After shifting gears with our Shadowdark games, I’ve started writing up more about the world and setting for this new campaign. Not much mind you, I’m not looking to fully develop a game world or even fully develop this Borderlands mini-setting. Rather just the things that come to mind and the words start to flow…for good or bad. A number of these little bits of writing are related to the monsters of the Borderlands (and the broader world). Below the break is some information about the Midnight Elves and their servants, the Dusk. This is relevant as the player characters have been exploring a location that one of them, Aja, has identified as an outpost of these creatures. The other characters know nothing of them.
Seeping through the cracks in reality or perhaps from a fevered dream of some unknown god or maybe even from the memories of all pain ever suffered by the gods, the Traudal are completely alien to this reality. Ancient tales speak of these creatures and the excruciating pain that existence in our reality causes them as well as the driving desire of the Traudal to inflict that pain back on our reality. Possibly immortal and as patient and as persistent as eroding water, they are the Traudal.
Only scholars and sages refer to them as the Traudal. The relatively few others who know of them simply call them Nightmare Elves. In ancient times, the Traudal warred against mythic heroes but, despite having great success in this conflict, the Nightmare Elves suddenly withdrew, retreating into the deeps of the world…into the Underworld.
Here, in the darkness, bathing in the strange energies of the Underworld, the Nightmare Elves remain in, or so it is rumored, a city of fluid, black stone that resembles glass but absorbs all light. Here they wait, sending nightmares to the surface, waiting for the right time to return to the surface and unleash all the pain to have ever existed in a cathartic mutual destruction of the world to finally set them free from this cursed existence.
Exceedingly few living today have ever encountered a Nightmare Elf. Legends hold that they vaguely resemble elves, but are impossibly slim and tall, over eleven feet tall. Their bodies are humanoid in shape and that is where the similarity stops. A smoky grey complexion constantly swirls across the surface of their body. Dark shadowy strands ending in faint wisps flow on their head as if it were hair. Most disturbing are their faces…or lack thereof. A Nightmare Elf has no facial features…no eyes, no nose, no mouth, and no ears. Nothing but a blank canvas never to be painted upon.
Outposts of the Nightmare Elves can still be found underground. They are nearly always abandoned. Such locations are rather distinct and recognizable to those who know of these beings. They are constructed of a black, glassy, smoky stone similar to obsidian. It seems to absorb light, showing no reflection. These holdings invariably have an entrance to a passage leading to the Underworld. It may be blocked or it may be hidden, but the passage exists nonetheless.
Even if abandoned, such locations are not without dangers. Traps, magical and mundane, as well as magical guardians may remain to inflict pain and then kill any daring enough to intrude within. Some may still hold servants of the Nightmare Elves which sages know as the Duskel but are more commonly know as the Dusk. There is no consensus on the origin of the Dusk. Most believe that the Nightmare Elves either created the Dusk from the stuff of nightmares or took some creature of the Underworld and molded them more to their liking.
The Dusk look much like smaller versions of their masters, standing some seven feet tall, with one notable exception. The Dusk wear masks, completely featureless, that cover their entire face. These masks are made of a material similar to, if not the same as, the stone comprising the outputs of the Nightmare Elves. Beneath the masks, the Dusk have faces that vary just as much as human faces but all are distorted as though made of wax which strayed too close to a flame. And all bear an expression of intense pain, frozen in place.
Like their masters, the Dusk do not simply seek to destroy life, they ache to do so as painfully as possible. Until the time that the Nightmare Elves are ready to rise and destroy the world, the Dusk will seek to inflect pain as often and as intensely as they can. To this end, the Dusk will periodically come to the surface to take captives before returning to the Underworld, subjecting their prisoners to a lifetime of misery and excruciating pain. Death is merciful in comparison to capture by the Dusk.
spooky