Calrak Nasadra

**Calrak Nasadra** is a male drow cleric of Malyk, from the destroyed House Nasadra of Ched Nasad. Due to the standing and piety of his mother Aunre, Calrak was not sacrificed upon birth, despite his status as a fourth-born son. He was raised from an early age to pursue the arcane arts by his brother Hatch'net, and due to Hatch'net's status as one of the city's Archmages, the young drow's early years were not dominated by the matriarchal oppression most drow males grew up with. During the Silence of Lolth, the actions of a few ambitious drow matrons and an army of duergar mercenaries brought on the fall of Ched Nasad and the destruction of most of its drow houses. Calrak, aided only by the interest of the god of Wild Magic, managed to crawl his way out of the ruins of city before pursuing a life on the surface.

Calrak is a character in the currently ongoing *Heroes of Hillsfar* Duet, taking place in the Moonsea region of Faerûn.

## Description

Calrak is a male drow elf. He stands tall at about 5 feet and 3 inches (1.6 meters) and weighs about 145 pounds (63 kilograms). Calrak has light gray skin, bleached by his exposure to the Glow. His hair is bone-white and kept relatively short, in defiance of traditional male standards. His eyes were once an emerald-green, though after his experience in the Glow one of his eyes took on a paler shade of green. Calrak is covered by burn-like scars, with a majority of the markings being on his upper torso, and some being visible on his exposed neck. These were a result of the fall of Ched Nasad, where Calrak miraculously survived the fall of the city's top most layer down into the other layers, and the pit below it. Among the scars made from the initial fall are burn-like scars from continual exposure to The Glow, the faerzress-suffused residue left behind when all the magic in the City of Shimmering Webs reacted bizarrely to the collapse.

During his adventures as a member of the Heroes of Hillsfar, Calrak often wore a sleeveless dark purple robe, devoid of any spider or weblike imagery. After their adventures earned them enough money, Calrak purchased and began wearing a set of mithral half-plate, which was of surface elven design.

## Personality

Calrak grew up with certain privileges, having been the son of Aunre, Uncrowned Queen of Ched Nasad. Although his education by his older brother Hatch'net taught him to be a dutiful son to his mother and a loyal male to all the females of his House, it neglected to instill that same respect for drow females outside of House Nasadra. If not for his status as the son of Aunre or as the ward of an Archmage, he would have been killed at an early age for his many moments of disrespect towards priestesses not of House Nasadra. For the first two hundred years of his life, his status allowed him to be arrogant, cruel, and cynical, earning him the ire of many. Having picked up his brother's arcane teachings quickly, his Matron Mother tolerated his behavior as she knew he would one day become as accomplished as his brothers.

The fall of Ched Nasad was a turning point in Calrak's life. Not only did Ched Nasad's fall end the rule of his house, but its descent trapped him in a faerzress-suffused pit, in a hellish glowing ruin that used be his home. Exposure to the Glow, as well as a year of struggling to survive in the ruins, changed him. His initial injuries prevented him from casting most of his magic, and the Glow soon sapped his abilities with the Arcane away. Only the interest of Malyk, and the scraps of healing magic granted to him, kept him alive. Rather than believing he was owed respect and attention due his status, Calrak's time in the Glow taught him that he wasn't 'owed' anything- no one was. If he needed or wanted something, he'd take it. Not because of some birthright or status, but because he had the strength and will to do so. In the Glow, there was no rule of law, and he owed no respect to any of the other survivors struggling to survive and escape when he found them, priestess or no.

In the century following his escape from Ched Nasad, Calrak recovered some of his old personality quirks, though he never lost the lessons taught to him in the year stuck in the Glow. Decades after he managed to leave, he has kept to his somewhat anarchic ideals, refusing to follow the laws of the returned Spider Queen or even the laws of the surface, once his travels brought him there. In truth, the only thing that has kept Calrak out of too much trouble was his intellectual decline and the lost of his arcane magic, as he was too practical to throw his life away in hopeless attempts at spreading wild magic and anarchy to places he's traveled to. Only after his meeting Luaffyn and traveling alongside her has he begun to grow in power once more, and the female cleric of Eilistraee is often the only thing keeping him from acting upon the more harmful sides of his personality.

## History

### Early Childhood

Born to the Uncrowned Queen of Ched Nasad and her patron, Calrak Nasadra was destined for a life of privilege- despite his status as a drow male. Shortly after his birth he was passed off first to one of his recently-pregnant cousins to be weaned, and as soon as he was old enough to walk, he was taken from that cousin's arms to be raised as a ward of his older brother Hatch'net, the Archmage of the Dangling Tower. Being raised by males, especially by one with as many privileges as the Archmage, led to Calrak developing many behaviors that would've brought on his execution if he was born to any other House. His first ten years were mostly spent among the Runemasters of the Dangling Tower, occasionally interacting with females of his own family when they came to visit Hatch'net. Though he was educated on the norms of drow society and in the languages of the city in these first ten years, his time as his brother's ward also led him to begin his magical education far earlier than other students of the Dangling Tower.

At the age of sixteen, Calrak experienced his first kill- having been ordered to test his mastery of the *firebolt* cantrip on chitines Hatch'net had gathered from Ched Nasad's marketplace. Though the chitine would've easily defeated the inexperienced mage in a proper and honest fight, that had never been his older brother's intentions. His promising ability, and his willingness to follow instruction, set the young son Aunrae Nasadra on the path of being the youngest official student in the Dangling Tower- though his education there would still take decades.

### Education at the Dangling Tower

Young Calrak might've been a prodigy, but his schooling at the Dangling Tower was by no means a pleasant experience. From the moment he entered the halls of the academy, he was treated far better than other young apprentices. Hatch'net ensured his younger brother had proper tutors, the attention of the academy's masters, and the resources to excel. This blatant favoritism led to resentment growing in the academy among the students Calrak's age, as well as the among some of the masters who saw training the boy as a personal insult thrust upon them by the Archmage. Although no masters dared to defy Hatch'net, more than a handful of them ensured the young student was given the most tedious or dangerous tasks. Other students were secretly encouraged to be hostile to the young mage, with the masters rarely interfering.

Calrak took most of what was said and done in stride, never directly bringing it to the attention of the Archmage. He'd been warned he would not be warmly received, and he wish to appear weak by calling for his elder brother's aid. In time, Calrak even began to believe that the hostility he received was merely a sign of his own superiority- for why else would drow mages much older than he care so much about him? In attempting to make the apprentice feel isolated and weak, the negative attention merely made him arrogant.

In his thirty years of schooling studying among the Runemasters, Calrak made a handful of 'friends'. Most of them were just younger students who believed they could use his success to benefit themselves in the future, but one was the Master Krashos Juzstiirn- an elderly drow from outside of Ched Nasad who saw sponsoring young Calrak as an investment, believing that if he mentored the future archmage, he'd surely see it repaid in the future. With the silent favor of his brother Hatch'net, and the very public mentorhood of Master Jusztiirn, Calrak graduated his from his schooling a young expert in the Abjuration magic primarily taught by the Runemasters. Due to his younger age and the promise he showed, his Blooding, the drow rite of passage into young adulthood, was merged with his Graduation Trial. At the age of forty-six, he was pitted against a captured and freed drow-hunter of Shevarash, emerging from the confrontation injured but victorious.

The newly-graduated Runemaster saw his success as the result of his own hard work and no one else's. Though Calrak did maintain a jovial and friendly correspondence with his elderly mentor, he cared very little for the students he had taken as 'friends' during the final decade of his education. He would even go on to report one of the students to the priesthood for blaspheming the Spider Queen- a charge the young prince of Ched Nasad was never asked to produce evidence for. He had entered the academy sheltered and hopeful, and exited it as a cruel and intelligent abjurer- praising the Spider Queen's name only when it benefited him.

## Gallery

Calrak Nasadra, by @luiyicloudSketch of Calrak, by @luiyicloudCalrak's Token during Heroes of Hillsfar.