------------- The Black Gryphon - Vhaerynandra

“If insanity is doing the same thing, the exact same way, again and again, and expecting a different result, what does that make the Drow?” – Cameron Quinn.

One would think that after Vorhing, the Drow would have learned a lesson. Alas, despite their very long life spans, the chaos that consumes them seems to trap them in much the same mindset that makes the demons not nearly as dangerous as one might think. Drow, or rather the Splinter Kingdom Drow, keep making the same mistake. They seem to fear half-breeds, they look down on them, insult and kill them, imprison them when they can. At the same time, the few who show talent escape the torments and become favored sons and daughters. Why? Because they can go where the Drow can’t, topside. Perhaps it’s a bit like sending the thralls out in the sunlight for the vampire clans. Better they get burned than you.

Vhaerynandra Aurganzhil was such a half-breed. Born of a lesser SK Drow noblewoman, her father had been an enslaved Symballan trader captured on a surface raid. Vhaeryn was at first destined to be aborted long before she was born, but the Drow woman received a visitation by a Yochlol that told her to keep and raise the child as a full blood Drow child. Vhaeryn grew up faster and stronger than the others, with a natural talent for magic and an exact and perfect memory for everything she ever saw or heard. By the time she left temple at the age of 75, she was destined to be one of the extremely rare few who would master the skills of Fighter, Mage and Cleric as a War Witch. Soon after, she left her home and ventured into the UnderDark with the SK Drow raiding parties of House Fey. Their party was betrayed by agents of House Belabra, as the Matron feared House Fey’s growing power. Vhaeryn and one other escaped the ambush and found themselves many thousands of miles away thanks to one of the Drow World gates. They ended up under Mount Drovmyr, lost and alone. Her companion soon died under the jaws of Hellhounds from House Belabra, and she again escaped, this time to the surface. With enemies all around her, she struggled alone until she was found by a hulking, pale human warrior.

Her life dangled on the end of a web, a single strand of hope keeping her alive, the hope that Lolth, having put so much into ensuring she survived and prospered, would not simply cast her aside. She knew the general disdain for males held within the matriarchal society from which she had sprung. She had practiced it as often as not. She had been whipped and tormented when she showed the slightest mercy towards males or the least bit of deference to them. This was different. She was in the surface world now, under a blazing blue sky, with strange white shapes floating by, both above and below. The air was thin, too thin to breath, and colder than she had ever felt before. The man, this massive human, must have also seen something in her that stayed his hand, for she would later learn he would as soon kill a stranger as speak to them. He scooped up her nearly unconscious body and carried her off, ever so gently. Weeks later they were lovers and she was working for a new lord, Torgunbandr the Olive Dragonmaster. When he fell, she and Sir Razzak were separated. Years later, they were together again. This time she was sure, they’d never part.

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