The Conflict
Prelude
In the year 375 AC, the Nahir of Jin-El Aethis was Lydrin Valaran, the hand-picked successor of Vimalus the Enlightened. She had been Nahir for only eight years (little more than a brief moment to an elf), but her reign (if you can call the Nahir-ship of any elf a "reign") had been quite peaceful until that point -- and being the chosen successor of the most revered of all elven-kind made her incredibly popular from the start of her incumbency. The first major undertaking of the young Nahir was an expedition to the nearby mysterious "Darkisle," who's dead mountains had long fascinated the elves of nearby Bal'A Rakau. Could this be home to an ancient Morlu ruin? What secrets could it reveal of that ancient time? The hopes were that this expedition could answer all of those questions and more, and had been meticulously planned for decades under Vimalus, though he transferred his office to Lydrin before he could see it through.
The expedition began smoothly enough on the 25th of June that same year. A small fleet of research vessels carrying 304 researchers and 46 soldiers arrived on the island after a few peaceful hours at sea, departing from the southernmost tip of Bal'A Rakau and arriving at the northernmost point of the Darkisle. Upon arrival, according to some of the researchers' logs, it became immediately apparent that the mountains and forests upon them were not so dead as they appeared to be from off the coast -- several wild animals were spotted and some sparse vegetation was observed scratching out a living near the bases of the petrified trees on the mountainsides. For the first several days, the expedition -- led by one Quintus Varro, a veteran soldier of several battles fought against the native inhabitants of what is now called the "Outsider's Haven" -- encamped on the coast of the Darkisle and began preparations to move inland. Luckily, we have Varro's account of the expedition, as he kept a detailed log of each day's doings in his personal journal. We know that after two days of being on the island, on the 27th of June, some of the researchers insisted that, while they had been gathering plant or rock samples, they had seen shadows in the crevices of the mountains watching them work, and felt that the creatures were more intelligent that the wildlife that the expedition has thus far observed. Varro initially dismissed the reports as the fever-dreams of overworked scientists, but posted his most keen-eyed scouts around the camp at night to humor them. On the very next night, several scout reports corroborated the researchers' claims that creatures were indeed watching from the shadows, with an almost elven skill for evasion. Several scouts had tried to get closer to the creatures, but none of them had managed to get within ten meters before the creatures disappeared without a trace.
It was at this point that Varro began a direct correspondence with Lydrin, requesting additional military personnel be sent to the expedition in case the Watchers, as they had been named, proved to be a deadly threat. His troop request was denied. Nevertheless, the expedition pushed on, and on the 5th of July arrived at a narrow pass in the center of the island, which opened up into a massive gorge that held a sight that none had expected to see. At first glance, the center of the gorge seemed to be split in two by a typical sort of ravine. When the leading geologist had made his way over to it, he is said to have exclaimed "No normal hole in the ground is this! It is an entrance of sorts to some darkness under the earth!" And they christened the darkness the Underdark, and began to study it intently, for no elf in living memory had ever seen this strange realm just below the surface of our own. There was some speculation as to whether or not the Morlu had constructed such a "cave," but it was quickly squashed as each geologist insisted that the stone formation indeed seemed natural and that there was no trace of that ancient magic besides.
From there, Varro's log continues on about the study of the region until the 10th of the month, when he scribbled down the exciting discovery of a village far beneath the surface. The log abruptly ends, and the next recorded event occurs five days later when one of the soldiers from Varro's scouting company presented an urgent request for reinforcements to the ruling council of Allas, who then communicated the message to Lydrin, who promptly authorized the troop allocation. The request cited violence against the research team and multiple wounded in need of medical aid as the reason military aid was needed, and we can only speculate as to what sparked the fighting.
From Varro's log, we can clearly tell that the party was being observed by the drow for some time before they stumbled upon the entrance to the Underdark in the middle of the island. We also know that Varro and his team discovered a settlement near the entrance to the Underdark (which is a vast and totally unexplored place, so while the team insisted the village was far below the surface, it was actually quite high up for most denizens of the Underdark), and probably attempted to investigate it. No doubt the drow were nervous about the newcomers' intentions, and since elvish and drowspeak are mutually unintelligible, there could not have been effective communication between the two. Whether the drow had been the aggressors, or had simply been, they thought, defending their home cannot be known (and most elves don't care to seek the answer besides).
Whatever the facts truly are, the relief force arrived on the 22nd of July, 375 AC, and found 283 researchers (four of whom would unfortunately not survive their wounds) and only 24 of the 46 soldiers originally sent with the expedition (three of whom would also succumb to their wounds). Varro was also among the survivors, as was one of the creatures who had attacked the party, bound and caged to be transported back to Bal'A Kaiga for study. The drow, as it was called, seemed, to the elves, to be some sort of perversion of the fair elvish form, and the new arrivals to the island were repulsed by it, and allegedly took turns spitting on it as they passed by. I must pause here, dear readers, and tell you that I use the word "it" because it describes, most aptly, the mindset which the elves of that time had, and that some still hold true. To speak of drow as anything but our kin is disgusting, and I hope my usage of the word will drive the point home.
News spread quickly across the elven kingdom, and the creature and its kind were quickly condemned by the High Council, who announced a retaliatory strike against those who had attacked their people. The drow were labelled as inferior, perverted elves, and it was even suggested that they were servants of evil gods who had helped collapse the Morlu empire and to sow despair across the world. Study of the captured drow (who quickly died of maltreatment) revealed that the creature was entirely similar to elves in every way, save their color and their mindset. Rather than comforting the elven public, this information was used to stoke fears that the drow were perverted elves, and that they must be eradicated to preserve the sanctity of the elven race. The biological similarity between the species was touted as proof that the drow had been fair elves once before, rather than being used as evidence that a long-lost sister-race had been discovered so close to home. With the apparent attack on the scientists and this propaganda combined, war was inevitable as the public called for the blood of the accursed and demanded revenge for the slain researchers and soldiers. Thus began the Dark War.
Immediately after the attack on the research team was reported in the capital, a task force of 200 soldiers was sent to the island to put down what the High Council thought was a small, unorganized local threat. This task force landed at the northernmost point of the Darkisle, where the research team had evacuated. They marched for several days through the mountains before finally arriving at the entrance to the Underdark that the researchers had discovered on the 29th of July. The task force immediately sought out the village that had allegedly sparked the conflict, and razed it to the ground, encountering no resistance up until that point. Apparently, the village had been abandoned, and the commander of the force believed that the perpetrators must have moved slightly deeper into the earth. The task force moved deeper into the Underdark and were not seen on this world again, save for the ears of all 200 soldiers and their leader.
Drow records are scarce in regards to this early time (apparently the nearest major Drow city wouldn't take an interest until after the burning of this village), but it is apparent that a drow by the name of Dhemnul assumed command of drow military efforts sometime around the disappearance of the task force. Dhemnul was a brilliant military strategist, and he would remain in command of the drow forces for the duration of the war. Whatever doubts Dhemnul had must have been immediately put to rest when the retaliatory strike force destroyed the tiny drow settlement, even though no drow were even present. It seems that he somehow understood that the elves had never before seen the Underdark, and didn't know how to navigate it (perhaps he deduced this just from watching the elves stumble around in even the uppermost levels of the Underdark). Dhemnul himself kept notes on his observations, and among them is a theory that the elves had never seen drow before, and probably thought that they wholly lived underground, and could not live on the surface for long periods of time. He also mused that the arrogance of the newcomers would be easily exploited if he could hand them a few false victories to get them to let their guard down.
Unfortunately for the elves, Dhemnul would be proven right, and they would not find a commander to match him for nearly 30 years. The drow pursued a policy of vicious guerrilla warfare. Individual soldiers would be picked off whenever they left camp to gather lumber, or to relieve themselves. Then, when a search party came looking, they would be killed too, before the drow would slip off into the mountains without leaving a trace. Those who were wounded by drow early in the war would almost always die as poisons unknown to the surface elves would kill with even the smallest dose (in a painful and slow way, I should add). In that first year of 375 AC, the elves would send a task force, which would traipse towards the Underdark and encamp outside of it, almost like they were "blockading" the entrance, and they would be picked apart piece by piece the whole time they occupied the island. The most dangerous duty of all was to guard the wagon trains that travelled from the coast to the soldiers encamped in the interior of the island.
After a year of losing battalion after battalion of soldiers to this small scale warfare, elven high command changed strategies, and had a massive ramp cut into the earth, stretching down to the sea, just to the west of the entrance to the Underdark. The construction was harassed by the drow and cost the elves hundreds of soldiers to complete, but it was finally finished in December of 376 AC. A makeshift port was quickly constructed at the bottom of the ramp and the north-south Road of the Dead, as the supply route was called, was no longer needed to keep the troops fed and equipped. With supply lines finally secured, the surface elves began scouring the nearby mountains for drow hideouts and began collapsing the entrances to every cave that they discovered, no matter how small. Many of the mountain patrols were killed, but each patrol consisted of 40 elves, and individual soldiers were instructed to remain in sight of at least ten of their comrades at all times -- and to stay within sight of twenty at night. This change in strategy was somewhat effective for the elves. Most of the caves that they collapsed were not entrances to the Underdark, but a few were part of the cave systems used by Dhemnul's men to move around, and collapsing those entrances made operations much more difficult. The entrances could have easily been cleared out, but doing so, Dhemnul reckoned, would only have served to lead his enemies straight to the heart of his operations.
In response to the new elven strategy, the drow became more bold: far more bold than the elves had reckoned they could be. On the night of April 4th, 377 AC, the drow emerged from the main opening of the Underdark, and began moving silently towards the elven camp. The elves had no knowledge of the steady advance of their foes because the drow had mounted onto large spider-creatures, known to us now as "steeders," and had climbed straight up the sides of the crevasse, rather than using the guarded footpaths that the elves used to descend. The surprise attack was a total success, and the majority of surface elves didn't even have time to arm themselves before the attackers had fled back into the darkness. The survivors discovered that the western half of their camp had been totally destroyed. Tents were rent apart by the dagger-like feet of the steeders, and elves had been eviscerated where they slept -- body parts were strewn about the western camp, ripped off by the steeders in their ravenous hunger. Worst still was the discovery that the commander of elven forces on the island had been slain, and his ears cut off -- though he managed to kill his assassin as well. Until this attack, steeders were an entirely unknown species to the surface dwellers, and their existence terrified many of the remaining soldiers, who were on the verge of mutiny against senior leadership.
Back in Vel'A Sharán, Lydrin Valaran was becoming increasingly worried with each new report. The news of the steeder attack seems to have totally broken her, and she reportedly flew into a frenzy -- accusing the commanders of the army of cowardice, sacrilege, and treason for not taking the threat of the drow seriously enough, and threatened to have all of them set to the front lines themselves if they could not end the "rebellion" against elvish domination. The public began to call upon the generals to pursue a more aggressive strategy, threatening to storm the military supply depot and take over the war themselves if positive results weren't reported soon. Their hands forced, the elvish high command ordered a general mobilization of the elvish army. The conflict now had Jin-El Aethis' full attention.
The next phase of the war was tumultuous and filled with disaster after disaster for the elves. The years 377-408 AC were marked by frequent changes of command, multiple slaughters of isolated elven encampments (encampments which were established on poor intelligence and in poor strategy), and a general lack of any good news from the island. If not for the sacking of a few small drow towns in 379 and 380, it is quite possible that the army would have refused to fight any longer and the conflict would have promptly ended. In 381, the elves finally received the news they had been waiting for, when an inhabited drow encampment was finally discovered in the mountains mere miles from the main elven encampment. For six years, the elves had been waiting for a real chance to strike at their harassers, and now they finally had that chance. They managed to totally surround the encampment, and slaughtered all but a handful of drow, taking no prisoners, and hastily sending the good news back to Vel'A Sharán. Fortunately for the drow, Dhemnul had not been in the camp at the time of the attack. Unfortunately for the drow, the elves discovered a partial map of the tunnel systems used by the drow for movement in around the elvish camp (the drow would never have kept a full map in one place). Ambushes were set in all of the tunnels that the elves could locate, and dozens of drow were silently killed before Dhemnul realized that his tunnels had been compromised. These dual victories reinvigorated the surface elven desire for a war of purification, and their previous defeats were used as evidence of the barbaric and unsavory nature of the dark elves. For the drows' part, major surface operations effectively ceased until Dhemnul could come up with a new strategy, and the war entered a quiet phase for the next several years.
Again, we don't know much about Dhemnul or what he believed in much detail, but from his notes we can gather that he legitimately believed that the elves would only be defeated if their pride could be shattered and their resolve worn down -- a "standard war" of vast armies and massive battles was not an option for the drow who preferred a more clever approach to warfare, which gained them no respect from their opponents. In the summer of 393, Dhemnul settled on an incredibly risky new plan to shatter the morale of the elves threatening his homeland. According to these notes it was "high time that our friends feel the cost of this war in their homes." We don't know what the other drow must have thought of this plan, but one can imagine the total shock among his commanders as this plan was announced. Dhemnul does tell us that one of his top lieutenants called the plan either the most clever or the most stupid thing he'd ever heard (and I would have agreed myself if I didn't know the outcome!). The drow commander proposed a strike at Allas, the nearest major elven city. To extend their reach that far, they needed ships to transport them, and the elves had plenty of those. On a regular basis, barrels of salted meats were delivered to feed elven troops on the island, and empty barrels were sent back to be refilled at a port near Allas (some 60 miles away). The plan was to have several drow assassins of the highest skill hide themselves away in the barrels, get shipped to the port, slip away in the night, and then make their way to Allas. While there, they would create as much havoc as possible, steal any information they could find, and assassinate as many important leaders as they could, all without getting captured alive. The plan seemed desperate, insane even, but to Dhemnul it was a calculated risk with an immense reward if it could be pulled off. At the worst, he would lose several of his best soldiers, at the most, he could crush the elven will to continue the fight and decisively end the conflict without winning a military victory. The plan went ahead.
On the night of the planned infiltration, the infiltrators crept silently down the massive ramps to the makeshift docks constructed back in 376, and took up position to the north of the docks, hiding in the water underneath the massive cliffs that butted against the sea. To draw attention away from the infiltrators, a diversionary attack was launched at the far southern end of the dock, and was staged to look like the drow were trying to steal supplies to bring back to their encampment. The ruse was successful, and the infiltration party was able to successfully hide themselves in some of the barrels marked for return to Bal'A Rakau. A few days later, they arrived at their port destination, and all of the drow managed to sneak out of the storage house without raising any alarms. A few days after that, November 3rd, 393, the magistrate of Allas began sending panicked messages back to Vel'A Sharán claiming that the drow were staging a massive attack on the city, and that they were slaughtering anyone caught in the open.
The magistrate's report was greatly exaggerated -- the drow did assassinate several nobles in the city, along with the city's governor, but they ignored non-noble elves and only killed them if they deemed it necessary. The drow infiltrators also managed to start a couple of fires around the city, all but one of which were swiftly contained before they could spread too far. Unfortunately, the one fire that did spread uncontrollably claimed the lives of 437 civilians, and although the drow assassins certainly had no qualms about killing these unfortunates, they weren't specifically targeting them as the magistrate claimed. The panic of the magistrate served the drow well, though, as it spread to the royal court and then out to the public, who vastly overestimated the amount of damage actually done to the city, with rumors flying around that drow killers were hiding in every city around the kingdom, waiting for the best time to strike. These rumors, were, in turn, followed by allegations that someone had helped the drow infiltrate Allas and betrayed the kingdom. For Dhemnul, his plan had worked better than even he could have imagined.
Panic among the elven citizenry was quickly followed with dismissals of top elven commanders on the Darkisle. Members of the High Council apparently had to prostrate themselves before the Nahir and beg her not to put the disgraced commanders to death for their failure to prevent the raid on Allas. Dhemnul took maximal advantage of the disarray within the elven command structure, and launched a flurry of aggressive raids on elven positions one the coast and in the mountains. Although these raids were militarily insignificant, the losses that they inflicted onto the elves only fueled the fires of doubt tearing through the elven empire. This state of affairs continued until 408, with general after general being dismissed for inadequacy.
Finally, in the autumn of 408, general Valus Niryn assumed general command of the elvish army, and proved to be as competent a general as Dhemnul. His first act was to request, before the High Council, that the Nahir be removed from military concerns so that she could focus on the construction of a grand shrine on the Druidic Sanctuary. Publicly, it was stated that the Nahir could no longer split her attention between these duties because she wanted to perfect the temple construction while Niryn completed the war. Privately, it was an effective method of removing her from command so that she would stop dismissing military commanders and getting young elven soldiers killed. With the Nahir removed, Niryn began a total reorganization of elven strategy in the war. Firstly, the elves would no longer sit on the surface waiting to be picked off by Dhemnul's drow. They began launching forays into the Underdark to map it out and to see if they could discover the drow city that was suspected to be nearby (this city did indeed exist, and is called Burdüg by the drow). The strategy of collapsing caves in the mountains was also renewed, and the perimeter guard of elven positions was tripled, with instructions not to follow any attackers, and to focus on curing the wounded of poison (a cure had been in development since the beginning of the war, and was completed by then). The triple-guard reduced overall casualties, and the instructions not to chase drow into the mountains reduced the number of patrols lost to making that mistake which had claimed the lives of hundreds early in the war.
Niryn's most important innovation was the creation of elite tracking squads made up of the best hunters from across the empire -- military or otherwise. These groups would sneak high into the mountains, far from elven camps, and would attempt to observe the observers and track the drow movements through the mountains, without revealing themselves. Once their position was compromised, or they had collected enough information, they were to return to camp and deliver everything they discovered to Niryn and his advisers. These squads were greatly successful, and Dhemnul seemed to be oblivious to their existence, convinced that the clumsy surface dwellers could never out-stealth the drow. His arrogance was quickly punished in 415 when Niryn ordered a massive raid on all of the cave entrances discovered by his elite spotters, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of drow across the Darkisle, and revealed the locations of several key settlements to the surface dwellers. These settlements were quickly moved upon and destroyed, and the drow took a massive blow to their pride, though they were far from defeated. In truth, all of the settlements thus far discovered by the surface elves were mere villages on the outskirts of true drow civilization, and were of little real value. After the destruction of these villages and the invasion of his main tunnels, Dhemnul wrote in his notes that he had "finally met a worthy opponent."
For the remainder of the war, Dhemnul and Niryn engaged in a brutal war of attrition, each side attempting to bleed the other dry. Several times, Niryn was almost assassinated, and several times Dhemnul was almost captured, but each commander always seemed to be one step ahead of the other in regards to their respective plans. And so the elven army became bogged down, bleeding soldiers, and yet unwilling to leave the Darkisle and admit defeat. Niryn was competent enough to deliver several small victories that the elven High Council kept insisting were signs that the war was drawing to a close. The surface elves never found Burdüg, although they came within a mile of it. Several drow townships on the outskirts of the city were destroyed, and many of the surface tunnels used by drow guerrillas were collapsed or booby-trapped. As for the drow, they saw themselves as defending their homeland and would stop at nothing to drive the outsiders back across the sea. Besides, the Underdark was a cruel and unforgiving place, and so warfare bothered them very little, much less than it bothered their surface kin. The island became something of a butchery for young elves, and most who went there came back scarred or not at all.
Finally in March of 483, the elven population decided that it had had enough of this war. The rioting began with one mother's refusal to send her son to the military garrison for a physical inspection (the inspection was, and still is, a test to determine the fitness of an individual who will be called to join the army). Her protests allegedly caught the attention of her neighbors, who all gathered around the officer attempting to take the boy and began to shout at him. He ran away and sent for a few soldiers to help him calm the unruly mob, but the sight of armed men storming into their quarter of the city turned the few upset citizens into a massive riotous mob. The riot swelled and swelled in numbers, and then spilled into the countryside as every major township in the empire rose up against the troop levy and demanded an end to the war, which had gained them nothing and lost them many sons. Riots went on for months, and citizens now took the stance that if the heretical drow wanted to stay in their savage lands and be left alone, then the elves should let them, because such a blasted place was not meant for elves anyhow. The riots continued for months, and huge portions of the army stationed on the Darkisle were recalled to restore order. However, many of the soldiers actually joined the rioters and began demanding an end to the war as well -- going so far as to storm the Royal Quarter of Vel'A Sharán, only to find that the Nahir had fled to the Royal Sanctuary. The infuriated citizens then held the High Council hostage and forced them to decree that Lydrin Valaran was no longer Nahir, and that she was to be banished from Jin-El Aethis immediately.
Meanwhile, on the Darkisle, Niryn saw the proverbial writing on the wall and realized that the government would collapse completely if a peace settlement wasn't reached soon. He took a small group of guards far from his camp, knowing that he was in danger of assassination the entire time. Strangely, no attempts were made on his life during the entire nerve-wracking journey. Once he had moved sufficiently far from his camp, he ordered his guards to lay down arms and call out to the mountains "Peace! Peace!" in the drow tongue, which Niryn had ordered deciphered. Evidently, although their language was crude, the drow understood, and one of them emerged from hiding and allegedly said "At last, you have shown sense." Niryn and his company were led deep into the mountains, blindfolded and along a circuitous route, and, for the first time, met Dhemnul face to face.
Dhemnul proved to be as cunning a negotiator as a general, and knew he held all of the cards. He first demanded, obviously, a total withdrawal of all surface elves from the Darkisle. Secondly, he demanded that the drow be formally incorporated into Jin-El Aethis. Niryn was totally surprised by the second request, as any of us would be, but Dhemnul's reasoning was sound. If Dhemnul could ingrain the drow legally into the elven kingdom, that means it would be more difficult for elven leadership to declare war again in a few centuries. To further this end, Dhemnul also leveraged the discontent with Lydrin Valaran and "suggested" that she be sent to the Darkisle as a royal hostage. In the same way, Dhemnul "suggested" that one of Niryn's daughters also be sent as a hostage to ensure that no elves would dare initiate a war against the drow. Niryn had no choice but to accept, and once the High Council had heard of the deal, any hope of continuing the war evaporated and they quickly gave in to the demands of both Dhemnul and the rioters.
Immediately after the High Council accepted Niryn's concessions to Dhemnul in 484, the end of the war was announced to the general public (rather, was announced to the rioters holding the High Council hostage, who then announced it to everyone else). The riots turned into celebration almost overnight, and the High Council was released from bondage. Lydrin gracefully transferred her title to Alain the Goldsmith, a relatively unknown noble who got his title from his tinkering with jewelry-crafting. She was then unceremoniously shipped away to the Darkisle, where she would find peace in the construction of the famed Gardens in the Dark, and where she would ironically come to favor the drow over her former brethren. Niryn's daugher, Vela Niryn, was also sent to the Darkisle, though she received much more fanfare and was held as something of a heroine who was sacrificing her livelihood for the hundreds of elven soldiers who would die without the alliance. She would wed Dhemnul, and would found the small, but beautiful town named Dhemnul's retreat -- as Dhemnul determined that living in the Underdark would harm his new wife (whom he seemed to genuinely care for) and he had been living on the surface fighting the war for a hundred years besides.
By February of 485, all of the surface elves on the Darkisle had returned to their homes, save Lydrin and Vela. For the most part, things then returned to normal throughout the elven kingdom, at least for a short while (or a long while, by human standards). As the soldiers returned home, they were reabsorbed into the posts they had left, and it seemed that things were finally returning to the status quo of over 100 years earlier. It became apparent, after a few decades, though, that things had indeed changed. One of the clauses of the agreement with the drow was that the drow would be allowed to establish beacons (of the arcane sort) on the home island of Bal'A Kaiga that could easily be located via telemancy in order to ensure elven compliance with the peace deal. After the war had been over for some decades, though, the beacons began to be used not for military movements, but for civilian ones -- some drow were quite curious about their surrounding kin, and had convinced the prefect of Dhemnul's Retreat to allow them to pass through the portals to observe and mingle with their kindred.
And so drow began to trickle across the empire, to see what was to be seen of the surface world outside of those dead mountains on the Darkisle. Unfortunately, while the killing was over, the prejudice against the drow had not passed (and has still not passed), and many were given threatening stares and uneasy glances. Few and far between could they find a surface dweller willing to serve them a meal, and fewer still could bear to gaze upon them for more than a moment. It seemed that the elves wanted nothing more than for the drow to crawl back into the dark where they could be safely forgotten. I recall, in the days of my youth, being pulled tightly to my mother's side on the rare occasions when we would see a "Dark One" on the street or in a tavern. Amazingly, at least to myself, the drow seemed entirely unconcerned with the hostility of their surface brethren and weren't offended in the slightest. I had the pleasure of discussing this aspect of the drow psyche with a scholar from Burdüg, and she explained to me that after a hard life in the Underdark and constantly fighting off invaders who seek dominion over your city, it is difficult to worry about the petty thoughts of those bested in battle (drow tongues seem to be as sharp as their minds!).
Once the drow began to wander through the empire, it was clear to all elves that the dark elves would not be disappearing permanently back into the Underdark. Rather than accepting the new normal, several veterans of the Dark War and their families began to form a political movement centered on expelling the drow from the imperial mainland and barring them from sitting on the High Council. Unfortunately, it wasn't difficult for the new movement, called "Purity" by its adherents, to garner support among the general populace of the kingdom. Former soldiers were seen as heroes, many of whom sacrificed their lives to preserve the sanctity of the elven race by battling the hated dark elves (who, recall, were said to be a perversion of the elven race). Many were all too quick to once again take up the arguments made by Lydrin Valaran, whom some of the Purity protesters had helped remove from office only decades before. At the time, Purity seemed like it was going to cause another Dark War, as the drow began mobilizing a small army to move on the mainland in case of elven aggression. Crisis was luckily averted in 534 when Lorn the Diplomat (he was given that title after this event) pushed a compromise through the High Council with the Nahir's blessing. The compromise allowed the drow to continue accessing the empire as they had been previously, but did bar them from having a voice on the High Council and stated that they could not open a business or conduct trade in Jin-El Aethis unless the community where the business or trade would be located unanimously agreed to allow the drow to do so. Effectively, the Decree of Elerias, as it was called, disallowed any drow participation in elven society beyond observing it.
For the drow, little changed (and has changed) after their victory in the Dark War. Frankly, the bulk of drow society was still uninterested in elven affairs, and only the most ambitious and creative drow politicians began to think of how participation in the politics of Jin-El Aethis might further their own cause. Drow were subjected to all sorts of racist assaults of both the physical and verbal variety. The Decree of Elerias changed nothing for most drow, since they were either uninterested or uninvolved in the surface world. Only now, in the last century, have we seen the rise of movements within drow society that call for representation on the High Council -- it seems that some drow have begun to see that unity with their surface kinfolk will benefit their society and lift them from a subsistence lifestyle.
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