Orcs and Elves (1)

There were two accounts of the monster's birth. One claimed that two chief gods had clashed, and their blood had mingled, giving rise to the monster from their combined blood. But many scholars who studied theology in depth didn't believe this story. Even if the two gods were Greater Deities, the idea that a mere drop of their blood could create a monster the gods themselves couldn't handle was hardly convincing.

The other account was much more scandalous. It claimed that Gruumsh, the Orc chief god, had forced himself on Corellon, the Elf chief god, in battle, and that Corellon had then given birth to Ityak-Ortheel, the Elf-Eater. The Elves denied this to their dying breath, but the other races... heh.

It was well known that Corellon's private life was quite a mess. He was also bisexual, able to be male or female, and among the current Elf gods were children he had given birth to himself. So plenty of people believed the story wasn't entirely baseless. According to legend, the moment Corellon gave birth to Ityak-Ortheel, he abandoned the creature. That was why it hated Elves above all else. What happened later bore this out: the monster had little interest in other races, but if someone summoned it to go after Elves, it would come running in a heartbeat. In fact, the Orcs had summoned it many times in their wars against the Elves, which lent further credence to the tale.

But just imagine Gruumsh and Corellon fooling around together... What the hell? That mental image was too much. I really couldn't bear to picture it.

In truth, many scholars and Mages were curious about what kind of creature the Elf-Eater was. It seemed like a godspawn, but it was completely unlike other godspawn. It had no interest whatsoever in destroying the world, and it had no particular resistance to the power of other gods. The Elves' usual solution was to get other gods to beat it half to death, then banish it. But even if the other gods reduced it to ashes, it would show up again after a while. So, to conserve their divine power, the other gods just beat it half to death; it took the same amount of time to recover either way. The creature only cared about Elves. Plenty of evil-doers had tried to use it, but unless it involved Elves, it wasn't interested. By all rights, it ought to count as a godspawn. As everyone knew, a godspawn was an unintended, unforeseen product of divine power—something that should never have existed. That described this monster perfectly. It did consume divine power, just like other godspawn, but only when it came from Elves...

Because of this monster, a saying had spread across the continent: any offspring of Orcs and Elves was sure to bring disaster.

While the Orcs and Elves waged their long and bloody war, the other races quietly rose to power. At the time, the main conflict on the continent was between Orcs and Elves, while the other races kept their heads down and focused on developing. By the time the Elves came to their senses, the whole continent no longer belonged to them. So the Elf gods made a brilliant move: they withdrew from the continent entirely, retreating to the forests and Evermeet. They gave up vast stretches of land, helped the other races build civilizations, and stirred up hatred between them and the Orcs.

In short: they could give up territory (and lose the team fight), but the Orcs had to die. But the Orcs were fools back then, happily declaring, "I fell for it." They thought they had finally defeated those damn Elves and could now turn their lives around. Before long, the Orcs' ambitions swelled, and with their chaotic, ridiculous gods fanning the flames, they imitated the Elves and founded an Orc Empire on the continent. Then they set out to conquer the other races and enslave the whole continent, just as the Elves had done.

But the Orcs had no civilization to speak of, and their own idiot gods kept dragging them down. So the newly founded Orc Empire collapsed almost as quickly as it had risen. Want to know how they chose their emperor? According to those ridiculous gods, strength was everything, so any Orc who wanted to rise in rank had to challenge others. They chose their emperors with knives. And so one of the funniest episodes in all the history of Faerûn unfolded: emperors came and went at a dizzying pace. In a single year, they went through more than seventy emperors. One poor fool killed the previous emperor that morning, had his wounds bandaged, and hadn't even had time to enjoy the beauties of his harem before someone cut him down at the entrance to the royal tent that afternoon... (The Orcs were unbelievably primitive back then. Having a tent to live in was already a royal privilege, all right? They were so happy they could have cried.)

The so-called Orc Empire quickly crumbled amid this farcical struggle for power. Then the Orcs turned on one another and fought like mad, while the other races hadn't even had a chance to lift a finger. Those idiots had already fallen apart...

Many conspiracy theorists who read this history in ancient texts believed that the Elves had never meant well from the start. They had withdrawn from the continent so that the other races and the Orcs would fight each other to the death, leaving the Elves free to recover in peace. Once the other races had fought themselves bloody, the Elves could make a triumphant return and rule the continent once more. But this just went to show why the Orcs were the Elves' mortal enemies: even at the very end, they managed to screw the Elves over. The other races on the continent were ready to go to war, but the Orcs had already brought about their own downfall. The Elves were left to yield the continent with no excuse to return. Their pathological pride had been there from the beginning.

Later, the Elves recovered their strength over the course of many years, but humanity rose to power—the age of Netheril had begun. The Elves assessed the situation, figured they probably couldn't win, and had no choice but to stay put.

At long last, the age of Netheril collapsed, and the human gods rose to power again...

Poor Elves. You can only get away with so much before karma catches up with you. And with their mortal enemies, the Drow and Orcs, taking the occasional vicious swipe at them, the Elves never made much progress.

Then things got even worse. The Elves had finally made it through the perilous Time of Troubles. But after it ended, Bhaal, the God of Slaughter and one of the chief evil gods, was killed. He had foreseen his death, so he divided his divinity and divine power among all his children, then made them slaughter one another, planning to be reborn in the final victor.

This was the battle for the Throne of Murder. But when the time came to choose a successor to the throne, fate played a joke on everyone: the Bhaalspawn who emerged victorious refused to claim the Throne of Murder. Instead, he overcame Bhaal's will and shattered the throne.

After that, the God of Slaughter was well and truly dead. Bane, another of the chief evil gods—the God of Tyranny—was luckier. He resurrected himself through his divine child.

The other chief evil god, the Lord of the Dead, simply changed identities. He defected without hesitation and became a neutral god...

And with the Mad God, the Prince of Dark Sun, and the Prince of Lies, Cyric, constantly making things worse, the evil gods' power sank to an unprecedented low. As for Cyric, he was a textbook lunatic, without a doubt the greatest little prince of self-destruction since the dawn of time. His story could wait until later—it was unbelievably entertaining.

The evil gods had never gotten along. They were always fighting one another and sabotaging each other, and now the Dead Three, who had long been allies, had lost one member and seen another flee. They were even less able to stand against the more united good gods.

So Bane, the tyrant who led the evil gods and was the only surviving member of the Dead Three, decided that the evil gods were too weak and needed to be strengthened. He hatched a grand conspiracy, hoping to create several new evil gods to counter the good gods.

And so a cataclysm struck the Prime Material Plane. Even Bane, its instigator, hadn't expected his evil scheme to bring about such devastation.

This period was known as the Age of Dark Boiling, and it directly gave rise to several powerful evil gods. More importantly, after the Crown Wars against the Elves, it saw the largest war ever fought.

During this cataclysm, the Drow caught the Elves off guard and struck a devastating blow, driving them all the way back to their stronghold, Evermeet. They came within a hair's breadth of being wiped out.

On the mainland, the Elves were also hunted by their other old enemies, the Orcs. This time, the Orc gods made a spectacular mess of things in secret. They planned to open a portal to the Orcs' ancient homeland, bringing endless hordes of Orcs into this world so they could conquer the entire continent. But fools would be fools: for some reason, the Orc gods went to work with devils, and, unsurprisingly, the devils tricked them. Their plan had been to seize every Elf they could find and conduct an unprecedented Blood Sacrifice to open a portal between the two worlds. But the devils and the other races sabotaged the ritual, and it failed. The captured Elves were either rescued or snatched away by the devils. In the end, the utterly insane Orc gods betrayed their own race and sacrificed their own people and worshippers instead. This caused most Orcs to turn their backs on their gods. The ancestors of the Avalon Orcs were among those who abandoned the Orc gods and came to Avalon during this period.

Could the Orc gods still be called Orc gods without Orcs to worship them? As expected, they fell. Only two Orc deities survived by plunging into the Abyss, but they completely abandoned their divine status and were reborn as demons. Those two were a pair of real oddballs.

The Orcs were also permanently divided afterward. Although Corellon, the Elf chief god, finally got his wish and personally slew Gruumsh, the Orc chief god, that didn't mean things went well for the Elves. Their strength, which they had only just managed to rebuild, was once again undone by the Drow and Orcs. They were back to square one, their strength devastated all over again...