Application - Underworld Wars
~Player Information~
Name: Heather
Personal Journal: agentgrrl
Time zone: CST
Contact: adeolucror@gmail.com | adeolucror
Current Characters:
Brennan Mulwray (theshockvalue )
Akihiko Sanada (tobestronger )
Vincent Valentine (dirgingcerberus )
Sephiroth (wutaiwarhero )
~Character Information~
Fandom: Forgotten Realms
Name: Drizzt Do'Urden
Age: Late teens-20ish (he's approximately 60)
Canon Point: Book 3: Sojourn, After Montolio Debrouchee (Mooshie)'s death, but before meeting up with the Weeping Friars
Is this character dead? No, he is not, though it's sort of a miracle
History: here sort of. This is a link to his very detailed history from comicvine.com. While it is a synopsis of the Graphic Novels, after reading and re-reading it, I couldn’t find any points in Drizzt’s history that were different from the novels or omitted.
[Optional] Character Development and Relationship Transfer from previous RP: N/A
Personality: At first glance, if one were to look beyond the color of his ebony skin and the reputation of his own heritage, Drizzt is a quiet individual with a probing violet gaze and keen ears tuned to listening to everything, to absorbing all the information he could possibly find. He’s polite in conversation, but short and direct, reserving his moments of extensive inner monologue for his long times of solitude which he’s grown accustomed to over his life in exile.
Ever since the time Drizzt was young, growing up in the hate and chaos-filled world of the Drow, being subjected to torment after torment at the hands of his vile and evil race, Drizzt has maintained a positive and, at times, jovial outlook on life, and was never blinded by the rhetoric of his often heretical people. Drow children are raised on tales of the surface races, told from the time they can understand speech that all the races that dwell in the light, elves, dwarves, humans, all of them, are evil, disgusting, malicious creatures that will slit your throat as soon as look at you. They are taught that the faeries, what the Drow call the surface elves, are to blame for the drow being cast from the surface and cursed to forever dwell in the bowels of the earth.
Drizzt never fell prey to the lies of his people, though. After graduating from Melee-Magthere and joining a regular patrol group bent on keeping the horrifying creatures of the Underdark from Menobarrenzan’s doorstep, he was assigned by his mother, Matron Malice of House Do’Urden, to a surface raiding party along with his father. Upon seeing a group of faeries dancing at a bon fire, Drizzt couldn’t believe these happy creatures, with their frolicking children, could have malicious intent, going so far as to say, “These creatures are not -- cannot be evil.” It awoke a desire in Drizzt to truly understand all the races he was raised to hate, to know them for what they really are instead of the lies the Drow spin to propagate their own villainy. It is a desire that has never waned, even through the years as he’s faced all the persecution his own race’s reputation forces upon him.
Even from a very young age, Drizzt has had a deep-set understanding of honor and an understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Most Drow lack this simple understanding, giving themselves up to the chaotic hatred of their Goddess Lloth, the Spider Queen, patron deity of the Drow. Drizzt has never been able to stomach the mockery of justice that rules the world of his people, and ultimately this almost instinctual disgust is what drove him from their halls.
While not blindly trusting, Drizzt, in contrast with the standard of the Drow, is loyal, trustworthy, honorable, and just. His age also makes him a tad reckless at times, rushing in to a situation to champion a cause he knows next to nothing about. He killed an entire band of gnolls because of this once, shortly after coming to the surface world, and he’s since been trying to understand a situation before he makes his presence known. The fate of the gnolls weighed heavily on his conscience for days before he was able to decide the humans he’s assumed the gnolls were planning on attacking were indeed good people and he’d chosen correctly.
When he does feel at ease with people, he is still quiet, but to a much smaller extent. He can be silly at times, slightly melodramatic, playful, and jovial. Mooshie introduced him to the worship and religion of Mielikki, the patron goddess of the forest and of Rangers, and at first Drizzt was adverse to the notion. He’d only known one other religion, the worship of Lloth, and he’d seen the destruction her religion caused, but over time, Drizzt learned that the ways and laws of Mielikki had always been his, he simply hadn’t known it. He now worships her openly, and often protects others in her name. Mooshie also made him realize how comforting the companionship of friends can be, and endowed him with a deep love of friendly company.
He’s always had an almost insatiable curiosity, but he’s only recently, and only with Mooshie, started to ask questions to fulfill his vast interest in all things he doesn’t understand. His second-sister, Veirna, made certain he, as a male, understood his place, and that was to speak only when spoken too. So, instead of asking question upon question, Drizzt is more likely to quietly, silently really, observe until he feels he has enough of an understanding to present himself to the objects of his interest. His curiosity can be so demanding at times that he ends up in some pretty dicey situations, as well, spanning from the harmless occurrence of scaring a skunk (an animal he’d never heard of), to the more serious scaring of a group of farmers that ultimately lead to their massacre at the hands of a Barghest that meant to get rid of a new-found threat to its growing power.
Drizzt has an indomitable will and perseverance, and refuses to back down from situations in which most would simple give up. Facing monsters doesn’t phase him, or the prejudice of his people. Drizzt’s faith, both in himself and in his beliefs, steels him against anything anyone or anything could throw at him, having even defeated his father, the one person Drizzt had ever actually liked in Menzobarrenzan, when he was raised from the dead and sent after Drizzt simply to put an end to him, once and for all. He’s defeated Barghests and gnolls, hook horrors and mind flayers with equal capability, and it’s his faith and his belief that he is doing the right thing that gets him through most of his battles. Drizzt’s abilities wane quite a bit when his heart isn’t in a fight or a situation. If Drizzt doesn’t believe in something, it is the only time he will fail.
He’s very passionate about his friends, going to sometimes outrageous lengths both to earn them and to save them. No monster or circumstance is foreboding or threatening enough to stop Drizzt Do’Urden when his friends are in danger, even going so far as to intentionally decline friendship if he feels his reputation, or his family which is hunting him, would bring harm upon others who know him. Drizzt’s wellbeing is always second-rate in the face of those he cares for, and he will shove all care about his own safety, mentally or physically, to the wayside if someone he loves is in danger.
During his ten years of wandering in the Underdark, alone save for his one constant companion, Gwenhwyvar, Drizzt was Alone. Both to survive against the unknown and indescribable horrors of the Underdark and to combat the growing isolation in his own mind, Drizzt developed another aspect of his personality. He doesn’t remember much of those ten years of solitude, of the endless and undeterminable spans of time between sleep cycles. He was a creature of pure instinct, of bloodlust, and of survival. Now, though he has returned to himself for the most part, Drizzt calls this aspect of his personality ‘The Hunter’, and he has slipped back into that mental state when he or his friends were greatly threatened. Once it was on accident, when the retelling of a story in which he battled a basilisk caused a flashback that made him snap into the Hunter. Another time was when the wraith of his father threw Gwenhwyvar into an acid pool, he welcomed the Hunter taking over, so he could exact revenge for her apparent death. When Drizzt becomes the Hunter, he himself blacks out and follows nothing but his instincts. His physical prowess reaches its peak and his movements are almost too difficult to follow.
In addition to desiring to meet other peoples, to understand them, to make friends, and to fulfill his mentor, Mooshie’s, dying wish that he find his place in the world and stay in it, Drizzt understands he needs the companionship of others to keep the Hunter at bay. While he hasn’t had an episode of the Hunter taking over in nearly five years, when things are dicey, he can feel the darker aspect of his nature there in the back of his mind, waiting for its chance to take over.
Skills/Abilities: The Drow have several racial abilities at their disposal, as follows:
- He can summon an impenetrable globe of darkness that not even infravision can pierce.
- He can shroud things in faerie fire, which is a harmless flickering flame of which he can choose the color. It’s usually used to make things easier to see in complete darkness, or to distract people and make them run when he thinks fighting would be disadvantageous.
- He can see the intrared spectrum, and his sense is so acute, he can, in complete darkness, see the minute outlines of rock walls heated by hot springs nearby, or the traces of body heat left by something living that touched a none-living surface recently. When he a child, he used to draw pictures on the floor with his toes using his body heat.
Being raised in a subterranean environment, Drizzt is weak to direct sunlight, it leaves him dizzy and weakened and nauseous, and any bright light will leave him temporarily blinded and incapacitated.
Drow are also inherently more agile and fast than humans, but not super-humanly so. Drizzt specifically won a dual at Melee-Magthere in which he was allowed to claim a prize from the loser. Drizzt took his bracers, which are enchanted and drastically increase the physical speed of the limbs they are worn on. Drizzt quickly learned wearing them on his own wrists made his already very quick movements too fast and nearly impossible to control, so he now wears the bracers around his ankles so he can run faster.
Drizzt is a highly trained fighter, and while he trained in many weapons until Zaknafain’s tutelage, he always favored the scimitar. He dual-weilds the weapons, and his fighting prowess has more than once seen him described as a dancer, weaving a complicated, lightning-fast, and almost choreographed dance of death with the blades. He can also use long-swords, crossbows, and strung bows with some skill, but nowhere near the skill of his blades.
He is a Ranger of Mielikki, and he can use her powers of reading the land and the sky to predict weather changes, and he can communicate on a limited level with animals, to the point it almost seems as though he’s holding a conversation with them.
His own youth and insatiable curiosity gets him into no end of trouble, and while he is starting to learn how to rein in his need to offer his aid when aid is needed, most of the time, his morality wins out over his logic, and it’s not unlikely he’ll end up in way over his head before he realizes what’s happening.
First Person Sample:
[Accidental? Video]
[The screen flickers from displaying a blank page, such as when someone has written a text post, to the audio playback screen and back again a few times before it settles on video. Admittedly, the video feed is very disorienting, being turned this way and that as though the holder both doesn’t know it’s on and is turning the ‘ipad’ over and over, inspecting it.
Finally, the holder of this device turns the video to face them, and while the face is mostly in shadow, a glint of light from the device shines in lavender eyes that seem almost disembodied in the shadows beneath a plain gray cloak.]
What a curious thing. [The new person speaks, though it’s obvious they seem to be speaking to themselves as the speech is very quiet.]
I wonder if it is a scrying crystal or… [and the speech trails off, as though this strange newcomer has just realized the implications of their own statement. The eyes dart to the side as though making a decision before the keen orbs turn back, actually focusing on the device this time.]
[There’s a small clearing of a throat before his quiet voice addresses the communicator. When he speaks, there’s a the sound of a small smile in his voice, and a flash white where his mouth most likely is. Keener eyes may also discern the sheen of light outlining a chin and cheekbones covered in ebony skin.] Greetings and good will to those who may be watching this communication, if that is what is happening. I am Drizzt Do’Urden. [A small pause.] I mean you no harm.
Third Person Sample: Mooshie’s grove in summer had the most delightful smell. Honeysuckle and pine resin mingled with the scents of sun-warmed earth and cool spring water to accentuate the leaves fluttering in the gentle breeze that so often swirled through the great trees of his, their, home. That same breeze rocked the high hammock in which Drizzt how lazed, lulled into a gentle slumber by the looming sun and the warmth of the day. Daylight weakened him, and it was the time he usually chose for sleep, comforted by the rock of the hammock and the gentle sway of the branches that held it aloft.
He adjusted his position in his elevated bed, and spray from the river below splashed him lightly in the face. Confusion set in at the thought. He was reclining in a hammock strung between two trees tens of feet above the forest floor, and while his keen elven ears could hear the brook from here, no moisture should find him at this level. Hooter, Mooshie’s great owl and constant companion, had departed this grove the winter previous, he recalled, and disorder was descending upon this once home. It was not his place.
A shift in the ferry which glided gently across the otherwise still river erased Mooshie’s grove from his mind’s eye and he remained perfectly still as the dream receded and the reality of his situation set in. mist swirled around him in roiling curls that were both disorienting and enchanting. The gentle rocking of the small boat wasn’t unpleasant and closely resembled the swaying of the trees in Mooshie’s grove. It explained the dream, but how had he ended up on this craft? Violet eyes searched the small vessel for other signs of life, and he latched his gaze on the cloaked figure working its guide pole at the head of the boat. The surroundings were dim enough to allow his eyes to shift into the infrared spectrum, and he peered at the ferryman in this new light and blinked. Whatever creature was guiding this vessel exuded no body heat, and that fact alone disturbed the drow to his core. He had no memory of being taken, no memory of this river, and certainly no memory of this cold figure now at the prow of this strange and somehow utilitarian vessel.
He shifted himself to a crouch in time to see a desolate dock looming out of the mist before them, his apprehension growing as to apparent destination seemingly solidified out of the roiling fog. This place was distinctly unnatural, and while it didn’t fill him with the hatred the land of his own people did, there was something…apart, distant from other places about this place.
He wasn’t afforded the luxury of pondering the place for long, though, as, somehow undetected to the ever-alert Ranger, the nameless ferryman placed a skeletal hand on his shoulder and pushed him, gently but firmly, toward the dock. Drizzt turned to the cowled figure, vision straining to glean some semblance of features beneath the hood of the ferryman’s cloak, but seeing only darkness within. The darkness reminded him of the non-light he could generate and that realization unnerved him. He was filled with a distinct need to be out of this boat and away from this cold and faceless creature, and he was on the dock in the next instant.
The sounds of water lapping against the hull of the departing ferry told him he need not look back, that he was being left on this dock to fend for himself. He grinned at the thought. If the faceless horror meant to strand him here, he would be surprised when and if he returned. Drizzt reached into his belt pouch, producing a small onyx figurine, a perfectly crafted statuette of a stalking panther, and held it out to his side.
He kept his voice a controlled whisper, so as not to alert any who may be spying of his presence. “Gwenhwyvar, come to me, my friend.”
Several moments stretched on as he waited for the rippling of energy that accompanied Gwen’s arrival from the Plane of Shadow, but it never happened. He looked down to the inert statuette of onyx in his hand, his heart and his mind flooding with dread. In all the years since he’d departed Menzobarrenzan, through the endless solitude of the Underdark, through his exile on the surface, through everything the young drow had experienced, Gwenhwyvar had been his one trusted companion. Whenever she could be at his side, she was there, supporting him, offering her warmth and protection. He couldn’t number the times she had saved him from an early end, and now she was beyond him.
For the first time in his life, Drizzt Do’Urden was well and truly alone. He couldn’t allow the sadness to cloud his mind yet, though. He was in an unknown location surrounded by unknown dangers. He scanned his surroundings, searching for any sort of clue as to his whereabouts. His attention was caught by a strange crystal-like object he found atop his pack when he first turned to the left.
That hadn’t been there before. This crystal coupled with the twinkling lights of some underground city off in the distance were enough to convince him of two things: this was not the outskirts of a Drow city as the lights were most certainly not faerie fire, and he was not alone. Though his heart was heavy with worry for his dear friend Gwenhwyvar, those two facts comforted him beyond measure.
Six months studying at Sorcere should be enough to discern the use of this crystal, he decided, and so he set about understanding its flat and mostly nondescript structure.