Val’Arv’Shun

## **Clan History**

The Arv'shunari are settlers who came to hide into the fog of the cavern. They began their history from the bottom and slowly overcome the various others colons around them. The constant earthquakes destroying their buildings they chose to trade the only silk they had in exchange of knowledge and materials.

With time stronger buildings emerges from the fog and the clan began to seek outside its cavern. A sharp control of the few available resources, the securing of essential trades for supplies led the clan to the first steps of ease.

The Arv'shunari knows that they cannot rule by military power or birth rights but they planned to infiltrate all the ramifications of trading into the underworld. In order to reach this objective they put their work into negotiations, relations between clans and the development of fine skills and talents to be reckoned with.

Political plots came alongside the mastery of finance and money, the clan willing to secure allies, resources and monopole of strategic markets. The fact as the cavern was overcharged with mana bring them into the mana technologies and nowadays the Arv'shunari are known as experts in mana cores and mana engines befitting for all aspects of the drow lifestyle, civilian or military. They also worked on geothermal activities as sources of energy and weaponry.

Their influence allowed them to open to build strong walls and a mana school behind their gates. There, Vals from all the clan can learn the Arts, and being instilled the ways of the world (and sometimes forge future bonds with the Vals of Arv'shun). The Arv’shunari are also know as sponsors in various fields of activities.

Now, the clan is demonstrating its opulence and the thirst of trade and richness still haunt them. Because money is the true symbol of ruling into every society and the Arv'shunari knows that their support is needed for the development of all the underworld.

## **Clan Culture**

The Arv'shunari began as clothes makers, farming silk worms on the vast stretches of mosses emerging around the geysers. The name of the clan spreads through the ages alongside the silk market. This production persists today but on a fine industrial level. This is why the Arv'shunari have a custom of trading policy towards the others clans.

Inside the fog released by the numerous geysers inside the cavern the workers are cultivating the mosses, collecting the silk worms needed for the breeding and production chambers. This task is a tiring and dangerous one because of the constant warm, the hazardous gaz and the hot water pouring from the depths of earth. This is why the workers on the fields wears all the time gazmasks and automated golems are allocated to the dangerous surroundings of the geysers holes.

But the silk industry is not the only resource the Arv'shunari have mastered. The fog is very dense and charged with mana. This is why the clan have built an inner network of researchers and engineers in order to create an industry of mana cores and mana engines.

The cavern is perfect in order to learn the mana arts and to develop technologies linked to it. The clan soon managed to be a renowned expert into this field of competence during the ages.

The Arv'shunari are seeking excellence in their works and their craftings are known to be among the finest ever created. If a clan seek some new engines for its purposes the Arv'shunari can provide efficient mana cores adapted to the project. Of course the prices betrays the added value, the quality and the excellence of the crafter. But, despite of this, the clan proposes a large scale of offers, increasing his fields of clients, wealthy or little less ones. They sponsors various fields of project among every level of dwellers of the underworld.

One of the recent addition of the cavern is the school of mana arts inside the clan's fortress. In here is provided refine teachings to all the nobles seeking to master the arts.

As the cavern is very charged with mana, filled with various engines and industries depending on mana cores, the clan strictly forbids the use of demons inside their gates.

On personal level, each Arv'shunari is a person versed into sociability and speech. Even if each of the family's branches is ruled by a matriarch, the man receives the same rights as the women to manage a market or a seat into a crafting place. This is why you can find many of them as traders, engineers or merchants.

But the clan's structure is very pyramidal and few in numbers. By Arv'shunari we could translate this by a clan ruling over the vassals clans established inside the district. Each of them are working for the name of Arv'shun and are piloted from the inside by them, by mating with a member of the founding clan or by being bought at a time of it history. This is why many members of the clan are mixblood.

Among 80% of the population inside the cavern is not a member of the Arv'shun clan but got affiliated to it by the time. They obeys the policies and in return are free to build their own systems to respond to the clan’s orders. This is why several minor vassals are using a lot of slaves to maintain industrial levels or prefers to keep a few skilled paid crafters to provide products for the trading markets.

On the fashion side, the Arv’shunari are always wearing their own products. Silk clothing is the core of the appearance of a clan's member. The weather is always warm inside the cavern and women and men are dressed lightly. It is not rare to see them wearing the minimal amount of clothes, revealing lot of bare skin and accentuate the shape of the body.

To a stranger the weather inside the cavern could be oppressive while wearing normal clothes but a native is perfectly fine in this level of temperatures. This is why nudity and daring fashions are not a taboo inside the ranks of the Arv'shunari.

### **Clan Colors**

The Arv'shunari chose to wear a pattern of colors including a base of faint purple and yellow due to the presence of the specific moss filling their cavern. They add to this pattern some black and sometimes blue parts on their clothes.

## **Clan Warriors**

The Arv'shunari are not a warring clan. They always favoured diplomatics ways through trading or using a more warlike ally (or paid one) for proxy. But the clan is holding warriors, and sometimes mercenaries, to defend his walls, cavern and fortresses against all signs of aggression. The Arv'shunari families are providing at least one son to join the warriors corps and at least one daughter to command the squads.

To increase the numbers, each capable fighter is allowed into the ranks, as long they pledge loyalty to the Arv'shunari and proves themselves into a series of ordeals. The clan encourages the spirit of initiative, an adaptive mind and call into his ranks any of the skills holders the clan could get benefit. To join the ranks of the Arv'shunari is the insurance of a good and regular salary and perhaps the chance to join the upper ranks by union with a high-born or a promotion for duties.

Each soldier is allowed to wear the full-plate armor of the clan, along with a heavy shield, a longsword and a halberd. Some are equipped with crossbows or serves as specialists.

Each warrior is trained into the mana arts and the armors always have several focis on them. Soon as they received it, the warriors are sent as guards at the cavern's gates and the clans' buildings, escorts the trading caravans or patrolls into the large fields of mosses. Due to the chemicals into the air, the everlasting fog into the cavern and the heat and hot water emerging from the geysers, the helmets are pressurised and equipped with mana lens and gas masks. All this equipment is allowing the warriors to fight or standing all day long into the hazards of the cavern.

The clan also uses golems as weapons and is conducting engineering researches on them. Through centuries, the golems factory managed to combine golem warfare with geothermics technologies.

The results are golems equipped with water tanks and boilers operated by mana, firing devastating shots of steam of beams on their enemies. Due to the overcharged mana atmosphere, the Arv’shunari are allowing some foreign engineers to come to their place to find financing and an opportunity to test their news models. In return, the knowledge and some parts of the new finds always power up their sponsors ..

### **Common Mana Affinities**

The overcharged mana atmosphere into the cavern led to a particular trait : most of the Arv'shunari are without specific mana affinity. Instead they learn to master each manifestation of mana art with focis. The clan is well-known to use a profusion of focis for various use (civilians or military). The training is there easier with abundance of raw mana than any other area into the underworld and each member of the clan knows how to use with high proficiency the mana arts.

But some affinity could be found into their ranks such as :

* Empathy
* Air
* Water
* Blood

## **Clan Fortress**

The clan is more acknowledged for his sense of trading and not for his military doctrines. So the clan's fortress is somehow more affiliated as a place of leisure than a mighty and impressive stronghold. In fact, the fortress is more divided in several building spread all among the cavern than a single one.

Each of them has a defined task like the silk factory, the trading market or the golems warehouse. But the main building is the siege of the clan's power and where the Arv'shunari shows their political weight and wealth.

It is also in here where lies one of the most reputable school of mana arts of the underworld. All of the buildings are pressurised and well ventilated against the chemicals hazards and the clan is holding strict security instructions for all the peoples living among the walls.

The commoner's district and vassal houses fills the gap between the clan's building.

Each quarter is delimited with large paved roads, facilitating the settling of shops and the carriage's continuous flows.

At the entrance of the cavern we can find a well-defended gate with stone walls where the heavy fog is pouring from all the open spaces.