Felwithe and the Koada’Dal

Founded in exile

Felwithe was founded after the destruction of the Elddar forest. It is named for the hero Alissa Felwithe, who led the Koada’Dal to Faydwer. Its builders had dwarven help, and the city shows it: heavy wooden beams, white-washed walls and inlaid gems. It stands at the far end of Greater Faydark from the wood elf city of Kelethin.

Inside the walls

It is enclosed by natural and built barriers. Its only entrance is cut into a hillside and tunnels upward to an open area high on the cliffs. A great wall on the east keeps “less agile folk” from falling off the cliff edge, and stone walkways on both sides of it let people look out at the ocean safely. There is a grand white bridge, and a waterway overlooking the temple of Tunare, and the city boasts of guildhalls “of unrivaled beauty” and “the finest wines in all of Norrath.”

The Clerics of Tunare

Felwithe is a city of faith. Its guilds together form the Clerics of Tunare, and the Mother of All is the patron of its people, a bond that goes back to the Elddar, whose loss the city still remembers.

Festivals and funerals

Its year is marked by three holy days. At Spring Renewal friends share half-eaten loaves and pour half-full bottles together into new cups, and feuding houses are encouraged to join the Renewal Ceremony: each head of household brings a portion of the family’s wealth, and they bury it together in the Tunarian temple garden as a “seed of hope.” After long feuds a wedding between the two houses often follows. Tunare’s Harvest falls at the autumn equinox.

At the winter solstice comes the Dark Night of Mourning, first held to mourn the first king and queen of Takish-Hiz and their century of suffering under Innoruuk. Candles are placed in the windows, and on that night, it is said, Tunare lets the spirits of the dead come home. The dead themselves are cremated, and their ashes scattered in the Garden of Sanctuary.

A court gone soft

Over time the royal court drifted toward comfort and ease, and dark elf spies used that to their advantage. It was the court of King Tearis Thex, father of Firiona Vie.

Felwithe besieged

Its later history was darker. A 2005 report to High Priest Yeolarn Bronzeleaf said the port of Firiona Vie had fallen to Lanys T’Vyl and that Felwithe itself had come under attack by Teir’Dal terror troops. In EverQuest II, A Recent History of the Tunarians recalls the fall of Felwithe and the murder of King Thex. Survivors fled into the mountains, then retook the city with Tunare’s divine power, but the agents of Innoruuk had burned every living thing in the canyon, and satyrs of the Myntr tribe came down from the Plane of Growth to tend the dying great tree.

In the game

Felwithe was the high elf starting city in 1999, reached from Greater Faydark. Players remember it as a small, bright city of temples and guildhalls, only a short run from Kelethin’s platforms and from Crushbone’s orcs.