electric-ant
First Post
Yes, he was posting on the General Discussion board yesterday, one asking for advice on TPKs and another about paragon tarrasques. 
Seriously, look for yourself.
But anyway....here's my character's background. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, and just assume the strings at the end get tied up somehow to the point where he will be when the adventure begins....it's long enough already.
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Zalen was the illegitimate son of a minor priestess of Lolth and a human slave-overseer in the underground city of Sei Vasar. He would have been slain had not the leader of a caravan of derro, passing through the city, offered to take him off her hands - for a small price. It was a common practice for wealthy human merchants, who were themselves unable to have children, to purchase and adopt unwanted infants, casting a blind eye towards a perhaps unsavory source.
As he looked fairly human, except for a gray cast to his skin and slightly upturned ears, Zalen was quickly sold to an eccentric merchant couple in a nearby metropolis. They delighted in him at first, but eventually they became more interested in business than in family. The merchants put him into a nearby monastery, hoping to gain divine good will as their business crumbled around them, but to no avail. The merchants were eventually forced to move out of the city, seeking a humbler (and less expensive) lifestyle.
Zalen initially fit in poorly at the monastery, growing to resent his teachers but respecting their wisdom and experience. However, he was finally able to adapt to the strict and austere lifestyle of the monks, and upon reflection, truly became to believe that discipline was the path to satisfaction and to perfection. After all, he only had to look at his ‘parents’ for proof - their brief irrational indulgence of his adoption had led them to financial ruin.
He trained at the monastery for decades until he was selected, by measure of discipline and ability, to travel outside the monastery for experience. Zalen was sent with a small group of monks to remove a threat to the area - a regular mission given to the monastery, as part of an agreement with the local monarch to allow the monastery to remain standing without paying taxes or tribute of any sort.
Their quest would be to destroy a long-standing problem - a wizard, nearby, had accidentally allowed a gate to the underworld to open in his tower, causing his death and the destruction of much of the tower. The gate remained open, creating a constant flow of demons and posing a considerable threat to the area, through which many caravan routes passed through.
The monks entered the tower and began to work their way towards the pinnacle, where the gate had been opened. Expecting and finding an easy path through the swarms of lesser demons, they were unfortunate to be present for the arrival of a greater demon, a balor, as it came through the gate in a fiery explosion, killing several of the monks. What the explosion left standing, the balor did not. The monks were slain, and the balor, intrigued by the presence and existence of a half-drow, returned to the lower planes with Zalen.
He was tortured in the fiend's demonic prison for an interminable amount of time before Zalen encountered a fellow prisoner, a celestial solar, whose botched attempt at planeshifting had sent him hurtling into the underworld. Overpowered by the overwhelming hordes of evil, the solar, Aevon, was trapped in the same manner Zalen had been, in the same prison, whom the balor lord considered an especially interesting captive.
Before they had time to talk, however, the balor lord began to approach the cells in which they were kept. Understanding that he would soon face his death and Zalen's not too long after, the solar decided to use his most powerful magic, a wish spell in a final act of self-sacrifice. Aevon gave Zalen the means to escape as well as unintentionally bestowing upon Zalen his spark of divinity.
Zalen's hair forever turned a feathery white as a mark of his transformation, and his eyes were changed into a dusky golden-amber, mirroring the celestial's own eyes, as he was propelled away from the fiend's prison and returned to the material plane in the same darkened tower he had originally been taken from.
Seriously, look for yourself.
But anyway....here's my character's background. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, and just assume the strings at the end get tied up somehow to the point where he will be when the adventure begins....it's long enough already.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Zalen was the illegitimate son of a minor priestess of Lolth and a human slave-overseer in the underground city of Sei Vasar. He would have been slain had not the leader of a caravan of derro, passing through the city, offered to take him off her hands - for a small price. It was a common practice for wealthy human merchants, who were themselves unable to have children, to purchase and adopt unwanted infants, casting a blind eye towards a perhaps unsavory source.
As he looked fairly human, except for a gray cast to his skin and slightly upturned ears, Zalen was quickly sold to an eccentric merchant couple in a nearby metropolis. They delighted in him at first, but eventually they became more interested in business than in family. The merchants put him into a nearby monastery, hoping to gain divine good will as their business crumbled around them, but to no avail. The merchants were eventually forced to move out of the city, seeking a humbler (and less expensive) lifestyle.
Zalen initially fit in poorly at the monastery, growing to resent his teachers but respecting their wisdom and experience. However, he was finally able to adapt to the strict and austere lifestyle of the monks, and upon reflection, truly became to believe that discipline was the path to satisfaction and to perfection. After all, he only had to look at his ‘parents’ for proof - their brief irrational indulgence of his adoption had led them to financial ruin.
He trained at the monastery for decades until he was selected, by measure of discipline and ability, to travel outside the monastery for experience. Zalen was sent with a small group of monks to remove a threat to the area - a regular mission given to the monastery, as part of an agreement with the local monarch to allow the monastery to remain standing without paying taxes or tribute of any sort.
Their quest would be to destroy a long-standing problem - a wizard, nearby, had accidentally allowed a gate to the underworld to open in his tower, causing his death and the destruction of much of the tower. The gate remained open, creating a constant flow of demons and posing a considerable threat to the area, through which many caravan routes passed through.
The monks entered the tower and began to work their way towards the pinnacle, where the gate had been opened. Expecting and finding an easy path through the swarms of lesser demons, they were unfortunate to be present for the arrival of a greater demon, a balor, as it came through the gate in a fiery explosion, killing several of the monks. What the explosion left standing, the balor did not. The monks were slain, and the balor, intrigued by the presence and existence of a half-drow, returned to the lower planes with Zalen.
He was tortured in the fiend's demonic prison for an interminable amount of time before Zalen encountered a fellow prisoner, a celestial solar, whose botched attempt at planeshifting had sent him hurtling into the underworld. Overpowered by the overwhelming hordes of evil, the solar, Aevon, was trapped in the same manner Zalen had been, in the same prison, whom the balor lord considered an especially interesting captive.
Before they had time to talk, however, the balor lord began to approach the cells in which they were kept. Understanding that he would soon face his death and Zalen's not too long after, the solar decided to use his most powerful magic, a wish spell in a final act of self-sacrifice. Aevon gave Zalen the means to escape as well as unintentionally bestowing upon Zalen his spark of divinity.
Zalen's hair forever turned a feathery white as a mark of his transformation, and his eyes were changed into a dusky golden-amber, mirroring the celestial's own eyes, as he was propelled away from the fiend's prison and returned to the material plane in the same darkened tower he had originally been taken from.
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