Dominant subrace: Dark elves
Location: central Shadow realm (rough region of Juran/Antioch)
Rise: during the First Flowering
Fall: circa -10,000SG
Governance: high council
The Ileleste'var are the ancestors of the modern drow as we now know them. Once only one of several elven kingdoms, they became seduced by dark powers over the centuries (primarily Lolth and Ghaunadaur) and aspired to supreme power over their fellow elven kin. Long had they dabbled in politics and assassinations among the northern moon elf kingdoms, preventing their alliance and secretly instigating the War of the Three Leaves.
Using the invasion of the gold elves of Selu'havessthor as an excuse, they commenced the second Crown War and proceeded to wipe out these three kingdoms, through such acts of brutality that they became referred to as “dhaeraow”, an epithet meaning “traitor” and serving as the basis for the modern term “drow”.
Upon the conclusion of a ritual of more than a century, the priests and magi of the other elven clans cast them down by invoking Corellon's aid, circa -10,000SG in an event known as the Descent. They were changed into the ebon-skinned, white-haired creatures we now know as drow, and cast into the underdark, while their city was pulled down and every stone crushed to rubble and cast to the winds, that they may be completely forgotten from history (unsuccessful as that has been). The ritual had the side-effect of also changing those dark elven citizens of Daione'yndaar, who instead fled southwards into the mountains, away from the rest of their corrupted kindred.