Dark Mother’s domain
To the south of Ersidris, some hundred leagues into the open ocean, there lays a line beyond which no human ship has yet crossed.
Much superstition surrounds it, and many stories too grim to be true. In short, it took some time to connect the dots, but now I can say with confidence that this place is the legacy of the Dark Mother, Nethrilla.
Her story is long, for she is one of the very few beings whose existence predates the Old Dark, which she may have given birth to, for her husband Mephisto had only been known to twist and destroy life.
Once, it is said, her domain stretched for most of the known ocean, and was the greatest among her family, even though her own son reigned over what would now be no less than half of the known world.
Her fall came through sons of Nuradin the Allfather.
Aldregon the Stormbringer first went to challenge Nethrilla’s dominion over the ocean, by slaying her beastly children by the thousand with strokes of lightning on the dark waters.
Nethrilla answered the challenge, and brought around him such dark than neither lightning nor storm wind could dispel.
But then his brother Stradugor the Sword of Zenith, brought his fire and fury to aid him, and for a short moment after his sudden onslaught, Nethrilla’s form was revealed amidst the vast darkness she veiled herself with
It was then that Vedamir, the Lord of Winds, launched his spear from on high where he bode his time behind clouds; and Nethrilla was slain by the lance, which was since ever known as the Spear of Dawn.
But not before, it is said, she gave birth to her last and most twisted child – Tetheroc, the World Serpent, a terror that still haunts the dreams of all seamen.
It is unclear who Tetheroc’s father may have been, but I would venture the bold notion that even at that time, Nethrilla may have had power over the heart of he who then became the Betrayer and the slayer of Nuradin. I speak of Dethregor, the Dark Titan, the Warden of the Underworld and its tyrant.
What else, if not the touch of her who was the primal dark given beautiful and terrifying form, could turn the loyal son from his father’s Light?
If that is so, then the legend takes on a new dimension, for then we have not one heart, but two, beating still, in the fathomless deeps beneath.
For it is well known among scholar who delve into legends of Underworld that Dethregor’s own legacy survives there and is known as the Heart of the Underworld from texts of the ancient race of Tel’Razi.
In our day, with magic and science, the boldest wizard-explorers discovered that black drakes and nameless winged horrors still nest there in ‘pillars of black stone unlike any in living lands’.
I am certain that those are the ruins of Mephisto’s ancient abode, the black spires of his once great castles.
So whether Nethrilla’s spirit persist or not, it can be said for certain that something does exist within the gloom... and even in death, it continues to terrorize the world of the living.
Indeed, the sailors sometimes speak of a thing called the Heart of Darkness when the Gloom is mentioned. They believe that once a ship crew hears the tremor of its beat, their doom will not be long in coming.
True or not, the maddening fear is very much a reality, for there are plenty reports of empty ships found lost near the edge of the Gloom, with no traces of damage
Some say the Heart lies deep underwater, whence it sends the ripples of its terror into the ocean; others claim to have seen in a flash of lightning a grotesque silhouette of a vast floating structure amidst the Gloom, and believe that to be where the power lies that reigns within the darkness.
On a final note, I should remark that among the high elves, the subject of Gloom is a mystery that I have pondered ever since my visit to Fen’Darendil, the City of Last Light.
There I saw once how a family went out into the sea just as a storm was brewing on the horizon, obscuring crimson of the setting sun
An elder told me then that when someone is ‘weary of the long years of the fading world’, they embark on a voyage ‘beyond the darkness’ veil’.
I was unable to get any more explanations; so I can only assume it is their way of making away with themselves.
If so, it is an unfortunate one - for on their white ships they take some of their finest artifacts, and surely it makes one sad to think that things of such beauty are given willingly to the uncaring depths of the dark ocean, or worse, to the evil that lurks within.
In my heart, I choose to believe that there is indeed something good beyond that veil of darkness, and even if no mortal can yet reach there, at least the Firstborn can.
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