About Dark-Knife
Talariel aka Tal aka Dark-knife
The Forlorn - elves raised among the other races, especially humans - are so-called due to the effect on the young elven psyche of watching generations of their friends and family pass away before they reach their first century. The exact effects can vary, but the usual result is a deep and abiding loneliness and difficulty making connections. It is from this commonality that the word takes its current meaning.
I have a clue. A clue to my mother’s killer. My brothers and sister are grown and independent. I have the equipment I needed. The skills I trained for. Decades of waiting are done. I am ready to find who killed my mother and see justice done.
The guards didn’t believe there was a connection. Just felt it was a bad area. Bad luck. I don’t know if they were fools or corrupt. She died in the same way my step-father did seven years earlier. I think she found his killer - or his killer found her.
Her Academae “colleagues” didn’t even turn up to her funeral, let alone help avenge her. She had taken a sabbatical while she raised her children and tried to find her husband’s killer, and seven years was too long for humans to remember her, it seems. The other elves never turned up either but then they were probably glad to be rid of her.
My mother always told me not to hate my father for leaving us when I was twenty. She was “tainted” - her father was drow. My father’s relatives cut him off when he married her. They ended up leaving the Forest to come and teach at the Academae, far away from other elves. When I was born here a hundred and twenty years ago the taint showed in my eyes. My mother said my father tried to cope with the shunning. Held on until I could walk, talk and reason. When he realised my stutter meant I would never be able to carry on his family legacy of wizardry it broke his heart. He left us to go back to his parents. The forest. Start a new family while he was still young enough to do so.
My mother raised me. She let me read anything I wanted from her library. When I turned thirty she got permission for me to study in the Academae library. When I turned fifty she started trying to find me an apprenticeship. I became a journeyman eight times - but nothing seemed right. Everything was hard. My mother praised me - said it took elves longer to learn, but when they did it stuck. I learned almost as fast as a human. She didn’t understand - I was raised around humans, with human nannies and teachers younger than me and human learning speed would always be ‘normal’ to me.
I started hanging out with some rougher kids, even running with some of the gangs while I was a journeyman. That’s how my mother and my step-father met. I was apprenticed to Jakthion and had to make journeyman alchemist before my mother would agree to go out with him. Once they were together I started running with the wilder kids full time. Got a name only kids would dream up - “Dark Knife” on account of a habit of throwing knives in pitch blackness. Met the first girl I thought I’d marry on the Shingles, and was dumped three years later in the Vaults. Still, she married the one she dumped me for and is a grandmother now.
Tormiel, 27, is my oldest half-elf brother. Cassariel, 32, is sister - with two children of her own now. Jakthion, 22, is my youngest brother and is named for my step-father, who died while my mother was still pregnant. After giving birth she became obsessed - something I now understand. I helped raise Jakthion, and when he was seven I was suddenly his only parent.
I didn’t make my mother’s mistake. I stayed careful. I started an Alchemy store. Employed the kids. Made sure they were educated properly. Got them apprenticeships. Got them set up. Prepared myself. When I asked questions I was careful, and I was discrete. I burned to run out. I would have done it just ten years earlier. But I waited. Fifteen years.
One of the kids I used to run with ran a pawnbrokers - let’s be honest, a fence - told me one day he had recieved a ring that matched my mother’s Arcane Bond. I couldn’t afford it and he wouldn’t tell me where he got it - claimed it was honour, but I think it was fear. He got cancer. I turned up with something for the pain. Sat with him when it got bad, and he started having trouble breathing. He cried a lot. Talked about the “old days” as if they were some golden period. Called me by my old gang name. Before he passed away he told me who he had gotten the ring from. Nothing I can bring to the guard, and his “associates” still have the ring.
I have a clue. A clue to my mother’s killer. My brothers and sister are grown and independent. I have the equipment I needed. The skills I trained for. Decades of waiting are done. I am ready to find who killed my mother and see justice - or at least revenge - done.
BUILD
I’ve put a build in below, but honestly there’s a lot of ways this character could go with some very minor tweaks. As currently written he’s an all rounder but it would be easy to go more skill (Mindchemist), more healing (Chirurgeon) or even dedicated combatant.
I’d be interested in picking up more Alchemist, with a splash of Rogue
PERSONALITY
Despite being the Elven equivalent of 17, Tal is fairly mature. He’s held down his urge for vengeance long enough, and now he’ll ride it where it leads.
His tendency to keep changing who he hangs out with to avoid seeing death means he has had a “taste” of a lot of different lives with Korvosa. In some ways he’s the jaded voice of experience. Underneath everything, however, is an optimistic teenager who wants to see the world.
Growing up in a city that worships Abadar he has learned to obey laws - or at least look he is - but he had had enough issues with authority that he tends to go around it where he can, seeing it more as an impediment than anything else. He is unashamedly good though.
Elven Alchemist 1
120 years old, CG.
Str 10 Dex 18 Con 8 Int 16 Wis 10 Cha 10
F 2(+2-1+1) R 6(+2+4) W +0
HP = 9 (fav)
Init +6
T1: Orphaned (+2 craft)
T2: Forlorn (+1 Fort save)
F1: Breadth of Experience (all knowledges and professions can be used untrained, and at +2)
Brew Potion
Alchemy
Bomb +1d6
Elven Fleet-footed
Elven Silent hunter
Darkvision & Light Blindness
Elven Immunities
Skills
Craft: Alchemy +9 = 3c 1r 3a 2t (+1 if crafting)
Disable Device +8 = 3c 1r 4a
Know: Loc +8 = 2f 3a 3special
Spellcraft +7 = 3c 1r 3a
Know:Arc +5 = 3c 2f 3a
Stealth +5 = 1r 4a
Perception +4 = 3c 1r
Heal +4 = 3c 1r
Acrobatics +4 = 4a
Sleight +4 = 3c 4a
Disguise +1 = 1r
Survival +0 = 3c
Equipment (105gp - not sure we really get max)
Alchemist’s kit 25
Leather armour 10
Healer’s Kit 50
Dagger x5 10
10 remaining.
Extracts (2/day)
Blend
Crafter’s Fortune
Cure Light Wounds
Disguise Self
Jump
Shield
True Strike
