Valette Tuil
Jhaammar Tuil was an excellent dancer. Lady Gadriene, his matron’s youngest daughter, loved his performances and pressed her mother to gift him to her as a coming of age present. By the time Jhaammar was 50 Gadriene had already supplanted her sisters and mother to become head of the house. They were a smaller clan in the city but for the time being had the favor of the Queen of Spiders. Gadriene’s love of Jhaammar’s dancing didn't save him from having to carry out the matron’s other wishes. There were always spies or enemies of the family to assassinate. Jhaammar hated being under her thumb, he hated that he was forced to do horrible things just because his Lady got into an argument over who's slave was more handsome. There were whispers of a cult deep in the Underdark that would take drow to the surface away from all this cruelty. It would be another one-hundred fifty years before he met a priestess of Eilistraee.
Jhaammar was finally on the surface. Years of patience rewarded. The cleric that found him on the surface was surprisingly friendly for a human. Comparatively it wouldn't be long before he met Daevyre Aubert.
Daevyre Aubert grew up in a home with parents who loved her and each other. Her mother was a cleric of Selune, and her father worked as a tailor for a local human lord designing ball gowns. It wasn't until she began her own studies as a cleric that she became aware of half elf discrimination. Daevyre faced difficulties from many sides. Elves who pitied her and humans who mistrusted her. Once she began traveling and living the tenets of Selune, she saw how easy it was to feel like an outsider when you weren't quite an elf nor fully human. She rarely traveled with others and learned quickly how to defend herself. One day while visiting a village along the sword coast she happened to stay at an inn with an unusual bard performing. She corrected herself noting that the performance wasn't unusual, but she had never met a Drow, let alone a Drow bard. After his mesmerizing performance she went up to tip him and strike up a conversation. Few people went up to tip, though some did. He sat humbly thanking everyone that came up flashing a pleasant smile occasionally when someone would speak to him. He had a humble posture yet there was a frantic energy that he seemed to hold over from the dance and song. When she eventually got to him, he seemed surprised to see her as if he was expecting a scolding. She approached tossing a silver coin in his instrument case. Before they could speak however an alarm rang out through the town. Some kind of attack? Daevyre, forgetting the bard, ran to the town council building where the alarm was originating. According to the guard captain stationed there; a neighboring town had just been raided.
It was now nearing midnight and there had been no further word from the scouts sent out. The local guard gathered a militia of anyone willing to fight. Daevyre wasn't sure if she was more surprised that the drow joined or that the guard captain allowed it. If a town was raided nearby it almost certainly wasn't a goblin attack. The most likely culprits, she feared, were drow; the guard captain had to know that, right?
The attack surprisingly came a few hours before first light. Many in the militia were exhausted and were slow to respond. But the drow seemed ready, like he knew it was coming. As Daevyre and the others arrived at the fighting she counted a small group of 7 drow. They were easily overtaking the tired guards. In a flash 1 of the drow sorcerers went down, the tip of a dagger sticking from the back of his neck. The bard appeared behind him emerging from a cloud of inky blackness that hadn't been there a second ago. Daevyres attention flew to a new target, a Drow with a hand crossbow was sidestepping guards and using their ally’s as cover. With a quick flick of her wrist she called on Selene’s aid summoning a spiritual weapon to harass the crossbow user. She then turned her own steel to a Drow swordsman who just felled 2 guards in 1 horizontal sweep of his curved short sword…
The battle lasted all of 2 minutes, what eventually turned the tide was Daevyre tricking the raiders into believing that the sun rose early with a surreptitious casting of the daylight spell. The locals took stock of their losses, 7 guards and 4 militiamen. Considering the strength of the raiders it was a marvel the losses weren't worse. She learned that the drow bard was actually a local and had been living in the town for a few years. His name was Jhaammar and he had been a bard on the surface for almost 40 years now. Unfortunately, the attack on the village meant Jhaammar had to move. If a Drow matron learned of a lone male drow living on the surface they would continue to come after him. Daevyre offered to help him find a new home to settle into. From there they became friends and more.
Some years later Valette was born. Valette grew up in a village not too dissimilar from the one her parents met in. She didn't face nearly as many hardships as her father and learned a lot from her mother about how to get along in a world where she belonged to multiple communities. She loved the stories her father told her even the frightening ones about drow assassins and priestesses of Lolth. After spending a year away at a bardic college, she moved on to study at a temple to Selune where she met her mother's teachers. While there she didn't quite feel like Selune was her calling. Valette spent some time searching and eventually settled on studying with a priest of Sehanine. Valette is young and looking for a way to live up to the ideals her parents and teachers instilled in her.
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