Xarros
The Dark Lord
Do not compare yourselves to the shorter-lived races,[...] for they do not see, they do not comprehend what it is, to walk into the dark expanse of time, shouldering centuries, seeing what we see, living for as long as we do, [...] and they would wish to bring us to their level: a pale flame on a feeble wick, a mere breath away from being extinguished. Next to them, we are a great and blazing fire, enduring even the mightiest storm. [...] So I say to them, "no, you will not steal our flame, for we shall bring it to your kingdoms, raging and all-consuming!"
Xarros (Pronounced ZAH-ross; 210 B.X – 0 B.X) was a Briadori King, first of the Drow, expert demagogue, dictator, and master arcanist. He rose to power amongst the elves as Forest King of the Elf Peoples in 162 B.X. and Great King of the Briador Forests in 100 B.X. In the latter position, from 100 B.X. to 0 B.X., the time now known as the Age of Darkness, he waged war on all non-elves, popularized Slavery and nearly conquered the entirety of Namyria.
Table of Contents
History
Youth
Xarros was born an Elf in the northeast of the continent of Gedfiel, in what is now the Briador Forests. He enlisted into the armies of the Elf Peoples in 185 B.X (25 years old). He was given the rank of Arcane Lieutenant in 180 B.X., after only five years of training–a record time for any recruit–for his aptitude in the magical arts. He attempted and failed to overthrow the Forest King from power in 175 B.X.
Rise to Power
After the coup, he was imprisoned until 165 B.X. When he was released, he rallied the popular support of the elves–a nomadic people, geographically disperse and constantly threatened by the growing civilizations who took more and more from the forests–by preaching about the unity and superiority of the elf, and spurring them on against the younger civilizations.
By the month of Thunders, 162 B.X., Xarros had amassed enough supporters to crown himself Forest King, and would fiercely argue with the Sea, Sky and Mountain Kings, in search for a unification of the four elf tribes. For the following sixty-two years, he managed to garner a following in the courts of the other three kings, proselytizing his message of elf unity to their cohorts and family members. In 100 B.X, when the four kings agreed to unify the Elf Peoples into a single tribe, they defined a political border in the northeast of Gedfiel, created the Briador Forests, and elected their first High King, Xarros.
The Age of Darkness
During the following one hundred years of his domain, in the era known as the Age of Darkness, Xarros and his Dark Army would conquer entire kingdoms, murder thousands, and make slaves out of hundreds of thousands.
His expansionist conquest began by taking over the plains and grasslands of the northeast of Gedfiel, chasing off or enslaving entire towns of any non-elves belonging to the northern Vehrun Empire. It took nearly twenty years of war before their borders reached a political geography similar to the one the Briador Forests have today. By the end of his reign, he had conquered a third of the continent of Lanest, half of Tesia, and almost every territory in Gedfiel.
The Great Schism
Since the communities of the Elf Peoples were dispersed throughout Namyria, news of the formation of a kingdom reached different communities at different points. A vast majority of Elves outside of the kingdom did not share Xarros' vision of elven supremacy. This created a great divide of the elven race: those who joined their great king in his conquest and became the Briadori, or those who would oppose his forced reign and remained the free Elf Peoples. Despite this divide, Xarros never turned his blade against any elves who rejected his rulership.
The Darktouched
In the darkest reaches, the brightest light cannot hurt your eyes. Shield yourself in the shadow of night, and a veil of stars. Follow me into the darkest depths, [...] and emerge, incorruptible, unattainable and undeniable.
It is known that Xarros was a masterful scholar of the arcane, and an avid worshiper of the The Shadow and The Star, the gods of darkness and magic. In the early year 100 B.X., when the spark of war was nascent, he went on a secret pilgrimage through the lands, and visited every shrine dedicated to either of the two deities within his domain. During his trip, it is believed he made a deal with them, promising exclusive worship of the entire nation to them in exchange for power and knowledge to win the war. Suffice to say, something was granted to him, as he returned from his pilgrimage changed, turned in to a Darktouched Elf: a Drow, ash-skinned and red-eyed. He brought with him unparalleled arcane knowledge and innovation, as well as the secret to turn others into Darktouched themselves, and thus began his transformation of the elven race.
All those who enlisted to his army would be personally granted the powers of the night by Xarros. Those who refused would be sent to the most distant reaches of the realm, away from the front-lines or any key missions. He would even manage to create two more Darktouched offshoot species, from the Dwarf and Gnome slaves he acquired during his conquest, turning them into the Döregar and the Dergnome, respectively, dark skinned, light eyed, and faithful only to him. Strangely, most other species didn't show any signs of change when undergoing the ritual, either being unaffected or simply dying instead of turning.
Near the end, Xarros' focus had changed from Elf supremacy to Drow isolationism, a shift in priorities that took some elves by unpleasant surprise. His fanatical conversion of his own self and those under his command into an entirely new race was seen as absurd and horrific by some within the Briador Forests, who defected to the free nations that remained unconquered. However, most were met with immediate prison for the crimes their peoples had committed against the younger races.
Slavery
The trade of enslaving intelligent creatures and forcing them to do labour existed since before Xarros became High King, but it was his systematization of it on his war prisoners that made it wide-spread. Records estimate that for every non-elf he killed, a hundred more were enslaved. Modern estimates put his slave count well into the two-hundred thousands.
The Vanishing
This war and reign of terror only saw an end with the sudden and still unexplained vanishing of Xarros, which caused massive chaos as his empire broke apart to the conquered nations it ruled over. Although some argue that the Dark King may have met his end at the hands of a brave group of adventurers who surprised him and took him down in an hidden location, dying in the process, others firmly believe that the man was chased by endless nightmares and delusions, hearing voices and seeing things that were not there, and that he ended his torment via ending his own life in a dark corner. Whichever the method or circumstances of his end, the effects were clear: the Age of Darkness had ended. Darktouched soldiers were chased out civilization. The four Drow Kings of Briador were tried, executed and replaced with Elf aides of the younger races. The calendars of all nations agreed this would be the start of a new era: the age After Xarros, later called the Age of Light.Age of Light
I swear, wherever that sonuvabitch went, it wasn't quite as bad as he deserved. I hope that he landed somewhere with hot tongs and rusty blades, and that'd be the comfortable treatment.
After Xarros suddenly vanished, the borders and politics of the world were thrown into absolute disarray. For an entire year–called year zero by historians– civilization tried to bounce back to where it was before the Age of Darkness. The borders of the Briador Forests were redefined as every nation under their control opted to return to being independen nations, and became what they are today.
The Darktouched Diaspora
When Xarros vanished, the Darktouched under his command found themselves without direction. They had made a deal of blood and darkness to pursue a goal and now it had been crushed. They found themselves exiled from just about every single civilized nation in existence, most times without words, just pitchforks and torches. They were forced to abandon the continents of Gedfiel, Lanest and Tesia, to move to the only other landmass in Namyria, the then uninhabited island of Sher Nasaad, where they remain ever since, completely isolated from the rest of civilization.
The Church of Light
When Xarros vanished and after the new kings of the Briador Forests were forced to provide reparations for the damages done to the other races, the elven rulers planted the seeds of a new cult among the populace, their vision set on a worldview that made the devotion the Dark King had for The Shadow and The Star into the greatest sin known. Thus, they created the Church of the Light, a clerical order dedicated to spreading worship for the gods of light, rejection of the gods of night, and a blanket ban on arcane magic of any sort, all in an attempt to deter anyone from following in the footsteps of the First Drow.
It is one of their main tenets that the violent acts Xarros committed were only because of the corruption he suffered by worshiping the gods of night, eventually reaching the point of corrupting even his very body, turning him into the first Drow.
Effect on the World
Before Xarros & After Xarros
After several months had passed, most nations of the world agreed to start counting years from the first anniversary of the vanishing of Xarros, using him as a turning point in the history of civilization. Nowadays, calendars refer to any year before his vanishing as Before Xarros (B.X), any year posterior as After Xarros (A.X.), or the year of recovery as Year Zero (Y0)
Slavery
While the forced act of enslaving individuals based solely on their race became an unforgivable act of terror, most nations never truly let go of the trade in general. After the war, there were many things to be done, and not enough hands to do it, so landlords and merchants seized the opportunity, and established the modern slave market. Many forms of slavery exist today, and range in method from the most mundane of chains to the most complex of arcane bindings, and those in their hold can be anything from poor fathers who sold themselves for coin for their children buy food with, to individuals who became too indebted to the state, or even criminals, serving their sentences as slaves to the highest bidder. If anything, while it is a direct cause of the invasions brought by Xarros, Slavery is not aligned specifically to his ideals.
Borders
Like in any other war, the redefinition of the political borders of most nations involved in it is the most visible consequence to the conflict. Once the war was over and the Briador Forests lost its hold on the occupied territories, they all declared independence and reinstated the borders they had before the war, with a few exceptions.
Briador Forests
As the Elf nation regressed back to the borders it possessed at the beginning of the war, into what is currently the border of the Briador Forests, the new Four Kings decided to maintain their new sedentary organization instead of dividing themselves into the tribes of the forests, mountains, seas and valleys once more. By unifying and giving their peoples a figure to look to, they could guide them through a better path than Xarros had done. Thus, they remained a council of kings, and instated the Church of the Light as their guiding agent in the times to come, while they rebuilt the bridges burnt to all the other nations.
Hynia
The Halfling nation of Hyvest was the last to fall in the conquest of Gedfiel. During the persecution and slavery that ravaged their nation, they fled by the tens of thousands to the north, through the southern Godfall Mountains Valley, into the Human kingdom of Hemania, which soon found itself flooded with immigrants that put the consumption of resources of the land in a very delicate spot. This, combined with the constant actions from elven agents pushed the country to a state of near civil war, where both races nearly began a bloodshed over the food of the land. It was through a diplomatic marriage between the Human princess and the Halfling prince that brought an end to it all, and founded the empire of Hynia, which occupied the combined territories of both nations once the war was over.
The Thousand Peaks & The Pact of Gold and Fire
While Xarros advanced on the south of Gedfiel and began his conquest of Lanest, in the northwest, the Dwarf nation of Varhöm realized its fortifications on the north valley of the Godfall Mountains wouldn't survive more advances. It was then when they signed the Pact of Gold and Fire, where they promised two-thousand years of gold supplies to the Dragons of the Godfall Mountains, who had remained neutral, in exchange for protection. Thus were born the Thousand Peaks, the first Dragon nation, and a protective barrier between Varhöm and the Briador Forests.
Vehrun and the Fall of an Empire
The proud Vehrun Empire sat in control of the west of Lanest and the east and south of Gedfiel for nearly two thousand years, thanks to the masterful political and social policies of High Queen Ciel Illya. When the western Vehrun Empire fell to Xarros, and its namesake capital obliterated, the remaining empire in the east affirmed itself as the new seat of the nation, only to surrender before Xarros fifteen years later, and allow him and his armies free entry to Lanest. When Briador lost its high king, the people of the west refused to form part of the cowardly nation that surrendered before Xarros. They formed the Free Cities of Vehrun, while the eastern empire became the Vehrun Principality.
Views of Other Races
They are envious of our heritage, it is a fact. We live longer, we posses more abilities than them. Even they agree, holding us as standards of beauty and grace they are unable to achieve.
As an Elf, a species capable of living up to a thousand years, Xarros saw a clear divide between them and the other races. While Humans were able to watch several generations of their dog companions pass in a single lifetime, so could elves witness the passage of generations in the other races. He posed that these younger races, unlike dogs, could grow jealous of these differences, and that they would not sit idly by in companionship, but in envious scheming, seeking only to harm the elf peoples for their own gain.
Some historians argue that his specieist views did not stem from any real hatred towards the other races, but that it was rather a system of propaganda designed to stir the right feelings in the populace, and to guide them in whatever direction he wished. Whether this was the case or not was never discovered.
Genealogy
Some people deal with daddy issues by jumping from bed to bed, like me. Others, by needing constant reassurance that they are loved, also like me. Then there's this asshole.
While most of Xarros' speeches against other races, particularly against half-elves, might make it sound like he was an elf of the purest heritage, this is not the case. While his mother was a true born elf, his father had mixed elven and human heritage, a half-elf, and already medium aged by the time he had his only son.
It is said that Xarros questioned their parents ceaselessly about his father's heritage, why he aged faster than his mother, why had they had a child knowing it would loose a parent so early on, and many similar questions. This came to a climax in 195 B.X., year in which his father lost his life due to old age, when Xarros was barely 15.
Some are willing to argue that the reasoning behind his usage of racial difference as a political tool was influenced by the unresolved issues of the untimely death of his father. It could be that he projected the rage of this loss into a hatred of species with shorter lifespans. Such conjectures, however, remain unproven.
Alignment
Neutral Evil
Species
Life
132 B.X.
0 B.X.
132 years old
Circumstances of Death
Unknown
Children
Eyes
Blood Red
Hair
Long, sleek, pearl white
Aligned Organization
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