Alyisstra Helvighym (legendary, singing, song, acolyte, apprentice, student Those above, the forgotten)

Qu'ellar d'Arkenndar (Mages of, black hearts)

In the dim mists of Faerûn's past, long before the rise of even the most ancient human or dwarven kingdoms, the elves founded mighty empires across the length and breadth of Faerun. The greatest of these empires--Aryvandaar, Keltormir, Miyeritar, Illefarn, Ilythiir, and Shantel Othreier--coexisted peacefully for thousands of years before greed, envy, and pride brought them low. The series of vicious, bloody wars that destroyed the ancient realms of the elves has come to be known as the Crown Wars.

The Crown Wars consisted of five major campaigns--some of which happened concurrently--that eventually involved all the major elven civilizations. For three thousand years the elves fought one another, tearing down most of what they had spent millennia building and practicing fratricide on a scale unseen before or since. In fact, one elf subrace became so twisted by evil that its members were forever divorced from the light of day. These elves, now known as drow, live underground to this day, and their hatred for other elves remains as strong as it was in those ancient times.

The First Crown War began as a seemingly minor debate over territory and governance. Aryvandaaran historians had discovered a link between the family of their ruler, Coronal Ivosaar Vyshaan, and the Olrythii, the ruling house of Miyeritar. Always ambitious, the members of House Vyshaan saw this connection as the perfect excuse to claim rulership over Miyeritar. The dark elves and wood elves of Miyeritar, a staunchly independent lot, were not at all interested in being ruled by the haughty sun elves. After several centuries of negotiating, bickering, and feuding with the Olrythii, the Vyshaan ran out of patience, marshaled their armies, and marched on Miyeritar, intending to annex it by force since diplomacy had failed. Thus began the First Crown War.

After two centuries of fighting, Miyeritar was occupied by the sun elves of Aryvandaar, though several dark and sylvan elf clans continued to resist. The Vyshaanti did not bring Miyeritar fully under their control until approximately five centuries after the occupation. Meanwhile, supposedly in retaliation for Aryvandaar's aggression against the Miyeritari, the dark elves of Ilythiir rose up and attacked their nearest enemies in the smaller kingdom of Orishaar. The stated premise for the conflict was weak, considering that the moon elves of Orishaar had no connection with Aryvandaar beyond a trade alliance, and the Ilythiiri had little to do with the beleaguered elves of Miyeritar. Though it was initially seen as a thinly veiled excuse for the Ilythiiri to seize some land from the moon elves, this offensive continued to gain momentum and eventually escalated to become the Second Crown War.

And when the folk of Ilythiir heard about the brutal attacks by the sun elves of Aryvandaar against their northern kinfolk, a shadow fell upon their hearts. The cunning dark elves claimed this shadow was the result of grief and woe, and so skilled was their artifice that all were tricked y it. When the Ilythiiri attacked Orishaar, the elves of all the empires believed that the grief-stricken dark elves were simply lashing out in vengeance on behalf of their cousins to the north.

But the shadow upon the hearts of the Ssri'Tel'Quessir stemmed not from grief, but from greed and envy. The shadow wove its insidious tendrils about them and whispered to them of wicked acts and fell deeds. To their own damnation, the Ilythiiri heeded the council of the shadow and were drawn by it into darkness.

Purportedly, the Second Campaign was an attempt by the Ilythiiri to avenge their wronged cousins in Miyeritar, which boasted the only other major enclave of dark elves on Faerun. Ilythiir's savage attack wiped out Thearnytaar, Eiellur, Syorpiir, and Orishaar, and the dark elves continued to conduct brutal raids against the elves of Keltormir for the next twelve hundred years.

It was during this campaign that the epithet dhaerow was first used to describe the dark elves of Ilythiir. Depending upon the intonation, inflection, and context, dhaerow could be translated as "face of shadows", "heart of night", "traitor", or a host of other, even less complimentary terms. One by one, the great Ilythiiri houses sought to gain the power to conquer their enemies from demonic patrons. Seeing an opportunity to subvert an entire subrace to evil, Lolth sent the balor Wendonai to Ilythiir. Wendonai successfully led House Sethomiir, the ruling house of the Ilythiiri, into darkness by favoring Geirildin, it's coronal, with gifts of dark power. Other high Ilythiiri nobles sought similar patronage, some because they envied the coronal's newfound power, others because they were determined to carve out their own kingdoms from the wreckage of the neighboring elven states.

Guided by their demonic patrons, the Ilythiiri came to relish warfare and torture and despise elven ideals. Their previous justification for the war--avenging their northern brothers--began to ring hollow after centuries of bloodshed and butchery. Even the peaceful moon elves of Keltormir were increasingly horrified by their erstwhile brethren’s actions and began to arm themselves for a retaliatory strike at Ilythiir.

In about -10,900 DR, the fallen solar Malkizid became the secret patron of the Vyshaanti high mages and taught them many terrible secrets of high magic. While the Second Crown War continued to rage in the south, Aryvandaar (now known as the Vyshaantar Empire) attempted to annex the sun elf and moon elf kingdom of Shantel Othreier, thus beginning the Third Crown War.

The elves of Shantel Othreier resisted Aryvandaar's attacks for three centuries, but with the sudden, mysterious death of Ynloeth, their coronal, they finally surrendered and diplomatically joined the Vyshaantar Empire, thus ending the Third Crown War.

About a century thereafter, a horrid magical storm known as the Dark Disaster laid waste to Miyeritar. History (as written by the victors of the Third Crown War) says that Miyeritar's attempts to stop Aryvandaar's armies caused the Dark Disaster. In truth, the fell magic that produced it was called forth by Vyshaantar high mages and proceeded unopposed because a Vyshaantar assassination campaign had destroyed many of Miyeritar's high mages in the months before. The Dark Disaster hung over Miyeritar like a funeral shroud for months, and when it's cloying mists and bloody rains finally dissipated, the once-proud forest had been reduced to a blasted, poisonous wasteland. Although many of Miyeritar's original inhabitants had fled long before the killing storm hit, innumerable innocents died horribly. Even today, the High Moor still stands desolate, its interior dotted with the ruins of the once-proud kingdom of Miyeritar. Only a few elves versed in history--mostly high mages and high priests--know that most of Miyeritar's surviving mages gave their lives in a now-lost ritual designed to preserve Miyeritar's legacy, in the hope that her light would someday rise again from the kingdom's ashes.

The destruction of Miyeritar enraged the Ilythiiri, who rightfully blamed Aryvandaar for the Dark Disaster. In the wake of the killing storm, the Ilythiiri turned their high magic fully to the pursuits of war, and the result was devastation on an unparalleled scale [otherwise known as the Fourth Crown War]. Within four decades after the Dark Disaster, the Ilythiiri utterly destroyed the realms of Shantel Othreier--the closest outpost of Vyshaantar power. In the words of the Song of the Sundered Crown, Ilythiiri high mages "called stones from the sky", and "caused the earth to boil and the trees to scream". Refugees from the doomed kingdom of Shantel Othreier told tales of Ilythiiri atrocities that made the actions of the Aryvandaar for the past several centuries seem tame by comparison.

In the face of this savage assault, the remaining elven kingdoms gathered in a great conclave and made a decision that would haunt elvenkind forever--the Ilyth