Luran Sageshadow… Luran Sageshadow… he’d heard of that name. But then if he was a bard and an elf that wasn’t surprising, for a time Rhaenor had done everything he could in an attempt to track down his mother, but being a half-drow didn’t invite welcome attention at the various inns and taverns he’d gone to. Most of the time he didn’t even get to speak to the bards playing to see if they knew anything of her, but usually he would either be propositioned by the inns’ patrons, whose lusts for anything exotic and interesting would be sorely disappointed by his refusal, and then he would receive a beating for his rejection of them. That or he would just stumble into someone itching for a fight anyway and what better target than a drow? 

His commander hadn’t looked kindly on Rhaenor coming back to the barracks bloodied, bruised and smelling of alcohol, even though he hadn’t touched a drop. He had attempted for a time to buy disguise kits, going as non-descript humans or elves, but the Flaming Fist paycheck wasn’t exactly generous and his work on finding his mother was slow and with little to show for all his efforts. But he pushed aside the thoughts of his mother, Luran was right, once they had escaped and found somewhere safer, then he could interrogate the elf further.

‘I believe I have heard of you, I was a Flaming Fist in Baldur’s Gate, though sadly i never had much time to visit the taverns,’ he said. ‘But you are right, the sooner we get out of this madness the better.’

He pulled the sword from its sheath again, though did not wield it at Luran this time and headed towards… a sphincter that looked like it was some kind of door. ‘They’re not ones for pleasing interiors,’ he muttered drolly and grimaced as the sphincter opened with a rather nasty sounding squelch. Ahead, through the smoke, he could see some odd looking creatures moving around the floor… brains with limbs scurrying about. But further along he could see bright sunshine and see just a glimmer of blue sky.

Starter for @darkestnightwilldawn

Fragments of glass cascaded down upon him. Now that the barrier between him and the outer world had been obliterated, the cacophony of bellowing flames and the howling of the wind inundated his ears. Whatever unconscious state he’d been in, gradually diminished and his blurry vision started to clear up. The dark, semi-organic architecture of the ship instantaneously called to mind what had transpired. The bastards had abducted him, incarcerated him and shoved a tentacled worm...

A searing pain — excruciating — suddenly gyrated inside his skull, puncturing his brain, burrowing deep into the intangible depths of his mind, his thoughts, his memories. The elf ground his teeth to prevent himself from crying out in anguish, and pressed the palm of his hand to his left eye and forehead — an inefficacious attempt to alleviate the pounding and the skull-splaying pain. Flashes of recollections scintillated before his mind’s eye. The illithid that restraint him with magic and forced the parasite in his eye, the same process being performed on other captives, the crude pool from which the monster fished the parasites. A clamour of screams, of pleads, of people banging their fists frantically — in vain — against the glass hatches of their pods — like he’d done — in order to break free. The dissonance still reverberated in his pointy ears and vibrated in his lithe body.

Unsure of the duration of his suffering, Luran eventually regained his wits and some control over his limbs. He carefully hoisted himself upright, brushing the shards of glass off him prior to disembarking the pod. When his feet hit the ground, the impact nearly knocked him off balance — evidently, his head hadn’t recuperated from the assault on the brain lying within. A feeling of nausea stirred in his stomach and unadulterated apprehension settled in his chest. After several heartbeats, he let out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding, and inspected himself for injuries, or worse, signs of tentacles, talons, or slimy and protruding brains. He couldn’t detect any wounds and though the exposed patches of skin were clammy, it was due to perspiration, not due to slime glands, or whatever organs or other anatomical aberrations caused mind flayers to appear so... moist. A cold, feverish shiver ran down his spine; he tried to exile the image to a tenebrous, inaccessible, abyss of the mind, and instead, tried to stay focused. Focused on a solution, focused on the task at hand, focused on getting off of the nautiloid.

Admittedly, he was heavily disorientated and if his survival instincts hadn’t seized hold of him, he’d still be putrefying in his enclosure. Confounded and dazed, he scoured the obnoxious chamber; a significant part of the hull was destroyed by... something unequivocally large. The elf wasn’t surprised if the nautiloid had been — or still was — under attack. Mind flayers had myriads of enemies — across planes, no doubt. Unfortunately, he so happened to be on board of one of their abhorrent constructions when their adversaries opted to blast it to smithereens... Just his luck.

To his displeasure, the pool situated in the centre of the room was still intact, despite the infernal brutality that had been unleashed. Cautiously, he inched closer, the wretched maggots were still floating in the translucent liquid. Habitually, Luran screwed up his nose in sheer repugnance, glaring down on the nasty vermin. For a split second, he contemplated annihilating the lot of them — the only proper retribution. However, after a moment of reconsideration, he decided it would be more judicious to place as much distance between himself and these Lovecraftian nightmares as he possibly could on an airborne ship saturating with them... He already had one tentacled tenant slurping up his brain juices, a second one would most certainly be the end of him.

Warily, the elf stepped back, letting his sapphire blue eyes glide over the other pods. The ones closest to the breach, had been utterly obliterated. The one opposite his was empty; the githyanki had escaped — well, good for her. There were several other pods, all in varying degrees of dilapidation — the involuntary denizens were all dead. Slightly desperate and effervescing with fear, Luran commenced his journey to the sphincter, hoping he wouldn’t be met with a squadron of mind flayers, waiting, on the other side. But just as he walked past his pod, he heard a noise. It was distinct, not like the crackling and raging of flames and fire, or the wind whinging as it brushed along the battered hull. This noise indicated he was not alone, someone else was with him, possibly alive. But was his unwitting companion friend... or foe?

The elf peeked into his own pod, heedful not to disturb the debris and alert the other of his presence. He had carried no weapons on him, only his violin. And to his relief, the instrument had survived the abduction as well as the assault. Quietly, he plucked it from his illithid prison and rested the instrument lightly on his collarbone, bow at the ready, preparing himself to channel his magic through it, should the need for it arise. His itinerary towards the source of the noise was deliberately chosen. Within mere seconds, Luran found himself squatting down several feet away from the other victim — thank the gods they weren’t a mind flayer! Nevertheless, he remained vigilant, for he couldn’t quite discern their features, and carefully prodded the other’s shoulder with the tip of his violin bow.

She steps on the stage, her hair is the pale golden wheat colour as shown in the small painting that sits on his grandfather's desk, but it's cut short and frames her face. Her eyes sparkle gold like his. Her robes are a pale blue with a belt clasped around her waist, a gold bird decorating it, making it clear to any who see her that she is a bard.

She smiles playfully at the crowd and swings the lute from her back, and without further ado begins a lively song that is so different from the previous bards who had mostly stuck to ballads. Presumably they had hoped to impress the hero of Baldur's Gate, but she doesn't seem to mind or care if he's in attendance or not. Maybe she still doesn't know who he is, though he's spent the entire evening with the crowd whispering and elbowing each other and possibly questioning why one of the heroes is visiting a tiny tavern that's miles away from Baldur's Gate.

She sings beautifully, just like his grandfather said, her voice lilting, sweet, bright like a bell and Rhaenor cannot move, cannot breathe, he keeps his eyes focused on her until they burn. He's so scared to move in case she senses who he is and takes flight again, however tempted he is to reach out and grab hold of her.

She sings several songs during the course of the evening and perhaps she begins to pick up on the people whispering about him or feel his eyes upon her, her brow furrows a little when she looks in his direction as though hoping to figure out who he is. Her set comes to an end and Rhaenor is ready, he moves towards the backstage area - if one can call it that, it's little more than some screens set up to form a square.

'Thank you, as ever you have been a wonderful audience, but I must take flight and make my way to another town!' she calls out. He sneaks into the backstage area, a dragonborn bard is trying to tune a fiddle and gives him a strange look, but resumes their work. And then his mother steps down from the stage, a big smile on her lips, but it fades when she catches sight of him and she freezes.

He's spent years of thinking about what he would say, how he would say it, he'd even written letters and little speeches to express everything, but now the only thing he can say is, 'Mother,' desperately, fearfully, as though she will turn into smoke and vanish again.

She sighs, long suffering and puts her lute on her back once more. His heart clenches in fear. Is she pained by him simply being there?

'So you found me?' she asks, giving a small, dismissive huff of laughter.

'Yes,' he breathes.

'Wait... Harlia, are you telling me your son is one of the saviours of Baldur's Gate?' the dragonborn says, their mouth dropping open, eyes wide with excitement.

Rhaenor frowned at the man, the confession had slipped past his lips unthinkingly, but then Curumë had wanted to know why he had relished killing Nere so much when usually he stayed very cool and stoic during the heat of battle.

A wild, bloody rage had clouded his vision until there was nothing left but him plunging his blade over and over and over into the drow sorceror. By the time he came to, panting and sweating and realised how much blood coated the sword, his hands, flecks of it even on his arms and face and lips, he realised he was no better than the contemptous words his grandfather uttered about him.

'It doesn't matter that I'm a paladin. I'm still half drow, still contemptible, still wanting. I must do everything to be more than my blood,' he said it calmly, as though it were the truth of the matter, rather than an opinion.

“Do you, now?” The Half-Elf regarded the man with a contemplative look in his eye. His arms were crossed before his chest, and the smirk on his face had turned upside down. Rhaenor certainly wasn’t the kind of Paladin he had first made him out to be—Rhaenor was a Paladin with a profound fear of being himself.

The warlock scoffed. He had never experienced this type of apprehension, that dread that drove men to abandon their ambitions and children to give up on their dreams. While other people spent their whole lifetime hiding from themselves in order to live in a golden cage, Curumë had always been just one thing, first and foremost: himself.

Curumë sneered at the man.

"That's rich coming from a Paladin of all people," he said, a faint hint of mockery in his voice. "And it’s even richer that you’d choose someone like me to confess this to."

He didn’t know much about the man who had come to share his woes with him, nor did he hold Paladins in high regard. And yet, while the warlock allowed himself to savor the strangeness of their situation for a few moments longer, in the end, he decided to have mercy on the other. With a shrug, he continued:

"But if you insist on hearing my advice… Destiny is what you make of it. Own up to your actions and stop breaking your silly little head over what other people think or say."

Smirking, he leaned in and gave the paladin’s forehead a half-hearted flick.

"Your head is not made for that."

EXTENSIVE SCAR RELATED PROMPTS 

he wasn't the type to fuss about another's scars,   himself covered in a number he preferred not to speak of.  eyes tired from the day spent in the wretched sun,  he hadn't even noticed it at first,   his attention only claimed when he noted the other man appeared in some state of discomfort.  curiosity and caution piqued,   the drow's keen eyes took in what appeared to be some sort of raised slash in an arm,   a starkly noticeable white against greyed skin.