They felt that destruction, even at that distance, and much of the insatiable need left them with that event they had come to their senses, but still felt corrupted, tainted, by what they had experienced. They were listed as casualties of the final battle by their fellow Huyundaltha and, in its own somewhat existential way, that was truth. By the time the Demonic Agent of Chaos was destroyed, they were several days removed from the Elven Forest, on a self-imposed journey in search of redemption. They had no inkling that this very bloodlust would become the key to victory against Molgoth. Not to put too fine a point on it, they fled, lest their bloodlust turn them against their fellows. These twelve were able to call apon the will and sense of purpose of their fellows to restrain their craving for blood, violence, and mayhem long enough to remove themselves from the conflict. Twelve Huyundaltha gave of their souls and were corrupted in order to save the majority. The reaction of the majority was instinctive, a part of their being. Had there been warning, these donors might have been restrained. While most remaining Huyundaltha were able to wall themselves off from it as anathema to their very Elvishness, they could do so only by sacrificing some of their own, drawing apon the spirit of Elvishness within them to protect the whole while leaving those donors unprotected. When the inherent potential for bloodlust was aroused amongst the Huyundaltha expedition against Molgoth and his Cult Of Stone, those tainted by that disease of the spirit were not merely those present. Because it was contrary to their purpose for being, this was never revealed to even the most senior members of the Elvish Race it was a secret known only to the Huyundaltha. One of those gifts was a sharing of spirit, an ability to call apon each other’s reserves of stamina, clear-headedness, and resolve, of strength, nimbleness, and fortitude, and yes, of Elvishness itself, in time of need. Although the majority of Elves did not know it, the Huyundaltha were not simply a vocation, they were an entirely new sub-race of Elves – one that members of the core race could aspire to and join, for the differences between them were artificially imposed. When Corallen set the Huyundaltha aside and taught them how to use their sheer “Elvishness” as a weapon in the defense of their race, he did more than simply create and educate them in a new fighting style and philosophy he gave them new abilities that set them somewhat aside from their kin. Once again, this is very much a first draft, as can be discerned from the over-use of “signaler” and “signaling” in Chapter 64. Just thought I’d offer that as a time-check for those looking forward to my posting something else on these Mondays. And that’s a good thing – fiction, even of the campaign background sort, is a LOT more work than a non-fiction article of the same length! My best estimate is that the Orcs and Elves series is 70-75% complete as of the end of the end of the Orcish Clan Wars. All of which means there should be more chapters per week and fewer weeks to the finish. What’s more, as they advance, there’s more that I can do with a copy-and-paste from existing materials, and there’s less critical info that the players don’t already know – so I can get a lot more compressed. Two more weeks should get us past that part of the story, at least. Even with the fact that this entire Orcish side of the story was originally only supposed to be three chapters – not the 17-or-so that it has turned into. That might give the impression that we’re only about half-way through, but as the Ages grow more recent, they also get shorter – which means that I expect fewer chapters per Age. But humans have always thought their own history is the more important than that of anyone else. In contradiction to the human history, the Age Of Empires starts before the Age Of Heresies and continues straight through into the age of Genocide. I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time…įor those who read the player-redacted version of The Ages Of Existence (presented in Inventing & Reinventing Races in D&D: An Introduction to the Orcs and Elves series part 3), it should be clear that the story is now deep in The Age Of Genocide, as humans call it.
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