Heroes of the Dark

Whispers in the Dark

The Xorlarrin are a warlike band of mystics.  Their psionic talents have made them powerful, exacting, and greedy—far greedier than perhaps Baenre or Barrison.  But something happened there, in the dark, when they suddenly struck out on their own and became a city-state unto themselves.

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The Fracture happened slowly.  In fact, it had taken a thousand years.  One of the most venerable houses, with a single matron since Menzoberranzan's founding, had lost their matron.  Not all at once… and not instantly, to be sure.

X.

It was the first of their name, not because they were mysterious, but because they had become a mystery.  The name of their forebears from the time of the Sundering was completely forgotten.  In this case, the "X" represented a name lost to time, which was unusual because the matron was so old she no longer remembered the time of her birth—the time before her skin was black.

The fact that she had died?  Had she?  was very troubling to her people.  Yet there she was, in the hive that had become their minds.

Combining faces and thoughts and names and intentions, until no lie, no opposition, no argument could survive.  Only the cold and pure fact of an eternity gone wrong.  She wandered between their minds, occasionally sifting the rarified fact or hidden knowledge that she desired, and she would take without asking.

She was the center of their world, their Link.  She was everything.  And now that the Link was complete, after a thousand years, it was time to ascend to godhood.  She would become Xorlarrin, the god of the mind.  A few voices failed to instantly agree, and were silenced.  A few more questioned, and were subsumed.  Now all was Xorlarrin, and her mind was cleared of any doubt.

Who were these people to enter her realm?  They were not of the Link.  They were… .Outsiders.  She would expel this cancer of question like a wound heals, until the withered scab fell away to be forgotten.

What was it they said?  "Start by talking about your intentions to attack us after we had done your bidding?"  …was that what I had done?  Very well.  No matter.

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