Season 0
Seventeen Years After the Fall
It has been 17 years since the Dawn’s Crusade was shattered beneath the obsidian blades of a united Underdark coalition. Orbb Dra’sa, once a bastion of Lloth’s dominion and House Alethar’s tyranny, now lies fractured—its veins pulsing with contested power, its heart uncertain.
No single faction holds sway over the city. Instead, Orbb Dra’sa has become a mosaic of influence: enclaves of rival houses, cults, mercenary guilds, and foreign emissaries carve out territory, each whispering promises of dominance while watching for betrayal.
Yet the Church of Shevarash refuses to relent. They contracted with the famed mercenary group, the Whitestone Company, clings to the surface tunnel—the only artery connecting Orbb Dra’sa to the world above. There, a fortress of radiant stone and divine steel looms, casting its judgmental light down into the depths. New recruits arrive daily—zealots, paladins, and warpriests drawn by prophecy and vengeance. Stronger now than ever, the Whitestone Company sharpens its blades and prepares to march once more. The city braces, knowing the next assault will not be repelled so easily.
Across Orbb Dra’sa, the game unfolds. Kings and queens maneuver their pawns, sacrificing, scheming, seducing. Every move is a feint. Every alliance, a trap.
In the Temple of Lloth, the spiders grow restless. They swell in number and hunger, their chittering echoing through the bone-laced halls. The priestesses, cloaked in blood and silk, resume the ancient rites—searching for sacrifices to appease the Spider Queen. Something stirs in the web. A revival, yes—but what has awakened her hunger?
Above, the surface dims. A forgotten spirit, ancient and wrathful, stirs in the high places. Its shadow stretches toward the light, whispering ruin.
And so the Underdark holds its breath. The silence is not peace—it is anticipation. The next few months will not merely shape the city. They will carve legends into stone and shadow. They will define an age
The arrogant proclamation arrived like a poorly veiled jest: a formal declaration of war, painstakingly inscribed on adamantine tablets and sealed with the runes of every major duergar clan in the Underdark. United for once in their grim, gray-skinned solidarity, the duergar houses had banded together into an unprecedented coalition, vowing to march against the drow city of Orbb Dra’sa—the Spider’s Nest—and crush its web of power once and for all. They even named the precise cavern where their combined forces would assemble to meet any army the dark elves dared to field.
In the grand, obsidian-walled temple of Lolth at the heart of Orbb Dra’sa, the missive was read aloud before the assembled priestesses and matrons. Laughter echoed through the vaulted chambers—sharp, mocking, delighted. The very idea that the dour, squat underdwarves, those pale imitations of true dwarven stock, would dare issue such an open challenge to the children of Lolth seemed absurdly overconfident. To the drow, it smacked of desperation, or perhaps some crude attempt at psychological warfare. Few believed the gray dwarves possessed either the cunning or the numbers to pose a genuine threat.
Yet pride demanded action. Two of the city's most formidable houses—House Alethar and House Niravar—quickly forged an alliance, drawing in a host of lesser allied clans eager to share in the glory (and the spoils) of crushing the insolent duergar. Together they assembled a grand expeditionary force: ranks of sleek, ebony-armored warriors, sinister priestesses chanting venomous prayers, summoned yochlol drifting like shadows, and great troops of giant spiders skittering along the cavern ceilings. With banners of black silk embroidered with silver spiders fluttering in the still Underdark air, they marched out from Orbb Dra’sa’s towering gates, leaving the city lightly garrisoned but supremely confident.
Before departing, the leaders of the two dominant houses met in a private antechamber lit by flickering green faerie fire. House Alethar and House Niravar. The negotiation was swift and almost cordial by drow standards—no drawn blades, no veiled death threats, merely the exchange of a few choice gems, a flagon of potent mushroom wine, and murmured oaths sealed beneath Lolth’s watchful gaze. They recalled the ancient war that had shattered the Dawn Crusade years before, when rival houses had briefly set aside their enmities to annihilate a common foe. History, they agreed, would repeat itself. The duergar would be broken, their forges silenced, their clans scattered into the deepest fissures.
The designated battlefield was an ancient, shattered ruin—a vast, crumbling cavern once home to some long-forgotten dwarven outpost or surface kingdom that had tumbled into the depths eons ago. Collapsed towers and toppled statues lay half-buried in dust and rubble; jagged walls bore the blackened scars of ancient spellfire and siege engines. Scattered everywhere were the skeletal remains of duergar warriors—gray bones still clad in rusted mail, clutching broken axes—silent testament to some prior, failed uprising or doomed expedition. The air hung heavy with the scent of old stone and decay.
The Alethar commander surveyed the desolate scene with narrowed crimson eyes. Something felt wrong. Too quiet. No distant clamor of hammers on shields, no guttural war chants echoing through the tunnels, no gray-skinned scouts lurking on the ridges. The duergar were nowhere to be seen.
The realization struck like venom: they had been deceived.
Even as the realization dawned, the trap snapped shut. Far behind them, in the miles of twisting passages leading back to Orbb Dra’sa, a series of thunderous detonations rolled through the stone. Engineered collapses—carefully placed charges of alchemical fire and magically weakened supports—brought down entire sections of tunnel. Tons of rock cascaded inward, sealing the primary routes back to the city in impenetrable walls of shattered basalt and rubble. The proud army of Orbb Dra’sa, lured out into the open, was now cut off from home.
Within the city itself, the true duergar assault erupted with brutal efficiency. While the drow elite had marched away, gray dwarven shock troops—reinforced by their psionic brethren and war constructs—poured through secondary tunnels and forgotten sally ports that the arrogant defenders had long dismissed as insignificant. Forges roared to life in captured districts; siege rams battered at gatehouses; disciplined phalanxes of duergar warriors advanced behind locked shields, their eyes glowing faintly with innate psionic rage.
The Silken Legion—the elite temple guard sworn to protect Lolth’s grand sanctum—rallied in desperate fury under the command of Lord Xarsaal, a battle-hardened weapons master whose name evoked both fear and grudging respect even among rival houses. Clad in armor of woven adamantite threads and bearing glaives etched with spider motifs, they formed a defiant line across the temple plaza. Priestesses hurled webs of dark energy and summoned demonic allies; giant spiders descended from the vaulted ceilings to tear into the invaders. The fighting was savage, house-to-house, tunnel-to-tunnel—blood slicking the stone floors, screams mingling with the clangor of steel and the crackle of psionic lightning.
The battle for Orbb Dra’sa would rage for weeks, perhaps months. Every street became a killing ground, every cavern a fortress. Supplies dwindled, slaves turned on their masters or were conscripted into desperate defenses, and the great spider goddess’s priestesses prayed feverishly for divine intervention.
And all the while, the proud armies of Houses Alethar and Niravar remained trapped outside—cut off by impassable rubble, unable to return, their grand punitive expedition reduced to a stranded host in hostile territory, wondering how the despised duergar had outmaneuvered them so completely. The Spider’s Nest was under siege from within, and the web of Lolth’s chosen had been torn apart by their own overconfidence.
Soon the armies from House Alethar and Niravar realized they were entirely cut off from support. No more food or wine would reach them through the collapsed tunnels. The twin armies encamped in the ancient Duegar fortress, which they named “Spinner’s Redoubt.” They discussed what to do next. Yath’Lar Lirael, representing the temple of Lolth to guide House Alethar, and Advisor Myranna, sent to guide House Niravar. Spinner’s Redoubt would become the base of operations for all Drow in the area, but no one house can rule it all.
Spinner’s Redoubt is a neutral ground where Niravar and Alethar may gather. Where a fragile peace is kept, urging the warriors of both factions not to attack the other in the Redoubt while House Niravar and Alethar would choose to build their hold elsewhere in the oppressive underdark night.
The year is 1500 D.R.