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Kalandax Drachni
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Backstory Life in Dier Drendal is tough for anyone, but life for a Drachni is especially harsh. The Drachni, or untouchables are the lowest of the dark elven castes. Untouchables are usually people that have greatly shamed themselves, but I was unfortunate enough to be born into it. My mother was once the daughter of a noble. She was cast out of the family after having an affair with lowly merchant, my father. Her parents warned her many times what would happen if she kept seeing him but their love was too strong. My parents managed to hide their affair for many years, until my mother become pregnant. Just after she began to show, she was cast out from the family and both her and my father were given the mark of the Drachni. Breeding between castes was considered against Nalthalos’s will and was strictly forbidden. My twin sister, Ilphwae and I were born into a life of constant pain and toil. We lived in a small three-sided tent on the outskirts of the city with no privacy and few possessions. Our daily lives were usually spent working the farms. This meant either tending to the crops, or moving and replanting the farms as the city moved on its ever changing course. One of the more gruesome jobs was making the fertilizer, which was usually done by cutting up the corpses of the dead, boiling the flesh and grinding the bone down to a fine powder, which was then spread onto the crops. A failure to perform a task usually resulted in a beating if you were lucky. Anyone that dared to talk back usually had at least one limb cut off and was then thrown into the boiling fertilizer vats, still alive Staying alive was difficult without a strategy. Many Drachni were killed for no reason, so I found it best to stay out of people’s way. Still, I was a particularly curious kind of person, so in the evenings, I would sneak into the merchants district, to try and bring back a little extra food for my family. We had heard the stories at night, stories of those that has escaped this hell and made it to the surface. Maybe it was just a story contrived by our parents to give us a small glimmer of hope. As children, that was all that gave Ilphwae and I the peace we needed to sleep at night. The worst night of the year is the first day of the remembrance of the betrayed, a festival which reenacts Nalthalos’s near death after his battle with Churn and the betrayal of the dwarves. On this day, any dwarven prisoners are usually tortured before being sacrificed to the dark god. One year however, no dwarves were around to be tortured. This is when the priests came down through the ranks of the drachni. As they approached our hut, my then elderly parents told us to hide and flee this place if we got the chance. My sister and I cowered in a corner as the guards dragged my parents off. They were then given fake beards and dressed as dwarves before being dragged into the city to be paraded before the cheering crowds. Eventually, after a day of torture, the rest of their blood was sacrificed to appease the dark god. That evening, Ilphwae and I decided that we should risk trying to get to the surface, as life here would only result in our deaths. Knowing that most of the city would be enjoying the festivities, it was not difficult for me to sneak into the merchant’s district and steal a few possessions and as much food as I dared carry. I even managed to sneak into the training grounds to grab a few basic weapons. It was not tough to disappear past the excavator golems that continued to carve a path through the rock for the ever-moving city of Dier Drendal. We were not dark elves. We were drachni. Nobody even knew that we existed. Nobody would ever care that we went missing, or so we thought. The journey to the surface was a difficult one. The caverns and tunnels through the mountains were dark, long and winding. I had no idea where I had started and no idea where I was going. Even if I had wanted to get back to Deir Drendal, there was no way I could find my way back. All I knew was to keep going up. After many days, we reached the surface. The first time we saw the sun, we knew we were finally free. We spent the next few months, living off the land in the Kelder Mountains. I quickly grew to love the outdoors and the wide-open spaces. I spent much time learning about what plants I could eat and about the animals that lived in the mountains. My sister was not the same. She wished to live comfortably and after the hardships we had endured, who could blame her. We quickly parted ways, with her moving to the nearest large city. Since neither of us particularly liked the dark elves or the Calastians, Ilphwae moved to Dardale. I continued to live off the land, spending some time tracking for local militia but mostly living alone. I grew to love the freedom of swiftly riding through the countryside on the back of a horse, traveling from town to town. I loved to feel the warmth of the sun as it rises in the morning and to watch the birds soaring in the sky. How I envied the birds, now that is freedom A few times a year, I would venture into Dardale to visit my sister. The people were initially very cautious of us but over the years, they grew to trust my sister and eventually myself. One visit however, I discovered that my sister had gone missing. After asking around town, I was told of a stranger that had come to town, another dark elf. The next day, they were both gone. He had asked for both of us by name and even stranger, he left his name, Vallyn Rilynduis. That name Rilynduis, it was the name of my mother’s mother, the name of the family that disowned us, of a family that I had never met. Why had the family I had never known come for us now, and what had they done with my sister? I spent the next few months trying in vain to find some small amount of information with no avail. I never did give up hope but my search became more and more desperate. I took jobs as a scout with caravans and travelers. This allowed me to explore this land in search of my sister and allowed me to earn a little money along the way. In the end, I just wanted to know if she was dead or alive. If she were dead, I could end my search. So I decided to come to the one place that knows more about the death than any other, Hollowfaust. I knew little about the place but I hoped that they might be able to tell me if she was alive or not. I knew that what I asked might not be even in their powers but I had to try. So I got passage on a caravan heading to the city of the dead. A few days or so from my destination, I was riding ahead of the caravan, looking for signs of battle when I heard a great commotion from behind me. As I rode my steed back and found the caravan under attack. Damn it, I had warned them that they need someone to watch from behind them but they were just too cheap to hire another scout. I rode in to try and help but I quickly realized that I was greatly outnumbered. I managed to take one of them down with my lance but I quickly had two more on me and another six bearing down. I looked back at the caravan to see most of the other guards already dead. At that point I decided that there was little point in fighting on. As I turned my steed, one of their axes bit into my left arm but I managed to turn my mount and ride for Hollowfaust. Goals and Ambitions To find out what happened to my sister and to find out why the former family of my mother would be looking for me. Likes Riding on horse back. Dislikes Enclosed spaces. |
