In times long past, a wealthy and powerful nobleman lived in a rich
castle in a remote part of the Drakalor Chain. He lived a life of
dissipation and cruelty after inheriting his lands and wealth as a
result of the early death of both his parents. Some said that their
deaths were not the accidents the nobleman claimed them to be, but those
people disappeared and soon no-one spoke of the deaths as murder even in
the quiet of night, for the nobleman had many spies and a taste for
death.

Despite his cruel nature, the nobleman could be charming and was free
with his gold to those who pleased him. He performed acts that seemed
charitable, but his real purpose was to buy goodwill, to clothe his
weakness and cruelty in a facade of generosity so as to seem pleasant to
those who did not get to see the truth of his nature. This enabled him
to satisfy his base desires freely and oppress the people under his
control without attracting the attention of anyone powerful enough to be
a danger to him, for there was no proof of his misdeeds and he seemed a
good ruler if his rule was looked at superficially.

With his wealth, he was able to hire as many prostitutes as the whim
took him. Despite the risk they often felt and the bizarre acts they
were often required to do, they went because the nobleman paid them
richly and treated them with well for as long as they pleased him. Only
that long. Those who ceased to please him were discarded as casually as
a broken clay pot, often with a beating.

He had a particular liking for dark elves, a fact which heightened the
distaste others felt towards him, for dark elves are generally people of
chaos and evil. This seemed to be why the nobleman was attracted to
them. Half a dozen dark elves lived in the nobleman's palace so that
they were available to him whenever he wished, but there was one who was
his favourite and he showed her only his most charming and courtly side.
He promised her many things, including support for any children they
might have together, though they both knew that she was no longer young
and that children were rarely conceived between humans and dark elves as
they are not similar enough for a conception to be normal. He spoke
often to her of a future with their children and swore on his honour
that their eldest child would be his heir. She was not to know that he
was without honour. His talk was empty noise. One day, by the whims of
blind chance, she conceived by him. When she knew, she ran to him full
of certainty that he would share her joy. He struck her in the face and
had his guards throw her out of his castle.

The scale of her misjudgement of this man shocked her so much that she
lay unmoving for a while. He had violated the deepest code of honour: he
had broken oath. That oath was to her, and that alone would give her the
right of vengeance to the point of death by the ways of her people. He
had struck her, another cause for vengeance. He had treated her with
great contempt, a cause for terrible vengeance. Anger flowered within
her and she would have quenched it with his lifeblood, but she knew that
his guards would kill her immediately afterwards even if she was
successful in her deadly vengeance. In other circumstances she might
have done it anyway, but she felt a stronger wish to survive and see her
child that would result from her pregnancy. She stood and strode away,
dignified and calm now that she had made her decision. The anger burned
hotly within her and helped sustain her in the wilderness. She did not
wish to be around others and her contained anger discomforted them, so
she built a crude but adequate home in a cave, living off the land and
occasionally trading the carvings she made for goods she needed from a
village a few miles from her cave. The villagers would sell the carvings
in a town a few days ride away, where there were too many people for the
dark elf to bear. Dark elven work was rare in the area, so it fetched
good prices and the dark elf was able to live off the goods she traded
for her carvings during the latter stages of her pregnancy, when hunting
was impossible and other means of obtaining food difficult. Near the end
of her pregnancy, she realised that she bore twins.

The village healer had offered to assist the dark elf during her
childbirth, despite fearing her anger, but the dark elf had refused
harshly, unwilling to allow anyone into her home or to stay in the
village for a few days. She would do it alone, as she now did all
things. Instinct guided her, but the pain was beyond any she had known,
narrowing the focus of her world until it was only pain and fear of the
unknown and of death. She had known that a woman could die in
childbirth, but only now did that seem real. The movement of the sun
showed that hours had passed since the first pains, but she endured and
her first child was born. Weak from exertion, she carefully ensured that
their mouth and nose was clear, wiping them gently with a damp cloth.
They drew a deep breath and screamed heartily, a surprisingly loud sound
from such a small person. Her joy was interrupted by fresh pain as her
second child followed their sibling into the world. With her children in
her arms and the afterbirth expelled, she faced fresh fear. There was a
worrying amount of blood and some of her own waste. Was this normal? Her
ignorance could be killing her still, but her children needing tending
and she roused herself to see to them. At that point, she saw the
village healer, who had waited out of sight in case they were needed and
had been drawn by the healthy cries of the infants, knowing that the
mother may need them. All was well and the healer was soon able to
return to the village.

A couple of days later, alone but for her newborn sons, the dark elf
laboured to make birth-gifts for them, harsh gifts to suit the harsh
circumstances of their births. Like many dark elves, she had some
ability in weapon-making and some magic, but she also had the rare skill
of binding the essence of an object into another. Her magic was weak but
her anger was strong and fresh, a raw emotion of primal force driven by
her adversity-forged will and focussed by the strength of her mind to a
single purpose. The potency of this focussed anger was such that the
deities themselves felt it and were shaken by its intensity, so
unexpected in a mortal. It took her magic and gave it power far beyond
its usual bounds, like a tree borne aloft by the huge waves which
devastate some shores, the tree given the force to smash through
buildings by the terrifying might of the waves.

Taking two hairs from the head of each of her sons, she interlaced them
in two pairs, a hair from each son in each pair. She crafted two daggers
to the limit of her smithskill, well made but unremarkable, for she was
a smith of only average talent. As she made them, she worked her son's
hairs into the blades, one joined pair in each dagger, and infused each
blade with the essence of synergistic joining symbolised by the
interlaced hairs of twins, powered by her rage-enhanced magic. The magic
gave each blade an unnaturally sharp edge that could not be blunted, but
there are other weapons ensorcelled in that manner. The power of these
daggers, as identical as the brothers for whom they were made, is in
their joining, just as the deeds of the brothers were greater when they
acted in unison. It is said that neither dagger can be destroyed whilst
there are twins alive in the world, and maybe it is so.

She touched the hilts of the daggers to the tiny hands of her sons, each
dagger to each hand of each son, and then placed the daggers out of the
reach of the babies. The gifting was symbolic, a thing of spirit rather
than flesh. That would come later, when her sons were old enough to
handle a dagger. Her anger largely spent in powering her magic during
the making of the daggers, she settled down to raising her sons,
supporting herself as she had before, off the land and by her skill with
woodcarving. It was a difficult and wearisome life, but it satisfied
her. The brothers grew, bringing their mother new worries as they
learned to crawl, walk and run, though the area was peaceful and
contained few dangerous animals. The villagers came to accept their
reclusive dark elf neighbour and stopped warning their children about
her. The brothers started to mix with the villagers more than their
mother had ever done. On their sixth birthdays, she gave their
birth-gifts to them, completing the ceremony she began six years before.
The brothers were awed by the solemnity of it and delighted by the
daggers, which were very impressive to the other children as none of
them had seen a magic dagger before. Time moved on and the dark elf
taught her sons the use of daggers, for she was skilled in many things.
They trained together, as they did almost all things together, and later
they hunted together, daggers moving to strike the prey simultaneously.
Every time the daggers were used in harmony by those for whom they were
made, the essence of both of them in both blades strengthened the
enchantment on the blades, making them more deadly and more attuned to
each other. Many mages in later times, including some of the greatest
wielders of magic in known times, have tried to duplicate this magic, or
even to understand it how it might be done, but none made any progress.
Some think that a deity aided the dark elf in her magic, and it may be
so.

The brothers entered adulthood, always in each other's company and
always working smoothly together at any task. Their mother, now
approaching old age and worn by a difficult life, took ill and knew she
was to die. Here, there are two versions of the tale and who can say
which is the truth? In the first version, with the last strength of her
life she bade her sons take full vengeance on the nobleman who had
wronged her, the vengeance she herself would have taken if not for them.
In the second version, she tells them for the first time the full story
of their father and his dishonour and dies peacefully shortly
afterwards, at which point the brothers renounced their father and swore
the vengeance of death upon him for the insult to their mother, of t

Penned by my hand on the 8th of Sarapin, in the year 360 AF.