Starbound
Sithas dropped his hands to his hips, and looked over the gathering with stern resolve. "But make no mistake! The preservation of our race is of the greatest importance. Not merely the purity of our blood, but the purity of our customs, traditions and laws..."
For centuries, the Silvanesti lived mostly secluded from the outside world, protected within their enchanted forest. In that time, mystery has shrouded the elves' activities, leaving outsiders wondering what events transpired behind the forest's emerald curtain... until now.
A History Lesson
as transcribed by Tyrenia Aleraon of House ClericThe regions in and around the Silvanesti Forest have always been a focus of important activity. Because of the isolationist nature of the elves who live there, however, many of these events have passed unnoticed by the outside world. The roots of this self-imposed solitude date back a thousand years. After the Kinslayer War, when a faction of elves seceded to form the nation of Qualinesti, the land of Silvanesti began a strict isolationist policy that endured through the ages. Although the Silvanesti could not avoid all contact with the rest of Krynn, they did their best.
The Nightmare
One of the most noteworthy events in Silvanesti history is, without a doubt, Lorac's Nightmare. The very mention of it causes the elves to tremble with the memory of a disaster that almost claimed their beloved forest.
Although the elves had defended their land in the Dragon Wars, an attack during the War of the Lance took them unawares. As elves fled, their king - Lorac - sought to destroy the marauding dragons by turning one of their own artifacts - a dragon orb - against them. However, it was the orb that triumphed, taking control of the king. Under the influence of the powerful relic, Lorac was assailed with magical nightmares that twisted his forest into the Bleeding Wood. Ancient trees, each with a name and personality of its own, cracked and rotted as their trunks grew gnarled. The Thon-Thalas River ran thick with ooze and became infested with revolting mutations. The Tower of the Stars withered, as did Lorac's spirit.
Long after the War of the Lance ended and Lorac died, the blight remained. It took twenty years of struggling labor under the leadership of Porthios, monarch of the Qualinesti, to banish the Nightmare and restore the elven wood to its former beauty. At last, the exiled Silvanesti could reclaim their enchanted forest home. The ancient wood once again enjoyed its ancestral beauty. The emerald boughs of the slender trees formed a translucent canopy high above. Shafts of amber sunlight pierced the greenery to sparkle upon the clear, glittering waters of the Thon-Thalas. The Silvanesti, with the patient attention for which their race is renowned, reshaped their capital, Silvanost, into the brilliant citadel of living wood, marble and crystal it once was. New structures celebrating the rebirth of the forest, mixed with lovingly restored buildings, shone with renewed life. The Tower of the Stars, home of the Silvanesti Speaker and seat of the nation's power again stood tall, and would remain so for over two-thousand years.
And then came the Silence.
The Silence
Around five-hundred years ago, the Holy Order of the Stars - the ancient gods of Krynn - went silent. Their clerics no longer had their prayers answered, and the truly devout felt their absence as keenly as one would feel the absence of a blanket on a cold night. Even those not so spiritually inclined could not help but notice that the night sky, once filled with the constellations of the gods and the moons of magic, was now alien - the light of its stars in the wrong places, feeling colder and more distant than before - and instead of white, red and black moons of the gods, now stood a pale yellow one, looking down upon them like a sick blind eye. One way or the other, there was little doubt that the gods had withdrawn from Ansalon.
Silvanesti priests shouted to the masses that the gods had forewarned them of the incoming silence, and that they were doing it to protect the star-spirits of Krynn, and that they would return once the danger was gone. Some took the priests' words to heart, and thanked the gods for their protection, and piously awaited for their return. Some, however, were not so hopeful. Specially with that came next.
The centuries of in the absence of the Holy Order of the Stars weren't kind to the people of Ansalon. The seas became agitated and harder to navigate. Earthquakes shook the northeastern lands, while storms raged relentlessly across the Plains of Dust and the Northern Wastes. The Lords of Doom shook and trembled, and all of Taman Kandon held their breath in fear of volcanoes' ire spewing forth once again - but, by some leftover blessing, they never did. All the while, a virulent disease spread through all of Ansalon, making no distinction of race or age. Millions died. Event the long lived Silvanesti weren't immune to the plague's effects, and hundreds of thousands perished.
In the middle of all this, the Silvanesti were facing their worse enemy - fundamental change. During the Cataclysm, even if the gods were silent, their presence never left the Silvanesti - a presence that could be seen strongly in the presence of High Sorcery. The Silence, however, was different. Very slowly - across decades - the High Magic of the Silvanesti started weakening, and then failing them. Not only that, but using any kind of magic - even primal sorcery - was much more taxing than usual. The last thing to go were the permanent magical tools that some of the Silvanesti used - such as magical swords and armour. Some objects and places of power were inexplicably spared such fate such as the dreaded Circle of Darkness - the room in the Towers of E'Li where the Ceremony of Darkness - the rites of banishment that condemn Silvanesti into to never set foot into Silvanesti once again - and the precious star-jewels. With the High Sorcery weakened and the safety of the Silvanesti imperilled, House Mystic decided to turn their attentions to the use and study of Primal Sorcery once more, as they did in the ages before the First Conclave. They approached the historically unstable source of power with all the caution they could muster given the circumstances. Every now and then, however, the magic bit back.
Trying to protect themselves from the worse of the plague, and worried that if the knowledge of their weakening magic was made known to their enemies they would be attacked savagely, the Silvanesti retreated into their forest, guarding its borders against the infected and healthy alike. It worked. The Silvanesti people was safe - for the time being. However, once more since the years before the Cataclysm, they were alone.
The One True God, Morgion and The Black Wind
Decades after the Silvanesti withdrew from Ansalon into their forest, they had a remarkable visitor. A man, whose name is lost to history, asked to speak with the Speaker of the Stars for he brought word of the gods. After considerable scrutiny, the man and the Speaker met. Then, the man claimed to be a harbinger of Apolythos, the One True God, that had come to Ansalon to save its denizens from doom and despair. He said that Apolythos had whispered to him that the Holy Order of the Stars had abandoned the world and its people, and that the illnesses and disasters could be prevented if the Silvanesti would just cast the Old Gods down, and accept Apolythos in their hearts. After the meeting, Apolythos was swiftly added to the Silvanesti records as an enemy of the Holy Order of the Stars, and its worship outlawed across the forest. The man was never seen again.
The details of the next events are a matter of discussion amongst House Cleric scholars, but more or less agreed to have happened as follows: soon after that visit - a few months to a few years later - a terrible curse was visited upon the Silvanesti. A thick, roiling black cloud with two glowing red eyes descended upon the forest south of Fallon Island - just across the river - and put a blight upon the land. A mass of diseased wildlife - both fauna and flora - was left in the spot and spread from it. A weakness - a new plague - started spreading through the Silvanesti people and in few years claimed the lives of thousands. Without the assistance of the Champion it probably would have been much worse - but her magical fire corralled the blight, and she kept it in check since then. The forest, if not the people in it, was safe - for the moment.
A while later (how long was that while is also a subject of great discussion to this day). At first, the Silvanesti in the Towers of E'li lost contact with Silvanost and with other cities that peppered the forest. Witnesses - or survivors if you will - started arriving from all parts of the forest, and soon we could paint a picture of what had happened: the dead had risen from their tombs. Survivors from Silvanost claimed to have seen the great Speakers of our past and their honour guard, and that they all claimed dominion over Silvanesti - only to be immediately challenged by another Speaker, successively. The statements from other settlements were varied and differed in tone, scale and colour, but they all shared one striking similarity - before any of the witnesses first saw the undead, they all felt a chill to the bone, as if a wind passed through all of them ignoring shelter or clothes. Because of that - and possibly because of a flair for the dramatic - the event became known as the Black Wind.
Kiranost
The Towers of E'Li welcomed and sheltered the survivors from other Silvanesti settlements, but the influx was brief. Less than a hundred-thousand passed through. The Towers were the only places the Silvanesti had that seemed to be reasonably safe. For some reason - that House Cleric attributes to the hallowed nature of the Towers - the dead entombed within the tower never stirred: not during the Black Wind, nor after. The Silvanesti organised scouting missions, mounted rescues, tried to fight the undead - which seem to be locked in an unending war for the seat of Speaker of the Stars - but they were severely undermanned and on their back foot. After many half-thought actions that resulted in more disasters than successes, the people of Silvanesti decided to settle down and prepare of the original survivors that passed through the place less than twenty thousand - many driven to leave by many and varied reasons. To those who stayed, the Towers became home.
Soon the Silvanesti decided to abandon the Tower on the east side of the Thon-Thalas river, as the river width is vast and maintaining patrols over the two separate sides was too difficult. The Silvanesti reestablished the Sinthal-Elish (the Council of the High Ones), and started preparing for the long haul. Soon the lands surrounding and to the east of the Tower became a settlement, and it was called Kiranost - the city of hope.
Years passed, and the elves adapted a bit to their new reality. Denied most of the forest area, they had to reach out to the outside world for resources. Soon, the Silvanesti deemed necessary to create a small outpost to trade with outsiders, since they didn't want them close to the Tower. In time, that became the village of Shalinost, on the eastern bank of the Bay of Stars. Also, the lack of resources - for the first time in many millennia the Silvanesti didn't have enough of everything for everyone - and the necessities of trading led the Silvanesti people ti develop a trading system similar to the other races, even earning payment for their work for Silvanesti now - a thing unthinkable in generations past.
Homecoming
The year is 3326 a.C - about five hundred years after the Silence began - and things have started to change. The Silvanesti now can't count on living many years past three-hundred due to the plague, and their resources - once vast and seemingly unending - are close to gone. The people of Kiranosti is now fewer than fifteen thousand and, although still proud and industrious, have developed an edge of desperation over two centuries that is driving them to erratic and impulsive behaviour. They have bent - possibly as far as they can - and they're on the verge of breaking.
But there is still hope. In the past couple of decades House Mystic has found primal sorcery to have become meeker - not as powerful, but not as dangerous as it used to be. Not only that, but a few enchanted items of yore that were dormant for centuries have demonstrated magic capabilities again. High Sorcery seems to be within their grasp once more. House Cleric speak of dreams, portents and whispers from the stars. That, allied with rumours brought by outlanders, have made some of the Silvanesti believe that the gods have finally returned, and that now is the time to act. However, getting the Silvanesti people to move as one is not as simple as it sounds...
