Ferlarys (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silverhealer) wrote2025-09-18 08:58 pm
silverhealer) wrote2025-09-18 08:58 pm
Character Info + Backstory
STATS:
Core
Name: Ferlarys
Race: Dragonborn (Silver)
Age: 45 as of 1492 DR
Background: Noble, sort of. I wouldn't argue if you told me it had to be Outlander or something.
Class: Ranger
-Favored Terrain: Forest
-Favored Enemies: Beasts
--(yes, yes, shut up, it's basic. She earned her initial level in ranger by learning how to hunt and forage after striking out on her own from Tymanther like the impulsive teenager she was.)
Style: Two-Weapon Fighting
Abilities (rolled 4d6 drop lowest):
STR: 10
DEX: 15/17/19 (+2 at level 4, +2 at level 19)
CON: 13/14/16 (+1 at level 12, +2 at level 16)
INT: 13/15 (+2 at level 8)
WIS: 15/16 (+1 at level 12)
CHA: 14
Proficiencies: Nature(exp), Insight(exp), Persuasion, Survival, History
Gear:
-Short sword (belted)
-Dagger (sheath combined with sword scabbard)
-Crossbow (belted opposite sword)
-Leather armor
-linen clothing under, dyed deep blue and purple
-spell component pouch
-Beautifully embroidered but functionally awful bag of holding, barely holds camping supplies and extra clothing and everything else has to go into a normal bag. ("Freebie" from the Neverwinter Adventurer's Guild after buying enough from guild stores; Neverember clearly skimped on their commission.)
-Backpack containing assorted rations, rope, flint and tinderbox, healer's kit, and unlit torches
Spells (Assuming nerf to level 5 for most games):
1st level - 4 slots
-Speak with Animals
-Cure Wounds
-Detect Magic
2nd level - 2 slots
-Darkvision
Levels after 5, for reference:
6: No new spells or slots
7: 1 new 2nd level slot, new spell: Barkskin
8: No changes in magic
9: 2 3rd level slots, 1 new spell: Pass Without Trace
10: No changes in magic
11: 1 new 3rd level slot, 1 new spell: Plant Growth
12: No changes in magic
13: 1 4th level slot, 1 new spell: Spike Growth
14: No changes in magic
15: 1 new 4th level slot, 1 new spell: Water Walk
16: No changes in magic
17: 1 5th level slot, 1 new 4th level slot, 1 new spell: Nondetection
18: No changes in magic
19: 1 new 5th level slot, 1 new spell: Locate Creature
20: No changes in magic
Animal Companion:
Name: Arrow
Species: Hawk
-She originally had a dog, who simply grew too old to continue after thirteen years of adventuring. The Guild was ready to help a senior member and had a sale recommended from the Neverwinter Mews. So far, neither of her animal companions have been tamed from the wild. Maybe next time she'll have a deer or something. She'd be an old lady by then, though. Raptors live a while.
BACKSTORY:
(Feel free to look up anything you don't understand on the FR Wiki, they've got pages for everything)
Tymanther and the Refusal of Qallim
(Section warning: referenced forced pregnancy)
Ferlarys wasn't a troubled child in the slightest. She was a peace-loving girl who was always the first in a group of children to help up someone who tripped or call a stop to a game if someone was injured. "Vigilant", they nicknamed her. At first, she was eager to fulfill her duties to her clan, the very image of a proud and loyal citizen. She accepted the prospect of military training without a single stutter.
But questions began wearing cracks for doubt to slip through. If religion was simply another form of slavery, why did it seem those in the outlying towns who worshiped gods chose their deities and when and how to pray? Ilmater in particular was the first reason she found to outright say, no, the old ways are wrong. How could the god of the oppressed and the suffering ever be a slaver? Had he held sway in their ancestral home of Abeir, his followers would have surely helped liberate them from their dragon oppressors. And on that note, if the dragons of this world were just as dangerous and oppressive as those of Abeir, and if there were no good dragons, was the entire world wrong about metallic dragons?
And if they were wrong about this, what else were they wrong about? What else were they stubbornly holding onto from their grandparents' days in another world that they no longer needed?
Her body knew the answer, though she'd tried to deny it.
None of her elders would suspect she would go on to spurn the qallim, eggbearing/-siring duty, and strike out into the wilds. She got along with her appointed mate, Xarkax. They suspected--correctly--they'd even already had a dalliance or two.
She'd seen the changes in other women's bodies as they bore fertilized eggs, as they roamed the city with hatchlings in their arms. She'd dismissed the strange, queasy feeling she got when she imagined those changes happening to her. (Her passion for healing would uncover a name for this feeling much later: tokophobia. Or something akin to it for eggbearing creatures.). Her clan needed her, and a bit of nervousness (that was quite a lot more than a bit) shouldn't stop her.
But as the time to fulfill this duty came nearer, she allowed herself, for perhaps the first and only time, to put herself first.
Because they were wrong about that, too. Wrong in a way she could not abide and would not perpetuate.
With only military drills to protect her from the wilderness, she packed everything she could think of and left to fend for herself in the nearby Methwood. But, of course, that was too close to home. Once she had a handle on hunting and foraging, she struck out for more distant horizons, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the people she once called her clan, the people who would claim a triumphant history of liberation and then turn around and tell their citizens they were not their own.
Taste of Adventure, Call to Healing
Her travels brought her to new friends: The Shadow Delvers, an adventuring party working out of Sembia. Putting up a front of mere treasure hunters, they stole into the many ruins and unearthed hoards and catacombs that had become accessible when the Spellplague had dropped Tymanther onto the land nearly eight decades ago. While they did indeed retrieve whatever powerful or useful spoils they could, it was to deliver them to their clients: a resistance movement against the occupying Netherese magocracy and their enforced worship of the evil goddess Shar. Without a second thought, she joined them. They needed someone who knew how to track and find their way through a hunt. Someone who knew her medicine. They lacked a magical healer, after all.
She didn't grow much as an adventurer in her time with them. Her role was support, and more often than not, she was tending an injured ally in the hideout, the cellar of a burned-down temple to Lliira, while the others were out questing. But that was fine with her. If the world needed a healer, she would be the best damned one she could be. It worked out perfectly.
Until it didn't.
Scarcely five months after she'd joined them, the Netherese shadovar discovered what they really were and tracked the party home. They dropped a freezing sphere into the hideout and immediately barred their exit with an arcane lock. It exploded into a burst of deadly frost, coating the inside of their little abandoned storage cellar with ice and killing every last one.
Except the single one resistant to extreme cold. The explosion flung Ferlarys into a stack of crates that collapsed on her, hiding her from view as the shadovar gathered the flash-frozen corpses of her allies. Because she rarely traveled with them, they never thought to search for another.
Barely alive, she dragged herself out and fled until she collapsed. She was lucky the next person to find her was a kindly old merchant. When she came to, it would be in their wagon, well away from Sembia to parts unknown to her.
They were heading west, to the Sword Coast, where Ferlarys would depart their company in the grand city of Waterdeep.
Waterdeep and the Dawnrivers
(Section warning: forced pregnancy, child neglect)
Ferlarys had her fill of adventure. She sought work as a ranger--the profession, not the player class--and found it, tending and protecting the hunting grounds of an unusual noble family.
What made them unusual? They were sun elves, and instead of communing with nature and their creator god, they immersed themselves in the balance of ledgers and the calling of commerce. Elsalor and Firtrilath Dawnriver had apparently lived in Evermeet once. Gods only know why they left to make names for themselves marketing white deer pelts, citing their elven heritage as a claim to the forest's bounty.
In hiring Ferlarys to tend their grounds, she learned their secret. They weren't using their heritage to lure out mythical white deer at all. They were simply breeding albino deer, and their distinct coloration and the inbreeding inherent in keeping their coats consistent made them vulnerable to predators.
This was not the natural way of things, but it was a peaceful enough job that Ferlarys was willing to overlook it, after her harrowing ordeal in Sembia. They came to trust her enough they would come to her with other things. After missing several seasons, only sending letters asking about her alchemy skills, they finally showed. And Firtrilath was heavily pregnant--certainly with more than one. It was not cause for celebration. They demanded she test their contraceptive, certain their apothecary had been trying to sabotage them. She found nothing, to their irritation. But she felt nothing but sympathy for the otherwise unpleasant elf. She'd escaped unwanted motherhood, so it was heartbreaking to see someone else go through it.
They missed another hunting season with the birth of identical triplets, nearly unheard of among elves. Surely, between the alchemical failure and the unusual birth, this was a sign from Corellon (though, if it was, Ferlarys was not impressed. Were there no willing elves to carry the vessels for returning souls?)
But they did not give it any spiritual thought and they did not make good parents. They even rattled off throwaway childhood names: Mirieth, Lirieth, Nirieth.
They should have given their children up for adoption, really. Their children knew well they were unwanted, and quickly grew into little terrors in blatantly unloved frustration. When their household staff refused to watch them while they were away for their misbehavior, they began taking them with them on hunting trips...and leaving them with Ferlarys.
She hadn't wanted to bear a child, but she took readily to caring for them. For the first time, the children had someone listening to and encouraging them. Of course she'll teach Mirieth what she's doing when she's looking for new predator tracks. Of course she'll lend Lirieth pinches of fur and feathers for spell components, and shoo spiders from window ledges when she develops a severe fear of them. And she'll never forget Nirieth says he's a boy, even when his parents resent him too much to remember. Traveling with them on hunting trips to see her became a highlight of their little lives. They even taught her Elvish, sharing their education with her in return.
When tragedy struck and the Dawnriver couple fell gravely ill, Ferlarys did all she could to save them. But her medicines were not enough. The children insisted she stay with them. And because she listened, they listened, too. They remembered her stories about leaving Tymanther, and instead of being called "mother", she was their "auntie".
She did away with their cruel manipulation of the albino deer and instead focused on simple leatherworking and alchemy (which involved getting in touch with guilds and incidentally settling several longstanding bets when she revealed their secret) as she allowed the deer population on their land to correct itself. It didn't bring in enough money to keep their affluent home in Sea Ward, and they ended up in the (still nice) North Ward. Such was her life in Waterdeep for the next ten years.
Nymzen and Adventure Again
The comfort of domestic routine would break with a single chance encounter. As Ferlarys and her wards, coming into working age as teenagers now, were on their way home from a trip to the market, they nearly collided with a drow man on a giant spider mount. Lirieth, deathly afraid of spiders, was unable to help herself. She shrieked as if in mortal danger. While Waterdeep, as many major cities, allowed drow to walk its streets if they caused no trouble, a young high-elven woman screaming for her life with a drow nearby--riding a spider, at that!--looked very much like trouble. A watchwoman's whistle pierced Lirieth's screams, and as Liri fainted into her sister's arms, Ferlarys watched as the drow man dismounted his spider, his head down, silently mouthing his explanation. From the look of what she could only describe as "resigned horror" on his face, he didn't think she or the other watchpeople racing to join her would accept it.
Spider aside, there was little in his demeanor to suggest he was from the Underdark. He wore the vestments of an acolyte of the halfling goddess Yondalla, of all things!
So Ferlarys stepped in, and explained Lirieth's arachnophobia to the watch. Perhaps it was her silver scales linking her to benevolent silver dragons. Perhaps dragonborn were developing a reputation for honor outside of Tymanther. Or maybe they were simply willing to accept the explanation from anyone who wasn't drow. The watch had the man bring his spider to the stables and left him to his business in the city. He thanked Ferlarys profusely, and Lirieth insisted on inviting him for supper in apology for nearly getting him arrested. When asked, he obligingly told his story. His name was Nymzen, and he'd lived in a nearby halfling village for the last forty years or so. It was time to broaden his horizons, and adventuring seemed like a way to earn a living in the process. Unfortunately, the Waterdeep Adventurer's Guild had turned him down. He'd been buying supplies to travel north to Neverwinter when he'd run into them. It had nothing but trouble recently, with a mad lich's attention and a recent volcanic eruption. They wouldn't turn down anyone.
This brought Ferlarys's adoptive niblings into an excited frenzy. She'd told them about her brief stint as an adventurer, and how free she'd felt with Tymanther at her back. They'd been urging her to give it another try. They could take care of themselves. She'd taught them how to fend for themselves and be smart about their resources.
She relented, and joined Nymzen. Off to Neverwinter they went. He was right, and they had no trouble joining the Guild.
Neverwinter: Growing Together
(Section Warning: domestic/intimate partner abuse (and a VERY incorrect response to it), mention of sexual abuse)
(Note: The Hero of Neverwinter isn't the chosen one, and the plot doesn't revolve around who they are. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time, multiple times, until they built a solid reputation. That said, I'm going to keep this generic because the plot of Neverwinter doesn't actually impact their plot in anything but the broadest of strokes.)
There was no shortage of work to do for Neverwinter. They took on mission after mission, going after necromancers, cultists, goblins, anyone giving Neverwinter or her allies trouble. She sent money and letters back to Waterdeep, sharing their stories as they made them. (One of them sent them to the Shadowfell briefly, and Ferlarys got to feel what "cold" was like for everyone else. That was...fun.)
As they adventured, she got to know Nymzen better. For his nearly four decades among halflings, he'd spent around seven in the Underdark, under the cruel thumb of Lolthite matriarchy. If anyone they dealt with was a strong-spoken woman (or femme-presenting person in general), Ferlarys had to do the talking, because Nymzen still shut down. She even had to watch her own tone, not that she was prone to forcefulness.
Despite his hardships, he'd come out of it all with a radiant resolve that Ferlarys found herself admiring more and more. He proved a fiercely loyal friend, and the way his eyes lit up when they talked, like a desert wanderer finding an oasis...this was a man in need of healing a wound no one could see. Afflictions of the mind and spirit were not exempt from her drive to provide relief.
Were she aiming for professional work, the rest of these events would not have happened, for good or ill.
When they barely survived a struggle against a horde of skeletons in cursed catacombs, she didn't hesitate when he asked her how dragonborn kiss. Neither of them seemed to want to stop at a kiss. His responses radiated such surprised delight, she assumed in the heat of the moment that she was somehow his first.
In a sense, she was. She was the first he'd wanted, start to finish, because Lolthite society is not kind to its men. But his mind had other ideas in the middle of the night. She woke to find he'd run off in a panic, and she had to track him down. When she did, he was...changed. There had been so much anger he'd been keeping under the surface, and his inability to enjoy intimacy without whatever awful inner demon had driven him off afterwards added more than he could bear.
When she found him demolishing a training dummy back at the Guild, she saw a man destroying himself. What she should have seen was a man who had forgotten he was a man, and not a feral beast. There was no reason behind his eyes, and she should have acted accordingly when dealing with him.
At least... That's what she still tells herself when she recalls the moment. He lashed out at her touch, just gentle claw tips on the arm, striking her.
In her defense, at least, she did not let it go entirely. Her childhood home had tried to walk over her autonomy, too. She told him in no uncertain terms he was getting one more chance... And in this case, she lucked out. Nymzen was not an innately violent person, despite his upbringing, and he never did so again. Had he been of even a slightly different disposition, it might have become a pattern. (Instead, he eventually doubled down on not spreading the despair inflicted on him and swore a paladin's oath, but that's his story, not hers)
Their adventures continued over the next year, including a trip to the Underdark where they had an argument over a pool of mind flayer larvae. Ferlarys argued it was wrong to kill any infant, and Nymzen argued these were infants who could only grow by destroying an innocent. Nymzen won that one, but Ferlarys refused to take part in poisoning the pool.
Yes, they were standing around arguing in an active mind flayer colony. They were very strong by this point, forged into mighty adventurers in the crucibles of danger.
Neverwinter never seemed to run out of problems.
And Ever Onward...
They married shortly after their first year at the Guild passed, and opened a clothing shop for an additional source of income. She wouldn't be able to adventure forever, after all, and Nymzen insisted they have somewhere to retire for the end of her life. She was so happy he was planning so far in advance it almost didn't hurt to be reminded she'd eventually leave all the elves she'd so foolishly surrounded herself with.
It's been about thirteen years since they joined the Guild now. For a profession that scared her away so easily at first, Ferlarys takes to it well. Their adventures have taken them to many places in the Sword Coast, from frigid Icewind Dale to the humid jungles of Chult. They try to visit Waterdeep whenever they can to spend time with the triplets in person, and with their beloved auntie and uncle both in the business, all three are showing interest in adventuring. Maybe they'll tackle Undermountain as a family one day.
Ferlarys can't imagine a better life, one more free and full of love. That it will end too soon for her new family, well, that's a matter for her nightmares.
She has her own clan, now. One who would never tell her she does not belong to herself.
Core
Name: Ferlarys
Race: Dragonborn (Silver)
Age: 45 as of 1492 DR
Background: Noble, sort of. I wouldn't argue if you told me it had to be Outlander or something.
Class: Ranger
-Favored Terrain: Forest
-Favored Enemies: Beasts
--(yes, yes, shut up, it's basic. She earned her initial level in ranger by learning how to hunt and forage after striking out on her own from Tymanther like the impulsive teenager she was.)
Style: Two-Weapon Fighting
Abilities (rolled 4d6 drop lowest):
STR: 10
DEX: 15/17/19 (+2 at level 4, +2 at level 19)
CON: 13/14/16 (+1 at level 12, +2 at level 16)
INT: 13/15 (+2 at level 8)
WIS: 15/16 (+1 at level 12)
CHA: 14
Proficiencies: Nature(exp), Insight(exp), Persuasion, Survival, History
Gear:
-Short sword (belted)
-Dagger (sheath combined with sword scabbard)
-Crossbow (belted opposite sword)
-Leather armor
-linen clothing under, dyed deep blue and purple
-spell component pouch
-Beautifully embroidered but functionally awful bag of holding, barely holds camping supplies and extra clothing and everything else has to go into a normal bag. ("Freebie" from the Neverwinter Adventurer's Guild after buying enough from guild stores; Neverember clearly skimped on their commission.)
-Backpack containing assorted rations, rope, flint and tinderbox, healer's kit, and unlit torches
Spells (Assuming nerf to level 5 for most games):
1st level - 4 slots
-Speak with Animals
-Cure Wounds
-Detect Magic
2nd level - 2 slots
-Darkvision
Levels after 5, for reference:
6: No new spells or slots
7: 1 new 2nd level slot, new spell: Barkskin
8: No changes in magic
9: 2 3rd level slots, 1 new spell: Pass Without Trace
10: No changes in magic
11: 1 new 3rd level slot, 1 new spell: Plant Growth
12: No changes in magic
13: 1 4th level slot, 1 new spell: Spike Growth
14: No changes in magic
15: 1 new 4th level slot, 1 new spell: Water Walk
16: No changes in magic
17: 1 5th level slot, 1 new 4th level slot, 1 new spell: Nondetection
18: No changes in magic
19: 1 new 5th level slot, 1 new spell: Locate Creature
20: No changes in magic
Animal Companion:
Name: Arrow
Species: Hawk
-She originally had a dog, who simply grew too old to continue after thirteen years of adventuring. The Guild was ready to help a senior member and had a sale recommended from the Neverwinter Mews. So far, neither of her animal companions have been tamed from the wild. Maybe next time she'll have a deer or something. She'd be an old lady by then, though. Raptors live a while.
BACKSTORY:
(Feel free to look up anything you don't understand on the FR Wiki, they've got pages for everything)
Tymanther and the Refusal of Qallim
(Section warning: referenced forced pregnancy)
Ferlarys wasn't a troubled child in the slightest. She was a peace-loving girl who was always the first in a group of children to help up someone who tripped or call a stop to a game if someone was injured. "Vigilant", they nicknamed her. At first, she was eager to fulfill her duties to her clan, the very image of a proud and loyal citizen. She accepted the prospect of military training without a single stutter.
But questions began wearing cracks for doubt to slip through. If religion was simply another form of slavery, why did it seem those in the outlying towns who worshiped gods chose their deities and when and how to pray? Ilmater in particular was the first reason she found to outright say, no, the old ways are wrong. How could the god of the oppressed and the suffering ever be a slaver? Had he held sway in their ancestral home of Abeir, his followers would have surely helped liberate them from their dragon oppressors. And on that note, if the dragons of this world were just as dangerous and oppressive as those of Abeir, and if there were no good dragons, was the entire world wrong about metallic dragons?
And if they were wrong about this, what else were they wrong about? What else were they stubbornly holding onto from their grandparents' days in another world that they no longer needed?
Her body knew the answer, though she'd tried to deny it.
None of her elders would suspect she would go on to spurn the qallim, eggbearing/-siring duty, and strike out into the wilds. She got along with her appointed mate, Xarkax. They suspected--correctly--they'd even already had a dalliance or two.
She'd seen the changes in other women's bodies as they bore fertilized eggs, as they roamed the city with hatchlings in their arms. She'd dismissed the strange, queasy feeling she got when she imagined those changes happening to her. (Her passion for healing would uncover a name for this feeling much later: tokophobia. Or something akin to it for eggbearing creatures.). Her clan needed her, and a bit of nervousness (that was quite a lot more than a bit) shouldn't stop her.
But as the time to fulfill this duty came nearer, she allowed herself, for perhaps the first and only time, to put herself first.
Because they were wrong about that, too. Wrong in a way she could not abide and would not perpetuate.
With only military drills to protect her from the wilderness, she packed everything she could think of and left to fend for herself in the nearby Methwood. But, of course, that was too close to home. Once she had a handle on hunting and foraging, she struck out for more distant horizons, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the people she once called her clan, the people who would claim a triumphant history of liberation and then turn around and tell their citizens they were not their own.
Taste of Adventure, Call to Healing
Her travels brought her to new friends: The Shadow Delvers, an adventuring party working out of Sembia. Putting up a front of mere treasure hunters, they stole into the many ruins and unearthed hoards and catacombs that had become accessible when the Spellplague had dropped Tymanther onto the land nearly eight decades ago. While they did indeed retrieve whatever powerful or useful spoils they could, it was to deliver them to their clients: a resistance movement against the occupying Netherese magocracy and their enforced worship of the evil goddess Shar. Without a second thought, she joined them. They needed someone who knew how to track and find their way through a hunt. Someone who knew her medicine. They lacked a magical healer, after all.
She didn't grow much as an adventurer in her time with them. Her role was support, and more often than not, she was tending an injured ally in the hideout, the cellar of a burned-down temple to Lliira, while the others were out questing. But that was fine with her. If the world needed a healer, she would be the best damned one she could be. It worked out perfectly.
Until it didn't.
Scarcely five months after she'd joined them, the Netherese shadovar discovered what they really were and tracked the party home. They dropped a freezing sphere into the hideout and immediately barred their exit with an arcane lock. It exploded into a burst of deadly frost, coating the inside of their little abandoned storage cellar with ice and killing every last one.
Except the single one resistant to extreme cold. The explosion flung Ferlarys into a stack of crates that collapsed on her, hiding her from view as the shadovar gathered the flash-frozen corpses of her allies. Because she rarely traveled with them, they never thought to search for another.
Barely alive, she dragged herself out and fled until she collapsed. She was lucky the next person to find her was a kindly old merchant. When she came to, it would be in their wagon, well away from Sembia to parts unknown to her.
They were heading west, to the Sword Coast, where Ferlarys would depart their company in the grand city of Waterdeep.
Waterdeep and the Dawnrivers
(Section warning: forced pregnancy, child neglect)
Ferlarys had her fill of adventure. She sought work as a ranger--the profession, not the player class--and found it, tending and protecting the hunting grounds of an unusual noble family.
What made them unusual? They were sun elves, and instead of communing with nature and their creator god, they immersed themselves in the balance of ledgers and the calling of commerce. Elsalor and Firtrilath Dawnriver had apparently lived in Evermeet once. Gods only know why they left to make names for themselves marketing white deer pelts, citing their elven heritage as a claim to the forest's bounty.
In hiring Ferlarys to tend their grounds, she learned their secret. They weren't using their heritage to lure out mythical white deer at all. They were simply breeding albino deer, and their distinct coloration and the inbreeding inherent in keeping their coats consistent made them vulnerable to predators.
This was not the natural way of things, but it was a peaceful enough job that Ferlarys was willing to overlook it, after her harrowing ordeal in Sembia. They came to trust her enough they would come to her with other things. After missing several seasons, only sending letters asking about her alchemy skills, they finally showed. And Firtrilath was heavily pregnant--certainly with more than one. It was not cause for celebration. They demanded she test their contraceptive, certain their apothecary had been trying to sabotage them. She found nothing, to their irritation. But she felt nothing but sympathy for the otherwise unpleasant elf. She'd escaped unwanted motherhood, so it was heartbreaking to see someone else go through it.
They missed another hunting season with the birth of identical triplets, nearly unheard of among elves. Surely, between the alchemical failure and the unusual birth, this was a sign from Corellon (though, if it was, Ferlarys was not impressed. Were there no willing elves to carry the vessels for returning souls?)
But they did not give it any spiritual thought and they did not make good parents. They even rattled off throwaway childhood names: Mirieth, Lirieth, Nirieth.
They should have given their children up for adoption, really. Their children knew well they were unwanted, and quickly grew into little terrors in blatantly unloved frustration. When their household staff refused to watch them while they were away for their misbehavior, they began taking them with them on hunting trips...and leaving them with Ferlarys.
She hadn't wanted to bear a child, but she took readily to caring for them. For the first time, the children had someone listening to and encouraging them. Of course she'll teach Mirieth what she's doing when she's looking for new predator tracks. Of course she'll lend Lirieth pinches of fur and feathers for spell components, and shoo spiders from window ledges when she develops a severe fear of them. And she'll never forget Nirieth says he's a boy, even when his parents resent him too much to remember. Traveling with them on hunting trips to see her became a highlight of their little lives. They even taught her Elvish, sharing their education with her in return.
When tragedy struck and the Dawnriver couple fell gravely ill, Ferlarys did all she could to save them. But her medicines were not enough. The children insisted she stay with them. And because she listened, they listened, too. They remembered her stories about leaving Tymanther, and instead of being called "mother", she was their "auntie".
She did away with their cruel manipulation of the albino deer and instead focused on simple leatherworking and alchemy (which involved getting in touch with guilds and incidentally settling several longstanding bets when she revealed their secret) as she allowed the deer population on their land to correct itself. It didn't bring in enough money to keep their affluent home in Sea Ward, and they ended up in the (still nice) North Ward. Such was her life in Waterdeep for the next ten years.
Nymzen and Adventure Again
The comfort of domestic routine would break with a single chance encounter. As Ferlarys and her wards, coming into working age as teenagers now, were on their way home from a trip to the market, they nearly collided with a drow man on a giant spider mount. Lirieth, deathly afraid of spiders, was unable to help herself. She shrieked as if in mortal danger. While Waterdeep, as many major cities, allowed drow to walk its streets if they caused no trouble, a young high-elven woman screaming for her life with a drow nearby--riding a spider, at that!--looked very much like trouble. A watchwoman's whistle pierced Lirieth's screams, and as Liri fainted into her sister's arms, Ferlarys watched as the drow man dismounted his spider, his head down, silently mouthing his explanation. From the look of what she could only describe as "resigned horror" on his face, he didn't think she or the other watchpeople racing to join her would accept it.
Spider aside, there was little in his demeanor to suggest he was from the Underdark. He wore the vestments of an acolyte of the halfling goddess Yondalla, of all things!
So Ferlarys stepped in, and explained Lirieth's arachnophobia to the watch. Perhaps it was her silver scales linking her to benevolent silver dragons. Perhaps dragonborn were developing a reputation for honor outside of Tymanther. Or maybe they were simply willing to accept the explanation from anyone who wasn't drow. The watch had the man bring his spider to the stables and left him to his business in the city. He thanked Ferlarys profusely, and Lirieth insisted on inviting him for supper in apology for nearly getting him arrested. When asked, he obligingly told his story. His name was Nymzen, and he'd lived in a nearby halfling village for the last forty years or so. It was time to broaden his horizons, and adventuring seemed like a way to earn a living in the process. Unfortunately, the Waterdeep Adventurer's Guild had turned him down. He'd been buying supplies to travel north to Neverwinter when he'd run into them. It had nothing but trouble recently, with a mad lich's attention and a recent volcanic eruption. They wouldn't turn down anyone.
This brought Ferlarys's adoptive niblings into an excited frenzy. She'd told them about her brief stint as an adventurer, and how free she'd felt with Tymanther at her back. They'd been urging her to give it another try. They could take care of themselves. She'd taught them how to fend for themselves and be smart about their resources.
She relented, and joined Nymzen. Off to Neverwinter they went. He was right, and they had no trouble joining the Guild.
Neverwinter: Growing Together
(Section Warning: domestic/intimate partner abuse (and a VERY incorrect response to it), mention of sexual abuse)
(Note: The Hero of Neverwinter isn't the chosen one, and the plot doesn't revolve around who they are. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time, multiple times, until they built a solid reputation. That said, I'm going to keep this generic because the plot of Neverwinter doesn't actually impact their plot in anything but the broadest of strokes.)
There was no shortage of work to do for Neverwinter. They took on mission after mission, going after necromancers, cultists, goblins, anyone giving Neverwinter or her allies trouble. She sent money and letters back to Waterdeep, sharing their stories as they made them. (One of them sent them to the Shadowfell briefly, and Ferlarys got to feel what "cold" was like for everyone else. That was...fun.)
As they adventured, she got to know Nymzen better. For his nearly four decades among halflings, he'd spent around seven in the Underdark, under the cruel thumb of Lolthite matriarchy. If anyone they dealt with was a strong-spoken woman (or femme-presenting person in general), Ferlarys had to do the talking, because Nymzen still shut down. She even had to watch her own tone, not that she was prone to forcefulness.
Despite his hardships, he'd come out of it all with a radiant resolve that Ferlarys found herself admiring more and more. He proved a fiercely loyal friend, and the way his eyes lit up when they talked, like a desert wanderer finding an oasis...this was a man in need of healing a wound no one could see. Afflictions of the mind and spirit were not exempt from her drive to provide relief.
Were she aiming for professional work, the rest of these events would not have happened, for good or ill.
When they barely survived a struggle against a horde of skeletons in cursed catacombs, she didn't hesitate when he asked her how dragonborn kiss. Neither of them seemed to want to stop at a kiss. His responses radiated such surprised delight, she assumed in the heat of the moment that she was somehow his first.
In a sense, she was. She was the first he'd wanted, start to finish, because Lolthite society is not kind to its men. But his mind had other ideas in the middle of the night. She woke to find he'd run off in a panic, and she had to track him down. When she did, he was...changed. There had been so much anger he'd been keeping under the surface, and his inability to enjoy intimacy without whatever awful inner demon had driven him off afterwards added more than he could bear.
When she found him demolishing a training dummy back at the Guild, she saw a man destroying himself. What she should have seen was a man who had forgotten he was a man, and not a feral beast. There was no reason behind his eyes, and she should have acted accordingly when dealing with him.
At least... That's what she still tells herself when she recalls the moment. He lashed out at her touch, just gentle claw tips on the arm, striking her.
In her defense, at least, she did not let it go entirely. Her childhood home had tried to walk over her autonomy, too. She told him in no uncertain terms he was getting one more chance... And in this case, she lucked out. Nymzen was not an innately violent person, despite his upbringing, and he never did so again. Had he been of even a slightly different disposition, it might have become a pattern. (Instead, he eventually doubled down on not spreading the despair inflicted on him and swore a paladin's oath, but that's his story, not hers)
Their adventures continued over the next year, including a trip to the Underdark where they had an argument over a pool of mind flayer larvae. Ferlarys argued it was wrong to kill any infant, and Nymzen argued these were infants who could only grow by destroying an innocent. Nymzen won that one, but Ferlarys refused to take part in poisoning the pool.
Yes, they were standing around arguing in an active mind flayer colony. They were very strong by this point, forged into mighty adventurers in the crucibles of danger.
Neverwinter never seemed to run out of problems.
And Ever Onward...
They married shortly after their first year at the Guild passed, and opened a clothing shop for an additional source of income. She wouldn't be able to adventure forever, after all, and Nymzen insisted they have somewhere to retire for the end of her life. She was so happy he was planning so far in advance it almost didn't hurt to be reminded she'd eventually leave all the elves she'd so foolishly surrounded herself with.
It's been about thirteen years since they joined the Guild now. For a profession that scared her away so easily at first, Ferlarys takes to it well. Their adventures have taken them to many places in the Sword Coast, from frigid Icewind Dale to the humid jungles of Chult. They try to visit Waterdeep whenever they can to spend time with the triplets in person, and with their beloved auntie and uncle both in the business, all three are showing interest in adventuring. Maybe they'll tackle Undermountain as a family one day.
Ferlarys can't imagine a better life, one more free and full of love. That it will end too soon for her new family, well, that's a matter for her nightmares.
She has her own clan, now. One who would never tell her she does not belong to herself.