Author's Note:
A Drow's Dilemma began as a one-on-one roleplaying project and has been converted into a chapter-by-chapter format for weekly posting with the permission and assistance from my partner. It will contain a considerable amount of sexual themes such as femdom, lesbian, straight, 'reverse' rape, BDSM, group sex, romance, and other themes. The main goal of the story, however, is to tell an epic tale of adventures, gods and goddesses, fae, and nymphomaniacs. This episode and every episode to come will be available for free on Literotica for the foreseeable future. All characters that engage in sexual or suggestive situations are mentally and sexually mature: the human equivalent of 18 for their race.
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Episode 120: Return
Another two months passed in the City-Camp of Temporary New Duskhaven. More and more of the Ellistraean clergy and faithful arrived, greatly swelling the drow population. Near the end of the two months, the number of surface drow fully equaled those of the Duskhaven refugees themselves. Just about every good-aligned dark elf on the surface of the world had made their way to the growing camp.
That had led to increasingly difficult administrative tasks, which in turn meant that the overworked Hadlyn called for Caleldir to visit her for lunch and relaxation quite a lot over that period of time. Caleldir was initially rather resentful of being 'on-call' in that way but quickly came to enjoy his time with the High Priestess.
At the end of those two months, the rest of the Sunites finally arrived in a massive host. Aelsuna was a very popular deity in the Light Elven Empire of Byzromine to the south and east. Though the empire itself did not send any resources formally, a number of their most powerful and devout nobles were willing to leave their lands to their heirs and go crusading in addition to a large number of younger sons of nobles that did not expect inheritances. The entire high Clergy of the powerful church brought with them a host of nearly seventy thousand souls, most of whom were fully capable of fighting. Like the smaller host of faerie and Light Elven pilgrim Sunites before them, the Byzromine Sunites camped near rather than with the Ellistraeans and did not concern themselves with events in the Dark Elf camp, except to send an influx of supplies and constant messengers to the military arm of the camp to coordinate troop actions for the forthcoming invasions.
Even though the host of humans, halflings, gnomes, fae, and, most importantly, Light Elves, kept away from the drow, there was nonetheless a lot of issues between them, mostly from the less reformed ex-Lolthian drow. There was always some stupid thing to resolve.
Another set of notable arrivals was a small band of entertainers, along with a couple of other people from the south who either joined the troupe or were in the area to do business with the Duskhavens. The troupe settled in neutral ground between the various camps where most of the adventurers had cleared the hostile undead and automatons. The idea was that they would make an entertaining place for all the factions to go to, and begin to see that everyone can, in fact, get along. In practice, the Sunites and surface drow enjoyed the grounds. The Ex-Lolthian drow barely attended; they were not sure what to think of this foreign entertainment that did not involve orgies or much in the way of any sort of gratuitous decadence.
Some from their group took it upon themselves to brave the Ex-Lolthian encampment and visit Duskhaven Manor. Carlotta, who came with the troupe as a resident brewer (and fulfilled any other task that an alchemist could), joined the small group. Zarag was also a member of the party; he had been working as a guard while they traveled and entertained through Clachleom. The leader of the troupe, Artur, was the third and final member of the group.
Ashyr greeted them all and filled them in with the grand tale of what happened to her and the rest of her city. By the end of the story, Artur had a few epic recitals filed in the back of his mind for entertaining his customers later.
Zarag was there to get advice on instilling a bit of... order to his unruly band of mercenaries, but Ashyr wasn't a good person to ask. Fortunately Gurzan and his wife - the Eagle-Shifter Harmony Sunfeather who was a devout worshipper of Aelsuna herself - had made their appearance a few days previous. As Ashyr was not a good person to go around instilling order - and Selene and Caleldir, who were, were in turn very busy - it just so happened that there was an unusually powerful and vigorous ancient half-orc around who took deep delight in putting chaos into order.
Zarag was glad to meet with a like-minded half-orc and was fascinated by Gurzan's situation. He, at least, was proof that Lawfulness was something that more than just one orc could achieve. There weren't many men currently with Zarag; he had come with a couple of trusted would-be generals of the more organized society the orc-elf strove for. His giant brother and necromancer sister were still at home. They were tasked with keeping the tribes from doing stupid things to their neighbors. Still, Zarag and his men learned quite a bit from the man that shared their heritage.
In addition to his wife, Gurzan brought along some six daughters - the six unmarried ones. He had another twelve or so, but they were with their husbands and not adventuring. The cheerful girls spent most of their time fluttering around in the form of multicolored, very pretty Brilliant Harpies and seemed to all be incorrigible flirts whenever their father was not around. They seemed especially fond of the Duskhavens, with Aria and Viola particularly taking a liking to Ashyr and following her around.
Ashyr had been very interested to meet Gurzan's daughters and wife. They had been a source of mild curiosity in those early days and proved to be even more interesting than Ashyr had imagined. She welcomed Aria and Viola to go wherever she did, though she humored Selene when she demanded that they could not follow her into bed with Caleldir. That didn't stop Ashyr from playfully seducing them into whatever they were comfortable doing with her. Viola and Aria were not hard to seduce into lesbian interactions, but they both said that the first man they slept with would be their husband - whoever he may be - so were unwilling to do anything with any males. Between those two and Carlotta, the Matron of Duskhaven had more than adequate stress relief from her growing duties as leader of her faction.
Carlotta was just there for a social visit and stayed well past the time when Artur and Zarag took their leave. Caleldir was very pleased to see Carlotta, but he did warn her to be careful not to be alone in the camp since he was afraid she might be targeted. He did not know if whoever continued to steal away women who had had some sort of connection to him would target her or not, but he did worry. Ashyr invited her to stay in Risa's domain for a few nights just to be safe, which the redhead accepted happily.
But it wasn't all happy meetings and the logistics of the supply movement. With all the pregnant women who Caleldir wanted to use the gene forge on, the Duskhavens were looking towards the cursed lands with more serious ideas of beginning the cleansing process. The first step was to go to a place where they had already managed a bit of clean-up: Naliira's tree and the dryad town surrounding her.
A Grand Council was called, with the Clergy of Aelsuna and Ellistraee, the nobles of the surface and Duskhaven drow, and the High Nobles of Byzromine all coming together in an affair that almost went bad a half-dozen times, but ended up a complete success. A stressful success.
Thus it was that nearly sixty-thousand soldiers, mages, and clerics began the march to Grand Oak. Ashyr and Caleldir led a small band moving ahead of them. It was time to pay another visit to Naliira. They fully expected a repeat of the events that occurred the first time they entered the edges of her forest. Their expectations were mostly realized; the forest itself came alive, heavy sleep mist filled the immediate area, and branches and vines attempted to snatch up Caleldir and whisk him away to the Tree.
