The Adventures of the Heroes of Happenstance

This is a history, first of my Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Character, then of the adventures and misadventures of his adventuring group, the Heroes of Happenstance, as seen through his eyes. Glad to have you visiting.

What do I say about my past? As little as possible.
My name is Talian. Talian, usually called Li. Family name? I don't have one. I don't have a family. City of origen? I am one hundred seventy-one years old. My origens are long gone. The place that I call home, then? Any forest in the Realms is my home. Of towns, I will have none.
I was born in Silverymoon, the youngest of my parents' three children. My older brother and sister were long grown by the time I arrived, and my parents were well along in years, even for elves. Silver elves, moon elves. Living in a city--to this day, I'm not sure why. My family was not well-off, but quite respectable, at least in their own minds. My father was a bowyer and fletcher, who managed to impart to me his art, if nothing else. My mother cooked for a small inn nearby. I grew up clean and well-fed, but nothing more than that. Still, I knew gratitude for it as the years went by and I made friends who hadn't those luxuries.
My friends. Now there's a sour topic. I don't know exactly how I fell in with my group of rowdies, but I do know it happened very young. I couldn't have been more than twenty or so. I remember very few names. Most of them aren't worth remembering. But they showed me a whole different side of life: a shady side, a frightening side, a side where the only things you could depend on were your wits and your reflexes. I learned about living in fear and living in filth, and I learned the ways my friends used to escape from what would otherwise be their fate.
I was a decent pickpocket; only caught once or twice, and that to my father's embarassment and my mother's pain. I was better with locks: my slim elvish fingers were quite clever, even working in small spaces. With the locks, I was never caught--not in the act, at least, though my friends would often enough set off alarms that I had quite a record of petty theivery.
Habyln got us caught most often. Not that he was clumsy, nor stupid--in fact, he was the brains of our little group of miscreants. He just reached too high. But we had no one else to look to who could keep us out of trouble with the thieves' guild and still keep my friends and their families eating regularly.
Why was I doing this, when I didn't need what we stole? I suppose I could say it was to keep my friends living, but that would be a lie. None of us felt much loyalty for the others. At the time I said it was for the excitement. I had lived a sheltered, peaceful life--well, begun to live it, as I was still a very much a child by elvish counting. Thieving was what I lived for; it gave me something to do more interesting than sitting in my father's workroom all day, crafting arrow after arrow. But there was another reason, too.
Habyln was beautiful.
I was attracted to Habyln from the first time I saw him, though I didn't understand that then. He was human, and I'm not usually attracted cross-species, but there are exceptions. I would have done anything for him, and I really didn't know why. Silverymoon is a very open city, where races mingle easily and no one should be condemned for what he can't control. Should be. I knew, though, that there was something wrong about being attracted to other males, so I denied it, even to myself, for many years. Silverymoon is a very clean city too. It doesn't really have a decrepit or sleazy district--regardless of my friends' situations, they were never really in danger of starving, for Lady Alustrial would rather help those in need than have them do ill to help themselves. Nonetheless, there was a theives' guild it hurt to run afoul of, and there were places for wenching if you knew where to look. My friends went there often, and I with them--and from the time I turned twenty-nine, I was familiar as any of the others with the acts that went on behind closed doors. But there was nothing behind it, and at some level, I knew that.
I was thirty-three when Habyln got us caught for the last time--at least, for me. I don't even remember what we were thieving anymore, only that it should have been routine. It wasn't. There was an alarm spell in a place no one expected. It was our ill luck that there were several city guards passing by just at that moment. We were all caught and sentenced to a moon's worth of labor. We spent the days repairing streets and walls--or at least I did. I never saw any of the others during that time. Oddly, it was then that I discovered something which has helped me often since. I am five feet two inches short. But I did the labor of any human a head taller than I, and I did it more easily. Once I started doing hard labor, I discovered a strength I hadn't known I had.
All this, of course, was mortifying for my parents. If they had asked, I would have been released to their home for nights. My father would not allow it. He had never saved me from what he refered to as "my own stupidity" before, and he would not indulge me or my mother now--my mother being the only one who looked for the indulgence. My father was sure that if I paid for "my crimes," eventually I would abandon them. So I spent nights during that time in the local prison. It wasn't a particularly pleasant place, but it was clean and we were fed. I was locked up every night in a cell with Owry, a half-elf whose crime was also thieving. He was an odd one, very quiet, with a dark, fey look about him. Some of the others on our crew thought he must be part drow. He would never say. Mosly we got on well enough by not talking--after all, there wasn't much energy left for talking after a long day's labor.
To make a long story short, well, some things don't require talking, and Owry shocked me by climbing onto my cot with me on night and showing me how to do a goodly number of them.
I was released a wiser, if much less happy, soul. I went back to my parents' house and set to every task my father gave me with a will. He was teaching me bowyery then, in hopes of occupying more of my time. It didn't work. Oh, I enjoyed learning, but I was drawn back to my circle of thieves quickly and inevitably. And now I knew why. What nights I didn't spend working with them, I spent out on the streets in the worst part of town, much as I once had with my friends. Only now I wasn't wenching. I knew what I was looking for, and again, it was there, if you knew how and where to look for it. My mother wondered why I slept so late in the day on the days when she was not working, but for the most part, my parents were very happy with me. It seemed to them that my time doing hard labor had made me an honest and hard-working son.
I did quite well for a time--a few months, I believe. But nothing lasts, and one night when I had gone out "hunting," I got caught in the wrong bed for the first time. Habyln and the rest of our lot were out looking for their own pleasure, and our paths crossed in an unlikely place at an unfortunate time.
I ran. It was all I could do. But they caught me. I didn't understand why they were so angry then. I do now, though I won't claim it makes any more sense to me than it did to that scared twenty-two year old. They felt betrayed. They had taken me in as one of their own, had called me a friend--though never meant it--for years, and now they felt I had been lying to them. I wasn't what they had thought I was.
They beat me bloody and senseless. They didn't break any bones, but I think that's mostly luck. They used their fists, they used their boots . . . and I still have a ragged scar above my left eyebrow where a belt used as an improvised flail nearly took my eye out. They left me there on the streets to die, and I do think they meant me to die, for there were those in that part of town who would kill me first and then see if I had anything worth stealing. But as I said, I am much stronger than I have any right to be. I pulled myself up and staggered home to my mother's loving care. She never even wondered how I'd wound up beaten so. My father probably wondered, but never asked. I began recovering, and as soon as I was well enough I resolved to become the best fletcher and bowyer my father could make me.
I couldn't escape so easily, though. About half a year later I was walking at night--for the urge to hunt could not be so easily denied--when they caught me. No, not Habyln and the others: they'd had all they wanted to do with me. These were silent and moved swiftly. They had me at knife-point before I could think twice. I could have twisted away. I could easily have broken free, and probably broken the arm of the knife-wielder in the process. But they didn't expect protest and I offered none. My hands were tied and I was blindfolded, and they led me to an interview with the thieves' guild.
I never saw the man I spoke to. Maybe that's for the best--he didn't sound very happy. Evidently most of the guild now knew why Habyln's picklock had been so violently expelled from his crowd. Habyln's group continued its thieving, though they did so at a disadvantage. And if they no longer wanted me, well, someone else was unwilling to let me go. I was still a very good picklock, and what's more, I was a charming, elven picklock, with good manners, who could presumably seduce the young ladies or gentlemen of some of the finer homes in Silverymoon and quietly relieve them of their wealth while they were not expecting it.
I refused to become part of the thieves' guild, but no one gets off that easily. I became an independent who occasionally took a job for the guild. I became, basically, a very high-priced whore, both with my skill and myself.
I took a job or two a year for the guild. The rest of the time I was an honest elf's hardworking son. And more, I managed to please my parents no end, for the occasional job for the guild actually did let me into a better-off circle of cohorts. I was better than Habyln's group ever expected, and I didn't get caught. The ones I stole from never knew it was me. I began to make friends with not only those I was set to seduce, but with their friends as well. And more, I found that I wasn't the only one attracted to other males. For the first time, I discovered what it was to have a lover, rather than to have a whore or be one.
However, higher gains meant higher risks. I thanked Mask more than once for the skills I had learned with Habyn's group--climbing in and out of the wrong windows was very much a part of my life, as was the occasional tightrope. Oddly, I had less to fear from getting caught thieving than I did from getting caught in the wrong bed. I managed to avoid that fate for several years, before it finally caught up with me, but when it did, it did so in a big way.
I don't remember who it was. All I remember is that it was a job for the thieves' guild and a beautiful elven male and a two-story window. We heard them coming in and I hastened for that window. The job was already done; the worse danger was being caught in bed. It was night, and the house wasn't exactly in the best part of town. What I had been told to steal was some sort of magical item--a token or statuette--that didn't look like much and whose owners didn't know what they had. Mind you, it wasn't the worst part of town either, though, and there were guards to avoid. I was out the window quickly and off into the darker parts of town, trying to avoid detection. I couldn't have been a hundred yards away, though, when I heard a loud alarm sounding. I didn't know, then, if it was due to my theft or not, all I knew is that I had to find somewhere to hide, and quickly. I raced through shadowly streets, looking for sanctuary.
When a voice called out to me and gestured me into a small, neat but old house, I sent a prayer to Tymora and took the offer. Two women hid me in a large trunk with a lock which looked as though it hadn't been opened in years. I heard the guards come through and search, but the state of the trunk combined with the fact that I was small enough to fit in it while most others wouldn't sent them on to the next house. They were indeed looking for me. The women let me back out, but one of them was lacking her cloak now, and I knew I was in trouble. She was dressed in chainmail--or barely dressed in chainmail, as it covered her breasts and a small portion from her waist to the to the very top of her thighs; and she held a wicked-looking whip in one hand. I knew, then, what I had fallen into.
The women were priestesses of Loviatar, and they had found themselves a victim to add to their goddess's strength and pleasure. They had me in the celler before my cramped muscles could protest and chained my hands to an iron torch sconce and my feet to a heavy brick on the floor. They gagged me so I could not make a sound. Then they beat me, and the less said about that the better. I still bear the wicked scars of whip and chain and flail on my ribs, my shoulders, and my back. But as I hung there, my muscles began to unkink from their cramped stay in the trunk, and I began to think past the pain to hopes of escape.
I had often taken on disagreeable and difficult tasks during the years since my first stint at hard labor to keep up the strength I had discovered then, and I hoped it would pay off now. When next a priestess came close enough, I ignored her "tools" and wrapped my legs around her for leverage. Then I swung all my weight into it and pulled the lamp sconce from the wall. I came crashing down on the first priestess. The second I clubbed with the chain still binding my hands. I straightended my clothing over my wounds and staggered out of the house as quickly as I could, hoping to melt into the night.
But Tymora was not with me that night. I fell out the doorway and into the waiting arms of the city guard, who were still prowling for the theif of earlier that night. It felt like a hundred years ago to me by that time, and after my ordeal with the priestesses of Loviatar, I had nothing left to fight them with. I handed over the item I had stolen and went quietly, more dragged than led. I finally collapsed so that one had to carry me. When I cried out in pain as my wounds were touched, they finally noticed the blood seeping through my clothing. They took me first to a surgeon for healing, for a thief obviously does not merit healing spells. I admitted to the theft quickly, and kept the thieves' guild out of it, trouble with them being the only thing that could possibly make my life worse at that point.
I spent the next two moons or so in a dungeon. I should have been doing labor or paying in some other fashion, but whatever powers were looking down at that moment blessed me, and with a look at the wounds from my encounter with the priestesses of Loviatar, it was decided that I'd suffered enough.
I was forty-two then, and at loose ends for the first time in my life. My parents took me back again and this time I was everything they thought. I became the wonderful son who did everything right. I had learned my father's skill well enough that I did nearly as much work as he did. I no longer went out at night much. The thieves' guild no longer wanted me, as I was now far too well known for their tastes. Some of my former "friends" disdained me, but others--those with whom I had truly been friends and not just feigning it--refused to believe the charges. I still visited them, though not as often. I made no pretense for the first time in my life, with one exception: no one but the few of my lovers who still spoke with me knew that I perfered males to females in my bed.
I no longer went hunting, but as I said, I still had a lover or two. One was Gahlm, the first son of a rather prominent elven family. I was forty-five when two memebers of the guard caught climbing out of his window. Everyone remembered who I was and assumed I had been trying to steal something. They wanted to put me on labor again, but I had nothing stolen, so they didn't have anything but my supposed intent, which I protested loudly. Finally, I protested loudly enough that they brought me before the Lady Alustrial herself. Normally they would have done no such thing, but my previous offenses were great enough, and I had never before tried to deny my thieving, so they weren't quite sure what else to do with me.
Born and bred in Silverymoon, I had a native's almost childish belief in Lady Alustrial's unquestionable goodness and fairness. Even she had a difficult time believing that theft had not been my intent, thought. Finally, she asked me if I had anything to say in my defense. I told her I did, but I would say it to her and her alone. The guards with me were not happy, but they left me there at her order, bound with chains thin enough I could probably have broken them had I tried. I looked at the Lady Alustrial and put my fate in her hands, and proceded to tell her the one thing that could possibly save me: the truth.
My faith was not misplaced. She not only believed me, she also felt sympathy for my plight. She had me released, and hugged me before sending me home. My parents never knew of that incident with the guards, much less of my meeting with Lady Alustrial. To them I was still the perfect son, and remained so for another year.
I was forty-six when I met Zhan. He was beautiful and wordly and I loved him from the moment he set foot in my father's workroom, having been directed there by the local weapons shop where my father's and my goods sold, looking for a dozen arrows to be custom-made. He was a fighter passing though town, it seemed, and he was looking for sturdier arrows than common-make. He said he tended to be a bit hard on them. And he looked at me, and he smiled, and I swear his eyes stared into my soul. I managed to take the order and get a good picture of what he was looking for without tripping over my tongue too badly. Still, by the third stumble, he put a hand on my shoulder and said one word: "Relax." From that point on, I knew I was in trouble.
Zhan continued to hang around the workroom, supposedly to make sure I had the right idea on the arrows, but even when my father and I were both working on them, he never took his gaze off me. During this time, my brother came to visit. I had met my sister when I was seven or eight, but this was the first time I had seen my parents' oldest child. He seemed likeable enough, he and his wife. They were staying with us for a few weeks.
It was an afternoon. My mother had the day off from working, and my parents and brother and his wife decided to walk around the town. I said I would stay and finish some of the work to be done. They told me they would be back around nightfall. Zhan showed up in the afternoon as usual. Like so many things in my life, I remember how I wound up in bed with Zhan, but I still can't figure out how it happened. I know that makes no sense, but it's true, believe me. Unfortunately, my brother twisted his ankle while out walking. Evidently, he wanted his wife to see Silverymoon, for she had never been there before. So he left her with our parents and limped home on his own to bind his ankle. He heard noise from my room when he got home and was worried, so he charged right in.
My brother knew exactly what was going on. I suppose it was rather difficult to miss. He backed out fast, but it was too late for me. Zhan left. I sat in my room and waited for judgement to arrive. It did, in the form of my father, a few hours later. He cursed and swore and delivered a speech about disapointment and proper behavior and wondered what in the Nine Hells he was to do with me. I said nothing. I took it all silently. I tried to go back to my life.
But my father had made a lot of noise in his tirade. Not only did my own family scorn me, but anyone nearby had also heard, and avoided me like the plague. Word got to my friends, and even those who had been my lovers disdained me, seeing only risks to their own standing. I let them keep their reputations intact. I had no heart for vengence. But I couldn't live like that. I found myself growing more and more sullen and taciturn, until I could bear it no longer. Then I packed my few belongings into a pack, put on a cloak, made sure my daggers were in its sheathes, collected a newly finished bow and two dozen arrows in a quiver from the workroom, and confronted my parents--my brother was long-gone by this time. I told them I didn't understand this at all. My father had put up with me for years, had always taken me back after my thieving. My mother had always loved me unconditionally, had bound up my wounds without wondering how I got them. And now they would have nothing to do with me, over something I had no control over.
With that, I turned and left. I was almost to the door when I heard someone's footsteps behind me. I didn't turn around, but my mother caught me anyway. She pressed something into my hand and kissed me quickly on the cheek. Then she ran back up the stairs. I left the house, closing the door carefully behind me. What I held in my hand was a small pouch of silver pieces and a few of gold. I have not seen my mother since.
I headed for the gates of Silverymoon, ignoring the looks I felt dogging my every footstep. On the way out, I passed the palace of the Lady Alustrial--ironicly, the one person who knew that which had been my darkest secret and did not condemn me. I reached the gates of the city early in the afternoon and thought to leave without trouble. At the gates, though, a member or the guard stopped me. He eyed me oddly, as if I were not what he'd expected. Then he handed me a sword and a paper, telling me he'd been charged to give them to me before letting me pass. I took them, surprized, and went on. When I was well clear of the city walls I attached the sword in its scabbard to my belt and looked at the paper. I didn't read well, so I couldn't fathom why someone would have given me a letter, but a letter it was. I sounded out the words carfully, and fortunately, the hand that wrote them had spelled them just as they sounded. They said, "Tri Harulds Holdfast." And when I sounded out the signature, I found it the note was from the Lady Alustrial.
I took the advice, not knowing why it was given. I had no idea where else I would go, and no idea what I would do when I got there. I'd had some idea of going to a large city and hooking up with the thieves' guild there, but Lady Alustrial had saved me once and I would do as she suggested for that reason, if no other. Travling alone on the road, a small, seeminly defenseless elf, was not the brightest thing I've ever done. I was accosted on the way, of course. I tried to fight using sword and dagger, but I knew nothing about fighting with them. I wound up using them mostly as bludgeoning objects and depended largely on my strength. I took several wounds and probably would have been killed if it hadn't been for the intervention of a human woman. She waded in fearlessly and the bandits, seeing someone who actually knew how to use the sharp edge of the blade, fled quickly. I was bleeding badly by that time, and the woman bound my wounds and helped me the rest of the way to the Herald's Holdfast, where I paid most of the money my mother had given me for healing.
On the way there, the woman explained that she was a ranger and had been nearby and heard the sounds of fighting from the road. I asked her why she had intervened, and she told me it was the only decent thing to do. This was an entirely new idea for me--I was used to looking out for myself and my friends, and letting other people find their own way out of their problems. The ranger's name was Califar, and she stayed with me several days in the Herald's Holdfast, learning part of my story. She asked me where I was going and what I planned to do, and I said I didn't know. I was almost out of money and I had no idea what to do next. So when she said I could go with her, I jumped at the chance. I asked where, and she said simply, "Moonwood."
I never intended to become a ranger, but first loyalty to Califer, then genuine interest in what she did, caused me to study from her. She taught me the ways of the forest and the ways of the seasons, which I had never paid much attention to in Silverymoon. She taught me weapons and skill with animals. She never asked me about my past, but waited patiently for me to confide in her. I did so, bit by bit, over the course of several years. When I finally told her all of it, I cried. Even now, a hundred thirty years later, there's still a lot of bitterness at my family's rejection. Then, when the hurt was much fresher and I had simply burried it for the intervening years, telling Cali caused me simply to fall apart. She held onto me like the child I wasn't quite through being and didn't condemn me. I have never in all my years met a ranger who has condemned me for being who I am or what I am. Then she told me that she had been set along the road from Silverymoon to the Herald's Holdfast deliberately, to watch for me. She wasn't sure, but she rather suspected that the request had originally come from Lady Alustrial.
I learned, in Moonwood, how to laugh again. I learned how to live without fear, without pain, as the wild things did. I began to worship Mielikki as my goddess, rather than praying to whomever was most convenient. I still would wander into a town occasionally, hunting, but more carefully, so as not to get caught. When Cali died, sometime near her fiftieth year, of a coughing sickness, I had been in Moonwood more than fifteen years. The forest didn't stop needing a guardian just because Califar died, so I stayed on. But I was still very young for an elf, and not so experienced as a ranger--Moonwood wasn't the most exciting place. I enjoyed the solitude as a contrast to my former life, which had been ruled by my contacts with family and friends.
I was somewhere near sixty when I heard about the foregathering. Another ranger--the first I had met except for Califar--sought me out to tell me of a gathering of rangers. A time of sharing and games and such. So at the appointed time, I went. I could not leave Moonwood for long, in conscience, but to be with people again did have its allure. It was a fun time, and when I left there, I was not alone. Bolten was another who perfered men to women, and we became first friends, then lovers. We went back to Moonwood together, and he is there still, though there's nothing more between us than friendship.