House Duskryn was small and wealthy. That was a bad combination in the city of Menzoberranzan. Small and wealthy drow houses were usually crushed and pillaged, the members offered up on the altars of Lloth for being weak. House Duskryn was wealthy because of its trade connections to the World Above. The most powerful drow houses often thirsted for the crafts, fashions, exotic foods and spices that grew under the hated sun. House Duskryn could provide those luxuries of the surface world as well as news and information. Those trade connections were all closely guarded secrets and those secrets kept them wealthy, and alive. House Duskryn had the most heavily armed and swiftest trading caravans in the Underdark.
created at: 12/30/2013
Many houses had tried to shadow House Duskryn trading parties, only to be slaughtered by traps or ambushes. That could be delicate, however. It wouldn’t do to draw the ire of the most powerful houses. Sometimes pursuers were merely delayed until the trading party could lose them. Other times, they were bribed with discounts, first choice of new goods, or information.
Aunrae quietly padded her way down the carved hallway toward the library. Her encounter with Zanitra had put her on edge. Zanitra had pieced together a part of Aunrae’s mystery. Spirits, mischievous and angry, perpetually surrounded Aunrae. Occasionally their mood matched hers, other times not. Their actions could never be predicted. Sometimes they whispered in faint voices, sometimes they swirled around her in cold winds. Sometimes they moved things. Last time Aunrae was in the chapel, they had toppled an ancient stone carving that had rested on Lloth’s altar for centuries. It wasn’t enchanted or opulent, but it was priceless in its symbolism of house Duskryn’s commitment to the Demonweb Queen. It shattered on the chapel floor and the whole estate was thrown into a panic. Lloth’s disfavor would do this to any drow house of Menzoberranzan. Desperate prayers to Lloth were offered from every Duskryn priestess. Some of them cut their knees so they could kneel in their own blood. The House Captain of the Guard, a male, was immediately subdued and offered up as a sacrifice. The Matron Mother even considered offering up the House Mage, Rylas the necromancer, Aunrae’s father. Such a powerful sacrifice would be more apt to appease the cruel Spider Goddess. There were other Duskryn mages keen to take his place, but the Duskryn Mother knew she’d need the arcane strength if word of this got out to another drow house. That and, even as devout as he professed to be, the necromancer wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Ultimately, nothing happened. Weeks passed and the house priestesses continued to receive their spells from Lloth. Nothing especially dire befell their trade caravans. Aunrae was sure that Lloth saw the destruction of the heirloom and would react in her own time. The Spider Queen’s actions were unknowable. Aunrae’s mind turned over the very real possibility that Lloth was waiting for Duskryn’s priestesses to discover the true nature of their odd half-sister. She shivered as she made her way past the entry to Lloth’s Sanctity. Zanitra was right. Aunrae never wanted to set foot in there again. Aunrae was not a priestess of Lloth. She had kept this hidden for months, since her training began. She had asked one stupid question, and never asked another: “How do you know when Lloth has answered your prayers?” She ached for a week after the beating she received from the chapel headmistress and her sisters. Aunrae could cast divine spells, but not like the others. She didn’t know where the spells came from or even how she learned them. Her sisters all knew. They were filled with deadly fervor for the blessings and teachings of Lloth. Aunrae wondered if it was the spirits that surrounded her that gave her the divine powers she wielded.
Her tutor awaited her in the library. Perhaps she would have some answers. The library was just around the corner but Aunrae’s pace slowed. Where the passageway turned, a huge pair of iron double doors waited. There was fresh blood in front of them, as there always was. Above the doors was an iron mask of the smiling Spider Goddess. The Hall of Vexation was another part of what secured House Duskryn as a small and successful drow house of Menzoberranzan. Secrets needed keeping, and in drow society secrets were only as good as the prisoner on the rack… or dipped in the boiling oil, or under the parchment thin blade, or twisted under any thousands of horrific devices the thousands of sadistic drow minds could devise. After a certain amount of religious training, Aunrae would be tasked with caravan duty. In House Duskryn, no one left on a trade mission without being able to keep a secret. No one. Everyone in House Duskryn that took a surface coin or knew the name of a surface merchant had spent time “training” in the Hall of Vexation. The amount of time differed for each drow, but it was always enough time to learn to keep a secret. Occasionally, a Duskryn drow would go in and never come out. Whatever horrors occurred in there even kept the souls of departed Duskryn from answering questions that could be forced from beyond the grave. Duskryn torturers were known as the best in Menzoberranzan and Duskryn drow developed a reputation for resisting interrogation, magical or otherwise. Last month, House Xorlarrin had sent an emissary with a stubborn human and a chest of gold. The emissary offered the gold as a fee to break their prisoner. It was a service the House had only begun to explore. If it added power and prestige to the name of Duskryn, the Matron Mother welcomed it gladly. Aunrae wondered if her time in the Hall of Vexation would help her keep her own secret. She doubted it.
Avoiding the blood on the floor, Aunrae turned the corner and made her way into the library. Tall bookshelves of black wood reached floor to ceiling. Polished cabinets carefully marked and catalogued numerous scroll tubes, filled with everything worth documenting: the history of House Duskryn, trade ledgers and journals, the personal histories of each Duskryn Matron Mother and so on. Some of her favorite surface histories were stored there. She had even found a passage in a trade journal that detailed a sighting of Drizzt Do’Urden, a drow that had left the intrigues of Menzoberranzan and found adventure and acceptance in the World Above.
Aunrae’s father, the Duskryn House Mage Rylas, was in charge of the library and kept everything orderly. Only the most delicate, cowed, and illiterate slaves were allowed to enter the library for household chores and cleaning duty. The Necromancer Rylas maintained his own personal library somewhere on the estate, but only he and a few certain males were privy to its location. None of the females cared as long as he and his charges displayed the proper deference.
Aunrae made her way to a long, oval table at the center of the library. It was lit with brass lanterns that held slices of slow burning, glowing fungus. The fungus glowed bright enough to provide ample reading light, but not enough to offend the sensitive eyes of the drow. At the end of the table, a diminutive, cloaked figure sat in a reading chair, on pile of books. The bowl of a silver and oak pipe jutted from the cloak and a wisp of smoke wafted toward the ceiling. The pipe was always the same. The tutor was not.
“Hello, mother,” Aunrae said to the small, ragged, and bloody form seated at the table.
The form shifted and inhaled on the pipe. She stepped closer. Aunrae saw it exhale through its nostrils… and a puncture wound in its chest.
“Hello, Aunrae,” Eclavdra’s voice rasped through the goblin corpse that currently hosted her soul.
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