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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Redclaw" data-source="post: 4429320" data-attributes="member: 53791">Varilar's revised background... I took a few liberties, Helium.  I hope you don't mind.  I was looking to explain the streetwise and dungeoneering training, and it just sort of kept going.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />[sblock=backstory]Most elves learn to love the forest before they learn to walk. Most elves spend their childhoods playing predator-prey and hide-and-hunt in the trees around their villages.Most elves are more at home with stars over their heads than a solid ceiling.Varilar has little in common with most elves.  Growing up inside the walls of Helen's Reach isn't a bad thing, but it's far from the natural state for an elf.  The Bulwark constantly separated him from the forest-life of his ancestors, and the shadow of Half Sigil Keep constantly reminded him that he answered to more than his whims.  For years, Varilar rebelled against the constrained life he was handed, but eventually he accepted it.From that point on, he became one with the streets of Helen's Reach, learning to love the alleys and gutters the way his wilderness-dwelling cousins loved game trails and forest rills.  Without knowing why, he was drawn to the heights of the city, running across rooftops and watching the world below him.  He learned how to hunt those who lived below him, not to kill or even rob, but to best.  For a while, many people travelling through the streets alone at night found themselves hounded by something unseen but felt.  Almost always they found themselves running through some area of town they had no intention of being in, driven by the constant presence of something.  Without fail, they ultimately found themselves standing alone on an isolated dock, looking out over the lagoon, with nothing but lilting laughter coming from the city at their backs to assure them that they weren't crazy.  Of course, if they had ever learned that they had been running in fear of a 10-year-old elf, they might have rethought that conclusion.Eventually even this became boring for Varilar, and that is when he discovered the sewers, and their remnants of the tiefling empire.  There he learned to fight, and to flee what he couldn't fight.  There he learned of survival, and the need for brutality.  Despite the harshness of the lessons, he was drawn back again and again.  He grew to know the sewers as well as he knew the streets, and eventually he stopped being overlooked.  Eventually he earned the notice of Morthos.  Whether that proves to be to Varilar's benefit or detriment has yet to be seen, a fact the elf is very aware of.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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