#and i have the skills and resources (ie dad who understands houses) to do the same. probably.

[corvidaedream]

dreaming about homeownership again

looking at houses online that, like. don't have ceilings and are in the worst shape u have ever seen and going "maybe one day..."

[wolffyluna]

Hi, I'd love to know your drow OC's backstory. I've finally started to read about drows and made my first drow OC last week, so now I'm loving them.

Hello!

Before I get into the backstory, I have to note that this character isn’t from any one DnD setting, and the setting he’s from is kind of a high speed mishmash of various settings. So there’s probably a few things in his backstory that won’t fit eg the Forgotten Realms settings.

Also he still doesn’t have a name. Woops. He shall be, for the purposes of this, referred to as The Currently Nameless Drow, or TCND.

He was born in a reasonably sized drow city, to an accountant mother, a bodyguard/guard-of-valuable-stuff father, and later on had a younger sister. His family were not the lowest of the low. They were vassals, not slaves. And they were not the poorest of the poor--

--but they were pretty dang poor. There was always running right along the edge of being able to buy food (which can be quite expensive in the Underdark) and pay their taxes to the noble house they owed fealty to (which was the one thing stopping them from becoming slaves.) Guards are pretty dime a dozen, unless they were particularly skilled, and while his father wasn’t unskilled, he wasn’t skilled enough/didn’t officially go to the fighter’s school to be able to command a higher price for his services. And accountancy also wasn’t spectacularly paid. And it was dangerous work-- no House wanted to be caught cheating their tithe to the Church of Lolth, but they all did it. So an accountant was in the dangerous position of knowing the real numbers, and having to convincingly create fake ones. If they screwed up, the House they worked for would throw them under the bus.

When he got older, his dad taught him how to be a guard. But he also taught him a few things under the table: worship of Vhaeraun (god of drow men, and also ‘oh my god Lolth is a disaster, we gotta fix this’) and how to steal. (His mother...she wasn’t a devout Lolthite, but she was of the opinion ‘better the deity you know’ and had a low opinion of Vhaeraun. So her husband took steps to make sure she never found out he or her son worshiped him.) The learning how to steal was so that they could stay on that ragged knife’s edge of both being free and full of food. 

One of the things you learn as a drow thief is that if you can, you never steal from a noble house. And regardless of that, you never steal from a noble house on behalf of another noble house.

...but, shortly after The Currently Nameless Drow reached the age of majority, his father was injured. Not in a way that couldn’t heal, but he’d be out of work for a few months unless he was magically healed. ...they very much couldn’t afford magical healing. They very much couldn’t afford ~1/3 of their money making capacity to be out of action, either.

TCND took a contract from a noble house, to steal a magic item from another noble house. He knew that, at least in common understanding, that was a bad idea-- but the amount of money would cover magical healing. He wasn’t in a position not to take it.

He managed to steal the item, and give it to the noble house that had contracted him. But he’d failed at leaving no trace.

There’s a reason you never steal from one noble house on behalf of another. When you steal for commoners, it’s hard for them to throw you under the bus if you get caught. But nobles? Oh boy, they have a  great stock of buses to throw you under.

TCND fled to the surface. He had two noble houses baying for his blood, and he figured that’s how far away he’d have to get before he became more effort than it was worth it to catch. And sure, there was a great risk he’d die before he got to the surface-- but a great risk is much better odds than the certainty if he’s stayed in the city.

He fled. He reached the surface.

He had no money. No friends, community, allies, anything. No one trusted him as far as they could toss him. He didn’t speak the language.

He had two skills: fighting for people, and stealing things. And when you can’t speak the language, and even if anyone could talk to you, they probably wouldn’t hire you-- you have to steal.

(Things may have gone different if he’d ran into any other worshipers of Vhaeruan around this time. But he didn’t.)

So he ran around panickedly burgling things. (In the middle of the night, because the Moon was really bright, and his eyes hadn’t quite adjusted to that, let alone the gods-damned Sun.) And he was stressed and panicked all the time, and the way that surface houses were designed different kept messing him up, and maybe the noble houses were still following-- in short, he was stressed. And he got sloppy.

...to the point that he fell down the stairs of the house he was burgling, and woke up the occupant.

The occupant was a cleric of the dwarven god of travel. Who was probably more thrilled to find a slightly panicked drow trying to steal his silverware than he should be.

Recently, he had been part of a drunken theology debate that turned into a bet.

The other cleric believed that once someone acted habitually evil, even if they were only slightly evil or only doing evil because of outside forces, it was incredibly difficult for them to break the habit and become good. Those raised in drow societies, or had tieflings that had slightly-evil tendencies fiendish blood tended to give you, were, in their drunken words, fucked.

But our cleric didn’t think that. Breaking the habit of evil wouldn’t be easy, no, but it would be easier if someone was only slightly evil or coerced into evil. With time and attention, it would be quite possible for drow and tieflings and other people raised in evil societies to become good. They just needed to form the habit! And he would -*hic*- prove it... with an adventuring party! Yes, an adventuring party. Those he brought into the party would be stuck with him over a long period of time, and adventuring would be a good way to help build new good habits.

...when they sobered up, the other cleric hadn’t forgotten the debate, but didn’t care about it. But our cleric still did. And the adventuring party idea would be a good proof of concept... He kept an eye out for likely candidates, and he’d found a few. A tiefling sorceror trying really hard to pretend to be an elven wizard and failing badly (though she probably barely counted. She was a tiefling, yes, but she didn’t seem the habitually evil.) A grumpy bard, who’d escaped the fall of the local Wannabe Evil Overlord’s microsociety (now, she could be called habitually evil, so that was a good start... but she had also been rescued by a paladin who’d started some of the work of breaking those habits, so she wasn’t exactly a fresh case.)

But now, tangled in his stair bannisters, he‘d found a bona fide, raised-by-drow drow, who was currently in the middle of an arguable evil act (ie, stealing from a good aligned cleric.)

So TCND ended up joining the part of complete misfit weirdoes. And our cleric’s plan-- worked? Especially for TCND. Because when he wasn’t having to steal and kill from people to survive, when he had the spare resources-- he wanted to help people. And he wanted people to not ever be in a position where they had to steal and kill and double cross to survive, and he wanted to help that come to pass.

(Along the way, he ended up converting to the worship of Eilistraee (the goddess of good aligned drow, and also freedom.) He lost his liking for Vhaeraun the more time he spent away from the Underdark, especially Vhaeraun’s goal to make drow the rulers of the surface. And he appreciated Eilastraee’s belief in free expression, because he feels things deeply and enthusiastically, and likes not having to keep that under wraps like he used to do in the Underdark.

Though he has Opinions about the branches of Eilastraee’s church that don’t let men be clergy, even though he has 0 interest in being a priest. He’s glad his ‘local’ church does let men be priests.)

(He also later met a drow wizard that made magic items and sold them, who was pretending to be a non-drow elf (somewhat more effectively than the tiefling sorceror, too.) They hit it off fairly well, occasionally met each other at church does as well-- and ended up falling in love. Their currently affianced, and when TCND isn’t adventuring, he’s helping with the shop.)