Mhaldûlne, to toil at what, he would not say. At last he emerged, bearing in his hand a small stone, aglow with inner fire. The stone pulsed with a bright and clear light, though its depths swirled ablaze with shadowed reds. It was named the Andaceríne, the Pearl of Andacer, and all those who looked upon it were enamoured of its beauty, and held enthralled until it was parted from their gaze. The Thanes and smiths of the Mhaldûlne were said to huddle about the Pearl as if for warmth, presided over by Andacer, a fey smile on his lips. The clan was seized by fever, delving ever deeper beneath. Their forges lit without pause, churning out suits of mail and cruel axes beyond reason.

The Thanes of Rhaud grew troubled by the isolation of Andacer and the Mhaldûlne, and resolved that the Andaceríne be sealed away. The Thanesmen stood before Andacer, demanding he turn over the Pearl. But he only smiled. The room grew cold while the light of the Pearl pulsed, and the Thanesmen were filled with dread. "And who are you to speak so to me? To demand my prize?" Andacer said. And the Mhaldûlne about him turned their gazes upon the Thanesmen, and laid hands upon the hafts of their axes. The Thanesmen made to leave, but found the doors behind them barred and locked. It was then that the Mhaldûlne fell upon them, and Rhaud was soiled with Dwarven blood for the first time since the Great War. In a fury, the Mhaldûlne boiled out from their hall, intent to punish those who would steal from them, and there was murder and strife in Rhaud. But though the Mhaldûlne were possessed by unnatural rage, the numbers of the Thanes arrayed against them were too great. Slowly, and grindingly, the Dwarves of the Pearl were pushed back. Andacer would not give up the fight, and the Mhaldûlne would not give up the gates, and so they were forced. Slaughter was visited upon that house, and those few who then remained fled into their deepest tunnels. The Thanes found Andacer in the lowest hall, a wretched thing, huddled about his Pearl. They slew him, and looked upon the Pearl with disgust, and resolved to destroy it. Chierne took up his hammer, and delivered a mighty blow to the Andaceríne. It cracked, and sparked, and threw off heat. The Thanes backed slowly away, but Chierne again took up his hammer, and shattered the Pearl with a roar. And so Rhaud was undone, and Andacer given his revenge. A great shadow coiled about the room, and its shrouded heart glowed dully with flame. Chierne stood before it, and commanded the Thanes to flee. The sounds of struggle pursued them as they ran, and there was a roar as of a furnace opened, and then silence. The Thanes sat, gripped with fear, waiting for Chierne. But it was the shadow that emerged from the keep. And there was slaughter to humble that before, and blood ran from the halls and through the streets, and there were bodies at every door, and those who had not fled were never seen nor heard from again. And thus was the fall of Gleaming Rhaud of the Thousand Halls, and the Sundering of the Dwarves and the Dwerim.[/ic][/spoiler]

[ic=Lothë, Prince of the Mhaldûlne and Lord of the Mansion]

Nír, who was King in the Deep when the great city of Nüln yet stood, had but a single son. When Nír met his grisly end, and when Nüln was put to the sack and the Dwerim slaughtered, it was Lothë who abandoned his father's madness and saved the remnant of his people. He gathered up those few that he could, and led them away without looking back. It was a long and perilous journey, and many more yet died on the road. But at last Lothë came to the delvings of his ancestors, and the Mines of Andacer. The land had grown feral and wild in the absence of Dwer or Dwarf, and so Lothë desired to tame it for his folk. The mansion of Mhaldûl-Nem, which is the last home of the Dwerim, was carved from the rock with all the skill and craft that could then be mustered. The walls and gates were made strong and fair, and halls were dug and forges lit.

In the Great Forest dwelt, and still dwell, many fell creatures, who would harass and haunt the Dwerim. And so Lothë decreed that it should be driven back, and with flame and axe it was. It was this work that garnered the ire of Blackrot, a foul Rotqueen of the Sporekin. And she raised from the pungent earth a great host of her odious kin, and set them against all the works of the Dwerim, and brought a new war to that harried folk. The numbers at her command were vast, and she soon assailed the gates of Mhaldûl-Nem with a writhing throng. The Dwerim spilled fire from the battlements upon the Sporekin, and the greater part of that host was blackened to ash. But again Blackrot came, and again her horde was driven back with flame. And then to the Dwerim there was left no more of their secret fire, and Blackrot was pounding at the gate, and the strange and ravenous cries of the Fungoids were heard in the halls. Lothë resolved that this could not be the end of his people, and gathered all his warriors about him. The Dwerim issued from the gate, and though they were outnumbered, their axes were sharp and their assault sudden, and they drove the Sporekin back, and cut to the heart of that host. But the Dwerim were then surrounded and pressed from all sides, and many among them began to fall, and it was that it might have been the end. But with a great cry Lothë took up his axe with new strength, and slew any beast that stood before him, and his men were all about him. They sung a dirge, deep and low, for all the losses of their people, and it brought fear even into the rotting hearts of the Sporekin, and they quailed before the Dwerim. And it was that Lothë at last espied Blackrot, and none now stood between them. He took up his great axe and cut into her bulk nine times, and she fell with a groan. With the foul blood of their Queen upon Lothë's blade the last of that vile host fled the field, and into the heart of the wood, and Lothë and the Dwerim stood triumphant.

His axe is yet named the Rotdoom, and the people of Mhaldûl-Nem cherish their Lord above all their riches, though perhaps only just. It has been a century and more, and the Mansion of the Dwerim has slowly grown, and prospered, and been left alone by the other peoples of the deep. But the mines are dug deeper, and the forges stoked ever hotter, as the Dwerim know that all things must pass. Though he will not set the Crown of the King upon his fiery brow, and instead yet wears the iron band of a Prince of his folk, Lothë stands ready to defend his people, and woe to him who arouses the wrath of the Dwerim.[/ic]

[ooc= Mhaldûl-Nem]Location: Middledeep 40

[spoiler=The Mansion]Starting Package: Thane's Hall, Forge Hall, Shield Hall, Tuber Garden, Apiary, Dwerim Mine

Completed Additions: Apiary, Brewery, Training Hall

Completed Defences: Outer Wall, Iron Gate, Murder Holes

Additions Under Construction: Lizard Pen (1 Week Remaining), Pyretic Refinery (1 Week Remaining), Hall of the Ancestors (1 Week Remaining), Hall of Trade (2 Weeks Remaining), Grand Furnace (2 Weeks Remaining)

Defences Under Construction: Reinforced Walls (1 Week Remaining)

Garrisoned Units: 30 Dwerim Axemen

Initial Expenditure: 1000 Gold, 120 Metal

Income: Dwarven Mine: 200 Gold, 25 Metal. Food Production Buildings: One Tuber Garden (25 Food), Two Apiaries (30 Food), One Brewery (10 Food), Mushroom Forest (25 Food) = 90 Food.

Unit Upkeep: 60 Gold, 60 Food

Adjusted Income: 140 Gold, 25 Metal, 30 Food

Finances: 0 Gold, 130 Metal, 275 Food[/spoiler][/ooc]

[Rhamnousia]

[ic=Dreams-of-Dead-Races,
Sovereign of the Darksea]


Dreams-of-Dead-Races is a creature strange and ancient beyond mortal comprehension, for it is among the eldest of a race that had grown ancient while the world was still young, whose ages are measured not in decades or even centuries, but by the rise and fall of mountains and the grinding migration of continents. It remembers, with perfect clarity, those distant aeons when the Primordial Sovereignty still ruled over the earth, the greatest dominion that ever was and will be yet again, when the pretty gods of mortal races were yet unborn and the ancestors of men and elves still crawled through the muck and the ooze and cowered in the shadow of hideous cyclopean monuments that rose from the blackest trenches, for what were they but cosmic accidents. It remembers, with awful precision, the creeping doom of the Long Dreaming that brought low their glorious empire, the siren song that called them down to the darkest depths. It remembers untold millennia trapped in restless slumber, in the dream beyond death, as the world groaned and shifted around them, as the Watchers, the first and greatest race faded from the fleeting memories of the mortals they had once held in terrified thrall, remembered only in the most ancient and obscure of myths.

But nothing is eternal, nothing save the Watchers themselves, and even the crushing torpor of the Long Dreaming has begun to fade. Far in the sightless depths, in the very bowels of the earth, a monstrous leviathan, a true nightmare out of time, a Sovereign of the most ancient of all races, stirred from its slumber. Even after long eons spent comatose, Dreams-of-Dead-Races is a creature of peerless, horrifying intellect, and even as it slept and dreamed its fitful, alien dreams, it plotted. While in their feverish naiveté, the young and unworthy races of the world may believe themselves important and their existences meaningful, it knows the truth : all of history is but a cycle , and that which once was shall be again. Even the most depraved and monstrous of mortals cannot hope to fathom the cruelty, the cold, tempered hatred that lurks within the mind of the Watcher Sovereign, nor could they imagine the primeval hell it plots to unleash upon the earth. It will remind the world why even the blind know to fear the dark and why even the deaf dread the hideous piping song…
[/ic]

[ooc=Cruel Form of Truth]

Location: Darksea

[spoiler=Starting Purchases]

Starting Structures
Brood Pool
Mucosal Pool
1 Thrall Pen
1 Algae Pool
Watcher Mine
1 garrisoned slumbering Sovereign Watcher

Starting Resources
800 gold
125 metal
125 food

Starting Purchases

Rooms (470 gold, 65 metal total):
4 Algae Farms (100 gold, complete)
2 Thrall Grottoes (100 Gold, 30 metal, complete)
Breeding Pool (100 gold, 25 metal, 1 week remaining)
Ooze Pool (100 gold, 2 weeks remaining)
Nightmare Gate (70 gold, 10 metal, complete)

Units (150 gold, 30 metal total):
20 thralls (100 gold, complete)
2 Watcher Savants (50 gold, 30 metal, complete)

Remaining Resources
180 gold
30 metal
205 food (+80 from Algae Farms)
40 bodies (+40 from Thrall Grottoes)
[/spoiler]
[/ooc]

[Llum]

[ic=Käferhold]
An unimportant farming combine, formerly known as Grimdelve. A major source of food for the empire, it's beetle farms and hatcheries supplied a large portion of the Empire's insectile workfoce. Renamed Käferhold by its new despot it is to be the new seat of power for the Lowerdeep Duergar. Now magma is channelled for defences and traps while armories and training halls are built.
[/ic]

[ic=Käfer]


Trained as a Sneak and eventually spy, Käfer has toiled in the shadows fighting behind the scenes wars and defeating enemy spycraft in the old Empire. Wounded by Deathcap Assassins while preventing an assassination attempt on an important general Käfer was bed ridden for months recovering. Political enemies used this to out maneuver him and resulted in his near-exile. Assigned to the unimportant farming dungeon of Grimdelve under the reign of Xorinath the Cruel, Käfer was removed from the spy games played by his former peers. In Grimdelve he bided his time, waiting for the opportune moment. After the fall of Xorinath and his Duergar Empire, Käfer knew it was time for him to claim his place as ruler of the Lowerdeep Duergar.

Young by Duergar standards he doesn't remember the horrors of the Ceremorph slave pens. Physically strong, Käfer's face has runic tattoos from his time as a Sneak and spy before being appointed to administrate an out of the way farming combine. Having regained his health, he is ready to claim the Lowerdeep for the Duergar.
[/ic]

[ic=Dungeon]
Starting Location: Lowerdeep 17
[spoiler=Purchase]
Hall of Trade: 2 weeks remaining 150 gold
Training Hall: Complete 100 gold 10 metal
Hatchery: 2 weeks remaining 100 gold
Hall of Smoke: 2 weeks remaining 60 gold 20 metal
Beetle Farm: 3 weeks remaining 50 gold
Beetle Farm: 3 weeks remaining 50 gold
Outer Wall: Complete 50 gold
Iron Gate: Complete 30 gold 20 metal
Magma Moat: 1 week remaining 50 gold

Units:
5 Duergar Sneaks: 60 Gold 10 Metal
5 Duergar Hammer Throwers: 40 Gold 10 Metal
Total Cost: 710 gold 70 metal
[/spoiler]

[spoiler=First Turn orders]
[/spoiler]
[/ic]

[Steerpike]

An NPC character who will be joining you.  This guy will be fun to play.

[ic=Garnákh the Disemboweler, Orc Warlord]

For the first time in centuries, a majority of the Orc tribes of the Underdeep have been unified under a single banner – the banner of the Bloody Spear.  Garnákh the Disemboweler is the largest, cruellest, strongest, maddest Orc Warlord the caverns have seen in an age.  Prone to spontaneous fits of extreme violence, Garnákh especially enjoys slicing open the bellies of his still-living victims and feasting on their entrails (his other favourite pursuits include crushing Goblin skulls with his bare hands, feeding Elves to his pet Wyvern, and setting Dwarf beards on fire).  He leaves a trail of impaled heads in his wake, skewered on spears - the bodies of fallen foes he prefers to eat.  In battle he foams at the mouth and laughs with a deep, guttural, maniacal, utterly terrifying laugh, making his madness horribly apparent to his foes.

As a tactician, Garnákh is even more crazed and reckless than most Orc Warlords, attacking with ferocity and overwhelming force, almost never leaving troops behind to defend his Strongholds.  Most of his army consists of a horde of raiders and berserkers, and Garnákh himself always leads from the front, wielding the massive spear, Bellysticker, which serves as a symbol of his reign.  Some say Garnákh plans on establishing war-camps and strongholds in the Middledeep to seek new opportunities for brutality; others claim that ascribing any direction to Garnákh's aimless slaughter is to misunderstand the Orc's fundamental madness.  Orcs consider lunacy a blessing from Old One-Eye, insisting that a battle goes best when unplanned and spontaneous, and that in Garnákh's madness lies the key to his tactical genius.  The Disemboweler has been known to assault an enemy for weeks only to suddenly desist and strike with overwhelming force against a totally different foe.  His unpredictability and penchant for total commitment to an attack makes him extremely dangerous.

A few Orcs have attempted to challenge Garnákh's rule; some of his marginally more level-headed lieutenants believe that sooner or later the Warlord will make a fatal miscalculation, and that his current tactics will ensure that the other races of the Underdeep will ally against him and exterminate all Orc-kind.  Whenever Garnákh learns of such lack of faith he challenges the disbeliever to single combat.  Each time he has slain his opponent, spitting the body on his spear and then roasting it over an open flame.  Such would-be usurpers are then served in a cannibal feast to his other captains as a means of ensuring their obedience.[/ic]

[Steerpike]

[ic=Lady Viarra Gloomsong, Dark Elf Matriarch]

House Gloomsong is the most powerful of the Dark Elf noble families, having ruled the dread city of Vashnaranzenan for two and a half centuries.  Patient and cunning, Viarra knows that to build a stable empire she must play the long game, and is willing to wait for months or years for a plan to reach its full fruition.  A pragmatist, her outward show of piety to the Dark Elf pantheon masks a cold and calculating intellect, and she scorns many of the debauched indulgences of her kin, though she maintains a façade of decadence.  Ultimately, she is not a fanatic but a ruthless, extremely practical ruler who maintains command through caution and planning.  Every scheme she concocts has a dozen contingencies; Viarra does not make mistakes.  She punishes failure mercilessly, giving no quarter to traitors or incompetents.

As a strategist and commander, she always prefers the quiet blade in the dark or the poison dart to open warfare – better to rule from the shadows and to use military force only when necessary.  Still, he is no coward, and will destroy any who threaten her city.  Her designs are sprawling and intricate, her ambition boundless, her patience infinite.  She almost never follows her armies into battle, greatly preferring to remain in Vashnaranzenan.  Her forces tend to include rangers, assassins, and similarly stealthy warriors, rather than hordes of slaves or battalions of spider cavalry.  Her tactics may seem defensive, but Viarra has a keen eye for opportunities, and will strike fast and viciously if required.  Despite the xenophobia of her race, she has been known to make unorthodox alliances and compromises if such agreements make sense: above all she is a schemer, a planner, dedicated not to ideals or principles or ideologies but to power.  No move she makes is random or uncertain - everything she does is deliberate and carefully considered, weighed against dozens of alternatives.

It is said by some that Viarra is sending expeditionary forces to Dark Elf ruins throughout the Middledeep.  What her interest is in such mouldering cities is unknown, but it is certainly more than historical.  Those who dwell near to such ancient ruins should take care and watch for her minions.[/ic]

[Steerpike]

[ic=Disa Grimhammer, called Disa Wolfslayer, High Queen of the Dwarves, Thane of Droch-Mûrad]

Disa Grimhammer was only recently proclaimed High Queen – an unusual honour for a Dwarf woman, gained by virtue of a Dwarfmoot in which her supporters overwhelmingly elected her, deposing the former Thane, Grumolf Stoneheart, called Grumolf the Craven.  Disa obtained her reputation on the battlefield, for she is a fearsome shield-maiden, said to have bested wild Drakes and to have single-handedly slain a pack of Wargs led by a vicious, two-headed Warg called Dreadfang.  She is a confident leader and a stout-hearted Dwarf in all respects, and has drunk many a male dwarf under the table in her time.  In battle she wields the warhammer called Wargsbane, with which she crushed one of Dreadfang's skulls – though the Warg remains somewhere within the Upperdeep, one head still-living, or so the Skalds claim.

Disa's Clanhold, Droch-Mûrad, is fiercely defended.  Disa has shown little desire to conquer the realms of others, seeking only to delve into unoccupied caverns, but if attacked she will defend her lands by any means necessary.  She is a better fighter than a strategist, preferring the battlefield to the war-room, but she is surrounded by wise Dwarves, and she is greatly beloved by her troops, whose loyalty approaches levels of devotion rarely found even amongst famously stalwart Dwarf-kind.

A few Dwarves still question Disa's rule, uncomfortable with the prospect of being led by a beardless woman.  Such Dwarves are in a minority, but they do prove a troublesome thorn in her side.  Many of her warriors have offered her proposals of marriage, wishing to gain honour by becoming the Thane's husband, and Disa's skill in battle would make her the worthiest of wives.  Thus far, however, Disa has rebuffed all proposals, and her suitors begin to grow cantankerous.  As the months pass her pressure to wed will grow every greater: it is known that a Dwarf Thane must have children, to continue their bloodline, but Disa has found none worthy of her, yet.[/ic]

[Dolmar]

[ic]Maldozzogoth, The Fallen Empire:

Once the Dark elves of Maldozzogoth ruled these Deeps. In ages past, their empire sprawled from one end to the other, and even those in the World Above trembled to speak of it.

And then the unthinkable happened: The slaves revolted, lead by Duergar recently escaped from their Ceremorph masters, tearing down in days what had stood for thousands of years. The few survivors of the royal family fled to a hidden sanctum, and watched in silence as the Duergar empire was raised. During this time, they began to grow distant from their kin and the old ways. Slowly, gradually, a shift happened. The remaining slaves began being given rights. They warred less and their intrigues were less lethal.

The Goddess was displeased.

They were warned. If they did not return to the Old Ways, they would be cursed so that all may know her displeasure, and the slaves they cherished so much would be brought low.

That same day, a visitor arrived to their realm - an elf, a surface elf, who was starving and wounded and far from home. The Old Ways demanded they enslave this elf, torture her for pleasure and fun, and then sacrifice her to their Goddess.

They couldn't stomach it. They fed the elf, clothed her, healed her wounds, and Dolmar Lestridae, general of their armies, personally escorted her back to the surface to insure her safety.

It's unclear which of these acts, or if it was just their accumulation, brought down the the wrath of the Goddess, but it did. Their former slaves were transformed into arachnid horrors, and they were forced to flee their hidden home. Vaelri Lestridae, the former High Priestess, was cursed worse, blinded and crippled while her brother returned from the surface, but all were marked for their rebellion so all Dark Elves might know them as forsaken.

So they moved again, this time to a new hiding place where their former kin would not look for them, and they huddled in fear of the Goddess's wrath. And then, salvation came. They were approached by an avatar of Sylessiadil, the Goddess of Shadows, who's central tenant is that that her domain is not possible without light for true Darkness is merely Light's absence, while shadows, which are Holy, are where Light creeps in to brighten the Dark. To a on, they bowed before her, and from that day forth the Dark Elves of Maldozzogoth became the Nocae, the Shadow Elves, sworn to a path of bringing light to turn Darkness into Holy Shadow.

Or at least, so claim the Nocae that have emerged in the fall of the Duergar Empire.  But Dark Elves are known for treachery, and only time will prove if this is a true attempt at redemption, or just another web of the Spider Queen.

Culture of Umbrazzid:

Although the Lestridae family is still the ruling family of Umbrazzid, they do not claim any title other than "Sir" and "Ma'am", trying to enforce the view that they are not better, merely first among equals - in private, they have even discussed the possibility of some form of government where their "subjects' were allowed to suggest laws or even make laws, but how to achieve that without it becoming legalized anarchy is beyond them.

Despite their preoccupation with shadow and gloom, the Nocae are an upbeat, friendly people, though slow to trust. They wear the darker colors they once did to honor their Goddess. The Accursed and Abominations are given a special place in Umbrazzid society - both are viewed without pity, but afforded places of honor and respect - the Accursed especially, since their only crime was being enslaved by the Dark Elves, while the Abominations are not hated for formerly leading them down the path of the Spider Queen, and are respected because they suffered the most for the rebellion - and knew in advance exactly how horribly they would be punished, yet still made that sacrifice for the good of the Nocae's souls.

[Everything below is the "official story" - which is either a ruse maintained with the cleverness only a Dark Elf could devise, or the truth, which is why no spy has been unable to uncover anything to the contrary.]

Vaelri Lestridae:

Former High Priestess of the Spider Queen, Vaelri is now the Oracle of Shadows, Sylessiadil's Priestess. While she trains others in the ways of their new Goddess, they still have long to go: and while Sylessiadil grants her visions, her eyes are still as useless as her legs. She stays within Umbrazzid, their new city, and does her best to remain happy despite knowing that, even if her people claim the right to walk in the sun again she never will - though still alive and mortal, the touch of the sun would destroy her utterly, her parting gift from the Spider Queen.

Dolmar Lestridae:

Former General of the Empire in Exile, Dolmar has resumed that role for Umbrazzid. He is not embittered by their fate, but hopeful - maintaining a belief his kin can be brought out of the Darkness into Holy Shadow as well. He tries to avoid direct conflict with any groups he believes can be "redeemed", which covers pretty much every mortal race, under the logic of "Look how far out of darkness we pull ourselves." Still, he is a general and won't shy away from combat, especially in defense of innocents and his home. He reserves a special hatred for irredeemable creatures like the Undead, Demons, and Ceremorphs. He does his best to not put on airs and eats with his men when in the field, not trying to claim "divine right" or any other superiority, and is as affable as someone who has seen so many battles could be. The only source of angst he has is his sister's cursed nature. A warrior at heart, Dolmar favors the glaive which he wields with skill, though in his time he composes epics, currently working on the fall of the Old Empire.[/ic]

[Spoiler=Pre Turn]
Done:
Armory Spire
1 Week Left:
Shrine of Sylessiadil
2 Lizard Pens
2 Weeks Left:
Improved Mines
Shadow Architecture (Defense)

Remaining Wealth (Will be double checking math since I kinda rushed this and made some last minute changes from my initial math ^_^;;)
Gold: 195
Metal: 110
Food: 200
[/spoiler]