S.Harrow, AR 152
This book is the first in a series detailing the historical upheavals and disasters that have shaped the geographic and political landscapes of the Underdark region seated beneath the Arelith Archipelago on the World Above.
This region of the Underdark has a history best divided into three discrete periods, where significant destructive or transformative past events represent the transitions between each. These would be the Cataclysm and the Deluge, two traumatic catastrophes visited upon nearly all regional civilisations by the designs of malicious powers in the Lowerdark.
These two events, occurring within a century of each other, both caused significant social and economic upheaval and resulted in entirely new modes of civilization taking form through the Middledark and Upperdark. The periods between them may be named Pre-Cataclysm, Post-Cataclysm, and Post-Deluge.
The Underdark: Pre-Cataclysm
("Udosian Era") This period extends from the undefined past to the year 61 AR. In this time, the two notable civilizations housed in the local Middledark were the drow city-nation of Udos Dro'xun, founded many thousands of years in the past, and Urblexis Grond, a much smaller but resilient collective of Underdarken races located in its proximity, founded not more than a century before the Cataclysm.
Udos Dro'xun was constructed atop a sprawl of towering stone pillars in a huge Middledark subterrane, and was the capital city and heart of regional drow culture and politics under a rigid, dogmatic Lolthite orthodoxy. Both its geography and historic religious inflexibility contributed greatly, albeit indirectly, to both the fall and the collapse of most regional civilisation in AR 61, and its resurgence in AR 88-90 with the foundation and first years of Andunor.
At some point in the millennia before the Cataclysm, two of Udos Dro'xun's resident Houses, each declared renegade by the city at large, were exiled from the city to re-found their holdings in the Lowerdark. Records of their respective 'crimes' in the eyes of the former city's government of the time are lost, but one may presume accusations of non-conformity with the Temple Orthodoxy.
However, the decision for their exiles is believed to have served a secondary purpose: beyond the removal of offensive elements from the city, the conditions and terms of their exiles were designed to capitalise on the much more stable geography and geology of the local Underdark at that time.
It is recorded that prior to the later calamities, the local Underdark was both geographically centralised around Udos Dro'xun and climatically far drier. With less fragmented and more contiguous tunnel systems, the drow of Udos Dro'xun had identified what was at that time the singular regional ingress point to a major juncture to various caverns in the Lowerdark, known locally as "the Vault."
The path that lead to this outer tunnel entrance was, at least in the century leading up to the Cataclysm, a straight descent for several hundred meters below the fallen city of Tollidor, which in the present day is adjacent the Crinti-occupied ruins of Elg'Nizrul (at the time a drider keep), and opposite the Great Scar from the Port City Andunor.
The original tunnel drop is believed now completely collapsed, though alternative sub-surface routes are unconfirmed. Further, as Tollidor is believed only to have fallen within the past five-hundred years (consult the book "The Fall of Tollidor" for details), any other paths existing prior its Fall are unknown.
House Freth and House Claddath (in this era named the "Exile Houses") both resettled in facilities constructed at opposing points around the bottom of the initial tunnel, which had been fitted with massive gate locks to keep the creatures of the Lowerdark sealed within.
Each of the Exile Houses possessed keys to only one such lock, and in their state of active hostility with the Underdark at large and active war with each other, it was believed that both locks of the Vault's Seal would thus never be opened. Thus the grave danger posed by the Elder Mind, the Tyrant Hive, the Deep Masters, and other terrible powers of the Lowerdark would be kept contained.
This effort was, of course, a spectacular failure.
At some point over the centuries, the Vault Seals were eventually breached and, as the only way to pass to or from the Middledark and Lowerdark, the Exile Houses Freth and Claddath grew more xenophobic and fortified due to universal external hostilities. This would exacerbate the effects of their centuries of isolation, as evidenced by their 'unique' cultures in the present day.
This brings us from several thousand years ago to approximately one-hundred fifty years ago ('AR 50). In this time, the significant cities of the region were Udos Dro'xun and Urblexis Grond as mentioned above, a secluded deep gnome village that is now called the Great Grotto (prior the establishment of the Earthkin Portals or the Brogendensteiner lift).
One final site of import was an Upperdark waystation known as "Jhared's Tradepost." This outpost was a single warehouse-sized building with multiple smaller structures and an arena housed within. It was constructed upon a plateau surrounded by dry crags and valleys near a surface tunnel that exited to the Minmir Valley.
It was in the course of normal history, with little reported activity prior, that the Cataclysm occurred in late 61 AR. This was and is regarded a deliberate act of war and prelude to invasion committed by the Elder Mind in control of Izlude's Torment, the Flayer colony sited within the Lowerdark Vault.
The exact nature of the event is ambiguous, but is largely understood to have been largely comprised of a significant psychic explosion (Urblexis Grond having been literally reduced to a flooded crater), followed by debilitating shockwaves that would nearly collapse Udos Dro'xun, leaving it only partially-habitable. This was followed by decades of nominal Illithid rule and the mass-enslavement of tens of thousands.
This statement bears repeating, for it is an appalling fact that many individuals are ignorant of despite the events having transpired within living memory.
- Within the past one-hundred years, all regional civilisation had been violently extinguished and its populations enslaved en masse by the mind flayers of Izlude's Torment. ***
The full ramifications of this catastrophe and the means by which survival and resistance against the region's would-be Illithid overlords was managed at all will be explored in a following volume on the "Post-Cataclysm" Underdark.