DISCLAIMER: We play D&D for fun. If you are looking for something that follows the lore and rules 100%, then this is not for you.
My first memory is of my fifth birthday party. The decorations, the laughter of Drow children, the blood curdling screams of my parents as they were rapidly burned alive, and a giant chocolate cake.
My family were Drow; a descendant of elves that were banished to the Underdark for following the deity Lolth. Most consider us a race of demon-worshipping marauders. But we aren’t all like that.
My mother was a retired adventurer and one of the most powerful Drow wizards in the Underdark. So I’m told. Her parents were indeed sacred followers of the Dark Seldarine but she had no interest in that sort of thing. My father was a Ranger from Buiyradyn: a tiny settlement that had rejected Lolth and the other “evil” deities.
They had met when her party hired him to escort them to a cave north of Neverwinter where they were sent to find a rare gem. The gem was rumoured to have been blessed by Vhaeraun himself. Unfortunately, upon entering the cave, they were ambushed by over a dozen Xorn who had blended in with the stone walls. The party did their best but were forced to flee. Only my mother and father survived.
Not knowing what to do, my father brought my mother back to Buiyradyn with him so she could rest and heal her wounds. The story after that differs depending on who you ask. My father says they fell in love and my mother couldn’t bare to leave. She, however, says she was just sticking around until someone offered her another adventure. Many letters came to hire her for her services but each time she declined.
Once they settled, they had a daughter. They named her Malice Dinoryn and she was the most beautiful, power little Drow baby that has ever existed in the the Underdark. Or so I like to think so.
My mother was a strong woman and and a typical wizard. She devoted her life to studying magic, spending years learning a single spell and then casting it over and over until she got it right. I definitely inherited her love of books and study, but our arcane knowledge couldn’t be more different. I despise repetition. I’ve never read the same book twice and, as a sorcerer, my magic came much more naturally. The redundancy of practicing spells over and over bores me beyond anything else.
However, my mother was still fixed on her methods and she was a terribly stubborn woman. If something worked for her, it must work for me. Which is why, on the morning of my fifth birthday, I sat surrounded by walls of ale barrels in the middle of a storage cave while my parents looked on disapprovingly. They had been trying for weeks to get me to perfect my first spell: Create Bonfire. It was a small, useful trick that every magic user knew but it just never seemed to work right for me.
The children my parents invited, who I’d never even met before, waited outside. They played games and ate the sweets our neighbour, a renown baker, had prepared. But not me. I was not to attend my birthday party until I made a bonfire.
I remember sitting with my arms crossed, hugging into my doll with my bottom lip stuck out in defiance. We had been there for hours and I could imagine the cake, my cake, vanishing bite by bite. Why were they doing this to me? It was obvious I couldn’t cast the stupid thing. They were doing it to torture me. They hated me. And that pissed me off.
I cried and screamed like I was being tortured. I could almost feel my throat tearing itself apart as I cursed my parents in the only way a five-year-old could. I rolled over onto my stomach and slammed my fists against the floor. When I did, flames shot from them, igniting one of the dry barrels in front of me.
The sudden fire terrified me. I panicked and tried crawling away but every time I pressed my hand against something, flames shot out, setting fire to another barrel. My mother gasped. She knew right away what was happening. There was wild magic inside of me and I had just awoken it for the first time. I was surging and out of control.
“Malice!” she screamed. “Stay calm. Don’t move.”
But I did move. I moved very quickly in hopes of escaping the fire that was rapidly spreading. Everything I touched burst into flames. My mother tried desperately to stop me but the fire had spread too quickly. It was nearly impossible to see with the thick smoke that had filled the room. I couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see me.
A loud boom echoed around me followed by my mother’s scream. The fired had found a full barrel and the alcohol exploded on contact. The last thing I heard from my parents was a loud familiar whistle as my father called for his companion. Arturo, an overweight Mastiff, tore through the smoke and scooped me up in his mighty jaws. He carried me away from the fire, past the children crying outside, and dropped me onto the barren, dirt ground where I could do no harm. He left me to rescue my parents. There was a massive explosion shortly after he entered.
After the fire died down, some of the elders retrieved my parents’ charred, crushed bodies. They were dead. Arturo was found in critical condition and died shortly after.
I was taken in by Balix Abaeir, a wizard who had taken my mother under his wing when her and my father first arrived. Though he and my mother had disagreements regarding how she approached my training, they both cared for me equally. We bonded very quickly. He studied divination and shared the same love of books. He continued to mentor me in her absence. He helped me perfect a handful of spells but I’ve refused to touch fire magic since.
Before you start, yes I’m aware of how Wild Magic works. I know the repercussions that arise when I lose control is completely random and the fact that I suffered a fire-related surge while casting a fire spell is completely coincidental. I believe those who say it should have no effect on whether or not I cast fire spells in the future. I mean, I’ve surged a few times since and most times it was completely harmless. But let me tell you a story.
Once a year the local Harpers group throws a feast of epic proportions for its members. A party beyond what most of the community could even comprehend. It was done in secret and nobody outside the faction was invited. Balix was a member and often teased that he could get me in one year, but I had to prove myself before he’d call in the favours the invite would require.
One late evening, over a few glasses of wine, Balix and I spoke of the difficulty of learning some languages. We debated, as we often did, about which were the most difficult languages to learn.
“What about Deep Speech?” I’d asked.
“Deep Speech? That’s reserved for the most intelligent races of the Underdark.”
“That sounds like me.”
He smiled through his sip of wine. “I’ll tell you what. You master Deep Speech and I’ll take you to the Harpers’ Feast.”
It took only twenty years for me to become fluent and Balix made good on his promise.
The party was as extravagant as they get when you live in The Underdark, which is essentially just a network of underground tunnels. But the food was amazing.
Good food was hard to find but the Harpers imported theirs from the World Above. I gorged on anything I could get my hands on. Stuffing myself with mouthfulls of meats and cheeses I had never even heard of, washing it all down with wine and ale reserved for High Elves and kings. It was glorious.
My body, however, disagreed. I barely made it through the night before I was hit with uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea as my body rejected these foreign nutrients. The entire feast exited from both ends until I finally passed out.
It would be foolish to blame the alcohol and food for my near-death experience. It was caused by indulgence and stubbornness. At the same time, whenever I think about the mysterious fish I ate off of the chest of an unknown adventurer, I have to do my best to keep composure.
You get where I’m coming from here?
Fire magic is cliche anyway. There are so many other amazing spells to learn. So many books to read. So many people to avoid.
I’m not really one for meeting new people. The night of the Harper’s feast was the most social I’ve ever been and if I’m completely honest, I was pretty damn socal. If it wasn’t for Balix, and the guy at the tavern who delivers me food when I’m too lazy to cook, I wouldn’t talk to anyone. So when Balix became engulfed in his super secret project, and the delivery guy got fired for stealing ale, things got pretty quiet.
It got to the point where I only saw Balix when he needed to bounce an idea off of me. Even then, he would consider my opinion, nod, and get back to his books. We didn’t do any real talking until the night before he left.
I was sitting at my desk, nose deep in a dusty old book written in Draconic, when he stormed in. He rushed my desk and, with one arm, swept my books and papers onto the floor. He replaced it with a dark bottle and two glasses. I recognized the bottle right away as the one he’d kept unopened on his bedside table. Whenever I enquired about it, he’d always say he was saving it.
I eyed the fallen notes, then the bottle, and then his grinning face.
“Breakthrough?” I asked. He only smiled and popped the cork off the bottle. “I hope it’s some kind of immortality spell. You’ll need it after knocking over my research.”
He reached down and grabbed one of the pieces of paper.
“Lothor and the Incubus,” he read aloud.
I snatched the paper from him.
“Don’t judge, that’ll be published someday. Someone out there is dying to know about Draconic erotica and the effect it has on their society.”
“I’m sure there is,” he said. “There’s a market for everything.”
I grabbed a glass eyed it before taking a sip. The drink was a golden colour with an odd blend of sweet berries and sharp alcohol. Balix watched me drink, waiting for my opinion.
“What do you want, old man?” I asked.
He sat back in his chair and took a long drink from his own glass. His expression turned serious.
“I’m afraid I have to leave for a while,” he said.
It took nearly all my willpower to hide the surprise in my face but he knew me better than anyone and picked up on it right away. I hid behind my glass and finished my drink off before filling it back up myself.
“So you’ve found something?”
He nodded. “I don’t want to get into too much about it, there will be time for that later. But I have found hints of an ancient Drow civilization…”
I could tell his was choosing his words very carefully. He was cautious about what he revealed. I knew Balix as well as he knew me and when he was acting this way, I knew not to push.
“When do you leave?”
“At first light.”
I smirked. “At first light” was a little inside joke. We never saw light in the Underdark so saying it basically meant “whenever I wake up.”
I nodded. “Well we’d better get to work on this bottle then.”
We finished that bottle and two others before I left him for my bed. I didn’t sleep. I stared at the ceiling until I finally sensed him standing outside my door.
“Balix.” My voice was barely a whisper.
He hesitated before answering “yes.”
“I worry, you know. About your research. At your age, your memory could start failing you. Any day now you could wake up and forget everything. Feel free to keep me up to date while you’re away so I can dictate your work. So we both know it’s safe.”
“Everyday.”
His boots thumped against the floor as he took his first few steps before pausing. “Be calm, child. The world is not safe from you.”
—
He made good on his promise. Well, as good as I’d expected him to. He used the Sending spell every so often to keep me up to date on his adventure, noting his first destination to be the Dessarin Valley. I found most his messages to be very humorous. It became apparent very quickly that Balix’s knowledge of the social customs outside of our little town were limited to what he had read in his books. His adventure was not filled with heroic battles as much as it was with awkward situations.
Still, I grew jealous. There was much out there to discover. I was 108 years old, considered an adult in the Drow society and I hadn’t seen the world outside of pictures. I’d never even seen the sunlight. Not many people in Buiyrandyn did so it would be nice to add that to my endless list of things to hang over their heads.
Aside from all that, there was something much more personal out there. In my entire town, I was the only Drow with wild magic. As much as Balix helped me cope and learn, he didn’t have any answers regarding how prevent my surges.
I did my own research of course but it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t even figure out how I got it in the first place. Some say it was passed on to me through my bloodline but I know nothing about my relatives other than their faith in the Dark Seldarine . Others say Wild Magic just happens randomly. That I was just unlucky. Some books told me it was a cursed passed on by a demon.
There were still questions that needed answering. And I wasn’t going to find them here. Could I really leave?
The messages from Balix stopped coming, his last one being very vague. He said he had encountered something that had left him frightened and that he’d hooked up with a delegation heading to Red Larch. They had agreed to let him join. The journey would be long but he had faith in those accompanying him. He was more worried about the harsh weather.
“The weather is as temperate as you are,” he had said.
Weeks went by without an update. This was enough to force my decision. I would leave. If I did not hear from Balix soon, I’d find him. But I had my own agenda as well. My own questions that needed answering.
I packed a satchel with everything I needed. I had my Scholar’s pack with books, parchment, ink, and other scholarly things. I made sure to grab the light crossbow Balix kept above the fireplace. I’d taken it down in the past and used it without his knowing to shoot rats in the tunnels nearby. I’d gotten quite good with it, actually. But there was one item I knew I needed to dig up.
I pulled the old chest out from under my bed. In it were a few momentoes I’d taken from my parents’ house before moving in with Balix. Sitting on top was the one thing of importance: a small doll.
The doll was a gift from my parents. I’d had it for so long, I couldn’t even remember receiving it. It was like a mini doppleganger of me: charcoal skin, white hair, tiny pointed ears, and pale eyes. It was the only real emotional connection to my parents that I had left. It had become my Arcane Focus: the one thing I could connect with to help me focus when casting the more powerful spells Balix taught me. I didn’t know what I would face out in the World Above, but if I needed to protect myself, I wasn’t doing it without this doll.
My bags packed, I journeyed through the tunnel that led to the surface. I was excited to venture off but I was also terrified. Would I even survive a day out there? I thought about what Balix had said before he left. “The world is not safe from you.” He was right. But nothing is safe from me. Not until I get answers.