Arsenal Za'rath
Drow Elf
Lawful Good
Paladin-Mage of Mystra
Arsenal Za'rath was born to Mezoberranzan commoners and immediately sold into slavery, although he does not even remember it. Rather, this is what he was told by members of the house D'Lakten, which he grew up in the service of, as a boy slave charged with endless menial chores and given little sustenance or comfort in return. Always he bore his dismal lot with a stoic humility though, not the truly broken, zombielike acceptance of many a male slave, but rather with a quiet transcendence; an externally impassive front while his thoughts, whatever they might have been, were not quelched within.
As he grew to a youth, his athletic body would earn the eye of the matron Grey-Faal D'Lakten and he would be made both an apprentice house weaponsmaster and her pleasure slave. He bore it all as stoically as ever, even optimistically focusing on honing his skills rather than bemoaning his lack of choice of station, and over time even began to pick up a rudimentary understanding of magic from a house wizard.
This continued well enough and after several more years he was also conscripted to the house D'Lakten's slave/mercenary active fighting force, and he managed to survive several battles between his house and others, even once being forced in Grey-Faal's name to duel to the death a rival house's weaponsmaster; and eventually he was transferred to a surface-raiding unit.
Their target was a certain moon elf settlement in the High Forest. Newly-founded, small, and remote, it was of no obvious value, and thus it was rumored this place must have had some secret importance; strategic, cultural, or magical; though Arsenal heard only a dozen conflicting and equally haphazard rumors. And when the raid began, Arsenal would see the surface world for the first time.
To most drow, it was a horrible place, empty and scorching, the night almost as bright and exposed as the day, where a drow felt he would fall, not down, but up, into that endless abyss called the sky, in which the cruel burning face glared down upon all. To Aresenal's pensive and latently intellectual mind, it was a curiosity; dangerous for a drow to be sure, but arguably less than the more familiar Underdark; and the same courage that allowed him to fight or please with death at his heels allowed him to consider this new place in a calm, rational way. And he found that he grew to like it, though he could not find the words for why.
The raid, which should have been a simple pillage-burn-flee affair, turned into a complicated fiasco. Barbaric wild elves that inhabited the forest were also attacking the settlement, and this should have made their job easier, but these primitives fought the drow on sight as well, though often they themselves went unseen, expert at hiding and ambushing in their home terrority. Worse and stranger still, a platoon of human and half-elven paladins arrived at the settlement to bolster their moon elven allies; and despite the convential wisdom of men as bumbling and forest-unwise, these proved accomplished hunters and fighters, able to see the drow raiders' very evil itself no matter where they hid. During a full onslaught between the factions, Arsenal and the other dark elves were captured, along with the paladins, by an overpowering ambush of the wild elves. Most were slain; the rest taken into captivity where they were mistreated and interrogated.
While his drow comrades howled at the paladins with every anti-human, anti-knight, and anti-good epithet they knew, and the men yelled back with a slew of self-righteous and drow-hating slogans, each blaming and cursing the other rather than their common captors, Arsenal sat quietly in his bonds, staring into the next wooden cage at a golden-eyed man who sat just as calmly.
At one point the vicious wild elves decided to mix the men and drow in the cages for some real fun; and while many spat in each others' faces or even wriggled in their bonds enough to scratch and bite, Arsenal sat quietly, tied next to the man with the golden eyes. Soon, they would take to speaking, in common, when they could get away with it, and would learn much about one another.
This paladin was Sir Eromus Prime, an aasimar, a man with celestial blood, born of a man and a deva. He shared with Arsenal, in a manner conversational and not preachy, philosophies of his god Lathander, philosophies of humility and hope; the things that Arsenal had always used to see himself through. Eromus admitted how drow were, yes, oft persecuted on the surface, no matter their individual nature, but that men and surface elves were not all bad, just as he knew all drow were not.
Eromus spoke, in fact, of several specific anecdotes of surface-dwelling drow he had crossed paths with or heard of, and told one story of a drow woman that his father Maximus had known some dozen years before, one Viconia deVir, recent expatriate of the Underdark. He had saved her from death at the stake in Waterdeep, allowing her then to suffer his company. He tried gently to convert her from evil, with hopeful early results, before she then fled, purportedly south towards Baldur's Gate.
Questions began to stir within Arsenal's head, but their present captivity required more immediate attention. With their current mistreatment and malnourishment, even though Arsenal and Eromus both bore it with great endurance, they could not physically last much longer. Eromus told Arsenal that he had managed to befriend in secret one of the wild elves, a young ranger, and she was willing to secretly betray her own tribe and help them escape. The aasimar and the drow together fomented a plan of escape that would involve a holy invocation, a cantrip, and the help of the uncaptive and locally knowledgable elf maiden. Arsenal and Eromus thus managed to get free one moonless night, and freed the all-to-few others that had lived, and the remaining squads of men and drow ran off through the woods and parted without ever finishing their fight.
Arsenal and his comrades were soon rescued by a backup party and taken back down to the Underdark, starved, beaten, and sunburnt. As soon as Arsenal was healed just enough to look his best again, he was sold by matron Grey-Faal, perhaps because she had grown bored of him, was disgusted by his raiding party's failure, or needed the money, to Verania deVir, formerly of the now-fallen House deVir. Verania now ran with one of her sisters a tavern-playhouse in Mezoberranzan, and there Arsenal came to live and work as a bodyguard, performer, and pleasure slave. He bore her treatment, even harsher and demanding than Grey-Faal's, with his usual stoicism and humility, becoming the outlet for the fallen noblewoman's rage, but now more complex thoughts ran through his mind, and he thought often of the surface world above, and of the golden-eyed man he had made and escaped with, and of the stories and philosophies he had heard. The golden-eyed man had given him the word for that inexplicable thing about the surface: Freedom.
Luckily for him, Verania deVir the innkeeper hadn't nearly the security that Grey-Faal D'Lakten the maton had had, relying primarly, is is often the case in drow society, on simply ingrained fear, the lack of anywhere else to go, and the severe penalties for slaves being caught free. Fairly adept in the art of sneaking and hiding, he managed not only to escape from her clutches but to make his way back to the tunnel he had taken to the surface before, and escape form the Underdark. He wandered, avoiding the sun, bandits, and zealous drow-hunters, back to the moon elf settlement of all places, and to his relief found Eromus Prime still stationed there, nearly the last paladin remaining. With the raids from drow and wild elves subsided, Eromus was ready to leave his post and travel back to Neverwinter, his closest thing to a home, and Arsenal accompanied him on the journey.
The two continued to share thoughts and beliefs along the road, and Arsenal gradually decided that surfacers in general, humans, and knights were not all so bad as what his rearing had taught him to believe; and he came to accept Eromus's ideals of liberty, justice, and compassion for all. As he slept one full-mooned night, he was visited in his dream by the Goddess of Magic herself, who bade him, if he really believed in this new way of life, as a warrior-wizard to swear and recieve knighthood in her name. He did so, and in the morning awoke a paladin of Mystra.
In the morning, Eromus beamed and laughed heartily at this news, and when they reached Neverwinter, led him on several minor good deeds within the city, which Arsenal did with fervor, even though he recieved scorn as often as praise. Soon, when news of the gobloinoid raids in the North and the call for adventurers reached Neverwinter, Eromus and Arsenal would decide that the time to truly put their ideals to the test had come.
Drow Elf
Lawful Good
Paladin-Mage of Mystra
Arsenal Za'rath was born to Mezoberranzan commoners and immediately sold into slavery, although he does not even remember it. Rather, this is what he was told by members of the house D'Lakten, which he grew up in the service of, as a boy slave charged with endless menial chores and given little sustenance or comfort in return. Always he bore his dismal lot with a stoic humility though, not the truly broken, zombielike acceptance of many a male slave, but rather with a quiet transcendence; an externally impassive front while his thoughts, whatever they might have been, were not quelched within.
As he grew to a youth, his athletic body would earn the eye of the matron Grey-Faal D'Lakten and he would be made both an apprentice house weaponsmaster and her pleasure slave. He bore it all as stoically as ever, even optimistically focusing on honing his skills rather than bemoaning his lack of choice of station, and over time even began to pick up a rudimentary understanding of magic from a house wizard.
This continued well enough and after several more years he was also conscripted to the house D'Lakten's slave/mercenary active fighting force, and he managed to survive several battles between his house and others, even once being forced in Grey-Faal's name to duel to the death a rival house's weaponsmaster; and eventually he was transferred to a surface-raiding unit.
Their target was a certain moon elf settlement in the High Forest. Newly-founded, small, and remote, it was of no obvious value, and thus it was rumored this place must have had some secret importance; strategic, cultural, or magical; though Arsenal heard only a dozen conflicting and equally haphazard rumors. And when the raid began, Arsenal would see the surface world for the first time.
To most drow, it was a horrible place, empty and scorching, the night almost as bright and exposed as the day, where a drow felt he would fall, not down, but up, into that endless abyss called the sky, in which the cruel burning face glared down upon all. To Aresenal's pensive and latently intellectual mind, it was a curiosity; dangerous for a drow to be sure, but arguably less than the more familiar Underdark; and the same courage that allowed him to fight or please with death at his heels allowed him to consider this new place in a calm, rational way. And he found that he grew to like it, though he could not find the words for why.
The raid, which should have been a simple pillage-burn-flee affair, turned into a complicated fiasco. Barbaric wild elves that inhabited the forest were also attacking the settlement, and this should have made their job easier, but these primitives fought the drow on sight as well, though often they themselves went unseen, expert at hiding and ambushing in their home terrority. Worse and stranger still, a platoon of human and half-elven paladins arrived at the settlement to bolster their moon elven allies; and despite the convential wisdom of men as bumbling and forest-unwise, these proved accomplished hunters and fighters, able to see the drow raiders' very evil itself no matter where they hid. During a full onslaught between the factions, Arsenal and the other dark elves were captured, along with the paladins, by an overpowering ambush of the wild elves. Most were slain; the rest taken into captivity where they were mistreated and interrogated.
While his drow comrades howled at the paladins with every anti-human, anti-knight, and anti-good epithet they knew, and the men yelled back with a slew of self-righteous and drow-hating slogans, each blaming and cursing the other rather than their common captors, Arsenal sat quietly in his bonds, staring into the next wooden cage at a golden-eyed man who sat just as calmly.
At one point the vicious wild elves decided to mix the men and drow in the cages for some real fun; and while many spat in each others' faces or even wriggled in their bonds enough to scratch and bite, Arsenal sat quietly, tied next to the man with the golden eyes. Soon, they would take to speaking, in common, when they could get away with it, and would learn much about one another.
This paladin was Sir Eromus Prime, an aasimar, a man with celestial blood, born of a man and a deva. He shared with Arsenal, in a manner conversational and not preachy, philosophies of his god Lathander, philosophies of humility and hope; the things that Arsenal had always used to see himself through. Eromus admitted how drow were, yes, oft persecuted on the surface, no matter their individual nature, but that men and surface elves were not all bad, just as he knew all drow were not.
Eromus spoke, in fact, of several specific anecdotes of surface-dwelling drow he had crossed paths with or heard of, and told one story of a drow woman that his father Maximus had known some dozen years before, one Viconia deVir, recent expatriate of the Underdark. He had saved her from death at the stake in Waterdeep, allowing her then to suffer his company. He tried gently to convert her from evil, with hopeful early results, before she then fled, purportedly south towards Baldur's Gate.
Questions began to stir within Arsenal's head, but their present captivity required more immediate attention. With their current mistreatment and malnourishment, even though Arsenal and Eromus both bore it with great endurance, they could not physically last much longer. Eromus told Arsenal that he had managed to befriend in secret one of the wild elves, a young ranger, and she was willing to secretly betray her own tribe and help them escape. The aasimar and the drow together fomented a plan of escape that would involve a holy invocation, a cantrip, and the help of the uncaptive and locally knowledgable elf maiden. Arsenal and Eromus thus managed to get free one moonless night, and freed the all-to-few others that had lived, and the remaining squads of men and drow ran off through the woods and parted without ever finishing their fight.
Arsenal and his comrades were soon rescued by a backup party and taken back down to the Underdark, starved, beaten, and sunburnt. As soon as Arsenal was healed just enough to look his best again, he was sold by matron Grey-Faal, perhaps because she had grown bored of him, was disgusted by his raiding party's failure, or needed the money, to Verania deVir, formerly of the now-fallen House deVir. Verania now ran with one of her sisters a tavern-playhouse in Mezoberranzan, and there Arsenal came to live and work as a bodyguard, performer, and pleasure slave. He bore her treatment, even harsher and demanding than Grey-Faal's, with his usual stoicism and humility, becoming the outlet for the fallen noblewoman's rage, but now more complex thoughts ran through his mind, and he thought often of the surface world above, and of the golden-eyed man he had made and escaped with, and of the stories and philosophies he had heard. The golden-eyed man had given him the word for that inexplicable thing about the surface: Freedom.
Luckily for him, Verania deVir the innkeeper hadn't nearly the security that Grey-Faal D'Lakten the maton had had, relying primarly, is is often the case in drow society, on simply ingrained fear, the lack of anywhere else to go, and the severe penalties for slaves being caught free. Fairly adept in the art of sneaking and hiding, he managed not only to escape from her clutches but to make his way back to the tunnel he had taken to the surface before, and escape form the Underdark. He wandered, avoiding the sun, bandits, and zealous drow-hunters, back to the moon elf settlement of all places, and to his relief found Eromus Prime still stationed there, nearly the last paladin remaining. With the raids from drow and wild elves subsided, Eromus was ready to leave his post and travel back to Neverwinter, his closest thing to a home, and Arsenal accompanied him on the journey.
The two continued to share thoughts and beliefs along the road, and Arsenal gradually decided that surfacers in general, humans, and knights were not all so bad as what his rearing had taught him to believe; and he came to accept Eromus's ideals of liberty, justice, and compassion for all. As he slept one full-mooned night, he was visited in his dream by the Goddess of Magic herself, who bade him, if he really believed in this new way of life, as a warrior-wizard to swear and recieve knighthood in her name. He did so, and in the morning awoke a paladin of Mystra.
In the morning, Eromus beamed and laughed heartily at this news, and when they reached Neverwinter, led him on several minor good deeds within the city, which Arsenal did with fervor, even though he recieved scorn as often as praise. Soon, when news of the gobloinoid raids in the North and the call for adventurers reached Neverwinter, Eromus and Arsenal would decide that the time to truly put their ideals to the test had come.