In the sixth adventure of the Dungeons & Dialogue Language Exchange series, a band of heroes defend Silverymoon against drow forces from the Underdark, only to find that something has changed in the past which has drastically altered the present. Silverymoon and the surrounding lands come under the threat of conquest unless the heroes can travel through time and space to set right what has gone wrong.

Deep within the bowels of Menzoberranzan, the drow of the Underdark performed a terrible ritual that cast the Silver Marches into darkness. It began with a series of rolling clouds that quickly spread across all the lands of Luruar. This was the start of the Darkening. Under the cover of perpetual night, the legions of the drow and their allies, who had long been preparing in their subterranean halls, emerged at last. The invasion of the surface world had begun. The forces of the Underdark swept across the countryside and laid siege to the bright city of Silverymoon, a center of art and culture at the heart of the Silver Marches.

In the vanguard of the invasion force, there was a mighty drow swashbuckler, whose skills in swordplay and shadow magic were unmatched. A month earlier, this swashbuckler had gone before the Darkening to waylay the champions of Silverymoon ahead of the rest of her army. The city was guarded by many warmages and knights, led by Taern Hornblade the High Mage of Silverymoon. And Taern had also called upon six mighty heroes from the distant south, mercenaries of the Flaming Fists of Baldur’s Gate.

Arfean was a half-elf bard from the College of Swords, a gambler who favored both ballads and blades. 

Durin Ironfist was a hill dwarf cleric. Once a promising jeweler, he heard the voice of Moradin, god of the dwarves, and became a Cleric of Life. He sought to protect the weak and also find rare gems and treasures as an expression of his faith.

Grand Anur was a goliath barbarian. The youngest of three brothers, he defied his family traditions and walked the path of a bard with his own unique instruments made of ivory and stone.

L’wenna was a warlock and hermit. Her distant ancestor had made a pact with a powerful demon, infusing her family’s bloodline with infernal influence and causing her to be born a tiefling who inherited a fell legacy.

Po was a human monk and Warrior of the Open Hand. He was an acolyte who came down from his training in the mountains to broaden his horizons in the wider world.

Sara Belmont was a drow assassin and charlatan. Young, reckless, and thuggish, she came from a ruined noble house among the drow. She became an outcast and ultimately left her own people.

These six had been called upon by Taern Hornblade to challenge the drow swashbuckler from Menzoberranzan. With their swords and spells, they drove the drow vanguard back to the Underdark. But now that the Darkening and the true invasion had begun, the six heroes returned north at Taern Hornblade’s request. After all, if Silverymoon and the Silver Marches should fall, the lands to the south, even Baldur’s Gate and Candlekeep, would not be safe.

Traveling by trade roads and rivers along the Sword Coast, they made their way up the River Surbrin until it joined the River Rauvin. Upon the banks of Rauvin stood the shining city of Silverymoon and its famed Moonbridge, glittering with the light of hope under the supernatural darkness which now enveloped the land.

On their way to meet Taern Hornblade in the High Palace, the heroes stopped by a local tavern, the Bright Blade Brandished, on the northern bank of the river. They hoped to get the pulse of the besieged city, and they were heartened to meet many other heroes who had answered Silverymoon’s call to arms. 

Among them were the human champion Godrik Vanhart and the elf wizard Theren Vaelthorne, fellow mercenaries from the Flaming Fists. These two had recently arrived from Castle Surbrin to the west. They brought strange tidings of the orc kingdom of Many Arrows. The new leader of the orcs, King Obould XVIII, had taken back the throne from a warmongering tyrant. Obould had brokered an uneasy truce with his neighbors when the Darkening took hold of the Silver Marches. Whether the Darkening presented an opportunity too enticing for even Obould to resist, or the prospect of a drow conquest of the Silver Marches seemed too great a risk, the rumor of an orc army on the march began to stir once more in the Spine of the World.

Though the heroes might have wished to hear more about recent events in the north, they felt they had delayed too long already. Therefore, they got up and headed to the High Palace to join Taern Hornblade in his war council.

The High Palace

Inside the palace, the heroes were unnerved by the silence that engulfed the place like a fog. As they approached the chamber of the High Mage, they were horrified to discover that all the guards in the hallway were dead! The quiet was broken by the clash of blades which could be heard inside the High Mage’s chamber. The heroes burst through the doors, and in the far side of that hall, they saw Taern Hornblade surrounded by six drow assassins, a pair of drow mages, and their leader, who was none other than the drow swashbuckler the heroes had defeated in the recent past!

This time, the swashbuckler and her minions were well prepared. After conjuring magical darkness, three of the drow assassins lured Taern away while the rest turned their blades and wands toward the heroes of the Flaming Fists. Yet they were not ready for Sara Belmont’s trickery. Sara fixed her gaze upon one of the drow mages, and in that brief instant, her look communicated a falsehood which the swashbuckler mistook for treachery. Before the mage even had a chance to protest, the swashbuckler swung her blade, causing the mage’s own shadow to rise up against him. Together, the swashbuckler’s blade and the mage’s own shadow pierced his confounded heart.

The remaining drow mage avenged his kinsman by casting a dark incantation. Black tentacles rose up from the ground at the heroes’ feat and strangled them. They struggled free, but they were met by the blades and arrows of the drow assassins who waylaid the heroes while they were still blinded by magical darkness.

A fierce battle ensued, and Durin Ironfist was the first of the heroes to fall. The drow swashbuckler’s sorcery and strength had grown since last they met. All might have been lost, but Grand’s song of healing revived Durin, even as Arfean’s song of eldritch horror drove the drow to madness. Together, the heroes fought back with sword and spell until the drow swashbuckler and her remaining henchmen were forced to flee. Godrik and Theren arrived soon after with a cohort of palace guards, only moments too late.

When the heroes found Taern Hornblade, he was lying in a pool of blood, his own and that of his enemies who lay dead all around him. Taern himself was grievously wounded and unconscious. The heroes brought him to the house of healing and tended to his wounds, but the drow had wielded vicious weapons whose poison had already run deep inside his veins.

The heroes joined the war council of Silverymoon where the lords and commanders of the city’s defense had convened to deliberate on their course of action. The drow vanguard that had tried to eliminate the city’s leadership was only a taste of what was to come. A siege by the hosts of Menzoberranzan, emboldened and empowered by the Darkening, would be unlike anything the people of the surface world could imagine. The drow would strike hard wherever and whenever the defenders were at their weakest, making it only a matter of time before the city fell.

If only the defenders could find and activate Silverymoon’s long-dormant mythal! This powerful artifact was created centuries ago by Alustriel Silverhand, the former High Mage of Silverymoon and Speaker of the Silver Marches. With the power of the mythal, Silverymoon could break the Darkening and the will of the drow. But only Alustriel Silverhand knew the secrets of its creation and restoration.

There was only one solution. The war council resolved to send emissaries to find Alustriel Silverhand and beseech her to help the city of Silverymoon by restoring the city’s mythal.

Yet even as this decision was made, a most bizarre thing happened. All around the heroes, the world began to change.

The knights and mages of Silverymoon vanished but for a few. The city fell into a state of disrepair, or rather a far humbler condition, as if it had never reached its heights of arcane power and sophistication. A map depicting the current state of the war showed that the forces of the drow had conquered nearly all of Luruar, save for Silverymoon. This was the final stronghold where the precious few survivors of the drow conquest had gathered together in their final hours.

And strangest of all, no one but the heroes and Theren Vaelthorne knew the name of Alustriel Silverhand or the existence of a mythal. It was as if neither she nor her creation had ever existed at all.

Arfean, Grand, Po, and Sara could not grasp what had taken place. But Durin understood what had transpired, for he had experienced temporal phenomena in the past. Meanwhile, L’wenna’s fiendish pact granted her eldritch knowledge beyond mortal comprehension. Durin and L’wenna knew that something terrible must have happened in the distant past which had altered the present, and it had to do with Alustriel Silverhand. Someone had tampered with history so that Alustriel was never born, or had never gained renown under her own name.

It was then that Theren produced from his robes a half-eaten fruit. He told the others that it was a fruit from the Delorean Tree, the tree of time. One bite could send all of the heroes hurtling through time and space until they arrived at their desired destination. It was up to them to imagine a point in space-time to which they would travel. There they would tether themselves until they fulfilled their sacred task of restoring the true timeline of the world.

The heroes suspected that something may have happened in Alustriel’s life which caused her to take on a different name. In this alternative timeline, she never gained fame and renown, and she did not build a mythal in Silverymoon. Therefore, they resolved to return to a point in time hundreds of years in the past when Alustriel was still alive. Perhaps she might heed the heroes’ words about her ultimate destiny and save the future.

9th Century

Durin, being the wisest among the party and the most experienced in the matter of time travel, bit into the magical fruit. A blinding flash of light engulfed everyone, and when it subsided, the heroes found them on newly cobbled streets. They were still in Silverymoon, but everything was different. There were no drow armies or darkened skies. There was no War of the Silver Marches. Yet the city was defended by powerful magic and not a few heroes of the age. Among them was Alustriel Silverhand, who lived by a different name in this time period. She was known as Élue Dualen, the High Mage of Silverymoon. And by her side was her lover, another powerful mage called Sammaster. The couple walked the streets of Silverymoon and their neighbors greeted them warmly by name.

“Good greetings to you, Élue Dualen and Sammaster!”

“It is another day made safer and brighter by your presence.”

“The goddess of magic picked her Chosen well!”

Both Alustriel and Sammaster were among the Chosen of Mystra, the goddess of magic. In ages past, when the ancient empire of Netheril sat upon floating cities in the sky, there were archmages whose powers rivaled the gods. When the greatest among them, a mage called Karsus, tried to become a god himself, his folly threatened the very fabric of magic itself, known as the Weave, which ultimately led to the ruin of his people and the changing of the world. Since then, the goddess of magic decreed that no mortal could wield powers beyond a certain threshold, not without the aid of mighty rituals or artifacts such as a mythal. And she handpicked her champions, called the Chosen, to defend the Weave against any threats against it.

Alustriel was brilliant and beautiful while Sammaster was dark and brooding. They could not have been more different from each other, so no one would have imagined that the two would fall madly in love with each other. Yet the unlikely couple appeared to have captured the hearts of the people of Silverymoon in this era.

L’wenna knew that something was amiss. The fiendish voices from her pact told her that this was not the way things should be. In the true timeline, Alustriel and Sammaster were indeed lovers, but their love would not last. Sammaster, driven by a desire for power, would fall and become corrupted, and the burden would fall upon Alustriel’s shoulders to vanquish him. Something had changed to turn their love into a lasting relationship.

The heroes tried to approach Alustriel, calling her by her true name. When Sammaster heard this, he grew alarmed and protective.

“Where did you hear that name, strangers? Who are you, and what do you want from us?”

In that moment, Sara Belmont created a distraction to lure away Sammaster, but her strategy was not without cost. When Sammaster caught up with her, he cast her into an extradimensional prison from which she could not escape. Nevertheless, Sara had bought just enough time so that the others could speak with Alustriel.

The heroes told her the truth. They were time travelers from the distant future and had come here to find her, for without her their world was doomed. Alustriel was the Chosen of Mystra, and while her love of Sammaster was good, it was not the greater good that she was meant to achieve. Alustriel Silverhand, the High Lady and first Speaker of the Silver Marches, what of the mighty alliance she was meant to forge? What of the mythal that she was destined to create?

When Alustriel heard mention of the mythal, her expression changed. Until then, she seemed to think only of her own private life and personal relationship, but the thought of the mythal, which she had long nurtured, was rekindled in her heart.

“If you walk down that path, my love, you know that your life will be full of suffering. You have seen it.”

Sammaster had returned after banishing Sara Belmont to an extradimensional prison. He held in his hand another fruit of time, whose power he had used to see into the future. He had shown Alustriel the life that awaited her if she created the mythal and became the leader of the Silver Marches. Though she would achieve great things, she would also experience immeasurable loss and grief.

Alustriel knew that the choice was hers to make. She looked uncertainly at these strangers who had brought strange tidings from a world yet to come. She saw reflected in their eyes the choice that she must make. She turned away from Sammaster, and embraced her true destiny.

In the years to come, she would come to be at odds with Sammaster who would become obsessed with his quest for power. She would create the mythal in the Moonbridge which would defend and define the city of Silverymoon. And she would become one of the founders of the alliance of the Silver Marches to protect the realms of elves, dwarves, and men. She would do all these things, but she would have no rest. The evils of the world were constant, and she would be at the forefront of the war against them. When the Darkening came to Luruar and the drow emerged from Menzoberranzan, Alustriel would come again to Silverymoon to restore the mythal and heal Taern Hornblade of his wounds.

The heroes from Baldur’s Gate would thank her for her courage, and she would remember them from long ago. To the heroes, only moments had passed since last they met, but to Alustriel Silverhand, centuries had passed. Though her mage’s glamor made her appear young and beautiful, the long years of her toils and trials were apparent in her eyes.

The six heroes who had journeyed through time and changed the course of history would go their separate ways. Some would remain in the Silver Marches to fight the forces of tyranny, while others would go abroad in pursuit of their own ambitions. But having met these same adventurers who had set her on the hero’s path, Alustriel would at last lay down her burden, seeking a life of solitude and rest in the hallowed halls of Candlekeep in the twilight of her long life. Yet neither the heroes nor Alustriel would know that in the shadows beyond time and space, the dark eyes of Sammaster were fixed upon them, watching and waiting.