Lore: House Urd'Nei

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/// This lore section is player made and is non-canon. It emerged through player gameplay solely but can be used in game freely. This will be updated with time.

House Urd'Nei

Overview:

House Urd'Nei is a Sshamath local house, known to take pride in supporting the conclave ever since it was established. For millennia long, each member of the family was known to at least have some basic competence with magic and each generation had at least one child contributing to a school of magic of their, or their parent's choice as a wizard. The nobles of this house take pride in their name and despite the value of nobility being nothing more than symbolic, it made contacts with other cities administration and people of interest easier. Members of this house appear proud, arrogant, cynical and very sure of themselves. Despite their history, none of the house members took seat on the conclave, their research inputs and ambition has resulted in broadening the resources within the library of the wizards and sometimes magical items of note.


History:

The founding date of the house is not known to precision, but it surfaced some time after the wizards have taken power in Sshamath. With the church of Lolth in disarray and the grip of fear and terror the spider goddess casts over her followers, some drow came to their senses and established life without the church's control. The two founding members of the house, Irlian the illusionist (female) and Verulin the enchanter (male) married by the conclave's authority and set out to establish a new drow life style, with both male and female having as much to say in the relationship. Ofcourse the traditional values of drow marriage have been kept. Both members of the community founded an alliance beneficial to both parties and the rivalry between the two was still an issue, to a degree it made both of them more ambitious and productive. The conclave found this relationship curious and because both were more or less vital parts of their schools, it has given the couple a meaningless nobility title, yet pointing at the alternative to many lost without Lolth, drow souls finding it hard to adapt to the new setting.

The founding couple has lived long enough to sire seven children and then the dynasty has grown over time. The death of Irlian and Verulin came to both at the same time. Whilst exploring the Oghraan ruins nearby the city, the two combined their powers to understand illusion and mind tricks concealing hidden chambers in the former city. Their expedition wasn't sole at that time and they have crossed paths with a Calish-ite miragist, also exploring the region. The two parties clashed only to result in Irlian's death and Verulin driven to madness by both her partner's death and illusion's clouding his mind. For two years on, the insane male haunted the tunnels of the underdark, only to fall prey to kobold spears.

There was a suspicion cast over one of the couple's children to have set this meeting up, however the suspect did not live long enough to be questioned by anyone. Rynthel, the prodigal son of the two was put under house arrest after the incident as he was seen the most beneficial to have gained of his parent's demise. Whilst in custody, after ten cycles he died a natural death and as unbelievable as it was, divination magic and other forms of establishing the turn of events, including checking his body for poisons proved no third parties were involved in his demise.

The forthcoming events removed the house from the spotlight. As no charismatic leader of the house was found after those events, the house started to lose prestige and became a house perceived like any other, yet always loyal and in service of the conclave.

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Notable House Members:

Vari Urd'Nei - A female archmage, who one of the first few shrug off the need to specialise in a specific branch of magic. At her early years she was considered air-headed, but she knew well it's best to take the best bits out of all schools rather than concentrate solely on one.

The conclave chronicles describe Vari as a silent, lacking ambition, observant and stoic mistress, but in truth, it was more an image of a proud swan on, swimming on the lake - above the water the beautiful, content and majestic bird, underneath the hard working feet, keeping it afloat and floating in the right direction. Vari was just that. She was very withdrawn from the affairs of the masters of the schools, but in the background she moved heaven (or rather the ceiling) and earth to set her own house straight, based on the negative experience she's had with the wizards in charge. The archmage believed that the conclave in it's current state with numerous internal conflicts is very prone to disintegration and that it is only a matter of time until House Sshamath currently waiting patiently would retake the power from the vulnerable wizards like a spider hunting for a fly.

Attempts of reasoning with the wizards (with the use of enchantment spells or not) did not bare many fruit as the ambitious nature of her kin to obtain more power than the next drow clouded their visions. As much as Vari failed to take controls of minds and souls of her wizard peers, she very much held control of her own house as mother matron. But she could not do so forever as even drow life ends after a few hundreds of years, unless ended earlier by assassins, or extended by attaining lichdom, vampirism or demi-god form to cheat death. Vari had none of that.

One of Vari's hobby was creating artefacts and objects of power and as a grafting artificer, her favourite objects to create were books. With her life drawing slowly to the end, she has used her talents in all the school to create the greatest and most guarded treasure of House Urd'Nei yet - The Book of Vari. The mistress used:
- Abjuration to protect the artifact with wards suitable for the item of this rank
- Conjuration to create the book itself and the perfect fabric resistant to the tooth of time
- Divination to establish if the person using the artifact is a living member of house Urd'Nei
- Evocation to deal with the person who isn't
- Enchantment to have the book speak and broadcast the message to the receiver
- Illusion to better portrait the visions and work in conjunction with enchantment and shield it from divination
- Necromancy to bind the house to use the artifact and her soul to the book
- Transmutation to establish whether a next member of House Urd'Nei is on it's way

If fact the artifact is a curse of great power cast on the members of the house. Vari made sure her children are all under the effect of the book, but after understanding the nature, there weren't many who attempted to remove the curse they were under and actually looked forward to the time they would have to use the book next.

The curse works in the following way:
Every Urd'Nei born house member has to be introduced to the book within seven cycles of birth. The book then implements the same curse on the newly born child and casts the first basic enchantments on them to subconsciously guide them through their first years of their lives to become an Urd'Nei. If this does not happen but the child is still alive, every other living house member begins to feel the ill effects of the curse as if their blood was burning inside of them. This effect grows stronger with every cycle, until the thirtieth cycle is reached, when an effect similar to a vampire being exposed to direct sunlight happens.

Vari understood that if this happens, her successors have become weak or lazy and allowed a child to be kidnapped or the house has fallen away from the virtues she believed right, to become nothing more than the bloodthirsty Lolthites with no aim or guided ambition. However the book did not bind members of the dynasty to follow her philosophy or suffer the consequences.

Once a newborn is introduced, it is their responsibility to consult the book at the given time - every fifty years. Since undead have no blood to boil, the book only holds this responsibility over the living family members. Undead members trying to use the book will be ignored (or worse) as there is no blood of a mortal to confirm the person is of the said dynasty.

The session with the book lasts a cycle. Urd'Nei members begin their meditation and communication with the book begins. The book is suspected to be a Vari's phylactery as the visions encountered often concentrate on the members progress in their path, criticism if necessary, guidance and wisdom on further steps, as well as a role play game, where the subject makes decisions, whilst the soul or wisdom of Vari comments on every step the member takes and explains far sighted consequences it might bring. It in fact presents a silhouette in front of the subject that speaks the voice. It remembers the names of the users as well as facts such as which school or profession is the subject a member of, shows joy if decisions were thought out before being done and displays irritation if they were rushed or brought no value. Further visions and situations are wisdom gained by Vari during her time, observing the conclave and wizards of many schools dealing with one another cycle to cycle and what it led to. She was in favour of wizards working together over in-fighting, facing a common enemy rather than themselves. She believed that other races could easily be brought to their knees permanently, including the cursed surface elves and that those should be the targets of the drow ambitions and not their kin. Most of all, she believed in tact, patience but did not shy away from using her powers to assert authority.

Vari has lived a few years on after creating her book. She was considered dead, but her body was never found. In fact, the conclave wizard roster still lists her as active, but missing. This is in case she has become undead afterall and that is not a reason enough to revoke her membership to the school.