High Lady Haelydre of Khail Thmarrow
Title: High Lady of the Bone Web
Race: Drow
Affiliations: Khail Thmarrow, the Velkyr, Temple of Arasta
Reign: Year 993 P.S. – Present
Status: Alive
Children: Prince Throdir, Inquisitor Hyroneth, (daughter, missing)
Early Life and Ascension
High Lady Haelydre was born to a minor matron house within the Drow caste hierarchy of Oshmedell, the capital city of Khail Thmarrow. Her rise was neither traditional nor expected; she was a priestess of the Webmother Arasta, but lacked the favor and bloodline to inherit power through conventional means. That changed during the Silken Reign Trials, a rare power vacuum event after the death of the previous High Lady, when Haelydre challenged and defeated her rivals through a combination of sheer martial prowess, cunning political manipulation, and whispered blessings from Arasta herself.
She emerged not just victorious, but divinely ordained in the eyes of the people. Her ascension marked a new age of militant expansionism, arcane experimentation, and religious fervor.
The Giant-Wed Pact
In one of the more mystifying and controversial chapters of her life, Haelydre entered a wedlock pact with a frost giant of unknown name, rumored to be of ancient, glacial royalty long thought dead in the upper reaches of Uuthrall. The details of their courtship are a source of myth and debate among Underdark historians, though what is known is that this union bore her Throdir, a towering hybrid of drow and frost giant lineage who now serves as one of her most terrifying enforcers.
This pact is believed to have been more than romantic—it is speculated that Haelydre sought the blood of primordial creatures as part of her pursuit of apocalyptic lore and forbidden power.
Second Marriage and the Inquisitors
After the death or disappearance of the frost giant consort (no record exists of his demise), Haelydre took a traditional drow mate, a noble-born male sorcerer whose name has since been scrubbed from public record—whether by execution, disgrace, or sacrifice is unknown.
From this union were born her other two children: Hyroneth, the calculated and ruthless inquisitor, and a daughter whose name is held under seal due to her recent disappearance. Hyroneth serves alongside his elder brother Throdir as an enforcer of his mother's will, both tasked with hunting the missing daughter who has, according to whispers, fled Haelydre’s control with secrets about her true intentions.
The Prophecy of Ragnarok
Since early in her reign, Haelydre has been obsessed with the Prophecy of Ragnarok, a doomsaying myth preserved by the Fire Giants of Gorthoid, which foretells a time when the flames of the deep shall rise, the surface shall fracture, and gods shall fall to ash.
Rather than embracing it as her fire giant allies do, Haelydre has grown consumed with preventing Ragnarok, seeing it not as destiny, but as divine punishment that can be forestalled—or even undone—through arcane manipulation and sacrifice.
To this end, she has orchestrated surface raids, not merely to seize resources or slaves, but to gather specific bloodlines, mages, and "soul-essence" of ancient lineages. These individuals are fed into a colossal, sealed machine hidden beneath the deepest catacombs of Phazzongad, the holy monastery city. What this machine does remains a mystery even to her closest allies, though some whisper it is a loom of fate, rethreading the pattern of destiny itself.
Rule and Legacy
Haelydre rules as an absolute matriarch, surrounded by the elite warrior-guard known as the Velkyr, drow women altered through ritual and sacrifice to become living weapons. Her gaze alone is said to silence dissent, and few dare speak her name without the accompanying prayer to Arasta for mercy.
She is a creature of contradiction: protective yet cruel, devoted to survival yet obsessed with an esoteric cataclysm, brilliant in statecraft but ruled by divine madness. Her children serve her, fear her, and—if the rumors are true—may one day be her undoing.
Her legacy is still unfolding. Beneath her empire of bone and silk, a god-machine spins in silence, and a prophecy yet looms.
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