An Extended History of Daggerdale
For the official historical details on Daggerdale you need a wide range of TSR products, foremost among them the basic 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Set by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb (TSR - 1993), the Dalelands accessory by Richard L. Baker III (TSR - 1994), Volo's Guide to the Dalelands by Ed Greenwood (TSR - 1996), Doom of Daggerdale by Wolfgang Baur (TSR - 1993) and the Randal Morn trilogy of modules - Sword of the Dales, Secret of Spiderhaunt and Return of Randal Morn - all by Jim Butler (TSR - 1995).
In addition to these gaming products, the novels Cloak of Shadows and All Shadows Fled by Ed Greenwood (TSR - 1995) and Finder's Bane by Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak (TSR - 1998) also provide very valuable details not revealed elsewhere.
Since her first appearance more than 600 years ago, Gwath's fingers - alive and later undead - have been deeply entwined in many of the evil doings involving both Shadowdale and Daggerdale, beginning at about the time the Twisted Tower of the drow arose in Shadowdale and continuing on through the vampire plague that caused Merrydale to change its name to Daggerdale, through the rise and fall and second rise and fall of the once chosen Sammaster and on through time, to this very day.
Gwath - According to Elminster
Shortly after reconquering Dagger Falls in the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR), Randal Morn was visited quietly by Elminster of Shadowdale, who passed on information that he and the mage Rhauntides of Highmoon in Deepingdale had gathered concerning the great lich Gwath. Elminster told Morn that he and Rhauntides believed that Gwath was rising again, and that steps must be taken to destroy her, or his Dale easily might fall again or even be destroyed. The following summarizes information that Elminster gave to Randal Morn:
The first traces of Gwath in the Dalelands go back to the ill-named Year of the Kindly Lich (606 DR), when a traveling mage from ancient Cormyr named Garthur and his band entered the southeastern part of the Daleswood (unofficial), now known as Spiderhaunt Woods. The band had many difficult encounters with gigantic spiders in the forest, some of them believed by Garthur to be unnatural creatures. Garthur noted in his journal that the forest still had been peaceful and free of such spiders in a similar expedition some 10 years earlier.
He and his band also discovered new trails that had been made into the Daleswood, and they were following these trails when the many encounters with the giant spiders occurred. After a bit more than a day in the forest and with many hard battles behind them, Garthur and his band came upon an opening in which stood a larghe and evil-looking towre of great dimension. Furthermore, this tower was guarded by a band of four highly capable warryors of ye darke elven ffolk.
It came to combat with these four apparent drow, and after three of the dark elves and one of Garthur's warriors lay dead before the tower, a woman, in part of the drowe race, emergethed from the towre and identified herselfe as Gwath the mighty and she did saye, that she beeth a priest of Llolth. She then attacked us with magickes most powerful and evil, and only in the last minute was I able to use mye own magickes to remove myselfe and the last survivore of my group to safetye. And long it was that our wounds did healeth, before we again were of our known strengths.
Elminster noted that the description in Garthur's journal of Gwath being in part of the drowe race is a very interesting remark and also one that has led to differences of opinion between himself and Rhauntides. Elminster said his library in his tower in Shadowdale holds a number of texts taken from the drow chambers in the Twisted Tower after their defeat, and these texts prove almost conclusively that Gwath was a full drow who came from the dark elven cities beneath the Dalelands.
In his youth, Rhauntides spent a decade (unofficial) studying in Halruua, in the Shining South, where he claims that the name Gwath is known from ancient tales in which a purported half-drow named Gwath once had been active as a mighty priestess of Llolth where the half-drow nation of Dambrath now stands, and further, this Gwath vanished inexplicably from the South in the early 7th Century DR, at roughly the same time Garthur recorded first mention of the Gwath of the North.
At this time, Elminster said, Myth Drannor was rising to the height of its glory, and the drow race seemed determined to halt the expansion of the moon elves westward from the legendary city. As a priestess of Llolth, Gwath seems to have been in the forefront of this campaign. The ancient elves of Myth Drannor came to know Gwath as a powerful priestess of drow sapper bands that conducted guerilla warfare by night in Cormanthyr on the fringes of Myth Drannor, and Elminster said he has no doubt that Gwath played a major role in opening a gate for the Army of Darkness into Myth Drannor in the Year of the Lost Lance (712 DR).
Gwath did not escape unscathed from her attacks upon the elves of Myth Drannor. The rulers in the Elven Court learned of her tower in Spiderhaunt Woods, as the borderland forest had come to be known, and led many forays into the wood to attack and inflict damage upon the tower. With time, Gwath was forced to flee, and she sought refuge in the foothills of the Desertsmouth Mountains on the western border of Merrydale, where she began construction of the Gwathburg in the Year of the Scarlet Sash (679 DR), finishing it in the Year of the Lost Lance (712 DR), as the Army of Darkness begin attacking Myth Drannor.
After the fall of Myth Drannor in the Year of Doom (714 DR), the drow controlled the entire surface valley of the Ashaba from present-day Ashabenford to deep within the Dagger Hills north of Shadowdale. The real goal of the drow seemed to be to gain the iron-fisted domination of the western Dalelands, from Spiderhaunt in the southwest to the Desertsmouth Mountains in the West and the Tesh Valley in the north. Again, all indications are that Gwath was the spokeswoman of Llolth and the leader of the drow movement.
Gwath's next goal was to destroy the growing human population in the western Dalelands. To this end, she summoned 15 great vampire lords from another plane to her Gwathburg, immediately exerted control over them, and ordered them to infect all of Merrydale with vampirism. These vampires first were seen in the Year of the Grey Mists (796 DR), when Merrydale began to be known as Daggerdale. It appears that Gwath turned over her Gwathburg to the vampire lords at this time and moved to a new, secluded tower in the Desertsmouth Mountains, one that has not been located to this date, although sages believe it to be in the northern part of the mountains, somewhere south of the old Tethyamar mines.
At this point, however, Gwath and the drow had overextended themselves. Both the elves of Cormanthyr and the men of the western Dalelands and Cormyr arose against the vampires and the drow. The vampires had completely overtaken the village of Highstone in the Dagger Hills, turning its entire population into vampires. In a daring daytime raid, elves from the Elven Court attacked the village, which had come to be called Bloodstone (no connection to the type of chalcedony mined in the Cold Lands and called bloodstone), and before the sun set on that fateful day, a wooden stake had been driven through the heart of every vampire in the village.
At almost the same time, a band of 400 armed men from the southern Dales and northern Cormyr, led by a group of priests of Lathander from Cormyr, fell upon the Gwathburg shortly after sunrise. After a day's fighting that caused many losses among the men of the Dales and Cormyr, the last of the 36 drow soldiers defending the castle of the vampire lords was killed, and with less than 30 minutes remaining until sunset, the priests of Lathander drove stakes into the hearts of all 15 vampire lords.
This is believed to have taken place in the Year of the Patchworked Peace (802 DR). The vampires of Merrydale, now Daggerdale, had not been completely destroyed, but the vampire lords and their slaves in the village of Bloodstone were eradicated. The villagers of Daggerdale were able to track down and destroy the remaining vampires in the dale on their own.
Gwath returned then to Daggerdale, this time to enact her wrath upon her former servants. She cursed the spirits of the 15 vampire lords and of the population of Bloodstone to haunt the Gwathburg and their homes eternally, as ghosts. She cursed the 35 drow warriors of the Gwathburg to defend it forever, as skeleton warriors, and she cursed their drow commander to lead them forever, as a death knight. And other curses she placed too on the Gwathburg, to entrap those who would violate it.
At this time, the power of the drow in the Ashaba Valley had reached its peak, with the Marshall-Mage Azmaer commanding the Ashaba Valley from the Twisted Tower in today's Shadowdale (official). In the Year of the Leaping Lion (834 DR), men built Castle Grimstead on the border of today's Shadowdale as a defense against Azmaer's drow.
The castle stood for 30 years, until Azmaer's forces succeeded in destroying it in the Year of the Broken Branch (864 DR). But the days of the drow were numbered. It took another 42 years, but in the Year of the Plough (906 DR), Azmaer and his drow had been driven from the Twisted Tower, the human settlement of Shadowdale had been created, and Ashaba became its first leader.
For more than 100 years, the annals of the Dales had been written without a single mention of Gwath's name. It was as though she had vanished from the face of Faerûn. This is not what happened, however, Elminster assured Randal Morn.
Elminster said there are many signs that Gwath's break with the faith of Llolth had begun long years before the vampire lords were summoned to the Gwathburg, and this break was culminated definitively in the Year of the Patchworked Peace (802 DR), when the vampire lords and the vampires of Bloodstone were destroyed.
Gwath, according to Elminster, had become fascinated with magic, and she had abandoned her priesthood and her own drow race to turn to wizardry and to seek power. He believes Gwath may already have been a mage of low level at the time of Myth Drannor's fall, and that she ascended to lichdom when she revisited the Gwathburg for the last time in the Year of the Plough (906 DR).
By that time, the tale of the ghosts of the vampire lords, skeleton warriors and a death knight in the Gwathburg had circulated through the Western Heartlands, and adventurers sought out the castle, either in search of a fortune or, on religious grounds, to attempt to send the undead to their eternal rest.
In the Year of the Queen's Tears (902 DR), Gwath had battled a mighty beholder named Garnath, seeking to steal its magic. After a long and dangerous battle, Gwath succeeded in killing the beholder and binding it to her, undead. In the Year of the Plough (906 DR), after Azmaer's fall and with the increasing human population in the Dales, she placed the undead beholder in the Gwathburg, to eternally guard it and to bind those who enter the castle as undead into service guarding the castle. As far as is known, Gwath never again returned to the Gwathburg.
Having divorced herself from the drow and Llolth, Gwath now seemed to be determined to become a power in her own right, and to this end, she began turning her attention to organizations of power in the Realms. Gwath also moved covertly within the Dalelands, disguising herself as a seductive, dark-haired human woman, which hid both her drow heritage and her decaying, undead lich's body.
In the early 10th Century DR, there are records of Algashon, the Bane priest who swayed Sammaster, founder of the Cult of the Dragon for many years, often being seen in the company of a beautiful, dark-haired mage cult member who was known as Gwann. There can be little doubt, Elminster told Randal Morn, that Gwann was in truth Gwath. Details on Algashon and the history of the cult can be found in The Cult of the Dragon by Dale Donovan (TSR - 1998).
In these years too, cult annals record that Gwann gave birth to Algashon's daughter (unofficial). Elminster is convinced (unofficial) that she is none other than the demi-shade Gothyl, who captured the Sword of the Dales and Randal Morn in the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR), after taking up residence in Gwath's long abandoned tower in Spiderhaunt. Gothyl, according to Elminster, was a mage who was turned into a demi-shade when her attempt to ascend to lichdom went awry. For more details, see the Sword of the Dales Trilogy by Jim Butler (TSR - 1995).
The mage Gwann was a prominent cult member for many years, most certainly a Keeper of the Secret Hoard. Her base of operations seemed to extend from Shadow Gap to the Mines of Tethyamar. After the fall of Sammaster, Algashon and Drakewings left a vacuum in the Cult of the Dragon in the early years of the 13th Century DR, Gwann was one of the more powerful Keepers of the Secret Hoard to fill it.
By the end of the second decade in this century, Gwann appeared to be one of the leaders of Algashon's old faction within the cult, which had begun advocating that it should affiliate with the Untheric dragon goddess Tiamat. The remaining Keepers of the Secret Hoard in Sembia, the North, the Vilhon Reach and Sunset Vale were opposed to Gwath and the former faction of Algashon and supported the old cult faction of Drakewings.
When the Algashon faction attempted to wage war upon the Harpers, in the Year of the Horn (1222 DR), at the time the Harpers had come under the sway of the evil Harper King, Gwann led the attacks upon the Harpers, and the Drakewings-Faction withheld its support. leading to serious defeats of Gwann's faction.
The schism in the cult continued another 60 years or so and even deepened, until the Year of the Many Mists (1282 DR), when a lich calling itself Sammaster arose in the Desertsmouth Mountains near Shadow Gap. Gwann/Gwath was among the Keepers of the Secret Hoard who visited the lich's lair in this year, and they left convinced that the lich was indeed Sammaster.
They also left the lair abhorred over Sammaster's return as a threat to their own growing power and agreed that he must be destroyed. And it no doubt was Gwath, with alignment concealed, who contacted members of the Harpers identifying herself as Gwynna, Witch of the Desertsmouth Mountains, to tip them to the location of Sammaster's lich near Shadow Gap.
The Harpers arranged for the paladins of the Company of 12 to investigate the tip, and these did indeed find Sammaster's lich, which they, destroyed, without finding the phylactery, however. Interestingly enough, the name of the Keeper of the Hoard Gwann disappears from the annals of the Cult, simultaneously with the destruction of Sammaster's Lich
More than 20 years before Sammaster's ascension as a lich, in the Year of the Bright Dreams (1261 DR), the mage Manshoon had formed the Zhentarim and had risen to the leadership of Zhentil Keep. By the Company of 12 had destroyed Sammaster's lich in the Year of the Blacksnake (1285 DR), the Zhentarim clearly were the waxing power in the Dalelands, just as the divided Dragon Cult's power was waning.
It was in the Year of Spilled Blood (1315 DR), 30 years after the destruction of Sammaster's lich, that a beautiful, dark-haired human mage identifying herself as Gwenda appeared at the gates of Zhentil Keep announcing that she was seeking an audience with Lord Manshoon. The unfortunate Zhentilar guards at the gate laughed, and then literally died laughing. When the woman brushed aside other armed resistance by the Zhentilar and a few lesser priests of Bane, she was encountered by the high priest Fzoul Chembryl, and after a discussion with him was indeed taken in to meet with Manshoon.
The contents of those conversations are unknown, according to Elminster, but it was obvious that Gwath had found a new organization with which to ally herself, and that Gwenda was nothing other than a new manifestation of the lich Gwath. After the meeting with Fzoul and Manshoon, Gwenda returned unharmed upstream on the Tesh and traveled as far as Teshwave, where she had settled down.
It is said that Teshwave and other parts of Teshendale were struck with devastating magicks before the Zhentilar overran the Dale in their conquering wave in the Year of the Gulagoar (1316 DR). After their conquest, there was no further sign of Gwenda in the dale, dead or alive, but within days, a beautiful, black-haired woman named Gwenda showed up in Dagger Falls.
With considerable money in her pockets, she purchased the decrepit Broken Dagger Tavern inside the city walls, which soon become the center of discontent over the ruling Morn family's lack of action to help Teshendale when it was overrun by the Zhents. Gwenda the tavernkeep was one of the main supporters of a good customer of her bar named Malyk, who said he could protect Daggerdale better than the Morns.
Before the Year of the Gulagoar (1316 DR) was over, a popular uprising had unseated the Morn family in the Dagger Falls area and put - unwittingly - the Zhentarim puppet Malyk in the Morn family's place, although the Morns continued to be the predominant power in southern Daggerdale. Within a few rides after Malyk's assumption of power, Gwenda sold her tavern to a disabled Zhentarim tracker named Tharwin One-Eye, and nothing more was seen of her in Dagger Falls or elsewhere in Daggerdale for many years to come.
Elminster assumes that Gwath spent the next 40 plus years in her hidden tower in the Desertsmouth Mountains, perhaps receiving magical items or knowledge as payment for her service to the Zhents. There is no further trace of her in the history of the Dale until the Time of Troubles. In the Year of the Shadows (1358 DR), a Harper ranger spied a dark-haired skeletal creature he took for a lich dabbling around the abandoned cottages in the former village of Sunstone southeast of Dagger Falls.
A short while later Elminster and the ghost of the Witch of Shadowdale Syluné, among others, came to the same spot to destroy several malaugrym (shadow masters) and the newly established gate through which they had come. The details on this encounter can be found in Ed Greenwood's novel All Shadows Fled (TSR - 1995). Elminster has little doubt that the skeletal figure seen by the ranger was anyone other than Gwath, in the process of opening the gate.
After the Time of Troubles and this one incident in the former village of Sunstone, nothing more was seen of Gwath in Daggerdale. Elminster had assumed that Gwath's physical essence as a lich was beginning to degenerate and that she most likely was preparing to move on to existence as a demi-lich.
Only recently, he said, was his mind rather abruptly changed on this point, although he still does not know how Gwath hopes to maintain her physical essence. Harper spies have reported that a beautiful, dark-haired human woman who calls herself Gwannet has been quietly visiting with important merchants in Sembia who are believed to be associated with the secret Iron Throne. Furthermore, according to the Harper spies, Gwannet has been presenting genuine looking documentation to the Sembian merchants which identifies her as a special ambassador of Randal Morn's.
She also is telling the merchants that once he has established firm control over all of Daggerdale and has destroyed the Flaming Tower, the last Zhent bastion in the Tesh Valley, that Randal Morn wishes to enter into an alliance with the Iron Throne, giving the organization the exclusive trade rights along the old Zhent trade routes through the Tesh Valley.
Lad, ye can be sure that Gwath isn't making these promises without some good idea of how she can make them come true, El told Randal. I think the next problem ye're going to have to take care of is Gwath herself!
