17 Flamerule, 1381 DR (Year of The Starving)
As I set pen to this letter, I find myself reluctant to wield it, as if by prolonging this act of writing I can delay what must come next. Yet I know that these events, already set in motion, cannot be denied.
Almost fifteen lives of normal men have I lived, and much have I seen. The birth of cities and the dawning of new nations. Orc hordes that covered the very mountains as ants would swarm over an unattended pastry, and flights of dragons whose massed wingspans stretched from one horizon to the other. The births of my twelve children, and the deaths of those I loved... and those I have hated. Great Works of magic in so many varieties and shapes that the oft-overused word 'infinite' is truly the only just description of such. Gods descended to walk the world, and goddesses risen from mortality to be born anew. While I have known those besides whom I have felt as much a small child as those of normal lifespan have oft felt around me, this truth remains - great age did I attain, and some measure of wisdom and learning did I attain with it. An archmage, a landed lady, a queen, a talisman of hope for hundreds of settlements of man across the land, all this I have been.
And all this is now lost.
For many months after the cataclysm, I had neither the time nor the surcease for weeping. Both as ruler of a kingdom and Chosen of Mystra, as Harper emeritus and simple woman of good will, all my energies were required to render what aid I could. To try to save all those who could be saved. To try and hold back the fell winter that has now descended upon us all.
Although many would consider me, and indeed have considered me blameless in this matter, I cannot bring myself to accept their forgiveness. Forever will I be ashamed of my part in bringing this tragedy down upon Abeir-Toril, even if only by my negligence and not through any act of will. And forever will I be twice shamed, and if the gods are just, damned, for having lacked the courage to oppose the architects of this doom when I had the chance.
While so many of my former subjects would have disputed the notion hotly, I am indeed human. I can feel anger, and bitterness, and shame. I have always struggled towards law and good, but I can be tempted. So as I sit here at the end, I ask myself: do I write this letter to accept my just share of the guilt? Or to deflect it upon another's shoulders? Should I put down my pen before I name those who wrought the fall of civilization, or should I continue on and damn my old mentor's, and my beloved sister's, names before the record of history?
But of all the many things I have been - queen, archmage, divine servant, mother - I have also been a scholar. And having failed all in all my other offices, I will not fail in this. Here, then, is the true tale of the end of the world.
As I have little time in which to finish this, I must rely upon the other tomes left in this library to tell of the places and things to which I refer, and save my last breaths and ink for the heart of the matter. So:
One thousand three hundred and seventy-two years after the signing of the Dale Compact, high over the desert of Anauroch did the last surviving city of ancient Netheril, the city of Shade, return to the face of Abeir-Toril. Ruled by High Prince Telamont and his Shade Council, these master arcanists of the old and fallen realms were determined to reclaim all the current lands for their ancient empire. Me and the cities I led took what part we could in the first war against them. And along with my sisters (true-named Amandorna, Esheena, and Amanandue) and Amanandue's husband, I took part in the initial attempt at destroying Shade's heart of magic, it's mythal. To destroy the mythal would have brought the floating city down from the skies, killing all within it. And while Telamont and his fellow archwizards were evil as few men in the history of our world have had the capacity to be evil, most of Shade's tens of thousands of common folk, and nearly all of its slaves, were innocent. To destroy the city would have been to kill them all, and the thought of such an atrocity held my hand and my spells from their full effect. Had I been able to strike as ruthlessly as my more militant sisters, could we have ended the menace of Shade that day? Would we not have failed in our attempt? Would Shade's threat not have remained for later years, to eventually tempt Mystra's First Chosen and my sister Alassra to the act of wrath, of madness, that they eventually committed?
Many would say 'yes'. But I will not. Even now, at the end of all that I have loved, I refuse to be ashamed of showing mercy to the innocent. I refuse to say that doing so could ever be wrong. Many are the things of which I am not proud, many are the acts at which I will weep tears of regret. But never that one.
Be that as it may, the fact remains - Shade survived. All sides of the war were exhausted and bloodied, and withdrew to renew their strength. And the city of Shade was not the only evil in the world, not the only task the hands of Harpers, and others, were occupied in dealing with. So for some years their threat loomed over Anauroch, and Faerun, as all those around them watched, and waited, and remained wary. And the tension grew.
Could I have forestalled what was to come, if I had only imagined what thoughts this gathering storm was inspiring among my fellow Chosen? Many, including some of my sisters, have said no, I could not. I say yes, I could have. And none of us now for certain, save possibly Mystra, whose voice has not spoken to us ever since the sky fell.
For that is what happened. In his hubris, Elminster Aumar of Shadowdale, first among Mystra's Chosen, brought down a great piece of the firmament, a mountain of the void, to strike the city of Shade. He was inspired to this method by an event that occurred during his abduction to the Nine Hells, when my sister Alassra, most recently called the Simbul of Aglarond, by the utmost exertion of her Art was able to tear a mountain loose from the face of Avernus and throw it many miles to crush an army.
Was this the source of Elminster's final act of hubris? Some taint of the infernal, some thought the archdevils planted deep in his mind? Was he actually as blameless as some would hold me to be? Perhaps. Indeed, part of my prays so, fervently. It would be comforting, mayhap, to imagine that the doom of men had been wrought by fiendish hands and not by ourselves. But even if such were true, fiendish hands could only whisper, and tempt, and suggest. The final decision was still ours.
By virtue of serving Mystra, my recollection of events is always clear and complete. I can still see in my minds' eye the conference at which Elminster proposed this latest bold strike upon the City of Shadow. By combining his own epic grasp of the arts with the Simbul's raw might, could one of the many mountains that drifted through the Sea of Endless Night far above our heads be dragged down to the face of Toril, to strike with more massed fury than a thousand thousand archmages casting in full fury could achieve. To wreak a blow infinitely more devastating than that which even poor dear Shandril, the last wielder of spellfire, achieved in her final moments. And yet since Shade floated over the empty, trackless desert of Anauroch, it would be a blow that would harm none else, Elminster said!
But he was wrong.
I was horrified when he proposed what he did. And yet... I did not speak up. I was so afraid for my poor realm, neighboring Anauroch as it did. So much had assaulted us already, so many of our brave men and women had died vs. orcs, and giants, and dragons, and fell beasts and winter snows. Shade menaced our border, and yet our bravest efforts could not have held off even a single determined attack. And so, when offered a chance for this threat to be removed... I saw only my fears, and my own concerns, and my duty to one little realm. I forgot my duty to the world, to all the created races... and to my own conscience. And so, I did not object.
And now I, and all other men and women born into this age, pay the price for that silence.
When the sky-mountain was brought down, the force released was thousands of times that previously estimated. Shade was indeed destroyed, obliterated from the firmament. But the destruction was so very much greater than that. Millions of tonnes of rock and dust, cast into the air, blocked the very light of the sun from our skies for months. Winter fell, an endless winter.
On 11 Eleint, 1380 Dalereckoning, the Year of the Blazing Hand, by the hands and will and Art of Elminster and the Simbul, was struck the blow that ended the world.
My own city and realm, far north as they were, were one of the first to fall underneath the advancing ice and the endless winter. My own magery, called mighty by men, was as helpless before the uncaring forces of the cataclysm as a single sheepherder armed with but a simple sling would be before a whelmed flight of dragons. As a queen who had outlived her kingdom, I and what few people I could save fled south only to find no surcease there.
The gods of Darkness rejoiced that year, as the apocalypse drove most everyone to the darkest sides of their natures. Even though people are basically good, in fear and panic may they be driven to surrender to madness, and surrender they did. I will not darken this page by setting forth the details of all the tragedies, the losses, the slaughters and famines and diseases and blights, that occurred in those final days. Let them be imagined from whatever reader finds this letter knows of human suffering and despair. For, truly, no imagining could encompass the total.
But even suffering ends, with death if nothing else. And death is now what stalks the world. I know not of conditions in the Underdark, of which realms of dwarves, of drow, of gnomes, of illithids and aboleth and other, older, things without names, might survive, or in which form they might be. But on the surface of Abeir-Toril, as far as I can scry, remains nothing but the ice, and the endless waste, and the dead.
The world belongs to the undead, now. From mighty dracoliches and liches of more common sort, on down to simple skeletons and zombies, the frozen waste is peopled solely by the creatures of the Negative Material Plane. It was always an empty path they trod, mindlessly trudging through a universe they could not comprehend, or clinging to enough sentience to sit and ponder forgotten thoughts, to endlessly exist and never live. And now they are the rulers of the world, for all life has departed.
It is possible that elsewhere in the world, some small enclave, or lone survivor, still holds out. I am not a goddess, and omniscience sufficient to be certain of this possibility or the lack of, I do not have. But my fellow Chosen and I did share a link, and thus, I know the certainty of all their deaths. Even the ghost of my eldest sister has let go of her purchase on this world, for nothing remains to anchor her to it. And pursued as I am, spent as I am, I no longer have the time to search for others who might yet remain.
I have used the last of my powers to return to this, the Vault of Sages, in my home city of Silverymoon. Although now buried under endless tons of ice, the wards and construction have still held. This collected lore of Faerun still endures, to hopefully be found one day again, so that even though we are gone, we can still be remembered. And if it is found, when it is found, this letter will be found with it, so that this last tale of Mystra's children will be told.
I know not what form the new age of man on this world will take, or if it will ever come to rise at all. Perhaps I write these words only for the entertainment of some gloating drow, or coldly alien illithid, or incomprehensible elder horror. Perhaps I write them for no one but myself, sitting here in the fading spell-light in this frigid and musty chamber, as I pen the final paragraphs of this letter and prepare for the end. Or perhaps the fates will be merciful, and one day on this fair world that we so squandered, new kingdoms and peoples will arise.
And if that day comes to pass, I beg that you learn from our example. However great your magic, however long your life or splendid your list of deeds, never forget that you are still mortal, and still fallible. If our tragedy is to have any point, any meaning, it must be this; that it serves to warn others away from ever repeating our sins.
I have lingered overlong on the writing of this letter, for I am understandably reluctant to go. Yet go I must, for of the many undead still plaguing this earth several of them are more than able to trace the last living bearer of Mystra's silver fire to this vault and thus arrive to despoil this last archive. And so I dare not remain here, but instead must lead them far away, to spend my life diverting Thay's undead zulkir and his ilk away from this last treasure. After a lifetime devoted to peace, I find it sadly ironic that my final moments are to end in thunder and spell-battle.
And yet it seems fitting that in this, the blighted frost, should I meet my end at the skeletal hands of blighted unlife.
Fare thee well, children of the future. I sorrow that we failed you so, and I pray that one day, you can find it in you to forgive our departed souls.
With my love and my prayers;
Endue Alustriel of Silverymoon, last High Lady of the Silver Marches, Chosen of Mystra