Further Inspiration
I am posting this to provide further inspiration to any artist who wishes to render Lord Everhate under their hand. Warning, the following tidbit of this character's long history is not for the weak stomach. Evil is never pretty and should never be illustrated as such in fiction.
A Seed of Evil
Chapter One: The Annuals of Pain Forgotten
It's when the whip begins to feel like a feather caressing your back that you know you're about to pass out from the pain. The sickening sound of leather straps beating against pulpy flesh becomes a mere whisper in your ear and your assailant's insults are lost within the fuzzy echo of the searing agony inside your head. You hardly notice the steady trickle of blood from your torn back winding its way between the cheeks of your ass on its way to its destination; the vampire beast that is the cold marble floor beneath you. Tied to the ceiling by bloody links of chain, you only wish for death.
I spent much of my child hood in such agony, inflicted upon my naked and crippled body by my own family. I was the youngest son out of 35 children birthed by my mother, the slut Matron of House Everhate. I was the only son ever birthed by the bitch that bore me and she frequently rued the fact I ever slipped out of that slimy hole between her fat legs. I was seen as a failure for House Everhate, the legendary blessed House of Mordnessar. However, I was not the only one bore that night. My sister, Zandra, was also born and was in fact, the first child to see the lightless and cold world we live in. I came later, after the birthing had been thought, over as a pile of black and withered flesh which dropped to the floor as my sisters eased my mother into her bed to rest. I was left on the cold floor next to her bed for a day and a half before I was finally noticed when my cry of hunger broke the silence of the room and the smell of the rotting placenta around me could be tolerated no longer.
Once found, I was given to one of our derro slaves to suckle from her crusty nipple for the first year of my life. Halordra had just lost her own child when one of my older cousins had raped her with a short sword. She could now no longer have children, because the damage to her body had been so extensive that she had barely survived the experience. Since I was offensive to my mother, I was to be raised by this beaten and submissive creature who would most likely be slain before I reached the age of speaking. Truth be told, the old dwarf woman cared for me as she would have cared for her own child, had it lived I was left for days in a filthy crib made of rothe bone and hay that smelled of mold, with little or nothing to eat and no one to interact with. My sister, on the other hand, was completely pampered as all females born to House Everhate were. She was given everything she needed, and because of this, I survived the harsh conditions of my own young life. We shared something more than just simple kinship. A spiritual connection existed between Zandra and myself, one so strong that I literally stole life from her body more than 7 stories above in her silken crib.
Since I was sick most of the time, Zandra too felt the ill effects of my treatment as her body weight dropped slowly and she became listless and feverish. It was when we were both close to death that my uncle, a powerful necromancer, discovered the connection between me and my sister. In order for Zandra to survive, he explained before my sisters and aunts, I had to as well. My uncle explained that we shared one soul between two different bodies and that I had been an anomaly in our conception, an accident that should never have happened. The fact that I had been born with two club feet, black hair, and was seemingly blind seemed to back up his theory perfectly. I was quickly fetched by my cousin to be brought from the slave quarters far beneath the house compound back to the living quarters where my sick sister slept, but not before my derro caretaker had used me as a fleshy mace against the man who had violated her with a sword and had ruined any and all chance of her ever bearing a true child of her own. She had rather me die than give me up and she was prepared to ruin my cousin's life in the process by killing my sister as well. Luckily, I was taken away from the deranged dwarf as two house guards arrived and subdued her. I watched with milky white eyes as my cousin struck the only mother I had ever known to the floor to have his way with her a final time before relieving her abdomen of its contents with a final strike of his sword.
My child hood improved drastically after that point. I was moved to my sister's room where I was given a small crib in a darkened alcove normally meant to be a closet. There I stayed, fed some horrible substance by a kobold nanny whose name I never knew. My healthy slowly improved with frequent feedings and I was even bathed once or twice a month afterwards. However, I was never held, never talked to and generally ignored, even when my mother came in to see Zandra. When that rare event happened, the curtain to my closet was always closed and my light extinguished as not to make my presence known to the visiting mother. I knew, even then, not to cry when this happened lest I be gagged and bound in my bed by the kobold who shared the closet with me.
When I came to be of speaking age, it was apparent that I was mentally retarded, adding even more insult and injury to the mother whose face I never saw. I was ordered beaten at least once a day, not including any additional thrashings I got from ‘misbehavior'. I never learned how to speak correctly, always mixing up words or using them entirely wrong. I was told I often spoke backwards with a voice that a child my age should never possess. I was eventually forbidden to ever speak in the presence of others at the threat of physical harm.
I eventually was taught how to drag myself across the floor using only my hands. For my 25th birthday, I was given a piece of square surface wood with rickety wheels attached to the bottom of it. I used this ‘land raft' to get around the house for the next 10 years of my life, often fleeing my frequent beatings on the board so that it became stained in my blood time and time again. By the time I reached age thirty, the board was completely blackened with the substance and smelled of a copper mine, bearing the scars of that pain as much as my own backside did. The beatings were long and harsh and I was never spared the snake-headed lash even for the simplest of mistakes. I was disfigured even worse than I had originally been when I was born, with the hunch on my back very nearly cleaved from my shoulders during one such lashing and even had a useless eye put out as an inexperienced sister struck me across the side of the head with her whip from behind. I lost most of my nose and half of my face when one of my cousins, a chubby bastard named D'lorth, set his lizard mount on me as I listened to them train one evening. I very nearly died in that attack from the blood loss and infection if not for the order of protection granted to me by my sister's predicament. After being healed, I was again beaten senseless by my aunt for making her waste a spell on my unworthy and deformed flesh, my garbled pleas for mercy going unheeded for what had to be the thousandth time. When I was 30, my privates were removed with a blazing hot dagger and fed as a delicacy at a party that night being held as a morbid celebration as the sister born two years before us was granted the title of priestess and given her first snake whip, which I knew would find its first taste of blood from my back.
What amazed me later on in life after I regained my perfect mind is the fact that my sisters knew Zandra could also feel every lash, every piece of flesh knocked or sheared off my body, but continued to beat me anyway. When my 40th birthday neared, I was little more than black scar tissue with patchy black hair, one blind eye, and three fingers on my right hand. When she returned from Oloarsa'ticnilith as full priestess of the Spider Queen, she was instructed to care for me herself now and that no longer would I be fed or cleaned by anyone else other than her. It was her punishment for the ‘evil' I had brought when born and I knew she was going to beat me continually for what I had inflicted upon her just by existing. It never happened.
I was cared for by my sister as a human woman might care for her child. She defended me when my other sisters and aunts came to beat me and she even crafted me three new fingers from adamantite for my right hand. We had a bond that no other dark elf in existence shared with another and she considered us to be one creature, cruelly split a part into two bodies by whatever taskmaster had inflicted us with being born drow to begin with. I couldn't talk to Zandra, but she always seemed to know what I was thinking or wanted to say, but couldn't. When in the presence of others, she would often be forced to treat me poorly, but I knew in what heart I had left that it was an act that she had to continue for us both to remain safe. I eventually learn to walk on the sides of my feet, painfully, with her help and was gifted my first quarterstaff by Zandra to help me get around. The staff was enchanted and gave me the ability to hover a few inches off the ground and to move slowly forward, backward and side-to-side with a thought. Truth be told, I still preferred my land raft to the staff, as it was quicker and I had become quite adept at speeding down the halls on the contraption to avoid the painful whips of my sisters who would try and strike me to simply see if they could. It became a game to the females of my house and whoever could strike me with their whip as I jetted by them would win a small betting pool of gold pieces and small magical trinkets. I was fast though, and had learned how to dodge the strikes of weapons on the land raft and the pool was lost only once or twice before they became bored with it and forgot it. Eventually I was ambushed in the hallway outside my sister's room and my land raft was hacked a part with swords as I watched in what could only be described as abject horror. I screamed gibberish in my mourning as the younger children of my house vanished, giggling, down the hall. I had just watched my legs for the last 20 years be hacked to pieces and it felt like an old friend had just died in my arms.
My mind shattered then as something so terrible welled up from inside my guts that I could literally feel my skin begin to burn. Like a wraith, I flew from the floor and scrabbled down the hall after the sounds of retreating feet and laughter. That laughter turned to frightened screams as the house whipping boy came around the bend in the hall at a speed meant only for men who had legs that worked. I grabbed the nearest sister of mine, lifted her 20 year old body from the ground by her hair, and slammed her face repeatedly into the black marble stone that made up the walls of our compound. Only did I stop when I could no longer hear the squeals of pain escaping her crush face. Her brains now covered my hand as more of it landed on the floor than was now contained inside what was left inside the oddly shaped skull now hanging from the bloody hair entangling my fingers. Instantly what strength had been summoned into me quieted, causing me to drop to the floor into my younger sister's brain and bloody spinal fluid. I looked around and heard the sound of many armored footsteps heading my way and that is when I screamed Zandra's name in perfect drow for the first time in my life before passing out from the adrenaline convulsing through my broken body.
