Grief

**Summary**

Grief comes from a family of Highreach slum Tieflings but was raised alone by his mother (Discord) after his father (Sly) and two siblings (Cherish & Excellence) were disappeared by a mysterious force of elves. Raised in comfort in the mansion of a wealthy Highreach tiefling, Grief has been (kindly) expelled from the estate with direction to seek a profession. Despite his relatively comfortable upbringing, he is consumed with finding a cure for his mother’s grief, from which she never really recovered. After a few hard months on his own, he has uncovered a mysterious clue about the origin of the Highreach Holocaust and seeks to find

**Tiefling Lore**

Tieflings in Eldoria are generally discriminated against for largely baseless reasons. Because of this, they are frequently excluded from government and positions of authority that they do not demand on the merits of their own strength. For other Tieflings, they often find themselves either attracted to tradesmanship, especially crafting, where they have control over their own fate. Truly wealthy Tieflings generally build their wealth by controlling large portions of unsavory trades such as mercenary work, mining, sewage removal (fullery/offal/waste), and smuggling. Slum Tieflings are superstitious and have two names, a virtue name and a “true” name. They fear that, due to their infernal lineage, if they tell anyone their true name that others may gain power over them.

**Highreach Holocaust**

While Discord was pregnant with Grief, an army of (facially) council affiliated elves swept through the slums of Highreach, arresting any Tiefling on the charge of practicing death magic. Grief's father and two siblings were arrested, his mother was spared because she was pregnant. The next day, a great pyre was erected on the plains below the city and ash rained for miles around. As far as the general public assumes, the Tieflings arrested were executed by burning. In the ashes of the pyre were found a great many bones though no durable items like rings or pendants that could have survived a fire. Survivors of the Highreach Holocaust often maintain a conspiracy theory that the Pyre was cover for a great kidnapping, the purposes for which are pure speculation. Regardless of the truth, neither the Tieflings or the Elves that arrested them have been seen again. All attempts to contact loved ones have proved fruitless.

The Council immediately disavowed the troop of elven soldiers and claimed they had no knowledge or affiliation with this group. They created a special investigative committee to determine the source, cause, and purpose of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the committee was subject to intense political pressure ultimately dissolved itself. Its final public statement decried obstruction and interruption of its mission. The lead investigator, a human by the name of Argus Magnold, was found dead two weeks later.

The remaining Tieflings of Highreach (wealthy Tieflings and the few in the slums who were spared) and some benefactors from other races erected a memorial at the site of the pyre to which Tieflings all around Eldoria make a pilgrimage.

**The Life of Grief**

When Grief was born shortly thereafter, Discord named her child after the emotion that had dominated, and would come to dominate, the rest of her life, Grief. Grief and his mother were granted shelter in the house of a wealthy Tiefling matron, Desdemona Angelfell, a powerful businesswoman of Highreach, where Grief was raised with the two Angelfell children, Daemoria and Trizdal, the heirs to the Angelfell estate. Grief was offered many of the same privileges of Desdemona and Trizdal, including lavish tutelage. His outsider status led to the siblings sometimes behaving in an insular fashion but as they grew older and more jealous of one another, he was often seen as a safe intermediary. Nevertheless, it was always clear that at the age of majority, it was expected that Grief would leave and seek his fortune. Desdemona’s rationale for this was that she had started from nothing, where she had succeeded, perhaps so could he.

After a few difficult months of seeking to ply his trade as a poet and author, Grief found himself drinking at a tavern with a stranger at the bar. After a few drinks, the stranger mentioned that she read a poem by Grief about the holocaust and she sought him out to tell him something. Shortly after the holocaust, she awoke in her home after a night of carousing to discover that she had a jade pendant necklace in her pocket with a Tiefling symbol of protection on it and the name “Sly” hand-etched into the back of it. Notably, the flaxen cord which it was strung upon was not burned in any way.

Armed with renewed hope that his family might still be alive, or at least some semblance of them might be discoverable in the world, Grief seeks knowledge of the past and present to determine the cause of his family's great tragedy, seek justice (if possible), and ward his people against future attacks.