CRITICAL HIT: Season 4 Primer (Part 3 of 3)

Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2

Critical Hit Season 4 premieres tomorrow! This primer covers the final seasonal forest, as well as the ancient question:

Why did the Elves leave the Feywild?

The Sundering

Every Elven Child has heard this story:

In the time before time there was only one kind of elf, eventually due to Lolth’s sinister lies the elves were split into three tribes, The Drow, The Elves and The Eladrin. This is known as The Sundering.

The legend says that the wisest (often translated as ‘eldest’) of the tribe became the elves, making the decision to change in order to meet the new threat

The most beautiful and charismatic became the Drow, they were targeted by Lolth specifically for this.

The Smartest and most pragmatic became the Eladrin refusing to abandon their techniques and magic even in the face of a new foe.

It is said that the ancient Elves most resembled Eladrin, after the Sundering, however even the Eladrin were lessened. Although physically they look like the ancient elves none of the tribes are as powerful as their progenitors.

There was a war, on one side were the Elves and the Eladrin, on the other the Drow. The Eladrin/Elves won the war, pushing the Drow into the Underdark. But it was clear that the Elves and Eladrin were no longer one people, so in his great wisdom the leader of the elves led them out of the feywild and into the natural world.

The Fen of Winters

The Winterwood is a quiet place. The Fen of Winters appears as a tropical swamp caught in the dead of an unseasonably cold winter. Bayou trees hang heavy with frost and the watery byways are frozen solid (but not too solid). The Fen of Winters’ dangers come equally from all sources. Enormous, silent owls threaten to eat travelers who fail to look up, just as the fragile ice threatens to swallow travelers who fail to look down.
Cities: Silverwall is the most prominent gnome settlement in the Winterwood, little is known about this city as the locals are strikingly xenophobic and only have as much contact with outsiders as is absolutely necessary. Wards, the largest Eladrin city in the Fen of Winters is often referred to as ‘The most welcome sight in the Feywild.’ The students of the Nonagon, widely regarded by the locals as the greatest school of arcane magic in all of the Feywild, have created complex warding rituals to keep the bitter cold out of the city. Here the local flora blooms as it does in the natural world (except it does so year-round), creating a striking tableau of blooming honeysuckle and verdant willows, surrounded by crimson fields of cranberries.

Critical Hit Season 4 premieres tomorrow!

art by Adriana Ferguson