Promenade-in-Exile

The Promenade-in-Exile

Temple of Eilistraee

Waterdeep

Founded 1490 DR

Personages

• Population: 28 total 11 clergy (5 clerics, 6 priests; 8 ordained priests, 4 acolytes) 8 lay worshippers 9 Protectors of the Song (4 Darksong Knights, 5 temple guards) • High Priest: Lady of the Promenade Leliana Vrinn • Right Hand of the Lady: Prilaroth Dulilys • Allies: Lady Remallia Haventree (Harper and noble woman), the Dark Brother's Own (small local cult of Vhaeraun)

Services

Curse removal, healing, ritual, social

Faction Details

Common Descriptors: Musical, guarded, celebratory Primary Classes: Cleric (Eilistraee), paladin, fighter, bard Alignments: CG, NG, CN, N

Faction Ranks

• Acolyte: Rank 1+. You are learning the ways of the Sword Dance, and the rites and reverences of the Dark Maiden. • Sword Dancer: Rank 3+. You are now a fully ordained priest of Eilistraee, anointed to perform her rites and serve the congregation who gather in her name. • Lady of the Promenade: Rank 10. You are the high priestess of this temple, and responsible for its well-being, its growth, and the cultivation of its clergy and laity.

With the Sundering and the return of the Dark Maiden, the Sword Dancers of Ardeep received an unmistakable message: the time had come to return and reclaim the Promenade. The years since its fall had not been kind, however, and the Moonspring network of portals was long-since devastated and disrupted. Moreover, the night they arrived in Waterdeep, as they came upon the city gates, they saw an unmistakable blessing: the Dark Maiden herself, dancing along the cliffs, above the level of the walls so that many Waterdhavians saw her, and dancing above a portion of the Field Ward.

Since then, the new temple without a temple, the Promenade-in-Exile, has taken upon itself a two-fold goal: to reclaim the Promenade, yes, but also to found a temple and dancing place above ground, within the city itself. Rather than a hidden dell tucked away in the forest, they will raise a hill within the city's walls, to show that the time for drow to take their place in the Lands of Light (even if that light is only the moonlight for some).

In pursuit of this goal, they have set up what community they can, finding homes and work for the drow of their temple within the city, and endeavoring to achieve their goals to the best of their ability. Yes, they have found allies in this – the noble elf lady Remallia Haventree, a known Harper, chief among them – but the opposition is terrible and vicious as well. Homes vandalized, and those who travel alone often attacked. But the Lady Leliana Vrinn knows that there is hard work ahead of them all, and it is work she is anxious to see underway.

Today, they meet in the Shrines of Nature during the nights of the full moon to celebrate, a favor arranged for them by Lady Remallia Haventree. They gather in one anothers' homes as they are able, or in private rented rooms of an inn or festhall sometimes. It isn't ideal, but it serves for the moment.

Rites & Celebrations

• The Evensong: Daily Rite. xxx
• The Sword Dance: Any Night. xxx
• Circle of Song: Any non-new Moon. xxx
• Moonwright's Blessing: Full Moon. A simple blessing performed upon the materials that the faithful intend to use to create something. These materials must be holy to Eilistraee's faith: silver, moonstone, moonbar, and mithral, in specific. The materials become lucky and easy to work, and hold magic more readily. This is performed with a ceremony cast at the 2nd level during the full moon. The items in question are considered to be worth 25% more than their normal value for the purpose of crafting items, both magic and mundane, although their value cannot contribute to more than half of what is needed to create the item.
• The High Hunt: Once per Season. xxx
• The Run: Once per Year. xxx
• The Love-Binding: Marriage Rite. xxx
• The Last Dance: Funerary Rite. xxx
• The Grand Chorus: As Needed. xxx

Temple Titles & Perks

• Moonfire: Rank 1+. Eilistraee's faithful have access to the cantrip moonfire. Those who are able to cast cantrips of any sort may add the spell to the spell list for their class.
• Protectors of the Song: Rank 3+. Those who have proven themselves capable fighters and devotees of the Dark Maiden may be chosen as a Protector of the Song. One of the temple's eight singing swords may be given into their charge, to wield in Eilistraee's name and at the behest of the temple. This charge isn't merely a security position: the wielders of the singing swords are the vanguard of Eilistraee's devoted, giving everything they have to the protection of the faithful and remaining upstanding representatives of the goddess's ideals to the rest of the faithful. For those who are granted one of the intelligent singing swords, they are expected to be good and stalwart companions to those intelligences as well.
• Wardings: Rank 5+. The temple's upper echelons are given magical protections by Dalnyon Ki'ntriel. These wardings are placed in the home of the individual, mostly in the form of arcane locks and glyphs of warding where appropriate and necessary.

Clergy Titles

• Lady of the Dance: Rank 5+ The Lady of the Dance serves the temple as a joy-bringer and instigator of revelry. Her task is dire and under-appreciated: for the drow who seek the Lands of Light, much of life is hard and grim. It is her responsibility to see that they remember the joy in living, and to celebrate their victories and assuage the pain of their defeats through song, dance, and revelry. After a season of service as Lady of the Dance, this priestess gains the Performer Skill Feat for free.
• Councilor of the Song: Rank 7+. The Councilors work under and advise the Lady of the Promenade, acting as senior priests and general leadership. The tasks needed to make the temple function are their responsibility. All Councilors are supported by the temple at a Modest Lifestyle.
• Guardian of the Moonspring: Rank 7+. Only senior clergy are ever appointed this title, and those clergy must recuse themselves from the Council of Song. The Guardian of the Moonspring oversees the health and integrity of the Moonstone in the Promenade, and of the entire portal network that it is the anchor for. Unfortunately, without access to either Moonstone or network, this title remains fallow and unassigned.
• Lady of the Promenade: Rank 10. The Lady of the Promenade is the leader and high priestess of the temple, even in exile. Through there are a series of mysterious blessings and abilities given to the Lady, they do not currently manifest. The elder clergy believe this will change once they have established a new temple, although it may take something as drastic as a total reclamation of the Promenade itself. Aside from this, the Lady of the Promenade is given a small bevy of magical items as regalia, and are supported by the temple at Comfortable Lifestyle.

Defender Titles

• Hand of the Protectors: Rank 5+. xxx
• Right Hand of the Lady: Rank 7+. xxx

Temple Personages

Clergy

	Leliana Vrinn Lady of the Promenade • Rank 10 Among those drow transformed into their original wood elven lineage, Leliana's devotion to Eilistraee has not wavered. She has lived to see miracles: the return of her goddess, the renewal of her magic, and the voice of her singing sword in her mind once more. She, too, is renewed and fiery, with a devotion to see the Dark Dancer's goals accomplished and more.
	Darkflame Sanolu Fezeera Councilor of Song • Rank 8 One of the two elder priestesses who aid the Lady, Sanolu is a somber, stoic woman, an incredible judge of character who is ever-watchful: the legacy of a life in Menzoberranzan as an acolyte to Lloth. When the last of that life's horrors proved to be too much, she fled into the Underdark, seeking a likely death...but found instead a light and a wordless song and a priestess of Eilistraee dancing her devotion and joy. The moment was utterly transformative for Sanolu, and she has been with the Promenade ever since. Sanolu mourns the deaths of Quilué and many others, and some of the Promenade's faithful whisper that she seems too much like the matron mothers they tried to leave behind, but no one can doubt Sanolu's devotion to both Eilistraee and the Promenade. She wields Argentsong, Quilué's own singing sword. They say that the intelligent blade and Sanolu find remedy for missing Quilué with one another.
	Ilutryl Slyrdril Lady of the Dance • Rank 5 Merry and joyful, Ilutryl is the Lady of the Dance for the Promenade, ensuring that there is music available at all times, and calling for dance when it is most needed, able to overrule even the Lady in that singular request. Though new in her role, Ilutryl has shown a subtle intuition, able to reckon when everything needs to come to a halt to allow the faithful to recapture Eilistraee's promise of joy, as embodied in the dance. The young bard spends a great deal of time ministering to the faithful, and helping the newly-arrived drow get settled into Waterdeep.

Defenders

Prilaroth Dulilys Right Hand of the Lady • Rank 8 A senior Darksong Knight and a paladin of the Oath of Ancients, Prilaroth is still becoming accustomed to life in Waterdeep. She is far more comfortable in the vast green expanses of the forests, and though she would never question the wisdom to set up the in this filthy, overcrowded, stinking city, she admits that she has a hard time seeing how such could possibly be of benefit to Eilistraee. Nonetheless, hers is not to refuse, but to serve, and so she does, quite capably.

Dalnyon Ki'ntriel Hand of the Protectors • Rank 6 Prilaroth's second-in-command, Dalnyon is an abjuration specialist wizard. Having escaped from a far Southern drow city and emerged among the Eilistraean worshippers in the Wealdath of Tethyr, he eventually left them in search of further honing of his magical art. In the thirty years since, he has sharped that art to an impressive degree, and was among the Ardeep Dancers when they elected to pass into Waterdeep. Dalnyon works to keep the group protected magically, working wards on their gatherings, and protecting the homes of the Lady and senior priestesses.

Laity

	Mhaeril Obsidienne Soft Trader at the Dark Delights festhall Mhaeril is not the first of Eilistraee's faithful to be offered work in the soft trade of Waterdeep, but she is the first of the Promenade-in-Exile to accept the offer. Though many of her fellows are uncomfortable around the notion of her work (mostly because they have not yet shed drow cultural connotations of slavery from sex work), she exults in it, finding a strange freedom in the ability to use her sensual nature not to dominate but to simply nurture, and to gain coin for it. She is one of the largest contributors of said coin to the Promenade, and for all the discomfort some may feel, all in the Promenade honor her for her generosity.
	Hournor Istinar Farmhand One of the strangest of the Promenade's laity Hournor wants nothing more than to become a farmer. He hires himself out as a farm-hand in the Undercliff farms, though he has a difficult time finding work sometimes. Still, his eyes are almost entirely accustomed to the bright sun of midday, though he wears a shady hat to help with those. He is also happy to do work by night for those farmers who are hesitant to be seen employing him, working in field or orchard through the evening, and done by the time the sun rises, just in time to collect his coin at the back door. Hournor is sweet-tempered, though somewhat meek (a result of the kind of abuse someone with his personality usually suffers in drow society).
	Narr Xurtheenil Gambler Charming and quick with his hands, Narr reveres both the Dark Maiden and the Masked Lord. With stunning good looks and a very urbane, Waterdhavian appearance, Narr's appearance at various gambling halls in the city has won him a welcome in all of them. He's something of a celebrity, an exotic curiosity with a smooth patter and winning way whether he's winning or losing.
	Inshee Elae Huntress Though she always returns to Waterdeep, Inshee spends most of her time in the wilds around the city, exploring the depths of the forests and the mountain heights. Inshee and her giant hound Slobber frequently return from such expeditions with magic or treasure for the Promenade. She doesn't have a home proper in Waterdeep, though members of the Promenade frequently take turns offering her a spot by their hearth. She is reserved and a very capable fighter. She also has several friends among the Watch.