Summary: Rykzir Qu'eblith, a mage of his house is chosen to consort with Lolketh who is in line to become high priestess of his family, and also happens to be his cousin. When a rival house attacks, they must kill everyone to receive the blessings of their priestesses and to sanction the murders. Unable to prove the death of Rykzir, the rival house must hunt him down through the underworld. Even if doing so shatters their worldview, ends millennia of isolation, and reveals to surface dwellers the bloody Heart of the Drow.
Chapter 1
The sun burns away the wise; the fool embraces the light above Droweblith. The wise embrace E’lith; her darkness embraces the strong; A gift from Kro'henlith to the Drow. –Dreketh, A high priestess of Kro’henlith
“Kro’henlith”, Rykzir corrected Truhrgar. “The ‘H’ is almost silent, subtle, but present.” The way the dvergar pronounced the sound with guttural phlegm made his fingers tap the hilt of his dagger with jealousy for the sacred name of the goddess. He looked over to the gray skinned dwarf; his scraggly beard was a mockery to his own hairless jawline.
“Apologies, my lord,” he replied, tightly rolling the scroll he was quoting from. Truhrgar then leaned back his head exposing a thick artery in the neck. Rykzir released his hand from the hilt and slid it along the cushion of the couch.
“What of these candles you brought me?” he asked as he lay on his side, propping himself up on his elbow. He glowered in the light of a mélange flame which burned, without heat or smoke, in a mantled hearth along the wall before him.
As Truhrgar stepped between the Drow and the hearth, he cast an otherwise stark shadow that barely contrasted with Rykzir’s deeply purpled, muscular thigh and abdomen. He set a stone box engraved with a spider's web on the table, as well as a bowl of water next to it. He bowed slightly before turning to kneel before the hearth. Grabbing a stone, he stood up and slowly sank his thick, calloused hands into the water which began to bubble and hiss with steam from the heat of it.
Rykzir’s eyes dimmed as he squinted with anticipation or boredom, he was not yet sure. The hearth, hewn into a thermal vein, contained a number of stones which drew their heat from the surrounding rock. Truhrgar opened the stone lid to reveal three, bone-white candles.
“Should the Matron choose you to consort Lolketh,” he paused while Rykzir groaned at the thought. “Ritual candles, such as these, contain an important ingredient to weave a powerful magic if you become more proficient.”
“If?” Rykzir scoffed and locked his fingers across his stomach.
“Nothing is certain in the house of Qu’eblith,” the dvergar struggled to form the beginning of the surname of Rykzir’s family. He placed one of the candles into the boiling water.
“How ever did you server my aunt for so long with such enunciation?”
“Your matron…” he paused, reaching his hand into the scalding water and pulled a thin filament from the melted tallow. “…notices my worth.”
“And what worth has a slave?” Rykzir asked, his keen eyes discerning that the dvergar, through all his wrinkles, winced in pain.
“A slave is not content with his place. I am content. Do you know what makes a candle, my lord?” He gulped before honoring his pupil with title, realizing he forgot that his lord did not like emphasis of the things he did not know.
“Does our matron allow you speak to her in such a way?”
He did not expose his neck this time, but held the thin strand taught between his fingers. “No, my–”.
“Besides, candles are for Altyrdrow and even lesser beings,” Rykzir interrupted waving his free hand callously.
“And, yet, they unwittingly but necessarily preserve such a useful material,” Truhrgar plucked what looked like a Drow’s hair and it sounded like a feeble harp.
“Ach, a musician’s ear after all,” the dvergar quipped.
Intrigued, the Drow stood up from the couch. His long, white hair illuminated as though it were amber in the undying firelight. His muscular, well-articulated body lustered purple as if it were some distantly forgotten moonless midnight. He walked past the table exposing his naked backside to the gray dwarf.
“What use does it have to me?” He turned and asked. Truhrgar dared not show his disdain for the decadent phallic display.
“My lord, the ephemeral spider walks between this world and the next. It is a creature as hard as stone and, seemingly at will, a smoke or vapor.” He skimmed the tallow from the water, consuming it until none remained. In the fresh, boiling water, he cleaned and set aside the silken strand. “This unique phenomenon can be yielded from their silk.” He swapped the cooled stone with a freshly hot one from the hearth bringing the water back to roiling.
“To which purpose?”
“My lord?” Truhrgar held the strand humbly in his hand. Rykzir, perceiving his body language, knelt to one knee, but held a tight grip on the dagger lying on the couch. “Keep these strands in your hair, if you learn the spell, then should urgency require, feel for the double knots and, following the strand between your fingers, cast the spell.” Rykzir marveled at how such stubby fingers could tie such a petite strand, but the dvergar were renowned for their craftwork.
“What is the spell?”
Truhrgar finished knotting the other silk strands into the hair. He reached into the box that contained the candles and removed a false door, pulling out a rolled parchment from the hidden section. “Manuscribe this into your spell book, I cannot read Drower.”
“Can you read at all?” Rykzir asked, snatching the parchment. He moved away from the bright light of the hearth fire, to the other side of his chamber and sat within an oriel window. He rolled out the scroll along his folded legs and felt the cool draft against his face as he poured over the arcane script.
The glint of the dagger’s blade in the fire light caught Truhrgar’s eye and he saw his opportunity. He deftly examined it, smelling that the poisoned edge was still fresh. He tucked it carefully between his gauntlet and burly forearm.
“Slave, bring me my ink and quill.”
Truhrgar motioned to a desk drawer, placing the scriber’s tools and a needle onto a black lacquered board with folding legs. He did not tremble as he made his way to his lord, hiding his forearms beneath the scriber’s table. Rykzir came across a confusingly written script and, meditating upon it, looked out the window. He admired how far he saw in the darkness of the cavern, punctuated by magical light of many colors, whatever the caster chose.
The towers of Metzyr’eblith rose into the ceilings of the caverns, their magical lights never going out. But, in the dregs below the towers were always the same dull yellow of candle light. Not even a bright yellow like the ritual candles when burned. Beyond the city, he saw the Mer shimmering from some towers which rose up from its waters. At such distance even the brightest light had no color and he instead imagined the colors of the waters and distant cavern walls from past trysts.
“Slave, do not the dvergar have alchemy to change the color of the candle light?” he asked as his mind wandered.
“Yes, with various salts and minerals, my lord.” He set the table over Rykzir’s thighs, careful not to brush his lord with his hairy arms, or the hilt of the dagger he now guarded with his palm. With the motion of a wyrm, Truhrgar’s arms struck at Rykzir’s neck and face. His hilted hand twisted to cover the Drow’s mouth while his free hand drew the blade just enough to slide across the dark neck. Careful not to cut himself for a drop of blood would indicate paralysis and inevitable combing of his flesh. “You should not have forgotten this,” he growled in a hushed voice. He felt the hot breath of Rykzir’s laughter through the palm of his hand and moved it enough to hear him speak.
“You’ have taught me well, old slave,” he chuckled and looked down. Truhrgar saw near his waist the faint glow of green swirls in Rykzir’s open palm. “We would have joined each other in death.”
“You should not treat your death as equally as mine, you are Vulgyrdrow,” he said and stood up releasing his grip. He looked down at the spell forming in his lord’s hand and smirked. “Acid to my crotch? What a horrible way to die.”
“I could smell you, and the poison of my blade, crossing the room.”
Truhrgar looked down and, smelling his shoulders, he scowled. “Have you been practicing my lord?”
“I have,” Rykzir wrapped both ends of the scroll around two spools that came with the table and rolled them until he was back at the beginning of the script. “And my spell book?”
“You command, I obey. Next time, be more specific.” He set the dagger upon a small pedestal beside the oriel window. “What do you think of the spell?”
“It is fascinating, older than what I expected for an invisibility spell.”
“It’s not an invisibility spell,” the dvergar cleared his throat as he brought over a flesh bound tome. It was tipped and bound in lacquered metal. The flesh was dried and leathered, stretched over tortoise shell and bone to give it a hard cover.
Rykzir read down the script again, turning the spools. “The ephemeral spider?”
“Good, my lord. What about it?”
“This spell consumes it,” he replied as Truhrgar laid the spell book upon the center of the scriber’s table, below the scroll.
“And you detect some invisibility?”
He looked through the scroll, pausing where he could make more sense of the script. “Plane shifting.”
Satisfied with his pupil’s answer, Truhrgar walked to the hearth and grabbed the cold stone from the bowl and set it upon the others in the flame. “Manuscribe the scroll, my lord, never lose those pages. It is far more useful than any invisibility spell.”
“How have you come across such arcane magic?” Rykzir asked. “And before the Matron’s test. I cannot possibly learn this in time.”
“No, I most certainly think you could not.” Truhrgar laughed like a deep drum. “If you could, you would be greater than any consort in recorded lore.” He finished eating the remaining tallow. “To answer your question, the library of Qu’eblith is a vast treasure of some of the most arcane in Metzyr’eblith. It would be a travesty were any of it lost.”
Rykzir turned the spools as the dvergar walked up beside him setting a vial on the pedestal next to the dagger. He plucked the needle from the table and Rykzir heard the puncture of his skin, it was tough and reminded him of punching the leather of his belt. Truhrgar stepped before his lord, a cloth pressed against his wrist, and held out the vial filled with blood.
He took the vial and thanked him with the wave of his hand. Placing it in a hollow of the table, he vigorously stirred it with his finely plumed quill before dipping the tip into a dried cake of ink. The dyes were all reddish hues of the pallet once mixed with the blood. He stirred the vial again, unconcerned that the little bit of color would taint the red. A bit of coagulant clung to the quill which he promptly flung out the window without regard to where it landed.
“You have not told me in all these kuryls if the blood is a requisite for the arcane or merely aesthetic.”
“Thus it has been since before your mother’s mother. Thousands of kuryls before I was born.”
“This is why I don’t know how a candle is made,” Rykzir quipped about his cryptic answer. He peered at the script, sometimes pausing on a single word, mediating on its meaning and which colored ink to use for each letter. He just finished the first line when he heard commotion below from the atrium. “Slave, bring me my apparel and set this aside.” He motioned for the table to be removed and fixated his gaze to the house guards. Their black mithril armor plated together like a chitinous husk of a ban’thwil.
The house earl yelled something to the gate’s watch but it was muffled under the lockstep of the marching order. Eight dvergar smoothly stepped through the pointed cinquefoil arch, two carrying each leg which stretched out from the lacquered litter. Followed by eight more slaves, again two for each leg stretched behind, giving it a ghastly arachnoid appearance. As it passed, it caught the flicker of the enduring flames which lined the atrium, lighting it with an occasional white opalescence.
“Our matron has arrived. It’s not even eight,” Rykzir said while inspecting a terrarium across the room. Inside was a little tyl spider spinning a web, it filled in six of thirteen sections and was halfway finished with the seventh. He saw each filament of the spider’s work, while Truhrgar had to lean in close to get a better look.
“Is your cousin with her?” He asked, tapping on the crystal shell.
Rykzir looked to the litter which stopped in the middle of the atrium, surrounded by house guard. Behind and to the right he saw their high priestess walking forward, her flowing gown rippling like the Mer in Lolketh’s hands as she followed close behind keeping it off the stone.
“Yes,” he longingly said, gazing upon her beauty. But hesitant at the thought of consorting with her. He didn’t want the responsibility, or the publicity. Were it up to him he would live out his kuryls in the tower as a mage in obscurity. Though the power would be nice, he thought, as he watched their matron’s consort exit the litter first, commanding the respect of even the Drowess of the guard.
He stood up and slipped the cloak around his shoulders, pulling his silk white hair from the nape, it flowed to the middle of his back. Truhrgar returned the scriber’s table to the desk and looked over at his lord who sat back down to lace his boots around slender pants. Rykzir clasped his belt with a silver buckle and the cloak looked an indigo blue with blood red trim and illumined embroidery.
“My lord,” Truhrgar stopped him as he headed for the door. Rykzir turned and retrieved the dagger from the pedestal and sheathed it in a strap along his chest that held the cloak closed. The slave handed him his spell book, he looked at the cover a moment, then placed it in a satchel that hung from the side of his belt. “Now you look like a proper mage.”
Rykzir moved his hand and crooked his fingers, muttering an incantation, then smelled pleasantly musk. “Let’s go greet our matron.”
Summary: Rykzir Qu'eblith, a mage of his house is chosen to consort with Lolketh who is in line to become high priestess of his family, and also happens to be his cousin. When a rival house attacks, they must kill everyone to receive the blessings of their priestesses and to sanction the murders. Unable to prove the death of Rykzir, the rival house must hunt him down through the underworld. Even if doing so shatters their worldview, ends millennia of isolation, and reveals to surface dwellers the bloody Heart of the Drow.
Chapter 1
The sun burns away the wise; the fool embraces the light above Droweblith.
The wise embrace E’lith; her darkness embraces the strong;
A gift from Kro'henlith to the Drow.
–Dreketh, A high priestess of Kro’henlith
“Kro’henlith”, Rykzir corrected Truhrgar. “The ‘H’ is almost silent, subtle, but present.” The way the dvergar pronounced the sound with guttural phlegm made his fingers tap the hilt of his dagger with jealousy for the sacred name of the goddess. He looked over to the gray skinned dwarf; his scraggly beard was a mockery to his own hairless jawline.
“Apologies, my lord,” he replied, tightly rolling the scroll he was quoting from. Truhrgar then leaned back his head exposing a thick artery in the neck. Rykzir released his hand from the hilt and slid it along the cushion of the couch.
“What of these candles you brought me?” he asked as he lay on his side, propping himself up on his elbow. He glowered in the light of a mélange flame which burned, without heat or smoke, in a mantled hearth along the wall before him.
As Truhrgar stepped between the Drow and the hearth, he cast an otherwise stark shadow that barely contrasted with Rykzir’s deeply purpled, muscular thigh and abdomen. He set a stone box engraved with a spider's web on the table, as well as a bowl of water next to it. He bowed slightly before turning to kneel before the hearth. Grabbing a stone, he stood up and slowly sank his thick, calloused hands into the water which began to bubble and hiss with steam from the heat of it.
Rykzir’s eyes dimmed as he squinted with anticipation or boredom, he was not yet sure. The hearth, hewn into a thermal vein, contained a number of stones which drew their heat from the surrounding rock. Truhrgar opened the stone lid to reveal three, bone-white candles.
“Should the Matron choose you to consort Lolketh,” he paused while Rykzir groaned at the thought. “Ritual candles, such as these, contain an important ingredient to weave a powerful magic if you become more proficient.”
“If?” Rykzir scoffed and locked his fingers across his stomach.
“Nothing is certain in the house of Qu’eblith,” the dvergar struggled to form the beginning of the surname of Rykzir’s family. He placed one of the candles into the boiling water.
“How ever did you server my aunt for so long with such enunciation?”
“Your matron…” he paused, reaching his hand into the scalding water and pulled a thin filament from the melted tallow. “…notices my worth.”
“And what worth has a slave?” Rykzir asked, his keen eyes discerning that the dvergar, through all his wrinkles, winced in pain.
“A slave is not content with his place. I am content. Do you know what makes a candle, my lord?” He gulped before honoring his pupil with title, realizing he forgot that his lord did not like emphasis of the things he did not know.
“Does our matron allow you speak to her in such a way?”
He did not expose his neck this time, but held the thin strand taught between his fingers. “No, my–”.
“Besides, candles are for Altyrdrow and even lesser beings,” Rykzir interrupted waving his free hand callously.
“And, yet, they unwittingly but necessarily preserve such a useful material,” Truhrgar plucked what looked like a Drow’s hair and it sounded like a feeble harp.
“An ephemeral spider’s silk?” Rykzir’s pointed ears turned toward the thing.
“Ach, a musician’s ear after all,” the dvergar quipped.
Intrigued, the Drow stood up from the couch. His long, white hair illuminated as though it were amber in the undying firelight. His muscular, well-articulated body lustered purple as if it were some distantly forgotten moonless midnight. He walked past the table exposing his naked backside to the gray dwarf.
“What use does it have to me?” He turned and asked. Truhrgar dared not show his disdain for the decadent phallic display.
“My lord, the ephemeral spider walks between this world and the next. It is a creature as hard as stone and, seemingly at will, a smoke or vapor.” He skimmed the tallow from the water, consuming it until none remained. In the fresh, boiling water, he cleaned and set aside the silken strand. “This unique phenomenon can be yielded from their silk.” He swapped the cooled stone with a freshly hot one from the hearth bringing the water back to roiling.
“To which purpose?”
“My lord?” Truhrgar held the strand humbly in his hand. Rykzir, perceiving his body language, knelt to one knee, but held a tight grip on the dagger lying on the couch. “Keep these strands in your hair, if you learn the spell, then should urgency require, feel for the double knots and, following the strand between your fingers, cast the spell.” Rykzir marveled at how such stubby fingers could tie such a petite strand, but the dvergar were renowned for their craftwork.
“What is the spell?”
Truhrgar finished knotting the other silk strands into the hair. He reached into the box that contained the candles and removed a false door, pulling out a rolled parchment from the hidden section. “Manuscribe this into your spell book, I cannot read Drower.”
“Can you read at all?” Rykzir asked, snatching the parchment. He moved away from the bright light of the hearth fire, to the other side of his chamber and sat within an oriel window. He rolled out the scroll along his folded legs and felt the cool draft against his face as he poured over the arcane script.
The glint of the dagger’s blade in the fire light caught Truhrgar’s eye and he saw his opportunity. He deftly examined it, smelling that the poisoned edge was still fresh. He tucked it carefully between his gauntlet and burly forearm.
“Slave, bring me my ink and quill.”
Truhrgar motioned to a desk drawer, placing the scriber’s tools and a needle onto a black lacquered board with folding legs. He did not tremble as he made his way to his lord, hiding his forearms beneath the scriber’s table. Rykzir came across a confusingly written script and, meditating upon it, looked out the window. He admired how far he saw in the darkness of the cavern, punctuated by magical light of many colors, whatever the caster chose.
The towers of Metzyr’eblith rose into the ceilings of the caverns, their magical lights never going out. But, in the dregs below the towers were always the same dull yellow of candle light. Not even a bright yellow like the ritual candles when burned. Beyond the city, he saw the Mer shimmering from some towers which rose up from its waters. At such distance even the brightest light had no color and he instead imagined the colors of the waters and distant cavern walls from past trysts.
“Slave, do not the dvergar have alchemy to change the color of the candle light?” he asked as his mind wandered.
“Yes, with various salts and minerals, my lord.” He set the table over Rykzir’s thighs, careful not to brush his lord with his hairy arms, or the hilt of the dagger he now guarded with his palm. With the motion of a wyrm, Truhrgar’s arms struck at Rykzir’s neck and face. His hilted hand twisted to cover the Drow’s mouth while his free hand drew the blade just enough to slide across the dark neck. Careful not to cut himself for a drop of blood would indicate paralysis and inevitable combing of his flesh. “You should not have forgotten this,” he growled in a hushed voice. He felt the hot breath of Rykzir’s laughter through the palm of his hand and moved it enough to hear him speak.
“You’ have taught me well, old slave,” he chuckled and looked down. Truhrgar saw near his waist the faint glow of green swirls in Rykzir’s open palm. “We would have joined each other in death.”
“You should not treat your death as equally as mine, you are Vulgyrdrow,” he said and stood up releasing his grip. He looked down at the spell forming in his lord’s hand and smirked. “Acid to my crotch? What a horrible way to die.”
“I could smell you, and the poison of my blade, crossing the room.”
Truhrgar looked down and, smelling his shoulders, he scowled. “Have you been practicing my lord?”
“I have,” Rykzir wrapped both ends of the scroll around two spools that came with the table and rolled them until he was back at the beginning of the script. “And my spell book?”
“You command, I obey. Next time, be more specific.” He set the dagger upon a small pedestal beside the oriel window. “What do you think of the spell?”
“It is fascinating, older than what I expected for an invisibility spell.”
“It’s not an invisibility spell,” the dvergar cleared his throat as he brought over a flesh bound tome. It was tipped and bound in lacquered metal. The flesh was dried and leathered, stretched over tortoise shell and bone to give it a hard cover.
Rykzir read down the script again, turning the spools. “The ephemeral spider?”
“Good, my lord. What about it?”
“This spell consumes it,” he replied as Truhrgar laid the spell book upon the center of the scriber’s table, below the scroll.
“And you detect some invisibility?”
He looked through the scroll, pausing where he could make more sense of the script. “Plane shifting.”
Satisfied with his pupil’s answer, Truhrgar walked to the hearth and grabbed the cold stone from the bowl and set it upon the others in the flame. “Manuscribe the scroll, my lord, never lose those pages. It is far more useful than any invisibility spell.”
“How have you come across such arcane magic?” Rykzir asked. “And before the Matron’s test. I cannot possibly learn this in time.”
“No, I most certainly think you could not.” Truhrgar laughed like a deep drum. “If you could, you would be greater than any consort in recorded lore.” He finished eating the remaining tallow. “To answer your question, the library of Qu’eblith is a vast treasure of some of the most arcane in Metzyr’eblith. It would be a travesty were any of it lost.”
Rykzir turned the spools as the dvergar walked up beside him setting a vial on the pedestal next to the dagger. He plucked the needle from the table and Rykzir heard the puncture of his skin, it was tough and reminded him of punching the leather of his belt. Truhrgar stepped before his lord, a cloth pressed against his wrist, and held out the vial filled with blood.
He took the vial and thanked him with the wave of his hand. Placing it in a hollow of the table, he vigorously stirred it with his finely plumed quill before dipping the tip into a dried cake of ink. The dyes were all reddish hues of the pallet once mixed with the blood. He stirred the vial again, unconcerned that the little bit of color would taint the red. A bit of coagulant clung to the quill which he promptly flung out the window without regard to where it landed.
“You have not told me in all these kuryls if the blood is a requisite for the arcane or merely aesthetic.”
“Thus it has been since before your mother’s mother. Thousands of kuryls before I was born.”
“This is why I don’t know how a candle is made,” Rykzir quipped about his cryptic answer. He peered at the script, sometimes pausing on a single word, mediating on its meaning and which colored ink to use for each letter. He just finished the first line when he heard commotion below from the atrium. “Slave, bring me my apparel and set this aside.” He motioned for the table to be removed and fixated his gaze to the house guards. Their black mithril armor plated together like a chitinous husk of a ban’thwil.
The house earl yelled something to the gate’s watch but it was muffled under the lockstep of the marching order. Eight dvergar smoothly stepped through the pointed cinquefoil arch, two carrying each leg which stretched out from the lacquered litter. Followed by eight more slaves, again two for each leg stretched behind, giving it a ghastly arachnoid appearance. As it passed, it caught the flicker of the enduring flames which lined the atrium, lighting it with an occasional white opalescence.
“Our matron has arrived. It’s not even eight,” Rykzir said while inspecting a terrarium across the room. Inside was a little tyl spider spinning a web, it filled in six of thirteen sections and was halfway finished with the seventh. He saw each filament of the spider’s work, while Truhrgar had to lean in close to get a better look.
“Is your cousin with her?” He asked, tapping on the crystal shell.
Rykzir looked to the litter which stopped in the middle of the atrium, surrounded by house guard. Behind and to the right he saw their high priestess walking forward, her flowing gown rippling like the Mer in Lolketh’s hands as she followed close behind keeping it off the stone.
“Yes,” he longingly said, gazing upon her beauty. But hesitant at the thought of consorting with her. He didn’t want the responsibility, or the publicity. Were it up to him he would live out his kuryls in the tower as a mage in obscurity. Though the power would be nice, he thought, as he watched their matron’s consort exit the litter first, commanding the respect of even the Drowess of the guard.
He stood up and slipped the cloak around his shoulders, pulling his silk white hair from the nape, it flowed to the middle of his back. Truhrgar returned the scriber’s table to the desk and looked over at his lord who sat back down to lace his boots around slender pants. Rykzir clasped his belt with a silver buckle and the cloak looked an indigo blue with blood red trim and illumined embroidery.
“My lord,” Truhrgar stopped him as he headed for the door. Rykzir turned and retrieved the dagger from the pedestal and sheathed it in a strap along his chest that held the cloak closed. The slave handed him his spell book, he looked at the cover a moment, then placed it in a satchel that hung from the side of his belt. “Now you look like a proper mage.”
Rykzir moved his hand and crooked his fingers, muttering an incantation, then smelled pleasantly musk. “Let’s go greet our matron.”
Chapter 2 - https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/story-lore/35151-the-heart-of-the-drow-chapter-2
Read the first chapters. Feel free to critique. Will link the next chapters at the end of the first. Two stories running so far.
Simeon Tor:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/story-lore/34598-simeon-tor-chapter-1-the-heat-of-battle
The Heart of the Drow:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/story-lore/36014-heart-of-the-drow-chapter-1