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lairofsentinel · 4 years ago

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Alessa Kalenhad

Chardry’s mother

Alessa Kalenhad was a human book merchant with a sharp mind who followed her family tradition in the book business. She was an extremely ingenious woman, able to deal with any situation making use of the few elements she had at her disposal. In particular, she was well known for having a delightful charm that allowed her to talk her way out of tense situations. Somehow, these skills were inherited by Chardry during his childhood, despite his drowness making them more complicated to be effective.

She was still a young woman starting her business networking when, in the Underdark Market, she saw a little drow baby with breathing problems in a sales stand of a fellow merchant. Knowing how male drows were acquired as exotic pets for some unscrupulous, powerful humanoids on the surface, she could not look aside the miserable fate awaiting that baby. Without thinking twice, she bought him, giving him the name of Chardry and sharing her surname. She never knew about his biological family, and never tried to investigate it either. Doing so would put her—and Chardry—in danger; drows did not like to make public the stains in their genealogy.

Her friends and merchant fellows warned her about the dangers of raising a drow child: rumours said that they have an evil, dormant nature, ready to awake as soon as they heard the Call of the Spider Queen. Despite being considered a lunatic for adopting that baby, she ignored those rumours, convinced that they were a product of ignorance and fear. She was a great believer of nurture over nature, and was determined to prove that a drow, raised far away from their cruel society, could be a creature like any other. Still, her friends will often warn her about the chance of ending up assassinated by her own son.

She raised him on the surface, inside the nomad merchant community, finding a place in the only merchant caravan that allowed her to stay with the drow baby. Although the families in the caravans were extremely wary of the kid, they tolerated her son because they trusted in Alessa. She had convinced them with her silver tongue about how a drow outside their violent environment made them as dangerous as any human.

To ensure their acceptance and, therefore, their survival, she reinforced—maybe too much—a calm, repressed behaviour in Chardry, fearing that any tantrum or anger in the kid would scare the fellow merchants with his red glowing eyes. Sometimes she wondered if being so strict with such a solitary kid was right, but she had no choice. She needed to repress his strong emotions—especially anger—if they wanted to stay in the community. The problem was always Chardry’s eyes, glowing red as his childish tantrum overtook him. Sometimes even she feared her own son, whose eyes were the manifestation of Lolth’s twisted instincts in his blood. Trying not to betray her son, she had to endure her own biases and fears not to disappoint him too much.

Despite the acceptance in the merchant caravans, it was clear that all families warned their children not to get close to the drow kid. This frustrated Alessa, who sometimes felt that all her efforts and Chardry’s were in vain, and made her acknowledge, day after day, that the world outside was not going to be kind to her son.

Since Chardry was raised as a lonely kid, she encouraged him to get close to books and knowledge, things that would keep his mind occupied while allowing him to understand the complex place she had put him in the world. Chardry learnt all about drows and drow culture from books, shaping his vision of them with a very human perspective at a young age. One of her biggest fears was that, one day, Chardry could resent all these decisions and reproach her all the efforts they made.

When she adopted Chardry, many of her non-business related friendships faded over time, afraid of the kid’s nature. She could understand the fear; she herself had felt cold blood running through her veins on more than one occasion in the many arguments she had with her son, especially during his teenage years.

Chardry’s teenage was the most stressful time for her. He was unstable as any human teenager, but unlike those, he was too solitary and desperate to fit in. She never knew when Chardry would appear bleeding or severely hurt because he tried something he read in some books to look less drow.

The situation escalated so much that one day, when she returned to her caravan after a long day of business, she found him with his cheeks and white hair soaked in blood, crying out of frustration. He had mutilated his own ears. Months later, another similar episode happened, with his arms being burnt in acid, in an attempt to decolour the purple of his skin. Despite all her love—and her mistakes—she knew there were levels in which she could never reach her drow son. The young man was not a human even though she raised him as such in order to guarantee his better integration on the surface.

She tried to find a partner all her life, but the few opportunities in which her nomad lifestyle allowed her to find a girlfriend who would accept her constant movement across Faerûn, they disappeared as soon as they saw her drow child. Her partners advised her to leave the drow before Lolth would call upon him, and some even gave her ultimatums to choose between them or her son. She even forced herself to try to find a drow partner, but the few ones she met on the surface were so cruel that she left them soon afterwards. Her hopes in finding a drow parent to help her son to live on the surface were immediately discarded. In an attempt to get close to any drow that could help her son to better fit in, she tried to make contact with seldarin drows, but she never succeeded: they were rare to find and usually isolated, living far away from troubles.

When Chardry was finally an adult, he worked inside the caravan: cataloguing new books, developing business strategies [in which he was not skilful], and keeping the business accounting, while she remained the face of their business. Their relationship became deeper and stronger. Even though she knew that her son felt a heavy weight on his shoulders for all the complications she got in her life due to his presence, she always made him clear that she regretted nothing.

Later in her life, when she reached old age, she started to worry for her son’s future loneliness and his dire complications to establish relationships that could sustain him in his long life. In secret, she prayed to many gods to take care of her son’s lonesome fate. ------

Chardry’s main biography [here]

Fic while Early Access lasts [The Warmth Found by the Campfire]

[ Alessa’s photos are the result of bg3 character creator and artbreeder, playing with the many free filters of FaceApp. Chardry’s, only the FaceApp filters ]

#chardry #alessa kalenhad #fic: the warmth found by the campfire #bg3

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lairofsentinel · 4 years ago

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Chardry (Cha-r-dree) Kalenhad Hedge-Wizard || Scribe Age: 187 years old [He was born in 1305 DR.]

Appearance: White hair (eyebrows and lashes too) that he dyes in raven black or brown colours. Red wine eyes inherited by his biological Lolth-sworn family. The goddess marks her followers with eyes made of blood so this feature becomes part of their genetics. His eyes in particular do not faintly but constantly glow in bright red since he is not an active follower of Lolth. However they do when he is angry or has some strong emotion (drow biology).

Voice: [here]

Visual traits: He has acid burnt scars on his arms and hands. They look like a change of colour in his skin. Only few have texture. He has asthma since he was a baby. His condition is in check by regularly drinking potions. He also has a scar of a dagger wound on his stomach.

Habits: He is always flattening his ears with his fingers or palms, and arranging his hair to cover them. There is a constant concern about his concealed ears. He also tends to roll his eyes frequently, especially when someone says “drow” followed by some explanation of the behaviour they are expecting from him. He learnt how to use his drow appearance for intimidation in self-defence but he prefers not to reinforce the fear that it naturally inspires in all surface races.

Ingame background: combination of the Hermit (30%), the Merchant (10%), and the Sage (60%). [Main one is Sage]

Personality: self-taught and ingenious. Resourceful, skill that was passively inherited from his human mother. Calm, a bit playful, melancholic, ever-longing for contact but fearing the appearances of a friendly approach. Strong anti-gods attitude. Due to his extreme loneliness and his appearance, he is wary at the first kind gestures towards him, but he is pretty weak against gentleness.

Skills: Due to his lonely long life, he has cultivated some solitary arts; he plays the erhu with great skill (in his left little finger he wears a magical ring that can summon an erhu), and paints vivid scenes of humanoids in endearing situations. Many times, he combines both arts to make musical, living paintings that he uses as a vain way to keep few emotional, yet false memories.

Languages: Common, Halfling, Elvish, Draconic, Undercommon (pretty rough, learnt by his own).

Summary of his Backstory:

Chardry was born in Menzoberranzan, inside a House of wizards and sorcerers [Xorlarrin] . When he had his first asthma attack as a baby, his family decided to abandon him in the Underdark slums, since he was too weak and not even worth of being offered to Lolth as a sacrifice. Some beggar sold him, ending up with a human book merchant, Alessa Kalenhad, who adopted him as her own son. He lived all his life on the surface, in a merchant caravan, always travelling across Faerûn. She raised him like a human and enforced in him a calm temper to avoid conflicts.

As a drow on the surface, he always had frictions with most humanoids who mistrusted him or feared him. When he was younger, he grow desperate to fit among humans, thus he made of dying his hair and covering his ears a habit he kept to his adulthood. As a teenager he went to such extent to mutilate his pointy ears. He also attempted to eradicate that characteristic purple undertone of his skin by using acid and different chemical compounds of his own inexperienced making. He ended up having discoloured stains in his hands and arms: the first places where he tested his experimental chemicals (although some were result of accidental spilling). After so many failures, he stopped aspiring to look like a human and focused his efforts on, at least, passing by for a half-drow. Sadly, his red eyes always prevented it, they were the undeniable mark of his pure heritage.

Unable to establish meaningful relationships with other surface humanoids, he found peace among books. He tried to enter many Academies, but most of them rejected him out of fear for the presence of a Lolth-sworn drow in their institutions. So he decided to study by his own, becoming a hedge-wizard. At least that provided him satisfaction and a bit of self-esteem in his life so filled with loneliness and frustration. For many decades he study by his own the Arts while helping his mother with business strategies and bookkeeping. She was who had the hunches for business and the charming face leading any trade opportunity, while he always remained in the background hiding his presence to avoid suspicions.

When he was around 45 years old, his mother died of old age. Soon after he met Fanir [dream person]. To cope with his grief, he began to dabble in necromancy while continuing with her business, as a way to honour her. However, all his attempts to keep trade networks failed. Rejected by drows and surfacers alike, he gave up his merchant life and secluded himself outside a small peaceful village close to Neverwinter. There, he developed a small business of copies of books that grew over time in the most academic circles, turning himself into a hired scribe. This job allowed him to be still in contact with what made him recall his mother the most: books.

His lonely life had remained that way for almost a century until that fateful day in which a Nautiloid kidnapped him during a visit to Newerwinter city.

Full Background Story and Technicalities

Chardry was born in Menzoberranzan, inside the House Xorlarrin (which bred its children to have great affinity to shadow magic and the Shadowfell). Several months after being born, he had his first asthma attack, event that made his family consider him a great weakness. Since it was an insult to Lolth to offer such feeble creature as a sacrifice, his family matriarch abandoned him in Braeryn (the slums of Menzoberranzan). It was expected that Chardry, as a baby, could not survive it. However, by fate or fortune, he did not died, and a beggar took him from the streets to sell him in the Bazaar. A slave merchant or a collector of rarities could find use in a drow baby. Male drows were a rare pet for particular surface Lords in some parts of Faerûm.

What was supposed to be one of the darkest future ahead, it turned out being his ticket out of the Underdark and its vices. The baby fell in the arms of a mature book merchant, Alessa Kalenhad, who bought the baby out of mercy. She became his foster mother, helping him to live on the surface, surrounded by merchants and moving from a place to another, always chasing after the opportunities of the market. She raised him as if he were her own, and nurtured him in her love for books and negotiation. She educated him to have a calm temper to avoid problems with his appearance.

With such background, he grow up to become into a strange drow. But his unusual personality did not spare him the world he lived in; people always mistrust him or feared him, so his relationship with other surface humanoids was always deeply complicated. His red eyes did not favour him either; most of the surfacers easily linked the mark of his red eyes with the most violent, plotting, and power-hungry drows. Therefore, constant suspicion forced him to lead an isolated life with the exception of his mother to whom he had a deep connection. His love for her was immense.

But he was not always in peace with the fact of living like an hermit. When he was younger, he grow desperate to fit among humans, thus he made of dying his hair and covering his ears a habit he kept to his adulthood. [He uses enchanted dyes to cover his hair, lashes, and eyebrows, and an enchanted eyeliner which gives to his eyes a soft glamour making them look brown, but few people notice the difference before his drow visage.] [Check the bottom of this post to see his real appearance.]

When he was a teenager, out of frustration, he went farther to the point to mutilate the extreme of his long pointy ears. The event did not give him the result he wanted to, thus he still keeps hiding them under his long hair. He also attempted to eradicate that characteristic purple undertone of his skin by using acid and different chemical compounds of his own making. His intention was to permanently tinge his skin with golden tones and make it look browner, but he ended up having discoloured stains in his hands and arms; the first places where he tested his experimental chemicals. After so many failures, he stopped aspiring to look human and focused his efforts on, at least, passing by for a half-drow. Sadly, his red eyes always prevented it, they were the undeniable mark of his pure heritage.

Unable to establish meaningful relationships with other surface humanoids, he found peace among books, learning by his own the Arts of the Weave and others sources of magic. Always learning from human point of views. He met the pleasure of the knowledge. Seeing him so dedicated to studies, his mother used all her networks to make him part of an academy that could teach him properly, but most of them rejected him out of fear for the presence of a Lolth-sworn drow in their institutions. Only an academy of humble reputation accepted him during his teenage, but he did not last. The mistrust and the fear he inspired in students and teachers alike (and some violent events) forced him to give up after a couple of months. So he decided to study by his own, becoming a hedge-wizard. At least that provided him satisfaction and a bit of self-esteem in his life so filled with loneliness and frustration. For many decades he study by his own the Arts while helping his mother with business strategies and bookkeeping. While she was the charming face leading any trade opportunity, he always remained in the background hiding his presence to avoid suspicions.

When he was around 45 years old, his mother died of old age. Soon after he met Fanir [dream person] with whom he had a short and not so good romantic relationship [more an affair from Fanir’s point of view]. To cope with his grief, Chardry began to dabble in necromancy while continued with his mother’s inherited business, believing he would honour her by doing so. However, he found more problems than he expected. Trying to keep alive his mother's Underdark trade network, he met drows that put his life in danger. They considered his weak and soft existence an insult to Lolth, and swore him to kill him if he appeared once more in the Underdark. Not wanting to push his luck further, he focused his business on the surface, hoping for better results. However, it was also a failure. Most merchants and clients who reached him used to ask for typical products sell by drows: slaves, weapons, sensitive political information, forbidden knowledge. The ones who remained interested in her mother's book business, stopped trading with him under the suspicion that he was using her mother's old networks to expand and cover shadier drow-related markets.

Rejected by drows and surfacers alike, he gave up his merchant life and secluded himself outside a small peaceful village close to Neverwinter. There, he developed a small business of copies of books, turning himself into a hired scribe thanks to strong disguise spells. This job allowed him to still be in contact with what made him recall his mother the most: books.

It was a solitary good job, which allowed him to deal with interested parties by mail or in short appointments in which he could disguise himself, covering his drow appearance. On occasions, his employers were scholars of great power that had nothing to fear from a drow, so despite seeing through his disguise, they did not bother about it.

After many years of work he began to notice some gaps in his memory. He realised that many of the most powerful employers had erased his memories after the deal was done. Fearing to lose his mother’s memories, he began to take precautions on the matter developing the habit of making a secret copy for himself before finishing a contract. With the success of this protocol, he incorporated this erase-memory-feature in his services.

Knowing how much scholars appreciated secrecy of their books, he promoted himself as the only scribe who allowed his clients to modify his memory or remove the days of work from his mind once the copy was finished. This risky service gave him a renown as a valuable and safe scribe in the scholarly circles as well as great wealth. His lack of allegiances to any academy or race were more than desirable additions to the service he offered.

And thus, his fame as a scribe of such confidentiality guaranteed him money enough to live without struggling while hiring professional wizards to do work he could not perform or buying powerful artefacts to reach his personal, secret goals. His lonely life had remained that way for almost a century until that fateful day, in which a Nautiloid kidnapped him in Newerwinter. He happened to be in the city for visiting a alchemist friend, Sand, and re-stock his supply of medicines for his breathing problems.

Technicalities for DnD (I think, I’m still learning about dnd)

Chardry learnt most of his magic through books without teachers and with a very human perspective. So he is sure and comfortable with all those low level spells which requiere no somatic compounds. The descriptions of movements with hands, fingers, and body in a book will never replace the direct observation from a teacher and their corrections.

Because his background, his main speciality is illusion magic, the secondary one, despite being concealed, is necromancy. Both are very stable due to his hedge condition. However, enchantment school is cast in a ver unstable way. This is the reason why in more than one opportunity he became victim of his own spells going awry.

Long time ago, he had a higher level (lvl 10), but due to his own rushed decisions (an aspect that shows his human raising) and accidents with sentient artefacts, he lost lvls, intelligence, and mostly, wisdom to his current level. However, he is able to cast some spells higher in level (only illusion and necromancy schools) than his current one at the expense of acquiring an point of exhaustion.

Hedge wizards and low level wizards technically cannot create powerful spells. But scribes can (old editions) as long as they invest time and money in them. Chardry is a drow, so spending decades in spell-crafting does not sound wrong. For this reason, Chardry has customised many common spells into versions that lack somatic components. Or like in the case of his spell Dimensional Library, he downgraded a powerful unreachable spell for him (Demiplane), into a harmless and more manageable one for mundane purposes.

Because he is a scribe, he will know additional languages every several levels. So he knows a good amount of them. Elvish and Halfling languages were acquired just by living in merchant caravans during his childhood with his mother. He learnt by his own Draconic expecting to find more arcane mysteries in ancient books. Undercommon was learnt only for trading purposes. He never wanted to connect with his roots.

Speaking roughly, he is 200 y/o. He lived as a merchant “in the background” for 50 years, and as a scribe for the remaining 150 years. For this reason he doesn’t have the proficiency that “merchant background” gives, but he has the ones belonging to the Sage/Hermit background (quite compatible).

Racially speaking, male drows are smaller than female ones (so Chardry should be smaller than he looks in game). Underdark Drows live in an evil matriarchy. Males are only useful if they can be worthy warriors, mages or consorts. Their social power mostly depends on their relationship with a powerful female priestess of Lolth [More details]. Most surfacers know these facts about Drows, which had given Chardry many troubles.

According to some dnd sources, drows may have pointy canines (I love the concept of fangs as an element that denotes demonic heritage. In DnD lore, Lolth was transformed and lived in the hells, acquiring certain demonic essence that I like to interpret she passed to her drows). When they are angry, their eyes colour may slightly change to a bright red, and when ill or poisoned, it can turn into yellow tones (this is biology lore). Drows have a natural affinity to magic. All these racial characteristics apply to Chardry.

Regarding sleeping, Chardry learnt how to trance after his mother died. Up to that moment, he had only slept. Now it turned the other way around: he tends to trance in general, since he feels less safe when sleeping.

Chardry’s real appearance:

Fic while Early Access lasts [The Warmth Found by the Campfire]

Meme Negative traits for Chardry [here] Chardry as a child/teenager [here]

#chardry #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #mybg3mc #fic: the warmth found by the campfire

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