Dark Dagger

It can be surmised that the true goals of the Dark Dagger are as mysterious as it's methods and as reclusive as its leader. That being said, it is obvious that its immediate goals are the co-opting and absorption of any and all criminal activity on the surface world with the stated intention of an eventual drow migration to the Lands Above. Additionally, in recent years, a state of war has erupted between Vhaerun and Mask, and it is the further charge of the agents of the Dark Dagger to eliminate the clergy of Mask wherever they are to be found with the ultimate goal of the complete annihilation and absorption of this lesser human thief god by the Masked Lord.

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The truth of the history and motivations of the Cult of the Dark Dagger and the mortal life of its founder, the Twilight Herald, is choked with legend, symbolism, religious dogma, and outright fabrication. What follows, then, is not a detailed account of the over two thousand year history of the Dark Dagger, but the broadest sweep of grounding legend known to any and all acolytes in the Vault of Cloaked Midnight.

"Almost three thousand years ago, a male child was born to the greatest family of the drow metropolis of Guallidurth, a family born of the blood of the first Diaspora of the drow. The child was exceedingly fair and beautiful to look upon, and yet, his eyes troubled the soothsayers and priestesses who attended his birth. For they were not of a match. One burned a most pleasing red, the red of fire, the red of blood. The other was the green of a moss shrouded well, a color that evoked not images of the Dark Below, but of the Dark Above, of concealing forests touched by moonlight that were the forgotten birthright of his misguided people. When this was seen, the soothsayers did pale, and the priestesses did shriek. They cried out that the child born was an abomination, that the color of his eyes boded ill for the great family. They cried out that his blood should be immediately spilled, to sate the madness of the Spider Bitch. But the hand of the Queen of Filth was not the only one to enter that birthing chamber that day, for then did the great matron mother from whose body the boy had emerged declaim, "None shall touch him, for he is of my body, and from my divine body can come nothing ill whatever." And so it was that no harm was done him, but even then he knew whose hand had sheltered him, for only he could see his true father, the Lord of Subtle Guises, there in that birthing chamber smiling down upon him.

The child thrived after a fashion, even in the confining roles assigned him by his small minded mother. To every task he was put, he excelled. As he grew in body, he was mastered both sword and spell alike, with a speed never seen before in the great halls of Guallidurth. All the while his mother looked on and preened, assuming in her colossal ignorance that this marvelous boy was as he was because it was she as spawned him. She grew eventually to secretly favor the boy, even above her own daughters, for the slow and stupid creatures could not compete with her male progeny. And so it came to be that before the boy had yet been deemed a man that the plans for the next great war of conquest were given unto him, to study and advise the council of matrons what neighbors he saw as ripe for conquest. For the spiders of Guallidurth were a warlike nest of vermin, and finding themselves in a rare moment of unity and clarity, they determined that their city was strong enough to become an empire.

The boy was happy to comply with these directions, for he thought war itself would be an education the likes of which he couldn't find at home. The deep bears were the first to fall to the armies of Guallidurth, followed swiftly several neighboring drow settlements of lesser power. The new made general was disinclined to stop there, soon bringing the dark dwarves to heel, and annihilating a coven of mindflayers, for they are treacherous and not to be suffered to live. On and on it went as the seasons on the surface sped by, until at last, the boy having long since become a man, he was able to look at the charts of the Dark Below and say that there were no neighbors left to conquer. And yet he was troubled. For in the passing years he had seen things that to his young mind were a strangeness. Despite the victories, despite the roll of triumph after triumph, the empire of Guallidurth was now less cohesive than it had ever been. The spoils of war were pouring out of the coffers of the treasury, not in. A vast fortune was being spent to keep recalcitrant slaves in bondage and shackles, and no labor was got from the lot of them. He had begun to realize the stupidity of the tyranny of inequality.

Turning from his musings, he thought to bring his concerns to his great mother. He found that she had followed in the path of her empire, and, like Guallidurth, had become a bloated, unreasoning, stupid beast with little thought left save more consumption. Perhaps unsurprisingly, instead of listening to the wise questions and council of her son, she instead commanded him to go out and conquer more, for her glory.

"But, there are no caverns unexplored, no people in the Dark Below that are not in our power!", he protested.

"Then conquer the whole of the surface, or do not return, lest I consume you!", replied the great beast that was his mother.

And so did the thing that the humans of the sand empire of Calimshan call the Night Wars begin. For many of their generations, they found themselves pitted against a mind the likes of which the surface had never known. Their peasant militias could not defend against the Silent Strike. Their noble generals knew not how to riposte the Coiled Serpent. And so it came to be that the great general himself strode the halls of their defeated emperor, and slew him with his own blade, and yet, he knew, that the victory was hollow. For despite defeat heaped upon defeat, and humiliation after humiliation, the humans remained as numberless as the cold stars in this alien sky. Instinctively, the general knew that time was to be the only enemy that the armies of Guallidurth would be unable to vanquish.

In the one hundredth year of the conquest of the Night Above, the great general of Guallidurth returned to his mother's house, in triumph and glory, bearing the broken rod and crown of her enemy. He found a realm riven by insurrection and instability. The conquests of the empire had risen up at every turn, and their slaves had begun to band together with enemies to her rule, forming armies to threaten the very walls of her noble manse, and yet, she demanded more. She demanded that he bring more of the surface under her control, more slaves to feed the fires of insurrection, more useless chattel to drag Guallidurth to ruin and destruction. It was then, finally, standing in the presence of his victory maddened mother while the chaos of insurrection surged just beyond the walls, that he finally heard the voice of his Father, a voice that urged him to leave and leave immediately, lest the great beast consume him before she finally consumed herself. And so he left, the outraged cries of his impotent matron falling against his back like the rains of the surface world.

In places far and strange did the Son of Shadows walk once he departed Guallidurth, for many cycles of growth, death, and rebirth. For years he walks the Realms both Above and Below, and in his wanderings, the voice of his Father comes to him many times. He came then to understand his purpose, and part of the Divine Plan born by his Father for us, his Chosen people. Finally, his wanderings brought him to a great fissure in the rock beneath the mountains. A vast labyrinth of green-gray stone and black volcanic glass in which the shadow breath of his Divine Sire surged and swelled on secret winds. Here, he knew, he could finally rest, and here he could build a new world for his people; a world of justice, equality, and reason, balanced forever in the secret place between the light and dark, the day and the night, the Sacred Twilight of Vhaerun Eternal. At the end of life's path, he strode forth, through death, on the road laid for him by his Father, the Herald of Change and Prophecy for all his people."

The further one diverges from the specifics of the Founding Time and the details of the mortal life of the Twilight Herald, the more of the history of the Cult can be stated with accuracy.

It is known that many of the original citizens of the Vault were veterans of the Night Wars, trusted officers and soldiers, both male and female, who could find a safe and secret refuge from the imperialistic madness of Guallidurth. As the instability of that great metropolis continued to grow, more and more disaffected drow would be persuaded to join the fledgling community within the Vault of Twilight Eternal. What had begun as a disaffected group of refugees had become, by the Year of Flames Rising (-650 DR), a settlement of over 2,000 drow.