Almost one full day ago, a party of a dozen Drow—subterranean elven outcasts—sallied forth from the oasis-city of Wevenore and into the deep-dark of their ancestral funerary-caves. Their objective was to reclaim them from a mysterious horror which had rallied the primitive, monkey-like ‘ghouls’ who picked at their dead into a terrifying and organized horde. Nobody knew quite who or what this mysterious adversary was, but those who had survived encounters with the feral beasts described some sort of ‘Ghoul Supreme’ egging the lesser creatures on.

At the elven militia’s head was no Drow noble, but reptilian foreigner of monstrous description: a lizardman called ‘Theral’ for his shining, coppery hide. Those elves who guarded the borders and patrolled the far reaches beyond the eyes of Wevenore’s nobility whispered tales of this dreadful being’s exploits.

They said that he had slain the Devourer, a great king-slayer of the westernmost caverns, and that he had subdued and subjugated the ancient and shapeless Shoggoth with his own two hands.

They said he spoke like an elven poet—that he could soothe the heart of any elfman or elfmaid with his rumbling polemics to peace, and stir any elf or animal to righteous fury with his fiery sermons to war. Even his charming half-breed knight was said to have such charm as to have courted a princess of House Yvonlace.

Rumour had it that he had conquered the greedy dwarves and stopped their damnable downward digging, humbling them and making them slaves of a new kobold kingdom in the Bloodrise mountain range.

They said that he was the heir of the Dragon Kings of old—mighty tyrants who once ruled the earth in a time before even elven records.

They said that he served the Gods of Evil, and that those who joined him in their worship would be permitted to march in his dark legions, to retake the surface-world and slaughter the traitor-elves.

Some—the impoverished and lowborn, the impatient and glory-hungry young warriors—spoke of him with undisguised awe.
Some—the nobles of Wevenore, the highborn mages, and especially those up-and-coming Princes Ascendant who saw his connections to House Yvonlace and the exiting Queen Myrymma as a threat—regarded him with less enthusiasm.

When he emerged from the funerary caves at the head of a triumphant procession, holding aloft the head of the slain Ghoul Supreme and proclaiming the caverns below purged of ghouls and lost souls alike by grace of the God of Death, none could deny that his visitation was IMPORTANT.

Whether that was for good or for ill… Well, that remained to be seen.