Dambrath and The Arkaiun Clans: Faerûn and its Forgotten Realms

How dose Dambrath look now? As of the 1450s, is there still a state? Or, has it devolved into a savage frontier-land, ruled by…?

You could read way too much into a throwaway descriptive tag of “sister city” on the FR Wiki and ~discern~ that the Arkaiun clans govern themselves in paired isolation. An artifact of Crinti rule, where these population centers worked in tandem to compensate for a dissatisfied population and communicating with other cities over such a large area?

Maybe this system was originally from the Kingdom of Dambrath, too useful to do away with by the Crinti on their campaign to exterminate Arkaiun culture?

---

As you can see, it is easy to start making stuff up when confronted with a lack of information . Below is my strategy, not necicarily for creating headcanon, but for identifying where canon is spares, and how to keep headcanon within actual canon.

Developing Headcanon

There is a lot of stuff I don’t know about the nations of this made-up land, so I research. When there is a lot of official information on the state, there tends to be a lot of conflicting lore, especially political and cultural lore, which is often changed to fit a new author’s story, or worse, a meta political narrative.

I cut a path through this quagmire with Ockham’s razor. If there are multiple answers or histories, I go with the one with the least amount of assumptions. And when I am left with unanswered, internal factors, which won’t have much impact on outside forces, I use critical thinking and try to limit the amount of assumptions I have to make.

So, here are the facts:

• The Drow united to annihilate the nation of Dambrath, after the human kingdom invaded their underground city to stop it from raiding.
• The war depleted both sides.
• An opportunistic cult of half-elves, known as The First, offered their services, then betrayed the King of Dambrath.
  • Where did these half-elves come from? Either Drow, Wild elves of nearby Jungle, or other?
  • Described as “Pale” Is that relative to the Drow or Humans?
• The First took control of Dambrath and promptly entered into vassal-dom to the Drow (with open trade!).
  • Why would The First give themselves and their new realm into vassaldom to the Drow? They wern’t Crinti yet. The Drow get everything they want, and The First get Dambrath, but in service to the Drow.
  • Seems like confusion with The First being half-elves and the Crinti also being half-elves… or 2/3ds elves?
• Drow + Arkaiun = Crinti, and Drow + First = Crinti. The Crinti were the aristocracy and middlemen of the Drow.
• The Crinti did their best to wipe out the Arkaiun culture, specifically their totemic, beast-god religion.

The Headcanon: Fall of Dambrath, Ruse of the Crinti

The Drow and First must have entered into the pact sometime before The First offered their services to the king. This is doesn’t answer why the pact was made, but it reduces the amount of “and then” in the story.

The “why” can be up to the DM.

My heart says The First are were half-Drow (Crinti) from the beginning. Convinced, due to cultural similarities, to submit to the dark-elves, and empowered ¹ to impress / successfully destroy the king’s armies.

Cathtyr offered the support of her priestesses. Reinhar IX believed this to be a sign from the gods and had a priestess assigned to each of his remaining companies. When the drow attacked, the priestesses within each company betrayed the Arkaiuns. Cathtyr slew Reinhar IX herself during the betrayal.²

Actual Canon: History and Birth of Dambrath

The Arkaiun Clans of Dambrath come from the ancient, Empire of Narfell. After The Great Conflagration, fleeing Nars settled in the Council Hills. The Nars, now called Arkaiuns thanks to a millennium of cultural exchange with Shaarans, fled further in the face of a rising Mulhorand and Unther.

The clans, united by a king, went on a mostly successful conquest of states along the Great Sea. Establishing the Kingdom of Dambrath. The kingdom would fall to a combination of Drow and a half-elf cult to a sadistic, goddess of pain.

This cult ruled Dambrath as the Crinti, an ethnic client state/theocracy, interbred with the Drow and determined to exterminate Arkaiun culture.

Long before the Spellplague, the Drow had grown complacent in their power. Those Crinti still loyal to the cult, worked to undermine them to take Dambrath for themselves. However, in the chaos of the Spellplague, long banished Arkaiun raiders descended on Dambrath, toppled Crinti rule, sending them into exile. The Drow killed those who sought refuge underground and sealed all known entrances to their city.