WHAT FAGGOTRY IS THIS?
OK, sit down, it's "Tabletop Time with Drunken Uncle Johnny" again!
Elves.
Near immortal creatures of nature and magic. One of the more ancient races, often created before mankind. Existing without the wrath and rage of mankind, they strive to find harmony and balance within themselves as well as with their surroundings and their place in the universe.
Do not mistake this for weakness.
Elves have been locked in dread mortal combat with the ultimate destroyer of life and all things good.
Gruumsh. God of the Orcs. Often depicted as only having one eye as per a cyclops.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The singular eye socket was an early attempt at covering up the fact that the God of the Elves, Corellon, put out his eye with an arrow after Gruumsh attempted to paralyze him with a spear in the primal days when humans were largely hunter-gatherers worshipping totems and hiding from lightning. In the early days, Gruumsh fought with the other primal Gods over where his people would exist, and in his wrath, shattered and despoiled the virgin areas of the Prime Material plane with his great spear.
The elves have been locked in mortal combat with the orcs since time immemorial, and all know that their spirits will ascend to the Heavens to help Corellon guard the Prime Material plane from Gruumsh and his foul offspring. The God of the Orcs is followed with such fanaticism that Orcs will often remove their own eyes to emulate their fearsome God.
Gruumsh has no pity for the weak, and he views the elves as weak just as he views those of his people who cleave too closely to 'civilization' to be weak.
Gruumsh was the first, but not the least of Corellon and the elves foes, but their visage and savagery has defined the elves war against those who would ruin the balance of nature.
There can be no truce, be no peace, between the orcs and the elves, for as long as one side lives the other will seek to wipe out what they see as an anathema to their own beliefs.
Even if Corellon was to finally slay Gruumsh his sons await to carry the banner in the eternal war of elf versus orc.
Elves who devote themselves to holding back the endless tide of green flesh have no respite as their endless days and summer nights are broken by warfare and strife.
But Gruumsh is but one foe against the elvish people. While the elves have allies in the humans, endless be their wrath, the dwarves, mighty be their works, the halflings, silent be their footsteps, the gnomes, clever be their ways, and the elves few numbers can be offset by alliances with the shorter lived races against the orcs, who all see their depredations and savagery, there exists a foe that dwells in darkness and secret.
In eras gone by, nearly forgotten even by elves, there was a plague. Some say it was Gruumsh, others say it was a long forgotten elven god of disease, when the primal gods were worshipped, but those who know such secrets know that it led to a violent schism within the children of Corellon. Leading these was one of his fellow divine beings, who saw their people pushed out of the elven spaces, caught between the green anvil of the orcs and the hammer of Corellon's worshippers.
They escaped into caves, pushing down, below the frightened humans hiding from lightning and thunder who would tear an elf limb from limb if cornered. Past the dwarves, who sought to wrest iron from the bones of the earth, and into spaces so deep that darkness is brightly lit.
The children of Lloth, the spider goddess.
Cursed by Corellon to lose her beautiful form and take that of a hideous spider, Lloth led her people in darkness, and there, with the eternal twilight of a drow's lifespan, they relearned the ways of warfare and magic. They set aside their hatred of the children of Gruumsh, taking them as war-slaves for use in the endless wars that Lloth encouraged to strengthen her people to resist the tyranny of Corellon's 'perfectly balanced world'. As time went on her form changed
Her people began to see beauty in the spider's form.
And Lloth changed with them.
Lloth knew of the martial fury that dwelled within the hearts of all elves, and she honed it, shaped it, and nutured it.
Worship to her became the focus of the drow life. Where Corellon was content to allow his children to worship others of his pantheon, Lloth was a jealous diety, for she and she alone had saved her people from the cataclysmic civil war that had rocked elvish society.
The strange radiations deep within the earth threatened them as the males became more spindly, more fragile, and Lloth blessed the drow with resistance to the radiation, changing their skin to be more like her own beautiful armored form.
She gifted them with magic, and extraplanar allies, in return for slavish worship and glorifying her with all manner of praise.
The drow soon became a force to be feared as they wiped out or drove out the apex predators of the deep underdark.
War bands began back tracking the ancient paths, seeing if the surface was anything other than a disease festering wasteland of corpses and depowered divinities wailing over empty cities. Wondering if the plague had run its course.
In the drow cities, the name of Corellon was still said. Seen as the one who's flaming sword had driven their people into the dark, who had intended on cursing Lloth with a hideous body but instead taught the drow to see beauty in other ways.
The matriarchs ruled over the cities with an iron fist, backed by magic and creations of wondrous power, allies, and slaves.
Deep within the earth, they plotted their return when scouts made contact with Giants and the matrons saw their chance to punish the worshippers of Corellon through an intricate plot to send the giants marching on the lands of Corellon, his human allies, and even the children of Gruumsh.
It would be glorious.
But things came apart, when the plots of the Giants were uncovered, and human mercenaries followed the trails back, eventually confronting the matrons.
And eventually assaulting the Demon Web Pits.
But the drow, like all elves, knew that short term set backs could still be turned into victory in the long run. The mages began to research, now that the strange and unusual magics of the surface world had been rediscovered.
The drow matrons knew that the children of Corellon were still locked in eternal warfare with the children of Gruumsh. However, the humans, full of wrath and fury, crafted for battle, blessed with short life so they felt no loss falling on the field of battle and would march tens of thousands into the field, had developed armor and weapons.
The children of Lloth adopted them, adapting, as ever.
After all, they had been fashioned by Corellon for the eternal war against Gruumsh and the hordes of goblinkind.
The drow were back.
But the children of Corellon did not fear. They had allies now.
Kingdoms and empires would band together to throw back the tyranny of the matrons of the children of Lloth and the savagery of the Sons of Gruumsh.
Elven magic and vision was well served by the rapid advancement in knowledge, technology, architecture, and weaponry by the wrath filled humans, who could match the orcs face to face on the field of battle.
Beauty, poise, grace, and magic ability were the children of Corellon's gift to the pact between those races who would stand against Gruumsh and Lloth.
Elves see no issue with nudity, seeing it as just the beauty of the creations of the Gods.
The elves, and the pantheons of good, had Corellon on their side. A fearsome God willing to face Gruumsh, willing to stand up for what was good and right.
He had learned from the humans as the humans had learned from his people. He had learned the way of wrath and carnage.
There was nothing that Corellon had to fear. Nothing that he could not face and overcome. Nothing that his people, or his allies in the humans, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings, could not eventually overcome.
But from the chaos of a turbulent age, came a foe that not even Corellon could overcome.
And Corellon was struck down.
Lloth was struck down.
The children of Lloth were struck down...
The children of Gruumsh were struck down.
The children of Corellon were warped and twisted.
And the creatures of chaos took over the once proud lands.
No longer was Corellon and his allies able to stand against the tide of darkness.
For all had been lost.