Shadow Elves: Clan Nelymbryn (The Apostates)
by Rodger BurnsThe shadow elves' construction of the Chamber of Spheres has not been without its hazards. At rare times in the past, accidents and catastrophes have happened; among the worst of these is what has been called a 'Ruin Cascade', a sudden destructive burst of magical energy which can rip across the City of the Stars, striking out of the sky at random shadow elves and apparently disintegrating them utterly and irrevocably. Ruin Cascades have occurred only four times in the history of the City of the Stars, and each one has caused a great deal of grief, anguish and vengeful retribution as hundreds or even thousands of shadow elves disappear and their relatives search frantically for whatever unknown saboteur encouraged the Cascade or try to decide which under-shaman's negligence brought it about. As for the lost elves, they are believed dead forever, with even their souls destroyed by the Cascade's fury.
A chance discovery in the wilderness of southwestern Bellisaria, though, may be about to change all that. Within the last ten years, Alphatian adventurers have begun to make contact with a strange colony of elves living in caverns below the Surkarian Range. These elves are exceedingly strange - they speak in an unfamiliar language, prefer lances and crossbows as weapons, are of smaller stature than most dwarves, and have strange pale skin except for a handful with strange symmetrical purple birthmarks. In other words, they're shadow elves - though nobody in Alphatia knows enough to realize this. In fact, they're descendants of the victims of one of the Ruin Cascades, who were not disintegrated but merely teleported to an unknown location halfway across the planet.
Though these lost cousins of the shadow elves may not have been destroyed, this doesn't mean they appreciated their predicament. The Ruin Cascade dumped them in a strange, empty cavern with nothing more than the clothes on their backs; the shamans among their number found themselves unable to commune with Rafiel, or use any sort of divine magic. They survived the first few years of exile mostly off sheer grit and determination (though had to abandon most of their past historical records and scholarly traditions, aside from practical magic), renamed themselves the Nelymbryn after an early clan-leader, and abandoned the Refuge of Stone and worship of Rafiel, becoming almost aggressively agnostic. (The fact that new births in their new home were almost uniformly healthy, free of the deformities that plagued them when living in the City of the Stars, only reinforced this decision.) Over the next several centuries, they built a small but strong city-state beneath the Surkarian Range, focused on weapons use supported by battle-magic and able to drive off all the nameless monsters and magically-created beasts crawling through and below the mountains. They even have a few shamans - connected to Khoronus, Djaea, Kagyar or Noumena mostly, of lower-than-usual social status but tolerated for their unique magical abilities.
Contact with the Alphatians, though, is almost certain to cause substantial change among the Nelymbryn. From the Alphatians' point of view, the Nelymbryn elves are Alphatian subjects (and Aristocrats to boot) and should be established as trading partners, recruited into the army, and encouraged to share magical knowledge with the Alphatian elite. The Nelymbryn themselves are unlikely to take the same viewpoint, though - they may have rejected some of the older shadow elves' traditions, but they're just as proud and just as suspicious of strangers - and that's not even taking into account the fact that most of the nonhuman things that have threatened the Nelymbryn caverns over the years originated from careless Alphatian experimentation. Alphatian traders and explorers have founded a new village on the southwestern coast of Surshield and begun diplomatic and entrepreneurial overtures, but these efforts may not go as smooth as the Alphatians expect. The intervention of adventurers may be needed to prevent an all-out war...
In addition, news of the discovery of the Nelymbryn elves has slowly moved westward, mostly via rumor and tavern tale, and only within the last year or so reached the clanholds of Alfheim. The Alfheim clanmasters recognized what almost no one else did - a physical description matching their old nemesis - and they're absolutely uncertain of what kind of threat these strangers might pose. The backwaters of Alphatia are certainly a long ways away from the Alfheim forests, true, but elven clanmasters take the long view - they'll almost certainly want trusted agents to visit the Nelymbryn holdings and report on the nature of this strange appearance. Of course, anything that the elves of Alfheim learn will soon enough be shared with General Gilfronden, and from there to the City of the Stars...
The Immortal Rafiel, meanwhile, is suffering a crisis of conscience. He's one of the few beings in the multiverse who can guess at the origin of the Nelymbryn elves and their past history - and he's only known of their existence for a few years, himself. Something inside their cavern - he suspects a Blackmoor device of some kind - shrouded their presence from him and has kept him sensing them directly or making contact with shamans; up until they made contact with the Alphatians he honestly believed them destroyed by the Ruin Cascade. Now they've been rediscovered, and the revelation of their survival has the potential to kick off a major religious crisis among the core body of his faithful. Not to mention that there's possibly as many as three other groups of Ruin Cascade survivors out there, in who-knows-what other locations on Mystara. He needs help, badly, but of what kind? And who can provide it to him?...