Sahala had lived thirty-four years of her life. She was already taller than the svirfneblin priests that raised her. The grey gnomes had taught her every tenant of Beryl's faith, hoping one day she would be called of Beryl to be a protector and liason for their people. She knew every ceremony, every right. She had learned the basics of gem-cutting, and how producing a perfect cut is a direct praise to Beryl. But she was still a child. According to the her elven lineage, she would not be of age for nigh of eighty years.
She had lived thirty-four years of her life. The illithid thralls stormed the grey gnomes' city. It was a well planned, surprise attack. The illithids had been watching the city with interest for decades, allowing it to build in numbers. The gnomes had focused on evading the Drow, completely unaware of the greater enemy that lurked in the dark expanses. Deep dwarves and umber hulks tore through the outer defenses. Under the leadership of Beryl's clergy, the svirfneblin rallied around the temple, and dug in, finally holding off the wave of axe and claw. But that was only the first wave, for the Illithid had yet to show themselves. Using powerful magic they teleported into the midst of the defenders, and guarded by elite duergar, they crippled the remaining resistance.
She had lived thirty-four years of her life. She became a captive along with all the other survivors. Some captives for consumption, some for slave labor, some for personal servants. All for the illithid.
Nothing is worth more to the illithid than a drow slave. To have such a creature of power under one's control proves one's status. As such, it is seldem that an illithid will consume a drow. That, and the drow are the only other creature of the underdark that rival the mind flayers' eminance. Sahala was the first drow the enclave had enslaved since the last drow slave died over 600 years previous. Ihihkctual, the right hand of the their collective overmind, claimed her as his personal attendant.
Sahala begins to come of age. It is seventy-two years after she was taken captive. Seventy-two years after she watched the gnomes that raised her be consumed. Seventy two years since she listened to the slurping sounds as the grey matter once belonging to the priests of Beryl was sucked through puncture holes at the rump of their skulls. Seventy-two years since she learned to hate. The lesson stuck. All seventy-two years.
As a child slave, Sahala learned how to massage the scalp and tendrils of her illithid master. She learned to communicate with them telepathically. She learned what it's like to have one's entire memory probed, to have the privacy of the mind laid bare. She learned to shield her thoughts from them. She learned how to handle finesse weapons, and to dance. Both pleased her master. He especially liked it when her dancing involved the weapons, in an arena. She learned to kill. She tried to kill her master. She learned pain.
Sahala develops. Her age is one hundred and ten. She is Ihihkctual's prized posession, and he flaunts her. She no longer sees the arenas. She is fitted for dresses of the finest materials. She is bathed and manicured and lead by a jewel-inlaid chain and collar through the enclave. Sahala's beauty beams brighter than the jewels around her neck. Sahala's scowl scours the admiration given her, yet she is sheltered like a precious gem, like a babe.
Sahala sees the Weave.
A war arises between the illithid enclave and a drow house. The illithid ally with a rival drow house, and Sahala sees another of her kind for the first time. A drow wizard offers to buy her from Ihihkctual. Ihihkctual consumes him, and it almost cost the illithids their ally. Ihihkctual becomes increasingly wary of attempts to steal Sahala.
Sahala feels the Weave.
Ihihkctual keeps Sahala in his chambers now. Sahala seldom speaks, but is taught the language of her race, both dark and light. He teaches her to write and read. She waits until he is in a deep meditation cycle, then puts a key through Ihihkctual's eye.
Sahala weaves.
Her leash had been lengthened, but not so much that she could reach Ihihkctual's meditation throne. She could see they key to the collar dangling around his neck as he sat in trance. Her eye's narrowed, flashing crimson. She lifted her hand, pointing up with her finger, and the key began to float. Her other hand moved as if pulling on an invisble string. Slowly, as sweat beads formed on her forehead and arms, she brought the key chain over his head. Veins began to bulge in her hands. Her muscles flexed, and she held her breath even as she held the chain and key in middair. With a sudden burst of energy, she sent the key hurtling into her hand. She caught it, deftly, then collapsed on her pallet from the strain. When her strength had returned, she released herself. Walking over to the entranced mind flayer, she took the key she stole from him, and jammed it into Ihihkctual closed left eye. The creature awoke with a mind shocking roar that knocked Sahala to the floor. Ihihkctual stood up, the chain attached to the key dangling from his eyesocket.
Sahala smiles.
Ihihkctual survived the attack, with one less eye. He was both angered and impressed by Sahala's actions. Nevertheless, he had her magically branded. It was something he had avoided doing on purpose, due to their foreign nature detracting from Sahala's unique beauty. They would insure she would make no more attempts on his life, however, and it was evident she was growing in power. This did not surprise him. He had suspected she might harbor more than a fierce demeaner.
Illithid brands look very much like tatoos, as they leave black markings rather than phyiscal scars, but are instated in the maner that any other brand is: they are burned into place. The heat source in this case is not a branding iron, but a series of binding spells. The result is a tangle of glyphs that circle whatever the owner wants to mark as his. These brands do more than show ownership, they also act as magical chains, keeping the person or object from going too far away from their owner, and, in the case of Sahala, prevented her from being able to harm Ihihkctual. He could have also used them to dampen her growing connection to the Weave, but he liked the idea that his slave was potentially lethal.
Sahala is branded on the arms, legs, and face. She no longer has a collar and chain. Going beyond one hundred meters from her master initiates a pain so severe she can do nothing but collapse and curl into a ball. Raising a hand against Ihihkctual increases the pain level ten fold.
Sahala passes one hundred and twenty one years of age. All but two of the svirfneblin she had been captured with, raised by, are dead. Consumed or otherwise. Rumors of a disturbance in another region of the underdark reaches the enclave. The enclave ignores them.
The disturbance turns out to be a hardy group of adventurers. Their purpose for delving into the depths of the eternal night was unknown, but the group proceeded to lay low any amount of resistance they encountered. And so they did with the enclave.
The Illithids knew of their approach before the adventurers knew of the enclaves existance, but dismissed them, trusting their outer defenses to crush the pathetic intruders. Whoever these beings were, however, they were not weak and pathetic. They obliterated the duergar sentries and other illithid thralls. Even the illithid taskmasters were left as nothing but piles of dust. The more the mind flayers watched, the more it became evident that these adventurers seemed bent on the destruction of the entire enclave. So the illithid sullied all their might and struck a counter-attack against the adventurers, aiming to cut at the invaders while still weak from fighting the outer defenses. Ihihkctual himself lead the counter-attack, Sahala at his side.
The ensuing fight was incredibly fierce, as it quickly became obvious these adventurers were still far from burning through all their energy. Many illithid fell fast to powerful magic, but the mind flayers outnumbered the adventurers. Ihihkctual could see they were draining the strength of the invaders, and that at this rate, they might win, if only by attrition.
Sahala sees her chance.
Ihihkctual stands at a distance, guiding the enclave and loosing the occasional blast of psyonic energy. Sahala stands near him, gazing over the battlefield. Then she runs headlong into it. Before Ihihkctual can stop her, she reaches the limit of her brands, and collapses as the magic and blood cruise around her. Enfuriated and determined not to lose his prize, Ihihkctual abandons his post and chases after her. But as soon as she can move again, Sahala begins to crawl around the battlefield, and Ihihkctual finds himself skirting from skirmish to skirmish trying to find her. What he finds is not Sahala, but a warrior brandishing two flaming swords. A warrior who doesn't mind the mental blasts used by Ihihkctual, who closes in on Ihihkctual, and who cuts Ihihkctual into three charred pieces.
The pain Sahala felt as her master died was unlike anything she had ever felt or would ever feel again. She thought she had died, and indeed, she lost consiousness, and did not wake until the battle was over. When she awoke, the pain had become a dull ache. An ache she would deal with for tthe rest of her life.
She could see the light of a few campfires, and she crept closer to them. The carnage she crawled over spoke for itself. The enclave was dead. The adventuers had even razed the city. How they had killed the overmind was beyond her, or, perhaps they didn't. Perhaps they never reached it's deep chamber. Never the less, she knew she must somehow follow these creatures, these adventurers. And she did.
Barely eating and almost never sleeping she kept a discreet distance from them, using her keen eyesight to guide her. Within weeks, they had found their way to the surface, by means of a series of limestone caves and an underground river fed by a waterfall. And so Sahala's journey into the Light began.
The waterfall sat in a deep forest, with great trees providing volumes of shade. Yet Sahala's skin burned, and she was near blind during the day. Worse, the farther the went from the eternal night, the more her brands pained her. It was this situation that caused her to lose the adventuring party. She didn't know how to start a fire, despite her magic being just strong enough to kill small animals. She had no idea of what plants were edible, but became hungry enough to try just about anything, and that which she did try made her extremely sick. So it was that she ended up lying naked and face down in her own vomit when the wild elves found her.
Their first instinct was to kill her. She appeared to be a dark elf, afterall. But she looked so pathetic, their warrior's nature would not let them strike down such a helpless foe. She was brought to the tribe's healer, who nursed Sahala through weeks of delerium, back to a sustainable health. Sahala's delierious rantings gave the healer insight into her past, and the healer recognized the pain that Sahala bore on a constant basis. The healer empathized, but the rest of the tribe wanted Sahala gone when she had recovered. Thus, not wanting to leave her helpless, but also not willing to go against the tribe, she convinced the tribal leaders that she at least must be given the tools to survive. When Sahala was healthy, the wild elves gave her a single bow, 3 strings, a bone knife, and a quiver with 20 arrows. She was told to find her own place within the home of the Runner.
So she moved deeper into the wood. She knew how to use a bow, from her training with her illithid masters, and that was all. The tribe taught her nothing. They had saved a drow from death. That was enough.
Sahala realized, to survive she would have to learn how to make a fire. The illithids had always used magic to provide flame and light. Though she had no idea where to start, she could feel 'the Weave.' That's what her former masters had called it. Days went by, weeks went by; Sahala was barely subsisting. All her attempts to bring even the tiniest flame to life had been utterly fruitless. But she was determined, and she pushed the limits of her mind and body, searching for the answer among the cords of the Weave, until she finally became lost in the wild tangle of magic in the forest.
She remained unconscious for nearly a day, although she was unaware of the time frame. She was nothing more than a stream of consciousness, and out of that stream formed a black river that she fell into, drowning, until the river took shape. The dark mass writhed and roared, and she thought she had suffocated. She could no longer see the strands of the weave; only the shadow. She was no longer inside it, but under it. It's fangs were red, and it's eyes were yellow. Everything went black.
Sahala awoke, or, at least she thought she was awake, yet she couldn't see anything. She tried to move, but it felt as though there was a weight holding her down. She also noticed, she was warm. She could only think that this must be her end, that she was on the threshold of death. The ground rumbled, and suddenly she was as light as air. She felt a warm breeze. She saw stars. Hundreds of tiny white specks and two larger yellow ones.
The yellow ones blinked. With a flash, the keen sight of her heritage returned. She could clearly make out the head of a beast, barely a hand's breadth away.
The beast purred.
It's breath was the warm breeze that soothed her cracked face, it's coat the heat that fueled her life.
The moon shone full, and she knew. She knew she had failed. There was no fire.
Instead, there was the breeze. The gentle midnight breeze that always froze the core of her being, yet this night, this night it was warm and strong and pierced her with its amber eyes.
Sewleviiran Fmaaja. The whisper became a roar, and from that day foreward, Sahala was never without her Midnight Breeze.
The indigo cat brought all manner of edible vegetation, teaching Sahala what is and isn't safe to eat in the forest. It protected her, warned her, gave her strength. They could speak to each other for days, weeks, on end, and never say a word. The panther's intelligence didn't surprise her; it only made her smile. Something, somewhere, still cared for Sahala.
In time, she garnered enough trust with the tribe of wild elves to be allowed trading rights. Through these elves, she learned some of the outside world, even the location of a village. She was warned she should stay away from it, but her curiosity, her need for place, lead her straight to it. She scouted it's outskirts, careful not to get too close, watching the woodsmen and their families from the trees. She saw her first human there, heard the common tongue for the first time.
She spent over a year watching and learning pieces of the language before she felt ready enough to approach the villagers. When she did, she waited until dusk, and walked right up the dirt path leading through town. She tried smiling and waving to a young woman carrying a basket. The woman stopped, dropped the basket, and stared for a solid minute before she let out a scream of terror. It was only moments before the rest of the villagers came running out into the street. Sahala stood there, arms up, no longer smiling, but not willing to back down just yet. She tried a greeting she had heard them use. No effect. More screams and a call to arms. Confused, she backed up, bumping into a stout woodsman who grabbed her by the throat.
"Are there more of you?" he spat from a mouth of missing teeth. Sahala's eyes were wide. She had seen undertones of animosity between the wild elves and these humans, but they never treated the wild elves like this.
There's a saying, "Only the dead threaten a drow." And so it was that as the man dangled Sahala in the air by her throat, a Breeze whirled through the town. The panther's pounce sent all three of them sprawling, only the man came up one arm less than he had started with, and Sahala came up in a sprint back to the shelter of the trees. Sewleviiran Fmaaja roared and bounded off behind Sahala, blood dripping off her chin.
The villagers rallied and began scouring the forest, so Sahala retreated deeper into the forest than she had ever dared to go. And she waited and hid. For years. During that time she explored the rest of the forest and beyond.
Her courage returned, and she began once again to seek out human settlements to learn from. She watched the roads and caravans and villages, all the while maintaining her trading relationship with the wild elves. With help from a few of the elves, and her observations, she became comfortable with the common tongue. In the same manner, she discovered small bits of the reasoning behind the abhorance others offered her.
Then came the Call.
And the Great Dragon spoke, and she awoke in Hlint. Fear engulfed her as she darted from building to building. It was night, and she trusted the shadows. She passed an elf who was looking in her direction. She stopped, and remained motionless, but he continued to move toward her. Taking a step back, she sighed, and looked straight at the elf. In her best Common, she admitted being seen. The elf simply chuckled, walked forward, and licked Sahala's cheek before she realized what had happened. Confused, but not entirely ready to run yet, she stood there as the elf smiled and explained his reasons for licking and his interest in Sahala- specifically, his interest in the relationship between her rustic garb and her grey skin. She supplied her connection to wild elves, and he supplied a welcome to the strange town of Hlint. And thus Ozymandias introduced Sahala to an adventurer's world. He was her first friend in it.
As per Ozy's words, she was not thrown out or attacked. Some barely even noticed her, others stared, and a few spit as she walked by, but nothing worse. Yet, in this, she felt even more isolated. There was no one like her. She had no place, and, worse, she had no knowledge of anything relevant to this world- to the world of the goblins, elves, humans, dwarves, giants, and more that make up the everchanging face of Hlint. But she determined to learn. Her entire being longed to disappear into the Sielwood, but she made herself stay. She took odd jobs and discovered the use of small bits of gold some called coins, and others, jinks. Sahala soaked in her environment like a sponge, and as her knowledge of the world increased, so did her knowledge of the Weave. The strings she pulled, the patterns she spun, became powerful enough to attract the attention the wandering adventurer.
Besides Ozymandias, she made the a acquaintance of numerous heros and adventurers as she settled down around Hlint, the most notable of which being the Great Druid, Rhizome. She was also astonished to meet other drow who had settled on the surface. Knowing almost nothing of her own race and equally little about the surface civilizations, she maintained an utter fascination with these other surface drow, and approached them whenever possible. Most were amiable and understanding, if not otherwise preoccupied with their own affairs. It was during this time that she also met a certain drow monk near the lake south of Haven.
