Dark Vengeance (42 page)

 

 

Many cities proclaim themselves the greatest of their realm or empire or even race, and Talonnorn of the Dark Below was one such.

Long and proud was its history, yet in its ending it proved no different than the rest. Poisoned from within by feuding among its increasingly decadent nobles and strife between those haughty ones and the increasingly corrupt priestesses of Olone, it fell into a decline of heir-slayings and slothful indulgences, depending increasingly on raiding other Nifl cities, and gorkul dens, and even the Blindingbright Above to seize the infants of Hairy Ones, to gain the brawn needed to work and fulfill daily city tasks and needs.

Many a proud place declines so, and when restlessness for renewal stirs, a tyrant always arises. Always, such a one delivers tyranny that only hastens the inevitable downfall.

So it was with Talonnorn, as the feuding noble Houses so weakened that city that the rival city of Ouvahlor raided proud Talonnorn itself, Consecrated fought Consecrated in the city temple, and Talonar turned to a charismatic but self-serving leader, Jalandral Evendoom, whose cruelties and mass executions in the end plunged Talonnorn into lawless ruin.

As with all such dooms, many legends arise, to lurk and flourish in their tellings and retellings, until all truths are lost. Talonnorn's legends include tales of a deposed lord returning from the Wild Dark in rags and desperation, to try to restore order and rule in his turn. Some legends say his daughter, maimed or outcast or even changed
into the shape of a monster, returned to Talonnorn with him, or instead of him, or to oppose him.

The wildest of these foolish, exaggerated tales is the legend that a Hairy One, once enslaved in Talonnorn, actually returned to topple the city towers, or slaughter all its people, or rule them!

Such claims only serve to amply demonstrate the folly of believing such distorted fancies.

—from
Dynasties of Darkness,

penned by Erammon the Elder,

published the Sixth Summer of Urraul

 

From the Land of Light to the Dark Below, Orivon Firefist descended.

Four slaves he sought. Four human children, taken and chained as he was taken and chained, snatched by raiding Niflghar as a child.

He cared not what might fall to his swords, nor what he might have to do. He went to deliver them from enslavement and bring them safe back up to the sunlit world, and would suffer nothing and no one to thwart him. One man, alone, he went down, and did this thing, and in the doing destroyed the proud Niflghar city that had enslaved him.

 

—from
The Deeds of Orivon,

penned by Elmaerus of Orlkettle

(date unknown)