Beginnings

[Trazk]

Trazk stood in total darkness, waiting for his turn to come. Darkness was nothing new to Trazk having lived his entire existence within the caverns of the Underdark. He could feel more than see the other candidates standing around him, all waiting for the voice from the darkness to call them forth. The merchant guild they had all come to join was one of the largest in Ched Nasad and therefore membership was select. The questioning to come as well as the trials to follow would be like nothing Trazk had experienced in his life.

“Trazk Al’Dzra” boomed from the darkness calling him forth towards the glowing sphere that appeared in the center of the room. Raising an inquisitive brow Trazk stepped forward and into the sphere, eyes trying in vain to pierce the darkness around him. Remaining as still as possible Trazk decided to face north and concentrate his gaze at eye level. He stood there for what seemed to be hours before he saw something moving in the darkness. The robed figure moved quietly towards him and then entered the sphere with him. The appearance of a female drow in full priestess regalia stunned the young drow and he immediately brought his gaze to the stone floor. He knew from long learned experience not to address her before she spoke with him, thus silence reigned for several moments.

Trazk began to remember things as he gazed upon the floor of the chamber. It is said that when one is at the cusp of death that their life flashes before their eyes. Trazk must have been teetering on that edge as he began to recall his entire life up to that point. From his childhood on the streets of Ched Nasad to his apprenticeship in the alchemy shop his father ran. He saw his father as he liked to remember him, hard at work in the shop. As is often the case in drow society he never knew his mother, having been conceived during a ritual and then born male he was discarded. Having no children of his own due to a wound received at the academy, his father took the crying babe from the streets as his own. Memories flooded over Trazk as he stood in the globe, they steady grey gaze of the priestess upon him and unwavering.

“Hold the tentacle to one side my son.” Trazk moved to comply with his father’s wishes, grasping the flailing tentacle of the creature and holding it tightly. Trazk watched with wonder as his father removed the poison sac and ink sac from the lake dwelling octopi. The tentacle in his hands went limp as the poison sac was removed and his father turned and favored him with a successful smile. “The noble that ordered the venom of Evernight shall be greatly pleased we were able to extract the most difficult component on the first try.” He turned and placed the poison sac in a small jar of preservation liquid and nodded for his son to discard the carcass of the creature. Trazk took careful hold of the tentacles and ensured the sharp beak could not strike within his reach before lifting the creature and taking it into the alley. As he carried the creature Trazk recalled the trip to the pool just outside the city where he and his father had tracked and captured the rare creature. Suddenly a sharp pain blossomed in the back of his head and Trazk remembered no more. Quickly, as if on cue he broke into another memory, again as vivid as the first.

Moving backwards in his mind Trazk recalled the first day he had ever encountered a noble. He was standing in the market and had just picked up a rothe shank to take home. His father had sent him to obtain the meat as a minor ingredient in a salve and the remainder would be dinner. As he reached for his choice, another hand grasped the meat and turned to leave. The shop keeper, instead of demanding payment simply acted as if it didn’t happen. Trazk reached out to grasp the shoulder of the young male drow and felt his hand wrapped in a crushing grip. With a small cry of pain he turned to regard a large male drow who promptly broke his wrist with an audible snap. Trazk’s cry of pain drew the attention of the noble with the meat who pealed out a rather silvery laugh and continued on his way. Trazk cradled his arm to his chest and after a few moments the shop keeper came out of the stall and helped him to his feet. “Why did you not stop him?” It was then in the madness of the marketplace that Trazk was first introduced to the ruling class of Ched Nasad. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about his place in the world, a feeling that he has retained to this day. Just as before his mind blinked and another memory came to the front, his life moving in freeze frame just behind his glazed eyes.

For years he had been going to the marketplace for his father and getting this and that for orders or the shop. He had become known to the merchants there and when he passed through the passages within the market he did so without real fear. He found himself walking down one of the small passages and towards a small building he had never seen before. It had always been there he knew but it had never attracted his attention. As he approached a bundle of rags beside the doorway shifted and he could see the beggar beneath. Trazk tried to sidestep the beggar but was unable to move away from the kobold before its hand grasped his ankle. “Stop that” shouted a strong voice from the doorway. This caused Trazk to pull his gaze from the goblinoid to the figure in the doorway. Trazk knew he wasn’t a noble due to the lack of house symbol but he definitely could have been by carriage. “Come in boy and let’s see what you have brought me.” Trazk looked at the cringing goblinoid and sneered before quickly following the other male into the building. Trazk placed the box from this father on the table before the gentleman and took a step back. He knew what the box contained having helped in its creation in a small way. “Do you know what is in here?” Trazk nodded silently and kept his gaze on the table. “What is it?” Trazk slowly shook his head from side to side to indicate he wasn’t willing to divulge the contents. A quiet laugh escaped the man as he began to open the box to reveal the lead sealed jar inside. “Excellent work as usual, my compliments to your master young apprentice.” The man then placed a small bag of coin on the table and watched as Trazk took it and placed it well within his tunic. He then pulled out another bag and placed it on the table beside the sealed jar. “Do you know where the money lender’s stall is young apprentice?” Trazk had already started for the door and the question turned him around and he nodded once, his heart beating like a drum in his ears. “To double your father’s wages could you deliver that jar there and ensure that its lid no longer was quite so well sealed?” Trazk’s mind reeled again in the fashion becoming all too familiar as another memory ended and began in his chaotic mind.

He sat just outside the very chamber his physical body stood in and waited for his group to be called in. According to what he had over heard the entire first group had not passed the initiation questioning and had met with the guilds enforcers. Word of this reached them through the guards outside the chamber. Judging by the looks on their faces they fully anticipated Trazk’s group to follow suit and for there to be no candidates again this year. Trazk looked around at the fear in the faces of his fellow candidates. Some covered it with laughter, others with false bravado, but all showed it in one way or another. Trazk had no fear of dying at the hands of the guild or any other source. He knew if it was the will of the guild to destroy him that he alone could not abort that fate, the guild was all. Life. Death. Mother. Father.

Trazk awoke and gone was the room and the darkness. The drow priestess had been replaced by the male from his memories. Trazk had never met nor seen this man since that day, but he knew he had killed for him that day. The other candidates were in the room as well and the only other fixture in the room was a table with a lead sealed jar upon it. Trazk’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the jar and its implications on the table but held his tongue and looked to the other candidates. A few had a look of hope on their face and for a moment Trazk wondered if they too had gone into a sphere and seen a priestess. Two others had already begun to congratulate each other, speaking in hushed tones. The man spoke quietly, almost a whisper but all in the room could hear him and his words chilled Trazk to the bone. “Trazk Al’Drza, open the jar and allow all to join those that came before.” Trazk immediately moved forward and started to peel away the opening on the jar.

It had been ten years to the day when Trazk opened the door to the small room the guild provided for him in the guild house. What he found brought back a wash of memory and emotion to the usually stoic drow. In the last ten years he had served the guild as an apprentice, sweeping floors and cleaning the guild house. He had learned the use of more weapons then just the crossbow his father had given him and seen the politics of the guild and city in action. He had watched great houses rise and fall due to politics and social faux paux. Not one of those stuck him as out of the ordinary or caused him to even break stride in the hallways where they were whispered. When he entered his room he stopped in his tracks like a rothe striking a wall. For there on his table, sitting beside his journal and inkwell was a ceramic sealed jar.