CHALYCHIA  ::  BACKGROUND


[In tournament play, the following passage is all the background informatin tha the players receive.  Read the passage exactly as written - players receive nothing more and nothing less than this.]

Legend tells of the horrible drow sorceress Chalychia.  Born of a drow father and a demon mother, she rose to become one of the greatest drow conquerors ever known.  She recovered a powerful artifact called the Shadowstone, and used its abilities to cover a five-mile radius of the surface world in constant twilight, centered on the elven city of Arovarel.  With allied orc armies attacking from the mountains, and drow armies swarming up from beneath, the elven city fell in a single day.  At the head of this horrible army was Chalychia.

But Chalychia's rule lasted only one year.  A band of powerful heroes led by the paladin Valinus penetrated her lair and destroyed the Shadowstone.  Meanwhile, the rallied forces of humans, dwarves, and elves stormed the ruins of Arovarel and routed the drow.  The heroes used a powerful sword to defeat Chalychia, but it was sundered in the battle. The heroes finally imprisoned Chalychia in an instant fortress in the bowels of her lair.  The sundered sword was buried in her lair, the lair was sealed, and a monastery was erected near the site.  The Monks of the Dawning Sun were charged with guarding the sundered sword and the lair, and were to be the lore masters of the history of Chalychia.

Now descendants of Avorarel's survivors have called for your aid.  They have seen many disturbing omens recently.  According to the stars, the Devil-Lich is close to breaking out of her prison and unleashing her wrath on the surface world once again.  You have been sent to the Monastery of the Dawning Sun to gather more information on the Devil-Lich and confirm the prophecy.

But when you arrived at the monastery, you discovered that all the monks were brutally slain.  Scrawled on the walls in blood were several prophetic verses claiming Chalychia's return is soon.  In the monastery's library, you found several tomes open to similar passages, all describing the powerful sword called True Death.  This was the sword used by the paladin Valinus to slay Chalychia, and according to the legends, its sundered remains were buried in the Devil-Lich's crypt. It appears that someone else has been researching True Death.

After finding a blod-stained map showing the way to the original site of the Devil-Lich's crypt, you set off to find answers.  Leaving the horror of the slaughter at the monastery behind, your band carefully picks its way down a treacherous mountain path.  After almost two hours of this tedious journey, you arrive at a cave entrance.  The cave mouth is surrounded by stalacites and stalagmites that appear to have been chiseled into angular teeth.  

Somewhere beyond this maw-like cave entrance is the Crypt of the Devil Lich!