Nirduk/shade relations, already a bit rocky thanks to Streck's attempts to both work with them and recruit Ganeth (in a generally haughty and condescending manner, to be sure), were further strained when Streck learned of the Shade Lord's dealings with the Marakeel Empire; after all, what self-respecting avatar of Corellan can contenance supporting, even indirectly, a regime that enslaves elves? So they parted ways, and in early AK 591 the shades attacked the Nirduk base and killed most of the higher-level Nirduks (though one of Streck's top subleaders, possibly the shade operative referred to as Heptagram, may have been lost to defection rather than assassination); the younguns were apparently beneath their notice. In the wake of this strike, Streck finally managed to bring Ganeth into the fold...and all he had to do was send Ekali to tell Ganeth that all their leaders were dead and they desperately needed a new one. (Here's a link to the clan roster from that time.)
Once Ganeth clued in to Streck's survival, he decided to make the best of things; he gives some nice reasons for wanting to keep his involvement with the Nirduks a secret in his first letter to Streck, but he mostly just didn't want to be publicly associated with Streck and his mercenary scum squad. (Ganeth mainly agreed to stay on because many of the younger Nirduks seemed merely misguided rather than warped and he hoped that he could provide a counterexample to the prevailing profit-oriented perspective.) Streck's reply proved, in case there was any doubt, that this would not be an easy relationship. Ekali was appointed as Ganeth's liason, with the understanding that she was absolutely not to go adventuring with him; she carried messages between Streck and G's effective mailbox at the Wind Temple and was generally happy not to be taking orders from Kalis.
Things were quiet for about a year. Streck generally failed to impart any useful information about shade operations or his previous role in them, though he did kill one of the True Shades. Unfortunately, Streck then made a really unwelcome proposal that Ganeth managed to dodge with some really pungent prose.
Shortly after this exchange, the party went to the West to help Rogash prepare for a war with Snickersnake, and Streck finally came through with some useful information. This info was amazingly accurate; the party took care of the Ashlord, and (after a few tense moments unrelated to the Nirduk clan) Snickersnake eventually fled to the Banditlands.
Shortly after the party got back from Artifact World, Ganeth received some interesting news from Streck: Kalis had left the clan (leaving rather few elves on the revised roster -- guess that separated the warped from the misguided, eh?), Ganeth wasn't the only one having weird dreams, several clans had returned, and there was going to be a big summit meeting between the various leaders and subleaders. The meeting took place at the Nirduk base on 592/12/19, and the main order of business was starting up anti-spider operations; these fearless leaders decided that the Parnos would handle things around Auramkil, the Balan would set up shop in the West, and the Nirduks and the Shorin would jointly cover operations in the mountains and around Silverton. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, the Shorins were going to eat what was left of the Nirduks for breakfast.
Well, Streck had a plan to deal with this: He and Elbret agreed to a temporary exchange of subleaders while these joint operations were going to be set up; Streck hoped that Elbret would try to have Ganeth killed and he'd kill her in self-defense, while he took care of Sirax when Sirax tried to take care of him. Before any of this was finalized, Elbret asked Ganeth to meet with her at the Shorin encampment; he survived (thanks in part to his trusty nightblade shadow Tremere and Silvana's scry lock) and gave Streck a rough report and recommendations about the Shorin situation. Ganeth got the "circlet of the starry night" out of his encounter with Elbret; he also got a coded letter that she never told him how to decode.
The Balan never made contact with the West, and the joint high-elven anti-Spider action never materialized.
Maintained by Erich Greene; last changed 8-13-96![[to
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