Legend's of the Great Rise: A Delve History

The Finding:

The Great Rise, was discovered by the Gnomish explorer, Gelwyn the Tinker. Who lived roughly 15,000 years ago in the Malverdin Peak's mountain range. His love of ecology, minerals, and desire to unlock new and fascinating scientific and naturalist secrets led him to a stretch of the River Arkon north of present day Korjin. The area was fraught with surface perils because of its proximity to pagan Wolven cults, goblin raiders, and the orcs.

But amid it all, hardy elf folk still ranged the wilds about the river, and on a time whilst visiting the pilgrimage trails of sacred Ilithin, the gnome encountered a group of rangers who shared a tale of great many-legged monstrosities creeping out of the caves and hollows in recent years. He had studied many natural systems in the Malverdin's, and from the telling he suspected a new and undiscovered passage into the deeper Delves must lay in the south.

He traveled with those elves to the suspected entry sites, but was disheartened to find that the passage most likely to have been the portal to the surface was long since collapsed and impassable. Elves, you see, tell a tale of a thing recent as far back as 10,000 years ago. Gnomes of the age were a fearful lot who knew little about mines and stones. They had just begun to take up the pick in the way their dwarf cousins had  done for the life of their history. They were just learning to be diggers and such at the behest of their estranged kin.

They had superstitious beliefs about digging too deep and falling out the other side of the world, or unleashing devils to devour their clans. While some of the fears might be warranted, more often than not their was nothing to substantiate such claims. And an enlightened sectarian cult grew up seeking answers by logical observance and deductions; of which, Gelwyn Fiddlebow, was a member.

He scoffed at dangers and rationalized the if of the gods themselves! But still, he prepared for years to be safe in the unknown of the deeper haunts. He journeyed to Djin tents and Elk Wood Island to learn all he could of the magic art of both men and elves. For four tireless centuries he studied to become one of the greatest wizards ever to live, and at the end of that study he hired a team of miners and had them cut the slate from the pathway.

Down for a few miles the tunneling went in a path fit only for gnomes. The trek to and from the surface becoming a tedium to the workers. And all the road Gelwyn was on hand to direct their efforts. Till at long last they neared the final expanse of granite and he jealously sent the miners packing back to the mountains to give tale of his maddened ways.

He was not a greedy person or prideful beyond any other gnomes like. He simply wished to protect the miners from any harm, and figured any beasts beyond the rock needed his special touch. The worker gangs would simply complicate the matter in a fight, and many unwanted deaths would mean a push to end his research back home. So he gathered his trappings and set them near behind as he chiseled the last few feet into the unexpected find.

Sure enough, he had to blast fire and lightning as the stone crumbled before him. A gaggle of a hundred or so kobalds met him and made the opening a bloody one on outset. When he came in past the singeing corpses of freshly dead monsters. He struck a spell of illumination and his breath was stolen away by a crystal covered cavern as high and wide as the mountains of his homeland!

He set up a way post the next day. A small cabin with stone walls, a warehouse full of supplies, and elf rangers to guard the complex, who did so readily with little protest. For it afforded a defensible position warm fires and dry roofs to rest under in the rain. They built a shanty there also, and aldermen came as well from the plains to rest there on their rides north trading horses. Gelwyn's Inn, they began to call it, and that was well enough for the little explorer, who was bent on keeping the findings exclusive.

When he surfaced it was to catalog and scribe his efforts and he would make an appearance at the tavern, Arkon's Whisp, to drink and regale the visitors with magic shows and revelry. But he remained silent as the grave about his discovery. He'd go down alone into the blackness of the path he named his, Exit Road.

There in the bowels of the world to strike up a lighted orb of magic and marvel over the twinkle of endless jewels, gemstones, crystals, and amethysts. All like a star filled night sky absent its moons over a clear freshwater spring lake as vast as any sea! He named it the, Crystalline Sea, and it was this feature that gave him his greatest joys. An eyeless clear fish scuttling away as the light beams unnerved it, delicate tube worms like so many roses-a-bud would slink back into hiding as he passed by. It was his own private world, magical and delighting to his senses.

It was several decades later that his tragic accident befell. Not monsters, or demons, or mischiefs lain by devious kobalds, for they knew the wizards powers and feared him well. No, it was error and mischance of his own making. On a time, as he dangled perched high above the, Crystalline Sea, he worked happily chipping out a sample of the vast mineral deposits at the top of the domed cavern. he hung from a rope staked chair with a system of lines, pulleys, and harnesses keeping him from falling backward to his death.

He had gotten into the habit of using a particular spell of light to work in, and was so busy at the chipping overhead that he didn't bother minding his ropes. A knot loosened (or so it is now speculated) and the tiny adventurer plummeted to his doom inside an intensely bright, heat radiating, plasma churning orb of brilliant light.

The Rediscovery:

For centuries, the whole ordeal was forgotten. The elves, sensing their odd employer was now gone, put a great stone lid over the Exit Road, and left the inn, tavern, and outpost for the aldermen to do with what they would. In a hundred years time the routes changed, a few attacks by undesirables happened and the ruined buildings burned to ash and faded away. There remained nothing and no evidence of the expedition at all. And for the gnomes who recalled the foolish explorers quest, they wrote it off a credence for their fearful beliefs about not treading in the deep places of creation.

Some 1,800 years passed by. Men fought a war with Wolven and Drall hordes and won. The Human Empire, was forged and fell in a brief lived dominion of the world. But men are a strange and brief race of meddlers on Epica. They reach for knowledge they are too short lived to understand and tread on grounds known for ages to be sapped and spoiled by the unholy. They unleashed the, Second Darkness, and in a few years time the world they had built lay in ashes at the hands of the Vampires and Ghouls. Men, even the fiercest alder kin of the Gwartallanii in the Malverdin's fled for new lands to escape the horrors of the Trio.

Men of Korjin resisted as knights and paladins, but the realm was taken for a cattle town. It was then that men took leagues with elf rangers long in years by the banks of the river Arkon, and they were told of a place deep below the ground where men might find life and a safe haven to weather the age of evil.

The elves spoke of a dear little friends death, a disappearance unsolved, and a wondrous world below their feet. No undead knew of the place, and it had lain sealed for many a year. They charged them, to venture forth into those depths with elf steel and bows. To seek out the fate of their friend, and then after to seek a living free of the insidious plague of the vampiric onslaught. They only had to ask once.

They took of the best in Elk Wood weapons and mails, magical arrows and potions for healing or harm. The elves then taught their druidic shaman the makings of magic. Hereto, it is believed magic was not known to men of any land but the Djin-Rujik principality. There men had taught wizardry to the like of, Vermand the Maddened, so named for his unlocking of the evil text that began the darkness afresh. So knowing this, magic's not tied to holy deities or nature were shunned by men.

Elfish wizardry was something no man had ever been allowed to study. It was deeply holy energy tied to the very essence of the All Father. Most of the magic was focused on the manipulation of light. Those hoping to explore or to tame the depths would do well to know it, and since they had clerics and holy men and women in their number they taught them to harness the ancient power.

So it came to it, that men and elves journeyed beyond the seal for the first time as friends, seeking answers and asylum beneath the earth. Down-and-down went the company, until light faded to blackest void and lanterns had to be struck. On a path where only the wee-folk were ever meant to travel. Then they doused the flames, for the black became lit by a faint pinkish light before them.

They went on in curious wonderment. What light could shine deep in the world? Elves had no answers, men were all but confounded no matter their wise learnings. The Korjish paladins had never read on such strangeness, nor were the saga's sang of pretty glows in the deep of the earth in thane halls. There was no knowing what they'd find, and so they grew anxious as the light grew brighter.

When they reached the end to the Exit Road, they were perplexed by the winding growth of thick vines and roots. Such things were not held in the kept writings of, Gelwyn, for the elves had studied it well. This was a new event horizon for all who tread the path. The ancients were like babes themselves, and men took heart from an even footing in mind with, the Fair.

They came out to a forested shore, a mush covered mossy swamp, and a few stands of grassy patches besides. The light was like a sunset's pale hues, but bright enough to make fuel for the growth of plants. How had they come to be here? What seeds had been carried down into these caverns? They were unable to fathom the ifs of it all, for they looked for the source of light and beheld the giant glowing orb for the first time.

The chronicler was, Belen Arn Elekin, a scribe of Ediwn's court. He records the moment thusly;

"And behold, the light beat upon us as if a cloud shrived sun were at its wane. We knew not how such a miracle might chance to form, nor had we the wit to do aught but marvel over the beauty of the scene. It was then, whilst thus enamored of the vista, that we solved the riddle of the trees. For a brace of sweeps flew us by overhead, chirping, and so we knew that the seal must have failed a little over times march."

-Belen Arn Elekin

Form this excerpt we can see the boundless wisdom of elves about their natural surroundings. Seeing the birds dart by told them how seeds could get into the caverns. The birds ate seeds along with their natural diet of insects hunted at low light. The droppings left by the birds germinated plants of various types. In addition, some seeds borne on the winds, however unprobably, must have blown the four miles of downward tunnel to rest in the grimy soil of the lit cavern. Aid of course can be attributed to the traffic of birds flying back and forth from surface to the cavern creating a wind to ride on.

The plants that grew up were healthy but twisted variants of the surface species. Constant dimmed light with no movement played havoc on sprouting plants expecting a day and night cycle. There was no way to grow but up, and west.

Trees shot out over the great body of water, they clumped thickly at the trunks but jutted away from the Exit Road's opening, working to not obscure the passage, but to hide it well. More birds, or at least their remains, were observed and recorded in the forests. They must have followed the sweeps down to populate the new niche only to perish over time. That would explain the many forms of surface vegetation transplanted by avian transport.

The ground closest to the water was a soft and unstable slush of green slimes, smelly bacteria of many hues, and algae. A mist rose from the great subterranean lac caused by the evaporation of the water under the unending glare of its artificial sun. This produced a humid vapor that lit on metal and the vegetation almost constantly. Hard barked trees have soft mushy skins there, and most were covered in parasitic growths of fungi and lichens.

Belen, also rote of a massive crayfish with no eyes feeding on rotted fish, that greedily snatched its prize and backed into the murky green waters swiftly once disturbed. There was a food chain in this new world and it appeared that food was a valuable commodity the elves took note.

Almost as soon as the party took a gander the name of the place emerged as an afterthought. It was as tall as the tallest mountains and so wide one could not see the other side of the horizon. There was one fitting name and, Belen, gave it to us for posterity, calling the enormous cavern, The Great Rise, for the first time.

The Quest for Enlightenment:

Elves figured out the mystery rather swiftly after they discovered the magical sun. There was a specific spell of the, Light Freer, that could create a much smaller and less intense version of the same kind of plasma orb. It took weeks of scouring the dome ceiling with spyglasses before they found the ancient remains of rooted climbing pins and dangling rotten ropes. The chair was still partially hung as well in spite of the age.

It all became clear to, Belen, as a practicing mage. The little wizard had fallen into his spell and evaporated instantly. This spell is fueled by the casters own soul. It's called "Soul Burn" and creates a light bright enough to blind walking dead or night lurking Drall. It can even be hurled at foes at great force as an offensive spell, the intensified heat of the resulting explosion able to slay most creatures. In hindsight we can say that the same spell would have been a bane to the first Ghouls and Vampires. Though in that age such was unknown to those who fought them.

With its caster absorbed the effect could never end, it grew, and got much hotter with an entire soul to stoke its core. It now feeds eternally on the spirit of the goodly gnome in the hereafter. Thus they named the oddity; "Gelwyn's Sun", to honor him and to settle the minds of the curious for generations to come.

In the year that followed the descent into the Rise, the elves studied the local ecology and marked the changes for the humans who wished to make this a home. Some organisms had perished and died out with the constant light and warming effects. Some adapted and flourished in the new setting. They identified dangerous and editable creatures in the lac and about the shoreline. And in the meticulous way of their kin they developed ways of hunting them.

They stripped fibers from certain plants growing in the underground forests and wove them with looms into thread. With this dexterous material gleaned from the natural surroundings the men could now weave nets and fish the lac for years to come. A tool that would help generations of humans flourish here if they had the wish.

It was inevitable that the lac would call to them before long. Across the mists, on a far horizon there rose a stand of trees. It was an island clearly in the midst of the Crystalline Sea. Curiosity hit the humans and they had to explore them. What would those wilds be like? How long before they'd reach it? And what would they use as a vessel?

The elves were ready to return home. They had unlocked the secrets of the environment for the men but now they felt the call of many tortured souls languishing under the undead menace. Like truer sons of the light and nature, they bid men farewell, but not before crafting a sturdy raft of mangled willow trunks. Then off they went up the Exit Road, with a promise to seal it over again on the surface, and to keep their journey secret unto death from the Vampires.

The men divided their camps. One to stay home on the campsite they knew and could manage, and the other consisting of the best warriors and rouges the party could field. A cleric and mage went with some twenty heroes both men and women across the green soupy waters of the lac. The rest set as a guard over the exit point and base with new children and mated pairs raising the first "Delve Born" people of the human race.

The Lost Clan:

Gnomes will tell you they are the greatest explorers on Epica. Elves will say they have been wherever your thinking of traveling at least once in times long march. Dwarves will say go there if it please you, but don't expect them to tag along, and that its not to say they are afraid of the journey, mind you. But the truth of the matter is that men are the greatest adventurers. When forced into staying and dying or fleeing to parts unknown men populated the four winds of the world. It is the human portion in the halfiling that makes them so eager to journey and curious about the world.

It was sure men under the earth would work up the itch to set out across the foreboding lac of the Crystalline Sea. If one sees the grungy waters thick with green pond-scum as they are today they will wonder where the name originated. Likewise, in that age the murk was thick the deeper one looked into the great body of water. But the elves gifted these men with the, "Treatise of Gelwyn", and so they knew what once was.

The crystals jutted from the banks and walls with moss and algae growing upon their now dingy, moist faces, but the sight was not hard to imagine if they pictured a sterile cave with no light. The mushroom's were dried husks turning to powder by the time the first humans set sail from the Lower Forest's. Anyone could see they were in a completely unique and new world. And fittingly, they were becoming a unique tribe of their own.

They used the elf Rope Knot Calends to judge the passage of days, weeks, and months. The time keepers were the early risers and women with child. Those who kept the time accurately to the hour, as the elves would have it. Upon leaving, the leader of the expeditionary party said to look for their return no later than six weeks from their embarkation. In nine weeks time there was still no word.

The kin and friends of the many who left grew fearful of what might have become of them. Nor did they desire to leave them at need and stranded on the island if there was aught to do for them. So it was that the whole of the clan took up tools as hunters and warriors, and made a pair of larger rafts fit to carry all forty across. And they went as families and guardians to prevent any further separations from their own. Thus, they shoved off and sailed the green mineral waters under the warm glow of Gelwyn's Sun.

The waters were still except for the plunge of poles into the lac that created disturbance, or the occasional breach of a massive tadpole-like white fish. Sounds would echo for a league as if following each ripple from the ferrymen's pole. Every drop from the shaft like a symphonic tone. It was frightful to think of sinking it the midst. What devious creatures would feed on them adrift in the waveless brine? Or after death, to sink or float in the abyssal mire as the crayfish tore loose and hoarded bit of their bodies. Every stroke of the pilots arms was unnerving.

And that damnable mist, was it there simply to thwart them in keeping a steady heading for the treetops. The trees being their only bearings to hold a strait line. When they at last came to the shore, they found no shore at all. The trail from the first party clearly visible in the mucky swath. Waders hopped bravely over the sides to pull them some distance over waist-deep sludge. The sludge ending in a mass of tangled roots they had to again portage the rafts over with sheer grit and muscle, a league at least, before they hit a sturdy enough landing for the rest of the clan.

They soon found a path cut through the forest. The forest itself new and fascinating, the trees grew up strait and tall and not slanted like the Lower Forest's, for they were directly under their magical light source. They were stunted however, for the light was ever constant with never a night sky or lunar cycle offering the call to grow tall.

The cleanly hacked path led to a central clearing on dry ground, a two day journey to get this far without the work it took for the first party to cut their way through the thick spruce forest. Even carrying their rafts was easily accomplished. There was a clear effort to aid those who would follow. The next waking hours after a good rest and a brief feast of fried fishes, the party went on to the far side of the isle and could make out a fire on a high bluff on another larger island. It was closer to the first isle but would still take many an hour to reach.

The fire that burned there was old, a plumb of smoke rising that told of the flames having died away. If they pushed on all day they could reach the far shores of the first isle but they debated the if. What was the meaning of the second fire. Was it a signal to come and find them, or were they beckoning them to join them after having seen their own cooking fire in the dimness? None could make that guess for sure.

The company decided to go to them and help if they needed any. They carried their rafts and made the muddy shores with the end of the counters day. The path was again easily discerned as they came directly behind their advance groups trail. The waders got into the mud and drug the rafts out to open water before climbing back on board. It was about six hours with no rest at the poles, and the ferrymen had brought the clan over the gap to the second grand isle. This was the larger of the two. Muddy shores again, but the land hardened and dried much sooner.

The isle had grasses, ferns, and bracken growing to the knee. The company looked about for a few days wondering why the party had not simply made a habitation here. There was a fresh spring well creek running across the plain, and emptying into the lac. It was like a miniature forest, and beyond that another true woodland. There were nesting crustaceans easily gathered for food, and the clear flow of the creek meant easier fishing and better drinking water.

They puzzled over it further when they found many giant crayfish shells by the old camp sight. They had taken from the bounty, but had moved on. Then they made a disparaging discovery. They looked on the hilly span leading to the forests and found there many tiny corpses. Dead creatures less than three feet tall. They also found two graves large enough for humans to rest inside and covered over with stones too heavy for the little monsters to lift. The dead creatures had been gnawed upon by crabs and creeping things in the cave ecology. They had died weeks ago.

The plan must have been to make a permanent encampment but they had been attacked by the little devils and lost kinsmen. Above the graves there was a large stalagmite and carved clearly on it was an arrow pointing up a well trod pathway. The path led up a high hill. This was undoubtedly the bluff they had seen the smoke rising from days before. So up they went, resting along the way twice. The climb taking a long time to manage on the narrow rocky slope of the trail. It must have been used by the little demons for many years.

When they reached the summit at last, they found a curiosity. The wooded area had been clearcut at a height of about a half foot from the root. The cut marks were not easy gashes but labored chipping strikes. These pygmy trees had been felled by the little beings, and clearly the job was done long ago. Once they had passed beyond the lumbered scene they saw where the timber had went. A perfect little palisade ring around a tiny hillfort such as men might built. The then found where more trees were freshly cut at two feet off the ground. These had obviously been cut by men, and they found the reason on closer inspection of the fort.

They found six more graves of men. They were in the center of the fort. The horror sank in as they could plainly see what the cause had been of such wanton death. For about the walls were scores of the dead little things. The ditch was near filled with them, and spears, tiny arrows, little axes, and swords of iron were stuck in the wall. Or they were laying near or in the grasp of the lifeless little fighters. The little beasts had amassed as a horde and assailed their brethren in this fort. The men reasoned it all as they held observances for the slain, toasting them with the small supply of plumb whiskey they had been saving for a happy return of their heroes.

The wiser of the clerics told the tale to the others as a battle saga once he had pieced it together. He spoke on how the brave explorers had tamed the isle for a home only to be set upon by these little warriors. For they must have been native to the cavern and the islands. He pointed to the second arrow carved on the wall of the little fort, that pointed westward to yet another island they could clearly see from the top of the bluff. There, he told them, a greater army of the monsters lived in strength. They had taken the fort from the few, only to be met by a great many. But glory to the men had been won. For the minuscule raiders had taken only eight lives in this brief war. while the men had lain hundreds to rest.

The Korjish folk amongst the clan were morose and somber and drank to forget their sorrows, as the thanes of the Gwartallanii sang and praised the deeds of their fallen heroes. But it was still a hollow celebration. They had missed their kin once again, and by the look of it only briefly. So they ate well, rested a day more, and then made way for the shore.They sailed west-by-south-west and reached the smallest of the three isles in a weeks time. Only to find they had missed the battle yet again.

This time they had struck as raiders and the creatures had made a valiant stand to defend their home isle. They met the men on the beaches and there fell by the dozens. The trek up the northern hill formation was short but it took them a couple of days to reach the hills from the beaches. They found burned bodies of the tiny marauders, and sang hymns of thanksgiving, for this time no graves of men were found. They had slain the females and young of the tiny host to the last. It was a brutal war of attrition they had won, and again over the mass grave and cairn a chipped arrow pointed the way west. For the hilltop they peered over the sea and far in the distance thy saw the shore of the far side of the Crystalline Sea.

It took three days steady movement to reach the Western Plains. On the voyage the wiseman had cracked open the ancient book of, Gelwyn, and read for them the identity of the little monsters. At last the began to call the kobalds by their true name. They matched his description most certainly. There was no mistaking the beasts were what he had wrote about. Gelwyn, had slain hundreds of the savage little beings in his day. And they had avoided the light for a long time, but had grown bolder over the last century or so.

They rested on the plain, and read a final sign on a stalagmite pointing to the end of the magical lights extent. Into the darkness where no one knew what lay ahead. The company then made a drawing, and four were chosen to carry the chronicle of men in the Delves back over the sea and to the Exit Road. The rest of the clan followed after their heroes as the record keepers sailed for the Lower Forest's.

When they arrived they were met there by a company of dwarf surveyors and gnomes who had come down from the, Lakes of Fire. They shared tales of the upper world with them and told them that the elf rangers who had befriended them had spread word of their exploits. There was no longer any fear of the vampires. For the mortal races had turned them back at the, Siege of Thereghat, and had learned the tricks to slay them. So the explorers went up the Exit to the welcome light of day, and shared their tale of adventure for all the world at newly liberated Korjarora.

The dwarf expeditions took four years to divide into two parties and traverse the shores north and south of the great underground lac. Gnomes took a hardy love of the central isles after making a boating trip after the fashion of the first brave explorers. When the dwarves made their meeting on the Western Plain they recorded a great calamity in the Western Passage. When they went to the edge of the light they found a great chasm had opened and cut the tunnel in twain. The span was vast and they sang a lament for the men who would forever be lost beyond, Death Fall Gorge.

Colonization:

For a period of about 3,000 years the wee-folk migrated and continued to settle in the Great Rise. The Gnomes, thinned to a few thousand individuals, gifted their ancestral haunts over the Malverdin Peak's to men, and Bel-Jah-Dorn became a land for the barbaric men of the mountain glens. Tiny wagons and deer sleds cut a train south to the Exit Road, and the gnomes went willingly into the nape of Epica's bosom.

Dwarves came from those same mountains, gifting halls and mines to the the Order of the Wing. The dukedom and the local clan had fought the vampires to end their blight of the living races and so it was a generous and happy time to honor men in their resurgent rise from darkness. They went also to guard the gentle gnomes, as it was after the fabled, Battle of Mount Primus. That's why dwarves had come to dwell under the Malverdin's in the first place. They left their riches there to seek new mines and carve new halls, and of course to watch over their Gnomish kin.

The gnome royals came down under a banner host of dwarf warriors and able gnome elites. Their king, Karl Jah-Dorn-No-Bard, made the crossing to the central, Isle of Shun, in the midst of the Crystalline Sea. For, Shun, the three rocks were named after the death that had taken place on their shores. Surely they were places of curses and shadow. But the gnome saw them as paradise waiting to be exploited. The little forests grew firm and strait up towards Gelwyn's Sun. The gnomes brought barley, beans, turnips, carrots, peas, corn, and cabbages. Potatoes, wheat, rice, chickens. They transformed the fertile soils into even richer farms and gardens and used magic to make the surplus grow larger.

The queen set up a trade commission that paid the dwarf halls in food for minerals, and set up a yearly caravan with the surface in Tumulton and Korjarora. By the first thousand years the market were established, and in another thousand the modern order of the Rise was established, as the dwarves and gnomes put minds and muscles together to build the Palace of Ruby Panes. The pyramidal structure was built in granite quarried from the western end and shipped to the greater isle.

The stone skeleton was then painstakingly overlaid with precious molten gold and ruby stones were faceted into a mosaic of red windows along the sloping sides. The palace let in the natural light and with lamps in the inner halls the gnomes royal house at last were honored with luxuries unparalleled in this world. The dwarves of the Rise took no small amount of pride in their works. They built a great wharf on two sides of the main isle, and used the narrow timbers to make dwarf galleons for transports and cargo ships.

The dwarf navy that emerged is the main trafficker guild today on the Crystalline Sea trade lanes. The ships they build are second to none even today. It was after this age of widespread expansion and utilization of the resources to be found, that the Rise was thrown back into conflict. It had been eons since a kobald colony had tread the location. When the Western Passage was severed the path for the original kobald threat was cut off forever. None could even guess what would befall the now bustling realm.

In the three thousandth year of the newly built kingdom the menace returned. Just north of the, West Plain, a tunneling mob of the tiny monsters broke threw in the upper portion of the cave near the ceiling. The high break was noticed by a band of dwarf mushroom harvesters. The mushrooms elsewhere in the mighty cavern were all but extinct. They were gathering a load of red cap's onto a pony driven cart for the journey to North Hall Mine. The falling rocks alerted them and the huge block narrowly missed them in their plummet to the cavern floor.

The age of plenty and prosperous peace had come to a close. Almost as an omen, the Gnomish king died that very hour of an old head trauma that had lain dormant for years. The aneurysm burst suddenly and his life ended as if linked to the entry of the kobald scourge. It may have been purely by chance, but the wee-folk saw it rightly as a bad portent for things to come.

The First Devler War:

The next four hundred years were tense times, as the evil races learned to tolerate the bright glare of the sunlit zones of the Rise. They also tunneled downwardly to come out more expediently on the cavern floors. Dwarven Avers, the Crossbow dwarves of legend were summoned from far distant Karzanz halls. Overland they came in vast trains of rams, many hundreds of heroes who's ancestral kin once stood the battlements with Nwyrrin rangers against a dark god. They came as directed, in answer to the threat of flying kobald bands raiding the Shun's.

Bat riders, vicious hook-chain dragging pilots with bows in hand. The stuff of a gnomes nightmares.

When the Avers arrived they learned swiftly to avoid the isles, or to come in vast numbers or not at all. For the marksmen of the, Low, were a great host and well able against flying foes. (To Be Continued)