Charlotte Kersten

A secret fact about these books is that Iraluri was previously named Filfearie, but I ended up changing it because 1) someone asked me “Oh, is that because she’s FILLED with FEAR?” and I was like “Oh God, oh no, it isn’t!!!! Do people think that???” and 2) I got to the point where I needed to figure out Immy’s nickname for her and I hated everything I could come up with associated with Filfearie. My beta readers read a Filfearie draft and a couple of them have stated that it’s been hard to make the switch to thinking of her as Iraluri.

I’d actually used the name Iraluri (or, previously, Iriluri; I changed it because I like the sound of Eer-ah-lurry more than Eer-ee-lurry) on a number of other occasions. All my drow characters in D&D have used that name, as well as my dunmer in The Elder Scrolls games. I was thinking about my most recent D&D Iraluri lately, and I remembered a tiny thing I’d written when my DM suggested we come up with character backstories. In the spirit of practicing with first-person, I dug it up. Here it is! (This character was a chaotic-good drow rogue).

You eat enough rotten spider meat and you kind of get a taste for it. I think that’s sort of sad, don’t you? I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t grateful for the spider meat – I was!- but it’s just that sometimes there were flies on the spiders, and then it was like, hey, how many insects can you get in on this meal? I always meant to ask someone how flies survive in the Underdark or where they come from, but there was never anyone to ask. I guess the answer is they get by like most of us do. 

There are other things you get used to. When you’re really, really little, you fit better through pipes and gates and shafts so they send you in first.  The shafts are dusty and full of dead things, and your elbows and knees get bruised, but I got used to that, too, and by the time I was too big to be of much use at that anymore, I could get a back door open for the rest in under three minutes. I timed it once. I lost my first tooth inside the Barriafin family vault, but no one else was as excited as me about that. I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging when I say that.

The littler you are, the more people feel sorry for you, and the more people feel sorry for you, the less they’re thinking about what your hands are doing, and the less they think you’re likely to be tricky, and then suddenly you’ve gotten a nice fat pouch of gold or a pearl-studded handkerchief or an ancient dagger used for ritual sacrifices. So I actually think it got harder when I got older, but then again, I also got a lot tougher. If you don’t get tougher, what else are you going to do? Well, that’s what I thought then, at least. 

Of course it was lonely. All the family wars and betrayals and slaughter and sacrifices didn’t do much to change my life, but they did kind of make me think that that’s just how it was, the loneliness. Even if you weren’t living in a tiny flat with ten other drow who’d just as gladly stab you as look at you and you had to sleep with a knife under your pillow and everything else you owned under that same pillow so as it wouldn’t get stolen, you were still liable to be killed by one of your own! Even if you had a dozen consorts and six times as many servants and a belly full of liver and clams in mushroom sauce with a bottle of venom wine every day, you still didn’t really seem to have anyone who wouldn’t turn around and stab you in the back over nothing at all. It made me think “Well, that’s drow for you.”

I only ever thought differently because – well, there are these mushrooms, and I know that sounds like an obvious statement because it’s the Underdark, but these are…hm. Special mushrooms. You eat them and you forget that you’re in debt and all you have for dinner is the rat you strangled after it ran through your hair the night before. Everything gets all floaty and you smile and smile. When I ate them the last time, though, I didn’t get all floaty. I was sitting on a roof and I could see the Menzoberranzan all stretched out before me and I know it sounds crazy but do you know what I did then? I just started crying. I thought “What are we doing?” and “What am I doing?” and then I got dizzy and fell asleep. But when I woke up, I was still asking those questions, and I guess I’ve been asking them ever since. 

I didn’t have much to pack and I didn’t have anyone to say goodbye to since the gnome who gave me the special mushrooms came with me. She’s my very best friend now. At first I just thought “I want to be good,” but then I thought about that city full of people and the cities beyond that one. So now I think “I want them to be good, too.” I talk to every drow I meet here on the surface, and I try to be friends with them and help them be good. I try to understand why they left and what they think of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into down there, and if they need help, I try to help them. Anyways, you asked “What’s your deal?” and I think you maybe meant it more in the sense of “Why did you and the gnome pick the lock on my barn to sleep in the hayloft?” but that’s it. That’s my deal. What’s your deal?