D is for Dothion

From the Ogham Analects of Sage Hjokenstalf...

"Before the fall of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, great cities whose beauty and complexity is lost to modern fey stood like mountains of marble, stone, gem and wood. Not just fabulous monuments to the power and prestige of the Courts, these were living beings in their own right, providers, protectors, cultivators of art and culture. And they were many, risen in dense forests, atop high mountains, in the deeps of meres, and still deeper in the crystal-studded night of the Feydark, teeming with magic and life.

Counted among these great havens was the gnomish paradise of Bytopia. In those days, nearly all the jubilant and empathic race were gathered in its famed twin structure. Bytopia was really two cities, one situated on the interior of a grand, earthen bridge. It faced downward, impervious to gravity, so that its towers, manors and parks appeared dangling to distant observers. Below it, in the depths of a canyon rut, stood its second half, looking up from crystal-lit shadows and wide rivers at a civilized ceiling. This upper half was known as Dothion, and the lower half Shurrock.

Alas, the wars raged, and the Courts tore themselves apart, and Seelie Bytopia was cracked, then shattered entirely. Dothion rained upon Shurrock in massive, crushing fragments. Earth and water filled the dark gaps. All was chaos and screaming and the blinking out of lights. When the dust finally settled, little remained of Bytopia, and truly the name no longer applied. Only shards and ruins of Dothion had survived the fall, some turned right-side-up as they plummeted, others remaining inverted so as to have staked themselves firmly in the rubble.

Dothion became a confused and jumbled labyrinth upon uneven foundation, and the grand earthen bridge survived only as two, jagged horns on either side the devastation. Some districts managed to keep their heads above the surface and basked in the sun and stars, while others rolled down steep, crooked thoroughfares into smoky, oft flooded, shadow.

The stricken gnomish race, a fraction of their former strength, tried to rebuild, spurred on by two of their surviving kings, Garl Glittergold and Gelf Darkhearth, but the mighty Courts were no more and the Wyld had become feral, fractured and merciless. They simply lacked the means to excavate, and when they did manage prolonged operations they were raided by ravenous bands of violent, wild-eyed satyrs, banderhobbs, kelpie and kobolds. Cyclopses began stealing into the alleys at night to drag gnomes down into the enduring Formorian Kingdoms as slaves and delicacies. The shock of their great fall alone touched many with insurmountable depression and even madness.

With heavy hearts, the surviving patriarchs began to slip away a little at a time, while their two kings howled in despair.

The first was Baervan Wildwanderer, a fiercely optimistic elder, who took his families into the grass seas of the Savanna, where they became great hunters and beast-friends.

Then Baravar Cloakshadow, the young, brilliant magician, who led his people into the misty Moors to learn his ways with shadow and illusion.

Flandal Steelskin, an aged general of Bytopia who no longer believed in the judgments of his kings, took his people to the far Cliffs, where they perfected the arts of smithing and weaponcraft.

Nebelun the Meddler, who tried in vain to lure his kings away from the folly of Dothion, eventually moved south and built the city of Heffyd. Yet it was not meant to last, for his jealous brother, Cursed Urdlen, overran the city with his twisted gnomish hordes, who soaked their caps in the blood of the fallen and ate the flesh of giants and beasts to gain their awesome strength. Nebelun perished, but his daughter, Cathlain, did eventually lead their people to the peaceful Meadows of distant Annwn.

The fate of Dothion’s kings and their people was just as tragic an affair. Over the course of years, the Glittergolds and the Darkhearths failed and failed again to reestablish Bytopia, yet out of stubbornness, obsession and unimaginable pride refused to leave. Garl and Gelf began to resent one another, each coming to believe the other their cause for failure. A violent and bloody feud ignited as their families turned on one another to fight over meager scraps and wreckage. The feud lasted decades, until the last of their wealth and magic was used up, and they resorted to clubs and spears where once they’d possessed grand wands, magical contraptions and the finest steel. Eventually even the families were spent, every one murdered, save the two kings themselves, old, crooked, filthy, hunting one another as the last gnomes of Dothion.

And they do so to this day, Garl and Gelf, scratching, punching, kicking, biting whenever they meet, but neither quite able to deliver the killing blow, knowing deep down that without their hatred for one another would come a remorse and madness that would utterly destroy them..."