I’m not sure exactly why you’ve come and I’m fairly certain you won’t stay. But if my story amuses you, then I will tell it. Or the parts of it best fit for mortal ears…
Yes I said mortal ears, you’re human are you not? Most on this forsaken little planet are, are they not? Me? No… I’m something else entirely. You can’t tell me that you’re sheltered enough to believe that humans are the only race running around on Earth. If you are, well. You are sadly mistaken.
Me? I am Arry…. Or if you prefer, Arristanya Sith Morridan, the first and last of my house. I am and always will be Drow. What is that? I am a deep dweller, a night elf, a cavern witch, or even demon to those of more Christian faiths. I am of a race of beings, descendants of the original elven kind that descended to the deeps of the Underdark.
Underdark you ask? My homeland… Simply, caves so deep in the ground that not even the briefest glimpse of sunlight is ever seen. A land where night reigns for all eternity. A land of death, dominance, magic and malice. Drow are a competitive, aggressive race bred upon the lust for power. We are long lived, verging on immortal. We are arrogant and vain, beautiful and deadly. Drow are the sweetest dreams and the most deadly nightmares…
Still you want to hear more?... Brave or Foolish you are…
I was born Arristanya Darth, Drow trace their ancestry through their mothers not their fathers and my mother was of the house Darth. One of the leading houses of the Underdark in her time. As I said, we trace our ancestry through our mothers and each great name is a house and these houses rule our world. My mother was a proud woman, her mother was a ruler in my time. But these were not women, they were deadly vipers, more likely to kill their own kin than to promote them. Assassination is not uncommon among my kind, nor is infanticide. Regardless of how powerful my mother might have been, I can say I never knew her as a mother, only a ruler.
My father you see had designs above his station. Men among drow are little better than slaves and hold no standing that is not bestowed upon them by the matriarchs. Marriage is unheard of, as is monotony. Is it certain that the many who took me and raised me was indeed my father? No… Do I respect him as such? Always…
My father elected to steal me away from my mother’s house where I would more than likely have been dead before I even reached maturity. My father was a brave man, if not so brilliant. Stealing me away immediately made him a target, the theft of a daughter is a crime punishable by horrible death. While he was successful in his kidnapping and escape, there was no safe harbor for him in any major underdark city so we were forced to the fringes and wild.
The wild of the Underdark is a dangerous place to put it lightly. More die than survive. I am a rare oddity for many reasons. First and foremost because even though all Drow are born with an inherent magic, most are good only for parlor tricks. My talents developed early and powerfully, enough to make me a threat to myself and others. While our magic is bred into our being, it’s control is not. Most city dwelling drow are taught to control their gifts from infancy. I had no such education. I had only the wilds and the beasts and my father. My gifts developed violently, control over the elements, over beasts, over other sentient beings telepathically. In one of my fits of growth when magic raged uncontrolled, my gifts reached out and slew my father in his attempts to save me. I was scarcely into what you would consider teenage years and I had lost the only family I knew by my own hand, intentional or not. And it is in my father Morridan’s legacy that I take his name as my own, instead of my maternal house.
It may have been days before I came back from my magical tantrum to discover my father’s corpse and that eve I went further into the depths of the wild to claim my own life for just retribution. I wandered further into the darkness than ever I had in my life, deeper into the caverns than perhaps many other drow. It was there I sank down to let my magic claim me, to end a pathetic existence. And my gifts did indeed reach out, but not to claim my soul as I thought. Instead they reached to another being, a creature who changed both my world and perspective…
I don’t know how, but out of the darkness my gifts summoned one of the rarest Underdark beings. Neither demon nor beast. Neither really living nor dead. Some call them spirit wards or guardians, others demons but they are creatures without substance or form unless they so choose it. But somehow my crazed gifts summoned such a being. They summoned an entity that I have come to know as NightSong. He is my guard and companion, my teacher and friend… and the only being to live these many years with me. NightSong appears as he wishes, when he wishes. To mortal eyes often a black cat, or lion, sometimes only a shadow on the wall. But he is always near, waiting for me to beckon.
He taught me without words, with thoughts and notions to control my gifts, my thoughts, the strength of my body and the power of my senses. We communicate without words, with glances and notions, in seamless form. At times it seems that we are not one, but two. Our existence was simple, we hunted and fought. Earned our place in the fringes and among the creatures and drow who existed there. We were happy in this simplicity. With what we were. There was no potential for what we could be until the day we ran into a scouting party from my mother’s home city. I of course was not identified, indeed many decades had passed since I’d been abducted and I was now a woman grown. But a wildling and a threat to be studied. I was captured after claiming the lives of many mindless drow drones, but taken none the less. Taken ironically enough, back to my mother’s house.
It’s odd how childhood memories surface when placed in once familiar surroundings, it did not take me long to identify the grand estate as my home. Or the matriarch as my mother… It too did not take her long to recognize her own blood. My talents with magic were a blessing to a matriarchal society and my study of survival and NightSong made it easy to blend into the murderous world that was Drow hierarchy.
I feasted… Attended balls, entertained whichever suitor amused me at the time. I sank into decadence and intrigue. I was privy to my mother’s plots for power and acted her cat’s-paw as well. Slipping poison into drinks or dragging the perfect suitor into a riotous scandal. I was groomed to be the heir of the house, the next matriarch. I have done things that now I might be ashamed of and murder was my nightly companion. But that was simply what was expected of me, how the Drow survived. And being wilding raised I knew no better.
It was a random venture for the glory of the house that first lead me to the night above, to the surface. To your earth and world, I am not sure if the Underdark exists on the same plane as your planet… But it is possible to crossover and I did so on my mother’s behest. I first surfaced in the times of Ancient Greece and I was astounded at the world presented. At the art, the music, and the light. At the way human society revolved and expanded without death and deceit. I was captivated…
Drow are not meant to exist in the night above, it is common, if not correct knowledge that we lose our magical gifts when we encounter the sun. I know from living here that are gifts are weakest in the daylight hours but they are not lost… At least not to those with pure intent. Regardless, I skip ahead. My mission complete, I returned to my mother and my world but my thoughts were always above, on the differences of human nature and society. Your world and more like the world that NightSong believes in, the world he groomed me to enter. Straying thoughts turned to straying trips. You have to understand that it is forbidden for Drow to go to the surface and those who do face serious punishment and death.
It was at my own risk that I travelled and surely enough after many years of eloping I was caught in my activities. Perhaps I am a coward, perhaps I did not want to lose the simple joys of moonlight and sun… Of peace and tranquility. But I ran. I ran to the surface. I learned to hide my appearance through glamours, to take the startling ebony of my skin and lighten it to that of African races. To dye the stark whiteness of my hair to more subdued tones, to tame the wicked points of my ears, and even to disguise the strangeness of my accent. Once fled from the Underdark I was treated as one dead and no further threat seems to exist from my mother’s realm. The threat lingers only in the possibility of discovery by your race. And so I hide.
And so I have hidden through many ages… Sometimes in solitude, sometimes in small towns… Other times in cities. But now I have hidden in plain sight. I always had an affinity for music, not for that of the Drow, it was too ethereal and distant. But in more recent times the grit and distinction of your rap and pop music has caught my attention. Lyrics and be outrageous and fantastical. I can speak of my homeland and you are none the wiser. I can hide in plain sight and you will not know me. Musical fame was easy to obtain and my star continues to rise even as I hide my nature. Even NightSong who rarely leaves me has disguised his wildness to a housecat. But someday you will know me, even if you do not know. What’s that you say? You thought my face was familiar? I assumed as much………
