Menzoberranzan

Menzoberranzan – Current Events, 1496 DR

In 1496 DR, the City of Spiders glimmers more dangerously than ever. The eternal night of @Menzoberranzan is fractured by new colors—thin, burning-red threads of light that drift like cobwebs through the air above Tier Breche and Narbondel. The city’s mages claim these “blood-threads” are wild magic surges leaking from deep @The Underdark fissures beneath the city, but the priestesses of @Lolth insist they are omens: the Weave itself being “rewoven” in the Spider Queen’s favor. Regardless of origin, contact with the threads causes visions of alien cities and gods that do not match any known planar chart. Some @Drow have gone mad after touching them; others have awoken with entirely new spellcasting abilities that seem immune to counterspells.

@House Baenre still rules from the pinnacle of power, but even they cannot ignore the rise of the Veilwrought, a secret cabal of spellblades and assassins claiming to weave their will between the threads of fate. The Veilwrought are neither openly loyal nor openly opposed to @Lolth, but their actions are destabilizing—assassinations of key matron allies, manipulation of @The Underdark trade routes, and theft of relics from both Bregan D’aerthe and the @Sorcere. The stolen relics include a shard of Narbondel’s magical core, the arcane timekeeper that marks the city’s “days,” causing the city’s cycles of light and darkness to desynchronize. This subtle disruption is already being exploited by raiders, slavers, and spies who move more freely during the confusion.

In the cavernous Deeps beneath @Menzoberranzan, the Fangless Houses—minor @Drow lineages long stripped of status—have begun uniting under a single banner for the first time in centuries. Their leader, a masked figure known only as the Hollow Matron, has promised to bring “a true dawn” to the @The Underdark. Some believe she seeks to lead her forces to the surface to claim a homeland under the open sky; others think she intends to seal @Menzoberranzan away from the rest of the world entirely. Her troops have been sighted using unfamiliar weapons—chitin-and-crystal constructs that seem grown rather than forged—and her emissaries have been whispering to the city’s disaffected males that the Spider Queen’s reign is ending.

Despite the tension, commerce and intrigue still flow through the city like poison through a dagger’s groove. But now every deal, every duel, every whispered bargain feels heavier, as if something immense is drawing closer in the dark—something that will either crown @Menzoberranzan as the unchallenged heart of the @The Underdark or tear it apart thread by bloody thread.