The History of Calendêhl

Also known as "The Retribution" by less elf-loving cultures, this event marked the tragic culmination of centuries of conflict.   After 300 years of war between the Drow Enclaves and the Alvenorian Dominion, the high-elves sought to end their slow, grinding defeat in a battle of attrition against their ancient foes.   On the first night of the 37th millennium ASD, the Alvenorian high-elves unleashed the most ambitious and catastrophic ritual ever conceived by mortal minds. Harnessing millennia of arcane knowledge and every magic-capable soul within their dominion, they attempted to shift the entire Tempest Wastes of Calendehl into the Abyssal Planes of Existence.   In their boundless arrogance, the elves believed their power was beyond even the judgment of the Gatekeeper—the cosmic aribiter of the rift between planes. They were wrong.   With a fury unparalleled in the history of Daurinath, the Gatekeeper responded to the elves’ audacious insult. Of the scant written accounts that survived the devastation, it is said the Gatekeeper appeared personally in the elven capital of Everbright. With a single swing of his blade, he tore open both the sky and the earth in an act of apocalyptic retribution.   The city of Everbright was annihilated in an instant, reduced to an unrecognizable wasteland. Almost no one survived the devastation. The heart of Calendehl itself was forever changed as the cataclysm incinerated everything within 500 miles and sundered the tectonic plates of the world.   From this unimaginable destruction was born what is now called the Everbright Scar, a gaping wound upon the continent, serving as both a reminder of elven hubris and a testament to the Gatekeeper’s wrath.   After this cataclysm the fall of the Alvenorian Dominion was invetible. Their retreat was sudden, swift and consequential. Within a few years, most of Calendehl was abandoned. The human and minor races left to their own devices.   The Drow Enclaves, however, suddenly without an enemy, were aprehnsive about their luck on the overworld. Worried that similar fate might befall them, the Drow Empire retreated their forces, only keeping their territorial gains in the Tempest Wastes for themselves and turning their attention to long-ignored internal quarrals and to their wounds after a very long war.