A Civilization IV Fan Fiction

During the Age of Magic, the elves were ruled by two separate courts. The Seelie court (the fairer and more spiritual) ruled during the spring and summer, and the Unseelie court (the more arcane and malevolent) ruled during the autumn and winter. When Sucellus died, the Elven prayers went unanswered. Because the Unseelie court was in power when it happened, they decreed that the Elven deity was gone and that Esus would be adopted in his place. Normally, the Seelie court would wait for spring and then reverse the ruling, but spring never came as the Age of Ice began. The Unseelie court saw this as a symbol of their dominance and began to punish elves that refused to stop worshipping Sucellus. This caused a bloody civil war within the Elven nation during a time when their numbers were already hard-hit. The Age of Ice eventually stopped the war as bands were separated by expanses they couldn’t cross. Once the age of Ice was over they were free to begin the war for Erebus anew.

Once the winter court danced beneath the stars but they abandoned their faith after the death of Sucellus and choose to revere Esus, the god of deception, instead. Our endless revelry turned deadly and the illusions and games of former ages were channeled into war by my father King Aydan Viconia.

He ruled with an iron fist and would not relinquish that rule until the world was in his grasp and bowing to our nation whether it was Winter or the spring and Summer when the Seelie Court held power.

That was a hundred years and a decade ago. Our dark elf legions marched forth and burned the lands. We forged a mighty alliance with the Calabim. A decadent vampiric aristocracy. Their battlefield success comes at a price they are only too happy to pay—the blood of their human thralls, kept in miserable conditions to serve as little more than cattle.

However, we faced an even mightier alliance that formed to end our glorious campaign. The Ljosalfar –so called High elves and our ancient enemies in the Seelie Court. Once the summer court spent its days in song and harmony with nature. They wasted their gifts building shrines and artifacts instead of weapons of war. We killed their god ages ago and the bloody civil war it touched off was only prevented when the age of ice began. They were the first to feel the pain of our spears.

Ancient pacts with the Khazad called them to defend the high elves. Tradition held them in a firm grip, but ambition drew them away from their underground homes. Steadfast in battle, in faith, and in friendship, they built their empire slowly and give not an inch in trade nor warfare. They were led by Dwarven Kings Arturus Throne and Kandros Fir and bore each other an old grudge, but an older debt, and while neither would ask help, each would gladly die for the other.

They were joined in battle by the Bannor Empire. A people forged by unbelievable hardship and trapped in hell during the fall of Braduk and forged into a weapon of unrelenting justice by their benefactor the arch Angel Sabiethiel. It was his forces who captured me under the command of Donal Lugh his champion.

His legions had stormed our capital of Umbrawood. As my father’s eldest daughter I had a place of authority on the council of the unseelie court. I had made a name for myself as a high priestess of the Ashen Veil.

Our Mages spent weeks in meditation, exploring the farthest reaches of the ethereal world. The demands of the body were ignored, and they survived sustained only by magic. Their efforts were rewarded, a sentience was contacted, dark and horrible. It whispered secrets into the mages’ minds, secrets of necromancy, diseases, and sacrificial rites. It promised power in exchange for their blood, and they freely gave it. It has only been through the disciplines I learned that I have survived such incredible hardships.

When Umbrawood fell I fought to the last but I was eventually carried away by elite winged warriors on the battlefield. I waited for my father to storm the towers of the palace in the Holy city of the Bannor.

I do not know if he ever succeeded because I was traded to the Khazador as a captive. It was felt I would be safer in their underground stronghold. They bound me with eternal manacles and stretched mithril chains on my wrists and ankles.

There they left me with me dignity to dwell in solitude as I plotted a vengeance that would destroy their mighty walls and bring forth their undoing. I was tended daily by dwarven women in awe of my statue as a beautiful Druas. Our race has dark skin that shimmers with the kiss of moonlight and our hair is the purest of white. Our eyes smolder with the radiance of the purple light of the arcane knowledge that burns in our veins but as long as I remained chained I could not muster even a simple illusion or cantrip.

I implored them to show mercy, I attempted to use my guile to even seduce the women. They were practical, squat, women with broad shoulders and manly jaws. They wore their fiery red hair tail in great braids decorated with gems and metals found only in the deepest realms of the Earth.

They did nothing but laugh and scorn my advances – imagine, the opportunity to lay with a Princess of the Unseelie court and they shunned the opportunity?

I slaked my vengeance by choking one of the Dwarven maids with my chains until the life ran from her veins and in so doing sealed my fate. I knew the dwarves would never allow me to live after I had taken one of theirs in such a brutal manner. I escaped through my wits and some luck through the passages of the Underdark. My kind can see perfectly in darkness and I made my way through ancient grottos of mushrooms and past monster lairs out of the Dwarven safety.

I had no plan – I would simply press on until I could return to my father’s court where I would take my rightful place at his side and lead.

I could do so for ages without hunger or rest. I would not need my arcane powers for that because the training and discipline I learned had been forged in pain and hunger over many years.

However, I ran afoul of some beastly orc men and one of their simple traps designed to catch spiders and other crawling underground beasts they used to live. I am dexterous beyond that of any human or dwarf but bound as I was by wrist and ankle chain I had fallen into a trap and found it impossible to free myself. There I waited for the trapper to check so that I may gut him and free myself.

However, the Orcs that found me were wary and careful – they disarmed me and took me carefully.

These were orcs of the clam of Embers. I ask you are the numberless orcs of Erebus shunned because of their viciousness and cruelty, or are they cruel and vicious because they are shunned? A riddle which troubles sages and priests, perhaps, but battlefield commanders have little time for such thoughts when the Clan of Embers is upon them.

Quick and harsh like the fallen goddess they served, orcs and goblins have menaced civilizations since the end of the Age of Magic. They had been shaped into a mighty clan under Sheelba. They had once been men but their foulness and covenants with dark forces had corrupted them into something much more malevolent. I had hoped we could refine them like a blade we could use to slice through the other races although I now believe they must be eradicated from the earth like all the other men.

I demanded audience with their Queen Sheelba. She would recognize my nobility immediately and ransom me to my father. It would be an indignity to have my freedom purchased but the Clan of Embers would not wish to anger my father and break our truce with them. They served our ends in this conflict and we had no desire to conquer them until we had taken our more immediate foes.

“Sheelba? You demand nothing, elf!” The orc snorted and thumped me hard into unconsciousness.

When I awoke I was completely naked, and still shackled in the slave markets of an underground city. I asked if this was their capital but I was thrashed by a nasty green orc woman who was washing me into silence.

“It wakes,” she told her rutting master Garrok. He carried a mace with the head of a young girl on the end. The mace was enchanted so that the head could speak – mostly in screams and anguish. He held it up to me “Care to join her?”

“No, I do not,” I said sharply and for that I received several lashes.

I tried to implore him that I was valuable. He told me that the girl on the end of his mace was also valuable at one time “But she failed to behave”. She was an Elohim and once the proud guardian of one of their ancient shrines but when the Clan of Embers overran their position she fell to them. “You are pretty like she was,” he shook the head at me and the woman’s eyes rolled in agony. “You have much attitude like she did though – it must be beaten out or you will join her”

It was then that I learned of my intended fate. He pointed to several slaves that were kept completely naked. All women of the various races. There were dwarves, humans even orcs but no Elven kind. I was seen as something of a prize by them and for that reason I was singled out.

They introduced me to my daily routine.

I was provided a stable like a common mount in the slave stalls. It had hay but no chamber pot. I was forced to relieve myself like a common beast on the floor and I had to sleep next to my waste on the cold stones of the stall.

Every morning an Orc boy would throw water on me and wash me down with a bucket and then I would be led completely naked out with the others. I was made to kneel – something I swore to never do but after many beatings with a rod across my most tender body parts I acquiesced.

A tin funnel was forced down my throat and then a gruel made up of oats and what tasted like spittle and foul bug juices was forced down my throat as a form of nutrition. I tried to tell them I needed no food and could maintain myself by force of will but this was the expectation of all the women in this part of the slave stalls.

The male slaves were kept elsewhere.

We were then either paired or forced to work alone like common pack animals. A bit and bridle would be forced into our mouths. Silvered nipple shields had been permanently attached to my breasts before I awoke and my once perfect nipples were pierced and forcibly extended several inches off of my chest. It was incredibly painful and I hate to admit strangely arousing – a constant sensation of pain.

I vowed to use this form of torture on rival priestesses when I eventually secured my release. I had taken little interest in our own slave pits as I had far grander activities studying the arcane mysteries while I served the Unseelie court but I now had all the time in the world to learn firsthand the humiliations of pulling a wagon for the Clan of Embers.

A Carrot was shoved up our asses – this would serve as a ‘tail’ of sorts and as a treat during our one and only breaks. The nipple shields were attached to leather leads that could be pulled roughly to force us to turn left or right. My clit was pierced with a common metal hoop and a rope was used to help guide me by tugging the piercing from the driver’s seat of the wagon.

They also used horse whips to adjust our speeds and drove us around the training square.

The lives of mortals are but decades before they are aged and useless but one such as I can live for thousands of years without a sign of age on my perfect body. I also bear no scars when I heal and that made the orcs even more determined to see if they could leave permanent marks on my body. I had no intention of remaining in this position for the remainder of my life but I had little choice other than to serve them.

At night, one or more of the nasty orcs would select one of us from the stables and have their way with us. The girls who resisted would sometimes be split in half and eaten so when it was my turn I gave my body freely to them and allowed the orcs to have pleasures that no courtesan or lesser noble of my father’s court would have dreamed to indulge with me in all of my holes.

Indeed, the orcs seemed to be obsessed with the anus of a female and used it not only to punish us with whips, and chains but to stuff larger and larger objects into it like a carrying case. At mid-day during our training they would stop and force the carrot from our ass into our mouths and make us eat the entire thing.

I chewed and pictured incerating them with the power of my magic. If indeed, they could be convinced there was some flaw in my mithril chains that they would replace them with one of their crude iron chains I could bring such a wave of arcane energy to this place that I would destroy both slave and orc warrior alike and not feel a moment’s pity for either wretched creature.

I considered my fellow slaves beneath me. These were lesser beings with crude lives and I assumed they deserved their fates. I took no pleasure in watching their beatings but I offered no sympathy either. Instead, focusing on how to make it appear as my eternal chains required repair.

If I could cast an illusion it would have been a simple matter to fool one of such low intellect as my orc master but while chained I could not. After a month of service as his pack beasts I finally had an opportunity to speak with the Elohim head on the end of the mace without getting his attention.

“Who were you?” I demanded.

“End me, I implore you,” the angelic head was clearly suffering in agony and covered in dung, mud and blood – strengthened by magics the head was still alive and could be bruised and bleeding.

“Tell me who you were and answer my bargain and I shall!” I promised.

“I was, or am Thalia, Captain of Corindale’s Honor Guard, I fell so that my sisters in arms could retreat and held off a mighty army,” she tried to impress me with tales of her valor.

“Thalia, can you cast magic or were you simply a warrior?” I asked.

“All Elohim warrior priestesses can cast divine magic as well as they can wield a sword,” she assured me.

“If you could wield a sword properly you would not be hanging from the end of an orc warrior’s mace,” I assured her but Thalia said nothing.

“Can you cast illusion?” I asked.

“I work with the light and reveal illusion but I do not work in shadows, that is for your kind,” Thalia vowed bitterly.

“How about now?” I dug my fingers into the sockets of her eyes and pressed firmly –without causing blindness.

“You cannot kill me, I cannot die,” She assured me.

“You can be blinded though,” I told her.

“Garrok!” She screamed for her orc master as I plunged my fingers into her eyes and blinded her. He found me and when he realized I had damaged his pet Elohim warrior I thought he would have my head replaced on the mace to take her place.

She had betrayed me and it had cost her an eternity of darkness in the bargain. Garrok was going to rip my head from shoulders and then offer whatever dark bargain to his foul gods to animate my head and keep me as his trophy.

It was only through quick wits that I managed to calm him with the offer. “I am worth thousands of gold with my body intact,” I assured him.

“You are worth less than a hundred gold. You make a poor pack mule. Your training should have ended and you should have gone with the great army against the Ilians to carry our supplies and yet you have been too weak. You’ll make a better price at the end of this mace to scream your pain at my enemies!” he promised.