The name given to me at my birth was Amolefnen'stet Jaluisencia. I hate that name. It is Elven for “precious flower which blossoms slowly.” My father picked that name for me. I don’t really hate my father. My family is from Evermeet from… as long as Evermeet has been here. That makes us nobles though not very high ranking ones. It also meant that I was treated like a daintily flower in a land where flowers are already treated pretty daintily. Growing up it was pretty obvious I was not as strong or as swift as my peers. My father wanted me to be a scribe. BIG mistake. Biggest mistake in his entirely too long life.
So you have me who can’t compete with my peers physically in most ways and then you give me books not only from Evermeet but from the human lands. I think I am a pretty good judge of character, especially my own. So I grew up without much company from my peers, treated like a fragile piece of glass, then read at length, for years of the wonders of the rest of the world. I wanted to escape! I wanted to GO! I wanted to see the world!
Of course I could not go. My father would not let his precious blossom go. Every time I tried to sneak out I was hauled back to my father. Most of the captains heard not to let me aboard, my father saw to that the first time I failed to sneak onto a merchant ship.
Eventually I bought some book son transmutation. I studied up. I thought maybe I could change my face and escape. That did not go so well, though it was my first start at magic.
After a decade and a half of trying to sneak off this gods cursed boring island, I took to drinking. Special authors note: Elven ale SUCKS(the word is written to take up half the page), dwarven stuff is the best though I never learned that till I escaped.
When I was drunk as hell life did not seem so awful. I did find one way I could compete with my peers, when on the few times I could goad my peers into drinking contests I almost always won. Precious flower my ass. Alcohol is like a magical potion which makes life happy. So for a while my time was split roughly evenly between drinking heavily, reading heavily and dabbling(and failing miserably) with transmutation magic. Well not entirely failing, on a few occasions I made some REALLY good magical beer-I blacked out for a week the first time I tried it, good stuff! Besides making totally awesome beer however, my magical studies yielded me little.
I’ll fast forward a decade, or three. I was generally despised by everyone who knew me and most strangers who had heard of me. Unlike human lands, Evermeet does not have a town drunk.
I wish I could magically enchant this paper to play a drum roll as the next passage is read, maybe later.
It was one of the high festival of Corellon and I was drunk off my ass for a week and a half, a continual bender. Apparently I fell asleep, somehow naked in the bushes outside the temple the previous night. I woke up around noon from the sound of prayers inside. According to the accounts of several hundred credible eye witnesses, including my father, my entire extended family and neighbors, this is what happened.
I stumbled into the temple, naked, and wandered down the main isle. Apparently the high priest looked like a good place to relieve my bladder which I did, all over his robe as several people looked on speechless. As I was later told, I then relieved my bowels on the altar.
When several upstanding citizens tried to restrain me I apparently began to hurl excrement at all comers, hitting the high priest who was already quite moist as well as the cities most prominent citizens who has the posh seats up front.
TA DA!!!! Now for my next trick… I laugh my ass off every time I think about it. I have NO memory of this at all.
To me at least, it seemed almost a guarantee they would execute me, or put me under “temple guidance” for decades. It is a pretty damn rare thing for anyone to ever be executed in Evermeet but then again I’m unsure if anyone ever went as far as I did.
My father intervened, gods bless him just this once. Instead of being executed or put under “temple guidance” for decades I was given a rather nasty looking tattoo which took up most of the right half of my face as well as on the back of both of my hands. These tattoos proclaim me as a heretic and a permanent exile from Evermeet. They also declare that I am in fact, not an elf, not a child of Corellon. This means I sure as hell could never go back to Evermeet, though I have no plans to. I’ve never tried going to any other Elven lands, I’m not all that eager too, not sure if these tatoo’s would bar me from there as well.
I was then put on a ship and given a modest quantity of gold by my father and unceremoniously dropped off in a human city on the sword coast, a non elf and permanent exile.
FREEDOM!!!!
The next four years of my life were filled with near constant joy and much, much less drinking then before, though I still drunk plenty. I traveled around. I went up and down the coast.
I went to sleep one night in a small road side inn… next thing I knew I was in some deep dank cave in chains with a lot of Duegar poking and prodding me. I was a slave and on my way to auction.
Soon enough I ended up as a slave to a drow wizard. As fate would have it things could have been worse, a –LOT- worse. He saw my tattoo for the first time and said “Thrall, if you are not an elf, what are you?” I said “Master, as you can clearly see, I am not an elf, I am a Wizard and your devoted servant.”
He asked me what I did to merit the tattoo.
I told him.
I *THINK* that probably saved me from a life of horrific slavery, so maybe Corellon won’t mind I pissed all over his high priest on a holy day.
He threw his head back and laughed and laughed till he cried, so much so that one of his guards came into the room but the drow kept laughing and motioned the guard out. He told me that from that point on my name was Wizard and his apprentice. He had me cover my skin from head to toe at all time, most of his household thought I was just his apprentice. I served as his apprentice for a number of years. This was when I REALLY learned some magic. Not stupid cantrip transmutations to make awesome beer, but enchantment.
My master was a master enchanter and the only drow I have ever met with a sense of humor. My slavery was a light burden and I really should not say this, but I came to love him, he was like the father I never had. I was technically a slave, I felt like a free man. I left his home very little but I did not wish to, I dove into the chores he gave me with fervor. Everything I truly learned of magic, I learned from him. Servitude to him was better then my life in Evermeet ever was.
I am not a religious man but after he died I said a prayer to Corellon and also one to Lloth, hoping he would end up with the former, but the latter as well, just in case. I hope he is allright.
He was murdered in drow politics, it is not something I really want to record. The heir to his possessions inherited me. He was your typical drow, a total bastard. I maintained my former Master’s lab for a time for this monster but it did not take long before he demanded I remove my hood and show him my face. I took a metal rod from the table next to us and stabbed him in the neck with it, it was the first time I ever killed a sentient being and probably the only note worthy feat of martial prowess of my entire life.
I ran and wandered the under dark for two weeks, near starvation, tired scared…. then I found this city of slaves called sanctuary. Well, that was last week.