Legends of Sarapadia
The Sovereign State of Sarapadia
| Cast of Characters | |
| Laima | Elf Paladin (PC) |
| Faeron | Human Druid (PC) |
| Sâzed | Dwarf Cleric (PC) |
| Udoros | Elf Ranger (PC) |
| Omen | Tiefling Warlock (PC) |
| Darvok | Dwarf Fighter (NPC) |
| Rheya | Elf Rogue (NPC) |
| Cathartic | Human - Lady of Light (NPC) |
| Nissa | Elf Queen of the Tinwael_Galéth (NPC) |
| Kyðeon | Elf King of the Urdai Sinwal (NPC) |
The Sovereign State of Sarapadia was established over a thousand years ago, beyond the memory of all but the most ancient and fell of creatures. This island-continent was ceded from the ancient Apadian Empire as a result of the Ulon-Zirak, the War on the Under-Dark. Few know of the histories of the war, and fewer still can speak its truth. In this day and age, the stories have passed from account to tale, from tale to legend, and from legend into myth. One thing remains certain: that in each instance and case of research into the origins of the Under-Dark, the wise are driven mad, and the foolish disappear.
The crown jewel of Sarapadia is Vesuva, the Citadel of Light. It was from this point that the ancient war was won, a city unassailable by the forces of darkness, here untouched by the ancient evils and standing for over a millennium. Vesuva sits in the central bowl of the Karthus Plains, a vast grasslands dotted with settlements and cities and towns, connected by a web of roads and hollow ways, some so ancient they were constructed by the Apadians themselves. The Karthus would take many days to traverse north to south, and some weeks east to west, longer if travel by foot without steed or mount. Radiating outward in each direction from Vesuva are towns and smaller settlements, typically agrarian centers closer to Vesuva, and trading posts further away. Bounding the north of the Karthus is the Tinwael Galéth, The Vast Greenwood, home of wood elves and fae creatures; an ancient forest with its own thought and memory reaching back eons. The Greenwood stretches all the way to the northern coasts, into the arctic archipelagos dotted with folk somewhat untouched by time. The southern reaches of the Karthus are bounded by the Urdai Sinwal, The Greybark Forest. This southern forest is teeming with the high elves and forest gnomes, halflings, and other non-human creatures in some numbers. While warmer than the Greenwood, the Greybark affords a dense canopy, enabling even underground creatures to feel comfortable traveling through it at night. The eastern bounds of the Karthus spill into the Sarapadian Sea, with rocky cliffs on the northern shores giving way to sandy beaches in the south. The backbone of the Karthus lies in the west, where the steep rocky crags of the Khâl Dakhîr, the Skyrend Mountains, weaves a high wandering swath from north to south, dropping off steeply into the Dârivi Ocean on the west, while curling and flattening into the Greenwood in the north and the Greybark in the south.
The Karthus is divided by a web of rivers, streams, lakes, reservoirs, fens, and canals. The Ossîgo River collects the glacial runoff from the Skyrend as it merges into the Greenwood with dozens of feeds from small streams and rivers. The Ossîgo sweeps south sharply; then as it approaches Vesuva from the west, it is waylaid into a large lake, the Silvermere, which is joined by the Hâzek River from the southwest, the confluence of streams from the southern half of the central range of the Skyrend. As the Silvermere bulges eastward toward Vesuva, the Yana River rushes in a wide ribbon chasing itself through wide bends until bisecting Vesuva proper. A wide set of canals crisscross the northeastern reaches of the Silvermere and connect shortcuts and irrigation systems to and north of the Yana. To the east of Vesuva, the Yana winds lazily to the Sarapadian Sea, with some reservoirs along the way which were the old strip mines used to acquire the limestone used to build Vesuva. More canals bleed of to the northeast of Vesuva feeding more fields. Small rivulets split off from the Yana south of Vesuva, creating the Coalfens which stretch for more than a day south of Vesuva.
The Origins of Sarapadia as told by Kyðeon, King of the Urdai Sinwal, Last Scion of Sarapadia
When I was a young elf growing up in Apadia with my family, I was afforded every privilege an elf could have. I was taught every language, every beast, every culture, every god and devil, everything there is to know of what the Northmen call Miðgarðr, Mid-World, the world in the middle of the mighty World-Tree Yggdrasill. Cosmogeny, biology, mathematics, wizardry, druidcraft, sword-fighting, and even poetry were my life until I became an adult elf, and the world changed.
The land of Apadia was changing. The sentient beings of the land began to war, which drew the attention of beings from other realms, the Space Between the Branches, who are drawn to such power. Long before then, some of them had planted their seeds while Midgard was young, and they returned to reap their harvest. Tiamat returned to burgeon the dragon population, and Lolth, the Spider Queen, a young and vital usurper, to check upon her children, the Dark Elves we call drow. Their servants, minions, and allies would come along like remora with a shark. This ultimately drew the likes of Eldanoth, who would forever after be known as The Enemy to all of Midgard. His enslavement to his own master requires enormous power of life force to sustain, and his subjects cannot thrive in a place where drow and dragons do not lurk. While they are not allies, they serve a common goal, and simply sort of co-exist in an unholy symbiotic structure from the directions of their masters. This also makes them formidable foes, for they are powerful, secretive, and bloodthirsty. Goblins, orcs, ogres, hobgoblins, and duergar, they all serve Eldanoth with any other subjects they can turn, who come from all races. Power they are promised, and power they are given, for Eldanoth is generous with his gifts, and he loves his children fiercely, and helps them each achieve their dreams of power and wealth.
With the help of Lolth and her subjects, and with the legions of darkness to his call, Eldanoth convinced Tiamat that their time had come to take all of the new continent, Sarapadia, for the dragons, and the drow, and the legions of his servants, while their enemies warred amongst themselves in Apadia. Once established, they could then wipe out Apadian resistance and claim the globe for themselves; then they would have a land on the Material Plane they would be able to use as a gateway for themselves. For nearly two centuries, they crept their foothold into Sarapadia, a wild land only tamed by Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings, who largely kept to themselves in tribes. Alliances and friendships formed between localities, and they each survived together. None were prepared for the darkest of their dreams to become real and attack them. Then the dragons came. The skies became a threat to all, and every crevasse filled with seething darkness unless commanded by the Dwarven Empire or the Gnomish Empire. Alone the humans and halflings braved the open terrain, sometimes food for bulettes and wyverns; but they bred quickly, their hardy races full of love and hope, even though darkness lies within all its souls in differing degrees.
For nearly two centuries, this darkness festered in Sarapadia, while the peoples of Apadia broke out in a war spanning the continent, among peoples who were once allies and friends. The work of Eldanoth and Lolth was strongest there, weaving their webs of deceit, and manipulating their leaders into war, while reserving their armies amassing in the Caverns of Ulon, the Under-Dark, the birthplace of drow from the ancestors of my own people, under the influence of Lolth, the Spider-Queen. Drow and driders and ettercaps and spiders joined with orcs and hobgoblins and goblins and ogres, all awaiting to be lead by the chromatic dragons and perhaps even Tiamat herself, if she chose to come to the Material Plane. Then one day, 1003 years ago, the Ulon-Zirak, the War on the Under-Dark, began. The land of Apadia was entirely bathed in darkness, impenetrable to all but magical sources. Only a small archipelago far to the northeast of Apadia was spared from the onslaught, likely only due to its insignificance to every other warring culture in Apadia. Every battle ceased to face this new common foe, but it was too late. Their supply lines cut and their towns aflame, crops burned and forests ablaze, there was nothing left but to fight a foe they couldn’t see, whose initial strikes were carried out by dozens of dragons. They prayed to their gods, but their gods had forsaken them, for they had forgotten the old ways; and in their wealth and hubris, they found war from lies and division from forgotten love. They had prayed to the same gods from both sides of their petty wars. They chose to believe in their own privilege as their right rather than the gift it was. And for that, they burned alive on the pyre of their own folly, bathed in the breath of every kind of chromatic dragon.
Were it not for the foresight of the Elves of Tarisir, I would not be speaking with you today. We kept our old ways, and warred not, so we used our resources to escape from Apadia and flock to Sarapadia. As we traveled to the new land and upon our arrival, we beseeched the help of Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon, the Lord of All Metallic Dragons, and indeed the grandsire of all dragons. He heard our pleas and recognized our plight, and granted each of the peoples who lived in Sarapadia and those who would now call it home, a Scion of their people, for the good of Sarapadia. I am the last of the original Scions remaining, and my gift is to see the movement of Urðr, whether or not I understand Her motivations. I saw then that our days would be numbered far less in Apadia, and used what influence I had to convince others to stay in this new land instead. We sent back the ships that brought our nearly ten thousand souls to Sarapadia, to gather more of our kith and kin; and they were never heard from again. For our thanks, we would forever become the guardians of Sarapadia, which is why we are a militaristic culture of elves. And I can see now that our past debts are coming again due, to test our strength.
Four hundred years we lived as feral elves, called to the forests here, ancient and wild, filled with the fey-folk, and we learned to speak with them. We taught the trees to sing and grow into new forms and breeds, and we showed the fey-folk how to control and use their magic in a focused manner. As we had landed on the east coast, we met first Halflings and Humans, who were surprised to see our arrival but they were glad to receive us, and we were most glad to be so welcomed. We shared our knowledge of magic, which remains elusive to the vast majority of them, and they shared their food and labor and loyalty. Faster friends than Humans and Haflings could never any elf make. After a time, we felt the pull of the forest and began our seclusion there. My sister, Tifira, and I, as the last remaining royalty from Tarisir on the new island, were dubbed to be leaders of the new elven tribes of Sarapadia. Tifira told me she wanted to use the fey magic she learned to bond herself to the land to protect it forever from the fate of Apadia using her gift from Bahamut. I commanded her to turn from this path, and she disobeyed me, and formed with nearly half of our population to venture to the Tinwael Galéth, where she built her own elvish empire before completing her work to tie the power of the Leylines to the power of the land, and the power of the good folk of the land, by forming the conduit herself with her own power of will. It claimed her life as I foretold. Yet, she taught a young elf maiden her craft before her death. She, in turn, taught another, and another, who eventually identified Marah. That this land remains one of relative peace is a testament to her incredible power, far greater than any other in these lands. It will be my 1287th birthday next week, and it will be my 559th without my sister, the most beloved of all things I have ever known. Luckily, her niece, Nissa, looks much like Tifira did, when they were younger. I find great joy in her kin, and they are likely the best folk of Sarapadia.
Our peoples grew apart, but stronger as a result. We forged new alliances with Gnomes and Dwarves as we emerged into an Enlightenment, and we began to chronicle our deeds and the histories of what we knew. We watched our allies’ cultures grow and thrive, and in the process, learned much about ourselves as being so alike our new friends. While we had banded together in loose groups with other folk to fight guerilla warfare against The Enemy when we first arrived on the continent, it was only the Scions who bound them together and directed the defeat of the chromatic dragons and the routing of all their other servants, or so we thought. The hubris of the Dwarven King Ironfist had failed to yield the Black Dragon Egg as a prize, so the dragons attacked, and we defended against a foe we need not have fought. In a desperate ploy, the Northmen saved us all by burying the mountain from the inside, imploding the seacave and catacombs with engineered explosives loaded on ships, which killed the invading dragons in the tunnels and burrows in the mountain called Gûuz hunting for the Egg, and shutting off the access to the Egg forever to anyone, inside a rubble of both natural and Dwarven-hardened stone. Gûuz was forever their tomb, as the races of folk had banded together to ensnare their foes in the trap, and won their first and only war.
After we began to record our histories, the world had changed from what we knew. We headed to our Renaissance, together, as a continent, sharing among ourselves, and noting that there were ever places of darkness around the land, places we dared not go. Keeping it at bay seemed wisest and least risky, but we knew not that Eldanoth and Lolth had remained when Tiamat left, hoping to divide the lands between them, perhaps. Until recent events we have not had the evidence to act rightly, and sought for proof of the movements of The Enemy. We are now in our post-Renaissance, and we are ripe for domination, and we are able-bodied, and useful when properly used. But it was not always thus. It is likely that in his rage at defeat on Sarapadia nearly a millennium ago that Eldanoth began first his plans for experiments on the Dwarves. I believe he studied the drow, and then created the duergar in the last few centuries using a similar process for the Dwarves as Lolth had for the elves, both with subjects willing and unwilling. Slowly, he could have chipped away politically at their empire using agents as he could on the Material Plane to do his bidding, seeking to move their riches to his control and thus control the entire empire. Similarly, he could have used the Gnomes to put their skills to use through deceptive agents who commissioned their work that would eventually enslave them. This would mean for eight centuries he patiently and painstakingly infected each culture with warring factions, which enabled him to destabilize them from within. The Gnomes proved too cunning for his political ploys, but were too trusting already with their work. The Dwarves, on the other hand, were hard pressed to ever share their works with any individuals not of a known tribe, but surprisingly clannish in their own cultures, enabling political maneuvering to be exacted by agents easy enough to bribe. By creating environmental pressures to limit their living spaces by releasing hordes of goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, and his other servants, Eldanoth was able to force the Dwarves and Gnomes who resisted his efforts from their homes, and the clans which were easier to sway were rewarded with riches and gifts taken from their previous lords, and afforded the best accommodations from their previous owners. It would now appear that his plans have been completed: the Dwarven Empire and Gnomish Empire are a shade of a memory, and I neither knew nor saw anything of this demise, a silent war fought from within. I have failed those noble peoples of Sarapadia, and now I find we are actually complicit with the movement of The Enemy, and our standoffishness as a culture has allowed darkness to thrive in the first true home of my sister. I cannot bear this shame, so instead I offer our people as the stabilizing source of protection for the peoples of Sarapadia. We will train sailors, and footmen, and warriors, and mages, all for the defense against The Enemy, who will yet return before he loses any advantage to time, for while his agents are scattered, so are we, which means he will find a weak point to strike next. He may be seeking the Egg to entice Tiamat to return, which would give him the advantage, and turn Sarapadia into the next dragon breeding grounds. Bahamut seems to be aware of this, giving us Sîpanna nearly two hundred years ago, and she is formidable by all accounts, and was possibly offered to deal with Îátu when she matured. I would have Ulfric discuss this with her and Ruric and Faeron when they address their next task. Ruric was responsible for Sîpanna’s rearing.
