T'lindhet

T'lindhet was a small drow city-state in Great Bhaerynden. A lesser drow realm, it became best-known for its conquest of Dambrath, which it came to rule for five centuries.

Structure
The city was located 3 mi (4.83 km) beneath the Gnollwatch Mountains, sitting atop a plateau in a cavern. An underground river split as it approached the plateau, and rejoined itself on the other side, granting the city great defensibility.

Below the plateau on the cavern floor was a market village where merchants from the surface and the Underdark gathered to trade, making a wide variety of goods from all over Faerûn available at reasonable prices. For a time, this market was the terminus of a trade route that extended to the surface and emerged ten miles north of Herath.

Government
T'lindhet was controlled by Lolth-worshiping drow noble Houses ruled by Matron mothers, who at times struggled and warred with each other when not facing outside threats.

In 1373 DR, fourteen drow noble houses controlled the city, while holding vast estates in the lands of Dambrath.

By 1479 DR, sixteen noble houses competed with each other for control of the city, having lost control of their surface estates.

The Conquest of Dambrath
In 802 DR, the Arkaiun King Reinhar IX ordered exploratory silver mining in the Gnollwatch Mountains, but the miners accidentally broke into the Underdark, bringing the humans of Dambrath in contact with the city of T'lindhet. The drow responded to the incursion by slaughtering the miners and then began opportunistically raiding nearby surface settlements.

In 803 DR the King sent an army to drive back the drow and invade the Underdark, but the expedition's success in reaching T'lindhet doomed his realm. After driving the humans out of their city, the enraged and affronted drow noble Houses put aside their infighting and united for the goal of destroying the kingdom of Dambrath.

With the Battle of the Shadowed Vale in 808 DR the drow slew almost 5,000 Dambrathan soldiers, but further battle in 817 DR had the drow defeated in turn. Seeking shelter from the human cavalry in the Forest of Amtar, more than 1,500 drow were instead slaughtered by the Trunadar wild elves.

Following the defeat of 817 DR, the forces of T'lindhet continued their war on the surface, managing to capture Herath in 819 DR, Prastuil in 822 DR, and Luenath and Maarlith in 825 DR. Besieging Shantil and trapping the King in Malduir in 830 DR, the war ended in 831 DR when the half-elf priestess of Loviatar Cathyr Shintar led her fellow half-elven Loviatans to betray the King, killing him and giving the drow of T'lindhet final victory.

After 29 years of spiteful conflict that cost thousands of drow lives, T'lindhet lacked the will or means to administer the surface realm. Instead, they granted rulership of Dambrath to Cathyr and her followers, the First, forming a new aristocracy that answered to T'lindhet. Alongside this, the drow noble Houses appropriated huge tracts of land for their estates and took human slaves as prized consorts, keeping Dambrath as a loosely-held vassal state to T'lindhet.

Post-Conquest
Uninterested in personally ruling their surface holdings, the nobility of T'lindhet eventually delegated the role to the children they had with their human slaves. Representing their Houses, these half-drow intermingled with the bloodlines of the First and with the Arkaiun, ultimately creating the Crinti. Despite demonstrating loyalty and competence for their Houses, the Crinti were treated as second-class citizens if they ever visited the Underdark, treated as inferior by their own families.

The Dambrathan town of Elveswatch on the edge of the Amtar Forest became one of the few places that the drow deigned to regularly visit, drawn by the constant low-level conflict with the Trunadar wild elves. Gaining great popularity for the opportunity to hunt surface elves, Elveswatch was one of two settlements in Dambrath to have its own temple of Lolth, the other being in Cathyr.

By the 14 century, T'lindhet's access to the wealth of Dambrath and the trade networks of the surface had rendered the ruling Houses of the city relatively complacent. With all of their material needs met thanks to savvy mercantilism and diplomacy, the Houses simply did not care to compete with each other as they once had and risk destroying all they had gained. With their Crinti vassals handling matters, the Houses were content to ignore the surface and focus on the Underdark instead. This attitude caused their authority in Dambrath to gradually erode, and the ambitious Church of Loviatar threatened to escalate the situation into a full rejection of T'lindhet.

Post-Spellplague
The rebellion of the Arkaiun during the Spellplague caused the complete collapse of the Crinti ruling class. Rather than accept their Crinti descendants as refugees, the drow of T'lindhet instead slew those that approached the entrance and sealed the route into the Underdark, leaving their distant relatives to their own fates. Contrasting with this cruel treatment, drow refugees from the city of Llurth Dreier managed to find new homes in T'lindhet when their city was destroyed by the collapse of its cavern.

With the loss of their estates and trade routes in Dambrath, the Houses of T'lindhet abandoned their decadent placidity and took to aggressively conspiring against each other for advantage. Unwilling to forget those that had wronged them in the past, they continued to maintain secret passages to the surface by which they would raid the humans of Dambrath and the elves of Amtar, as well as travelers on the road between Earth's End and the East Rift.