History of House Sar’Donnath

 The House Sar’Donnath has a long and noble history although in recent years we have fallen or harder times.  As I write this I will try to be completely objective although this is not going to be easy for me to do.                          Kienar Sar’Donnath 

1100 years ago, at the time when the Younger races rose up to viciously strike down the Elder races, House Sar’Donnath was an ancient and powerful people.  We stood high in the council of the Elven races, our Mages and Priests were greatly skilled, our Soothsayers knew many secrets long hidden and our soldiers were brave and strong.  But none of this was enough!  As you all know, the Younger Races attacked without provocation, they were jealous of what we had and wanted it for themselves.  Our people were not war-like, we were not prepared for what was to come and when the upstarts came at us like thieves in the night, we took many losses.  Our soldiers did what they could to defend the House and the Elven people as a whole and our losses were greater than that of many of the other Houses. 
        My grandfather, Matholim, was the leader of our people at the time and he was among the very last to flee from our Blessed Isle when the war was lost.  I still have an oil-painting that Matholim himself created, it shows our ancient homeland in flames as the marauding Younger Races rape and pillage and destroy and every time I look at that masterpiece it brings a tear to my eye.
        I apologise, the pain is still fresh with me and will be for as long as I live.
        House Sar’Donnath fled our homelands, as so many other Elven Houses did and, after years of wandering the oceans, struggling to survive, always heading eastward, going from one landfall to another, we landed on what we came to know as the Varalla Archipelago, a series of islands, both small and large.  There were signs of an older culture once having used these islands, but now all that were left of them were ruins and faint hints of what might have once been cities.
        The land was fertile, the oceans provided us with fish and, for centuries it seemed as though that we could be able to make a new home for ourselves, a home where we could rebuild all that we had so recently lost, that had been so viciously taken from us.
        Many of the Elven Houses that made their new home in the Varalla Archipelago talked of revenge on the Younger Races, talked of striking back and retaking what we had lost, but our House spoke out for peace and forgiveness.  Matholim, my grandfather could see no use in pointless anger, all that would happen would be more pain and death and hardship.  Had we not gone through enough of that?  Luckily, the other Houses were swayed by Matholim’s wisdom and we settled in peace in our new home.
        Centuries passed and many of the islands that made up the Archipelago were inhabited by the Elven people.  But, to our ever-lasting sorrow, as our people spread out, we started to loose contact with each other, we stopped being one people and split into many factions, each one wanting to live their own lives with no interference from the others.  The largest island, Varallan, was where the Councillors and Priests had made their home and here, we still followed the vision of peace and harmony that we had always wanted, but on some of the other islands, the Elven people became more and more tribal, becoming introverted and bitter.  At that point, House Sar’Donnath had little to do with those people although perhaps, with hindsight, we should have done what we could have to aided them, to brought them forward into the light.
        Six centuries passed and in that time, we did rebuild much of what we had lost, but then things started to go wrong.  Sometimes, when I sit alone in my chamber at night, I wonder if our people, if our House, is under some kind of curse.  There are many others I know of who never go through the hardship that seems to plague us and it is difficult not to be just a bit resentful of this.

        The Elves of Varallan started to change.  Our goals and ambitions of a utopian future were put aside and we started to live only for the day.  We started to become more and more insular, wanting only what was best for ourselves in the short-term and never thinking about the future.  We became bitter and argumentative, we started to become more and more violent.  In short, we were starting to take on human tendencies.
        A few of the eldest and most stable of the Elven people realised that there was something seriously wrong at this point and they set about finding out what it was.  This was no easy task for even they were becoming less like what they had once been.  Eventually, after years of study and searching, they discovered that the Elves were not the only residents of Varallan.  Our new homeland had been built on some kind of crypt or dungeon, a vast complex that was guarded by ancient and powerful Magic as well as many deadly traps.
        A small group of our wisest leaders, my grandfather amongst them, eventually managed to make their way into this tomb.  They faced many dangers before they came to the central chamber and realised that this was not so much a crypt but a prison.  In this chamber were ten statues of Elven figures.  But not quite Elves.  Their features were finer and more angular than ours, they stood taller and broader than most of our people and even the statues had the bearing of nobility.
        After much research and study, our Mages and Soothsayers discovered that these were statues were actually ancient Fey Princes that had been bound in stone.  When alive, these beings had been powerful beyond imagination with almost god-like abilities, but something or someone had managed to trap them in this fashion.  The Fey were beautiful and their plight touched our leaders with pity and so they set about finding a way to free them from torment.
        Matholim was unsure of this.  He believed that there had to be a reason for the Fey being bound like this, he believed that we should look into things more closely before we set about trying to free them.  Unfortunately, he was not listened to by our people.  But there was one being who did listen to him.  The Fey had indeed been imprisoned by someone, by one of their own in fact, a Fey called Lordhel.
        Lordhel was one of the greatest of the Fey Elders and his powers outranked any other.  He was a just man, a noble man who saw things clearly and when he realised that his people were starting to fall into depravity, he did what he had to do to save them.  Eons ago, Lordhel of the Fey saw that some of his comrades were using their great powers for evil.  No, perhaps evil is too strong a word, perhaps it would be better to say that it was being used for selfish purposes.  Lordhel went to the ten strongest of the Fey Princes, the ones who were falling the fastest and he begged them to turn aside from the path they had set themselves on.  Lordhel said that he had seen a future where the power of the Fey would be broken and all that would remain would be pale imitations of what they once were and he told the Fey that unless they listened to him he would be unable to stop this decay.
        The Fey Princes laughed in his face.
        It was something that Lordhel had never wanted to happen, but he knew what he had to do.  He had to try to turn the Fey away from the path they were on and the only way he could see to do this would be to take the greatest threat away from them.  Lordhel was as good and kind a man as he was wise and he could not bring himself to kill the Fey Princes but he had to take them away from his people somehow.  He had to imprison them.
        Using his most potent Magic, Lordhel created the prison that we were then living on and he bound the Fey Princes within it, he bound them in chains of stone and Magic that he hoped would never be broken.  But, the power of the Princes was such that he could only do this by binding himself to them and imprisoning himself along with them for all eternity.  This would be his sacrifice for the safety of his people and it was one that he made with no regrets.
        Unfortunately, even after Lordhel’s great sacrifice, the Fey people continued on their downward path and the beings that we now know as Fey are but weak shadows of the great race that they once were.  But that is another story.

        Lordhel still had some power and he reached out from his prison into the mind of Matholim, my grandfather, and told him of all that had gone before.  He told him that the reason our people were following the path of depravity was because of the influence of the Fey and he told Matholim that this would increase a hundredfold if the Fey were ever freed.
        Matholim tried again and again to stop the other Elves from freeing the Fey but he was not listened to and was eventually over-powered and imprisoned because of his pleas.  When the Fey were eventually freed, the first thing they did was to go to Matholim and call him traitor and twisted and evil.
        By this time, the Elves of Varallan were completely enthralled by the beautiful Fey and did whatever they wished.  Matholim was executed for his ‘treason’ and the rest of our House were banished from Varallan island for all eternity.  We could never again set foot on the land that we had given so much to create.  Twice now we had been driven from our homeland through no fault of our own, twice now we had to flee for our very lives.
        As a final punishment, the Fey Princes cast a great Ritual and took away the very life-force that made us immortal.  We no longer lived for all eternity as did all other Elves, we had limited life-spans and we later found out that out lives would be less than three centuries.  Much longer than most of the Younger Races, but what is three centuries to a people who had once known all eternity?  Could the Fey have given us any greater punishment?  I think not!
        Shintarre, my father, took command of House Sar’Donnath and led us aboard some of the great ships that we had and we left the island of Varallan.  We were not prepared for a long journey and could not travel far and we travelled only as far as the most easterly island in the Varalla Archipelago, an island called Morraine.  By the time that we had travelled this far, our supplies were exhausted and we had to make landfall.
        Morraine was inhabited by the Elves who had turned away from the search for calm when they fled our Blessed Isle.  They had turned their back on enlightenment and were now little more than warring tribes.  As I look back at this now, I believe that it was the influence of those damned Fey that had made them like this, but that is of no importance now.
        Our House had come to a land of savages, Elves that had once been noble were now little more than barbarians.  Shintarre saw all this with great sorrow and pain and he immediately set out to do what he could to bring the Elves back to the correct path.  It took almost three hundred years but eventually Shintarre and the rest of House Sar’Donnath  had changed the savages into educated and controlled people.  They were still fierce and war-like in many ways, but they now listened to Shintarre and his advisors, they now believed in order and they now were willing to aid each other rather than fight amongst themselves for what they wanted.
        This must have greatly angered the Fey and the Varallan Elves for while Shintarre was beginning to train the Morraine Elves in the study of Spellcraft and Philosophy once more, we were attacked.  An armada of ships struck at our small island home as the Fey led their puppets against us.  This was a war we could not hope to win.
        I was a newborn babe at this point and my mother was one of the first to fall to the Fey Magic.  She and my sister were sailing off our western shore, simply for the pleasure of it when the Fey attacked us and the first act of our invaders was to shatter the small sailboat my mother was in with a blast of pure energy.  Why they did this I will never know but it is something that I will never forget.
        The battle was short but fierce and many, many of our House died in those evil times.  Our warriors were still fierce and my heart swells with pride whenever I am told of the many acts of selflessness and bravery on that day, but they could not stand against the Fey Magic and the numbers of the Varallan Elves.
        As it became clear that we would loose this battle, my father gave me into the care of some of our people and told them to flee.  I was put aboard one of our boats and, with little more than a handful of my fathers advisors, of women and children and of a very few warriors, we fled eastward, ever eastward.
        On Morraine, my father led the last defence against the enemy, giving us time to flee.  The battle was  one that should never be forgotten but this neither the time nor the place for me to tell of it.  All that matters is that were defeated, utterly, and that we were now homeless again.  The King of the Varallan Elves, Dakinar, stood over the corpse of my father and announced that from this day forward he was putting a price on the head of every member of House Sar’Donnath and that they should all be killed on sight.
        That happened almost three hundred years ago and ever since then, we have been hunted and stalked by the Varallan Elves.  The one ship that did escape from Morraine fled eastwards and every time we settled in a new home, it would only be a matter of time before the warships of Varalla would appear on the horizon and we were forced to flee once more.  We did manage to settle on one island, Inverask, for about two hundred and fifty years and in that time House Sar’Donnath started to regain some of its lost strength.

        Under my guidance we built up our armies, we strengthened our Magical defences and we made ready to defend ourselves against the Varallans.  But all that was to no avail.  In the Year 1099 we were found by the Varallans and they launched a huge attack which came close to destroying us again.  Once more we were forced to flee eastwards and this time we landed on the coast of lands belonging to the Wolves.
        What you see now of House Sar’Donnath is a pitiful remnant of what we once were, but we will grow strong again.  Our House will never become what it once was, those days are long gone, but we will be strong enough to defend ourselves, to claim a place of our own, to have a home where our children can grow up without having to be taught the use of a sword before they are taught how to read.

Kienar Sar’Donnath High Queen of House Sar’Donnath

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