Felak

Felak was founded in the Lith-Crillion Era by Akthol and Tharag settlers. Their journey started in 310 LE, and by way of the Earth Seam, they arrived in the Aerruxa Sector a year later. It was a long journey, with many stops and temporary living along the way. These stops also had their share of prospecting. They passed through Seam Portals, following the flow of the elemental river. They had left the dark of one continent, passed under a channel sea, and entered another continent where prospecting turned up a rich find, the purest vein of adamantine they had ever heard of.

On 11 Dreamer 311 LE, the Felak settlement was founded. It was named for one of the crew that fell into the Earth Steam and was lost. The build site was at the bottom of a dimly lit canyon. The settlement would grow upward, following the ore veins. On the surface they traded adamantine for cloth, sugar, salt, and other things they had no access to. With growing wealth, Felak spread east and west. With outposts and ports along the Earth Seam, and often friendly relations with the river's earth elementals, they spread west and north into Aerruxa.

For three centuries, Felak reigned in relative peace. This came to an end when prospectors discovered another adamantine pocket in the bowels of Khuzir. The digging stirred a trio of dragons from their deep slumber. These dragons, the Reds of Kilth, were ancient beasts, second generation blood of Tiamats Clutch. Against Felak, the Reds sent their armies of fomorian, derro, and troglodytes. By the end of this Kilth-Deeps War (614 LE - 623 LE), Felak and her sibling city-states Gulud-Burâg and Urbal Nabad, were under the yoke of the dragons and their fomorian overlords.

When Varelay (684 LE) came to power, slave armies were established by the Reds of Kilth. These were sent against the demons in what became known as the Red Scourge. Demon infiltrators, usually succubus or incubus in disguise, got into these slave armies and stirred up rebellion. They told the dwarves that once the yoke of the dragons was broken, they would be free and allowed to return to their old cities. When Varelay won the war, the three dragons slain, the dwarves did not get freedom. They were rounded up by the demons and taken back in chains to places like Drachlaz and Orias Vual. There long stay and often unwelcome dalliances between Varelay's demons and slaves led to many cambion offspring. These were mostly dwarven cambions, a people that would be treaty badly by the true bloods for a long time thereafter.

Varelay's decline in the Varelay Upheaval (2608 LE - 16 HE) left a lot of dead demons and a multitude of freed slaves. Most returned to their ancestral homelands, with dwarves and cambion dwarves returning to their old holds in the Kilth Mountains. They cleared these places of their illegal occupants, then began the rebuilding, and the firing up of their ancient forges. For centuries thereafter, the cambion dwarves and other cambions of the region, reminders of demon mastery, were the subject of harassment and even kept from positions of power.

With the establishment of the Smizerak Kingdom in 640 HE, Felak became a capital. Suffering two subjugations, the other city-states agreed that unity would give them a better chance against their next foe, with the city-states Gulud-Burâg, Ilagandam, and Tholig-Mizin falling under Smizerak's government. Urbal Nabad, long ago founded by Felak prospectors, remained in the hands of the derro and the fomorians.

Felak spreads along the bottom and along the walls of a 2000' deep chasm. Considered a city of both the surface, and the Underdark, Felak is an important trade city. It gives merchants the chance to trade goods with few middle parties. In the city's subterranean side, is a great port on the Earth Seam. The surface of the city has a very large market comprising eight flagstone courtyards.