Daeloth story

Chapter 1: The Fateful encounter

Étharié had just left Solaris, she was walking alone in the desert. Behind her, the sun was red, slowly disappearing under the horizon. The sky was blue, the clouds oranges under the sunset and the gold dunes were slowly turning ocher with the fading light. She was only wearing a see-through dress which highlighted her perfect curves.
Her plan was to join her betrothed during his expedition in Corsolath's pyramid, concealed by the shadows of night. Like him, she was eager to learn more about the Eldars, their ancestors, and also, to spend time with him in a newly discovered ruins.
Feeling impatient, she used wind magic to enhance her physical capacities and started leaping from one sand dune to another, light as a feather.
The sun had disappeared and temperature was quickly dropping. She was close to naked, but strangely enough she was not cold tonight. Her blood was boiling and she was feeling like a sand wolf on the hunt, looking for her prey. She decided to further raise her movement speed and began to raise dust clouds after each of her jumps.


She quickly arrived at Corsolath, the area surrounding the pyramids felt eerie. The archeologists camps around were empty, there was no one. No sound could be heard but a faint whisper coming from the slow breeze. Étharié focused on her magic perception to feel living beings nearby, she could only feel one very slow and arrhythmic magic pulse, one coming from a magic signature she very much knew, Menelaus.
He was very close to death, as she was feeling it, she rushed to his side without much care for the unknown power emanating from his side. He was laying on the ground, covered in blood, unconscious at the only entrance of the pyramid. Éthariá used first aid water magic to heal him, she could not detect any injury, his very weak state was coming from psychic damages and not physical ones, damages she could not fully heal.
She spent a very long time putting back Menelaus in a stable state, or so she thought. She was so focused on her task that it could have been hours, days, or few seconds, she could not tell.
Only when it was finished she started breathing again, she released all the tension that was inhabiting her from the moment she found him, she let the fear loose and it overflowed... Fear for him, for his life. Fear of what he did to be covered in blood, Ereldar's blood from what she could tell. She was running crazy scenarios in her mind, one after another to try to understand what happened, maybe there was something else, that would explain the weak state of Menelaus. That would be the only explanation, something had attacked him and surely the others which were missing. But who could beat the third seat of the council? Who or what. Fear of the unknown...

While she was focused on her inner feelings, Étharié did not notice the blue scorpio that was slowly moving towards her back, it was big, the size of a big cat, the head of the scorpio was very like a women face, an atrocity never seen before in these lands. When Étharié noticed the moving creature, it was too late, she did turnabout just in time to be struck by the scorpio's stinger right in the chest, between her breasts, shot in the heart with a dark and malicious poison. She fell on the ground like a disjointed doll, paralyzed. A carmine liquor was pouring off her chest as she started feeling the warm leaving her body, her blood which was still boiling with anticipation of this night moments ago was now being wasted on the dirt next to the pyramid. Her consciousness was quickly fading then coming back to her before fading again in a raving loop. It felt like her consciousness was only coming from the pulsating blood that was still present in her veins. It felt like this phenomenon kept repeating itself for an eternity, or maybe a few instants before she felt a shivering cold penetrating her flesh first, then her bones and finally her mind. And she finally embraced death... Or so she thought.

She opened her eyes, everything was black. Étharié was floating in the void. An endless dark sky was before her eyes. Here, no stars, no sun, no moon, no things, nothing. Maybe she was in another plane of existence, or maybe she ceased to exist and death is only an eternal slumber in the void, alone with your mind. Something that would drive anyone crazy. But she wasn't as alone as she thought as in front of her a strange being appeared. It was a female of an unknown specie, half humanoid, half insect, her insectoid traits reminiscent of a scorpio. It had a scorpio tail with a very sharp stinger, chitin plating all over its body and many limbs with pincers and claws coming out of its back. It was covered in gold and had very intense light blue eyes. Around the strange being, a dark and wicked aura, many souls were fused together in this aura, ereldar's souls, full of sorrow and suffering. That is when Étharié noticed that she knew some of the souls...

In a geyser of emotion Étharié consciousness came back to her, her body was overrun with spasms and her mind by a burst of obscure power. Her teeth were grinding against each other, her fingers were digging furrows in the dirt, her hand frozen with a claw stance. She groaned in pain and tried to stood up but she couldn't.
After some time, she regained control of her body and could stand on her two feet. It took her a moment to understand where she was and remember what happened. She touched her chest where the stinger hit but there was nothing, no hole, no wound, nothing, her dress was immaculate and there was also no blood on the ground where she had felt. But she could clearly remember the pain of the stinger and her blood pouring out. This was a real mystery, what had happened?
She looked around for the blue scorpio but could not find any, she looked for its tracks but there was none. Menelaus was still unconscious but he was still there, alive and still stable, she made sure. That's when she noticed close to him, a blue and gold dagger. A woman was sculpted on the hilt, she felt the urge to take her, and she did. She knew the dagger, she was named Xérulath, but who was Xérulath? Étharié's mind was very confused with all that recently happened, she felt like she was missing some pieces of the story here but could not remember anything.
She felt like the answers she was seeking were kept in Corsolath's pyramid and she felt the surge to look for them, alone, in the empty pyramid. And so she went for it.

She entered the dark and cold place only wearing her see-through dress and the blue dagger that she decided to keep, she was walking in the shadows as she did not take a magic light with her, the luminescent crystal would have proved very useful. Étharié decided to use fire magic instead. She created a fire ball that she kept close to her, the light was flicking and she could not see far, but it was still better than nothing.
Without any guide or map, she felt like she was going to lose her way in this underground labyrinth but she did not. She arrived at an intersection, it wasn't the first she crossed in her path, but this one was different, the place was reeking of blood, walls were painted red and ereldar corpses were dismembered and scattered around, butchered by something or someone. She stopped for sometimes in order to understand what had happened inside the pyramid.
After some investigation, it turned out that all ereldar seemed to have been torned to pieces by magic spells never seen before. The magic behind this was erratic, it was both pulling and pushing energy, fusing and spliting it. The corpses were so mutilated that Étharié could not recognize the members of the team. Starting to feel sick in her stomach, she decided to continue her search for answers.
While walking randomly inside the pyramid maze, she encountered many corpses on her path, all Ereldars, all more or less killed by the same kind of magic, or, sometimes, by what it looked like friendly fire. She finally arrived to the root of all that chaos, the very chamber where Menelaus had found the dagger a short while ago.
The pedestral was still there, empty. Étharié felt a strange feeling, like she could feel some kind of emotions coming from the dagger, from Xérulath. She despised this place as she was forgotten there for a very long time that felt like an eternity for her. But she had to be there. Guided by the object feelings, Étharié approached the circular wall behind the pedestal, instinctively, she knew that one of the bricks was a mechanism that would trigger a mechanism and open a hidden door.
She pushed the brick, some distorded words came to her mind and she said them out loud. The wall started to glow and vibrate, the chamber's lit up with a soft blue glow and the passage showed a corridor. She entered and the wall close behind her.
The some small crystals in the walls interstices were glowing blue and spreading light allowing Étharié to see, the bricks in the wall seemed older than the ones in the main passages of the pyramid maze, very much older. She followed the only path offered to her and arrived in a small room that looked like a laboratory and a library at once.
She started go through all that was in the room, various unknown objects of whose usage escaped her, various books she could not understand and many schematics with symbols and shapes she had never seen before.
In all this mess, she found a mirror, she looked at her reflection inside it and saw a girl inside that looked very much like her, but different. While her hair were white, her eyes purples, her kips red and her skin white, the girl in the mirror had dark grey hair, golden eyes and lips and a brownish skin. But the differencies only stopped there, they both had the same faces, the sames ears, the same dress... She looked at her own dress, and she saw her own brownish skin through the dress. She dropped the mirror which broke in pieces and scattered on the ground, astonished by the changes in her appearance she started to notice how different she was from before. She felt power, she felt stronger. More determined than before, more alert, everything was clearer. It was like a veil had been lifted and she could really see, feel, hear for the first time. Colors were brighter, smells stronger and her magic perception could pick a variation in the fabric of magic way farther than before. That's when she felt them.


Numerous ereldars were entering the pyramid, some of them were currently helping Menelaus, other were going inside the ruins like she did, to investigate and understand what had happened there.
She was thinking quickly, what to do to not get caugth with all those precious artifacts. She did not want others to find the secret chamber.
Xérulath woke up from her slumber and the little effigy of the women on the dagger opened her eyes and yawned. Surprised, Étharié dropped the dagger that came in contact with the ground. "Be careful, stupid! I'm not a sweetbutter knife" The ereldar stopped moving, did she heard a voice in her head or was it the dagger talking? "Yes it's me, I'm talking into your head, I own you now that I've pierced you. Remember that sharp stinger right into your heart? Wasn't a dream, it was a contract, I'm your master, you're my servant. I give you some power, you serve me. Now speed up and go into the chamber were I awoke and close the main door before those lowly beings get to us." Étharié froze for a moment astonished and confused, then her heard started to hurt more and more, a pulsating, throbbing pain was growing inside her mind. "Obey me mortal or I have no use for you and I will kill you. Slowly." The pain quickly faded, it was a warning, a threat, do what I tell you to or else...
Étharié walked to the other end of the corridor, she opened the passage following Xérulath orders and quickly closed the gate of the main chamber using an old mechanism, but she was wondering if they would be able to sense her using magic perception.
"No they won't, this chamber and the secret room linked to it are both covered in hiding spells, you won't be found here, we won't be found.
Now, we have some work to do, you, have some work to do, grab the books I tell you to grab and I will help you understand the foreign language the books are in, you need to learn everything in this room."
Étharié was confused, she didn't want to spend too much time here, it will be noticed by her fiance, everyone will see that she is missing and they would never think she died in the pyramid as she was not there in the first place. Also, if she had appeared with this appearance everyone would be suspicious. Finally, she would starve to death.
"Worry not as I can feed you with my very own energy. For your appearance we will disguise you with a mix of illusion magic and makeup and you will be able to exit this secret room by another passage, you will likely arrive somewhere else in the ruins of Corsolath."
She decided to voice her concerns, talking alone felt weird to her.
"I need to go now, Menelaus was wounded, as he will be my husband, they will be looking for me, I need to go now and prepare."
"Then go, take me with you, hide me and we will come back here whenever we can. I can never be discovered, you understand me, right?"
"Yes"

And so, Étharié, equipped with Xérulath left the pyramid unseen. They got back to the city of Solaris where Étharié found a way to sneak up unnoticed. When the mages of the conclave arrived at her door, it was morning, she was being called to the justice court because of what had happened in the pyramid and she would be a witness that would determine if any wrong doing had been done by Menelaus.
Obviously she lied, she used the dagger magic to cover the facts that she was lying. She told them that she had never set foot in the pyramid, Menelaus was there for his work as he told her so and that she would never think Menelaus able to kill his team members and friends. She was easily released and Étharié could go back to her work.

Chapter 2: The rise of chaos

Étharié and Xérulath spent many years preparing (approx 400 years), as Menelaus was shut at home for a very long time, the wedding was cancelled and Étharié married another conclave member from another family, the fifth seat Kaneathos from the Kelotras family. As soon as they were married, she stabbed him in the heart with the dagger, Xérulath did not kill him. Like Étharié, Kaneathos became a servant and they started working together towards Xérulath goal, building an army.
You have to understand that at this point, Étharié et Xérulath's wills were inter-connected, the desire of one was the desire of the other. The dagger was a corrupting object, evil. But it was not a corruption that you could feel at first, it was a slow, steady increase of loyalty until you would became a total fanatic following Xérulath every move, every order, every thoughts.
Étharié and Kaneathos started recruiting ground borns and middle borns ereldars, attracting them with promises of increased magic power. Those were not false promises, but this new power was coming with a cost and a very expensive one furthermore: Your freedom.
Strangely enough, apart from Étharié whose apparence changed a lot when stung by Xérulath, in most of the corrupted ereldars, no visible change could be seen. In few of them however, the skin became darker, their hair and eyes could also change color, but nothing that they could not hide with illusion magic or makeup.


Their numbers were increasing slowly and they became many. Soon their secret organization became known as the Dark Cult and the members as the cultists of Chaos. They were infiltrated in all strates of society, all castes and even had one seat in the conclave with Kaneathos. The last part of Xérulath's plan could soon be started.
In the city of Solaris, tensions were on the rise. Rumors of a sect were spreading in the streets, something was brewing. Rapidly, those rumors even reached neighbouring cities and soon the entire ereldar territory was under heavy pressure.
The conclave began to investigate on the matter, they created a special constabulary 'Ithael'. This police corp was composed of experienced battle mages whose set of skills comprised tracking, investigation and combat, both physical and magical. But like any other organization in the ereldar society, some members were already part of the cult.
The corp first serious lead on the Dark cult came from one of its spies. The goal: Create even more chaos. The lead was logical and everyone believed it. It was that the Dark cult was in fact an anti conclave organization created by ground borns radicals which believed every ereldar should be equals. Against the power of the High borns, they had the numbers as for every High born, there is at least one hundred ground born. The spy also had a list of name and so, mistake were made. Ithael squads were dispatched in the ground born wards and they raided the houses of the culprits, capturing every one in the house, man, woman, children. Some of them tried to fend for themselves, not understand what was happening, those were killed on the spot. Attacking Ithael was a proof that you were acting against the Conclave.
When it was proven that the list was fake and that the ereldars caught were honest ground borns, the scandale started, middle borns and ground borns ereldars alike went in the street and blocked the conclave building to demand answers and when the conclave stayed silent, the Dark cult started to recruit members in the opposition, many middle borns and ground borns joined the Dark cult at that time, it was the goal of the scheme since the start, more chaos, more followers.
In the meantime, Ithael was looking for the spy that organized all of this as he had disappeared right after the events. They had a tough time tracking him, but they finally did.

He was hidden in an underground house, in the ground born ward, surely waiting for his accomplices. When the Ithael squad entered, he was not alone, they were three. The goal was to capture at least one alive to question him. It was a six man team against three, but capturing them was a harsh handicap to overcome. The battle was difficult, from the nine ereldars , only three survived. The spy that escaped and two squad members that were burried alive when the house collapsed.
From the reports, we can understand that everything happened very quickly, Ithael members entered the house, they used earth magic to block their opponents movement by imprisoning them and psychic binding to block any magic, but it didn't work, all of the target escaped the psychic binding spells with some unknown magic, they shattered their earth cocoons and returned fire using some black lightning spells that utterly destroyed two members of the squad instantly. The remaining Ithael members then engaged in a magic battle were one target was killed and the spy used the unknown magic to cause a shockwave that collapsed the house and the underground it was in and used the distraction to escape, killing his last teammate and two other agents on the spot. Later, only two members of the squad were found alive in the rubbles.

Chapter 3: Civil war

With the news about a dark magic spreading in the city, Menelaus came back on the front stage. He reached out to the conclave and showed them what he had been working on the past hundred years, he had a good enough understanding of the evil magic that appeared in the pyramid and that nobody believed in, Witchcraft as he called it, he studied it in order to find a way to block it, and he did, Menelaus what was the opposite of Witchcraft, Theurgy. If Witchcraft was chaos, Theurgy was order. They were both sides of a unique coin. As he showed to the conclave how one and the other could break each other, the fifth seat Kaneathos showed signs of anxiety. At that moment, Menelaus was showing spells to detect witchcraft magic residus. It was a total surprise of the member of the conclave to see that the chamber of the conclave had witchcraft residus inside its owns very walls, this was due to the presence of the fifth seat, a corrupted one.
As soon as Menelaus understood the nature of Kaneathos, he created a sacred shield around the fifth seat in order to shackle him, blocking his escape and protecting the other conlave seats from being attacked by the evil being. The cultist fought back, he used impressive magic potential to break the barrier and free himself, but Menelaus kept it up. He even began to slowly decrease the barrier size, restraining Kaneathos movement until he could not move anymore. the he added a second barrier around the first one and put binding spells around it to block anything from travelling inside or outside the barrier.
Kaneathos emprisoned, the conclave could not doubt Menelaus power and that Theurgy was the answer to their problem. As soon as possible, Menelaus regained a seat at the council, the first seat. His first motion was to had mandatory training for Ithael agent in Theurgy magic. His second was to ban the usage of Witchcraft inside the conclave territory.
The emprisonment of Kaneathos had not been made public, yet, after only a few days, news spread that a conclave seat was a member of the cultists. Ereldars are not people easily shook, but this time, the city was very close to mayhem. Paranoia and suspicion was settling in everyone's mind, society was on the verge of collapsing, it was time for the Dark cult to rise from the shadow, to wreck havoc and take power over the council.

Like forest fire, witchcraft appeared everywhere in Solaris' city, neighboring cities were plagued with it too. The Ithael agents had not finished they training of theurgy and were overrun by the cultists whose power was overwhelming. But Menelaus had already thought of that. When came back from his hermitage, he was prepared. During his time far from politic, he teached theurgy to a handful of powerful young ereldars from all backgrounds. They were nine, 6 girls and 3 boys, all very young but already pretending to the title of Archmage, the highest rank for non High born magic users. The nine took the matter into their own hands, each of them came as support an Ithael squad of agents, teaching them on the run the best ways to handle and block Witchcraft.
Quickly, a stalemate between Ithael helped by The nine and the Dark cult appeared and in a matter of weeks peace came back to the ereldar society. But that peace was only on the surface. In the deepest of the city, Witchcraft was still there, the Dark cult was reorganizing itself and searching for ways of defeating their new enemy, the theurges.
Back at the conclave, after the arrest of Kaneathos, doubts were rising about Étharié integrity. It was unlikely that she did not knew what her husband was doing, but she was nowhere to be found...


Étharié was back at the secret chamber in Corsolath's pyramid, she was very angry at Xérulath for not warning her about a sacred magic that could destroy the Dark cult, after all, SHE was the one to have put so many time and efforts in preparing all of this, it was HER time to shine, HER time to destroy the conclave, HER time to build a new society at her own image. The civil war had failed and how quickly! If only Xérulath had warned her about it, if only Menelaus had not came back, if only she had killed him when she had the chance hundred years ago when he was unconscious.
While she was mulling over her past mistakes, Xérulath who now assumed a humanoid form was searching in the books for a specific type of incantation, something she had ruled out at first for her plan as it was very dangerous, a demon invocation spell. With this, the cult would be able to bring her brethren from their dimension into this one. This plan was like a double edged sword. Demons were a very individualist specie, if we can call this a specie, and invoking a demon would certainly not create a form of allegiance between the summoner and the demon, that would means at least three things. First, there was not guarantee that the demon that would be bring here would willingly serve Xérulath's cause. Second, there was no assurance either that the summoner would survive the process. Third, any demon could be appearing, a minor or lesser demon, that would be basically worth nothing in her current situation or a very stronger one that could destroy her plans and surely her with it.
After a long discussion, Étharié and Xérulath agreed on the plan, they would teach the way to summon a demon the fifty most promising members of the cult, and so the plan was set in motion.


There was no more tension in Solaris, peace was back. Menelaus was still the first seat of the council and was ruling the ereldar society with the help of the other eleventh, the nine were promoted to the rank of Bishops, a new rank only bestowed upon Archmages that had a mastery of Theurgy magic, Ithael was recruits agents and training them in theurgy magic. The ereldar society was moving forward while the conclave was preparing it to another surge of Witchcraft.
Menelaus had always been a visionary, but since the accident at the ruins, he had become very cautious. Some would say, too cautious, a particularity very rare among the High borns whose power and longevity protect from many mortal concerns. The majority of the motions he was passing at the council were related to the Dark cult and Witchcraft, reinforcing the power of Ithael that was now under the Nine direction and giving it absolute power over any other organization in the ereldar society. They could easily imprison someone on the sole suspicion of being part of the Dark cult or even for presumably helping it. Hate for Ithael appeared in every stratas of the society, they were despised for their harsh methods and judgements that would be quickly carried out in most cases. For many, it was simply death, and for even more it was interrogation, physical and/or psychic torture, then death. They were called Witch hunter as they were on a witch hunt, they became the grim reality of the ereldar society.





----------------------- TB reworked

The risky ritual was entrusted to fifty cultists. No one, not even Xérulath, could predict which demons would arrive from the summoning. Lesser demons that would prove useless to the cause? Major ones that could have been a threat to even the cult itself? But it was a required gamble in order for Étharié to achieve her objectives, destroying the Conclave.

On a particular night, a blood moon, Étharié gave the order for the summers to thart the ritual. From the fifty cultists that summoned demons, only a handful survived. The majority died killed by the summoned, some killed themselves after a glimpse at the worlds of the demons. In Solaris, the cult rose back from the deads and the demons were set free causing a huge mayhem in the city.
Overrun by the demons, Ithael and the Nine hunted them but many many ereldar lost their lives during this night. Cultists, agents and civilian alike.
Menelaus took the initiative and with his two most powerful students and some agents of Ithael, decided to raid the pyramid off Corsolath where he was sure Étharié and Xérulath were hiding. The penetrated the pyramid and after a very difficult battle, Menelaus left with Xérulath in her dagger form. He died later in Ithael headquarters while Xérulath was sealed away.

Forced exile

Having lost the demonic artifact, root of their Witchcraft, Étharié and her most loyal followers decided to evacuate the city before being hunted down and killed by the agents. Joined by many other cultists from different cities, they left for the east on a short notice while the city was mourning the loss of their leader, Menelaus.
They travelled far east before encountering their first trouble. Ithael had sent agents to prevent their escape. As Étharié was the most powerful of them, she defended what was left of the cult.
They continued east and the farther from the artifact they were, the weaker their corruption became. They felt weakened and even if their dark magic was still present, it was not as powerful as before. Also, they could now better differenciate between their goals and Xérulath objectives. Since the ritual, their loyalty and obedience toward Xérulath was in fact a spell, a curse. Destroying the Conclave was not something they had wanted, it was another society they wanted, a better one, without the separation between High born, middle born and ground born, a society more egalitarian towards people and not based on their magical potential. But building this society while crushing the current one was not a viable solution.

The green folks

The long exile they were in made them think about their actions. Now, being called the cultists of chaos seemed very strange to them as chaos was not something they wanted. They wanted peace, equality and maybe, one day, revenge over the demons that used them and betrayed them. One night, under the full moon they decided to take a new name Daeloth which means "Blessed by the moon" as a memory of what they did during the blood moon night and that they survived it. A strange name.


Ithael agents had not been seen for a while now, but the Daeloth continued to walk east to escape a maximum Xérulath's curse and the pursuers the Conclave may had sent.
The met another specie of humanoid that no ereldar had never met, the Orc. Green or brown skin, massive. The first tribe they met wore some kind of dog pelts. They were very aggressive and attacked the Daeloths. They encercled them using their mounts, some type of very big wolves, killed a bunch of daeloth and stole some more, they were obviously looking for slaves.
The daeloth, weakened by the curse and the very long walk, could not defend themselves very much. Étharié was less weakened by the curse, maybe it was because she was the first to have been corrupted and she had now assimilated the power, or maybe it was because Xérulath's grip on her was stronger and the distance had not broken the link yet. She followed the wolfs' track to the tribe village. It was a small camp, there was maybe one hundred greens and maybe twenty of her folks. Étharié let all her repressed emotions overflow, she hated to have been promised to her uncle, she hated to have been manipulated by Xérulath, she hated failure of the Dark cult and she hated even more the weakness of her followers. And mainly, she hated herself for her own weakness. Her anger fuelled her magic power, the dark energy that surrounded her was deadly, she approchaed the village

••••Era of mortals••••