The Dark Mistress died years ago. Her dark spirit continues to linger in the dark feywilds around the mansion that was built by her lover before they were both betrayed. Salymira was her name. Once a shadar kai and then the mistress of Janulen of the Black Sword keep, now a tragic, cautionary tale of passion and shadow.
Janulen was an artificer of fantastic renown who specialized in thunder magic. Then living at Mantan, the Black Sword Keep atop Mountain Iredinn, in the days before the event known as the Gherivoninacht, the night the mountains crashed into the sea. Janulen was contracted by the Dark lord Maurphiun to create a device to be called the Gherivon, the thunder machine. Mauphriun, a thrall of the Shadow King Alnayab, chose Janulen for the job because of the remote location and his singular talent.
Janulen lived alone with his wife Ralyria and his assistant, the faederkin Thanataign. For many years Janulen struggled to construct the Gherivon for his dark employer. Maurphiun, a scholar of ancient history, moved to the mountain to aid and observe Janulen and his designs. IT became clear to Maurphiun that the building of the Gherivon would drive Janulen insane as the construction of the device might literally tear his mind apart. Maurphiun contracted the services of a Shadar Kai sorceress and consort, Salymira, to soothe and revitalize the exhausted Janulen. In those years, the ShadarKai were known to inhabit and consort with the Dark Elves of Baestelix, and this is where the two lovers began their triste, all to the betrayal of Ralyria.
In the year 1125, in the hours before the Gherivoninacht, in the last moments before the activation of the Gherivon, Ralyria learned of her betrayal. She found the mansion of Phytherios on the other side of the mountain peak and asertained its dark purpose. A legendary fury arose in her heart. A fury so great that an elemental daemon named Farthuriel from the FeyDark, heard her woeful heart beat and came to taste her rage. Farthuriel offered to take the heart of Janulen and cast it into the dark well, and in return, Ralyria would let him transform her rage into a mighty thing. “Anything! I will give you anything to condemn Janulen’s heart to the void!” Ralyria gladly screamed.
Thanataign, the faederkin, every faithful to Janulen, overheard this dark bargain and reported it to his lord. Maurphiun was there when Thanataign reported on Ralyria’s dark dargain. Maurphiun sensed that this daemon, this Fartheriel of the Black Well, might actually have the ability to stop the Gherivon from activating. To save his agenda, Maurphiun made a dark deal of his own with Farthuriel to become an undead demi-lich, trading a bit of his soul, so that the Gherivon might not be interrupted.
He did not know, however, that indeed Faruthiel had betrayed Ralyria too, and had transformed her into a black dragon to kill Janulen. As the Gherivon was activated, the dragon attacked and the incantation ritual to realize its full power was never manifest. For indeed the Gherivoninacht occured, reducing the Southrin Mountain range to the sea, but lo, the plan was to destroy all of Ethilistyr as well. Ralyria pierced Janulen’s heart with her vile tooth and sent the doomed artifacer to a unliving state of wraithdom. Maurphiun, in a blind need to fulfill a plan that was never fully realized, keeps trying to subdue the dragon, who still haunts the mist trail.
Chronicles of the World of DaoTyr 