T'lindhet

T'lindhet was a drow city 3 mi (4.83 km) beneath the Gnollwatch Mountains which sat on top of a huge plateau in a large cavern. An underground river split as it approached the plateau, and rejoined itself on the other side.

Outside of the city, 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.

Government
In 1373 DR, fourteen drow noble Houses vied for control of the city and the lands of Dambrath.

By 1479 DR, sixteen noble houses of T'lindhet competed with each other for control of the city.

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'lindet doomed his realm. After driving the humans out of their city, the enraged and affronted drow put aside their infighting, and united their forces for the goal of destroying the kingdom of Dambrath. In the Battle of the Shadowed Vale in 808 DR, the drow slew almost 5000 Dambrathan soldiers, but further conflict in 817 DR had the drow defeated in turn. Seeking shelter in the Forest of Amtar, the drow army was 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 was finally won in 831 DR when the half-drow priestess of Loviatar Cathtyr Shintar led her fellow Loviatans to betray the King, killing him and giving the drow of T'lindhet final victory. Unable and unwilling to claim the surface realm for themselves, the drow instead granted Cathtyr and her followers rulership in their stead. Interbreeding with the drow resulted in a half-drow ruling class, the Crinti, who dominated the political, military, and religious institutions of Dambrath.

The drow of T'lindhet maintained diplomatic and trade relations with Dambrath, but the two realms were never close. The Crinti were treated as second-class citizens if they ever visited their distant families in the Underdark, and closer relations were never achieved. 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 surface elves. So popular 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 Cathtyr.

Post-Spellplague
The rebellion of the Arkaiun during the Spellplague caused the complete collapse of the Crinti ruling class and the servants of Loviatar. Rather than accept the surviving Crinti 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 fate. 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.

Unwilling to forget those that had wronged them, the drow maintained secret tunnels to the surface, by which they continued to raid the humans of Dambrath and the elves of Amtar, as well as the road between Earth's End and the East Rift.