Felyntree

**Felyntree** (FELL-en-tree) is an Underdark Druid.

## Personality

Felyntree has mild and mostly preferential avoidance of daylight and direct or unshaded light. She tolerates overcast days, but has bouts of vertigo when in mostly clear days, Though she finds nighttime more hospitable, the endless openness is still disquieting. This agoraphobia is manageable when she finds it necessary, though it continually recalls her to subterranean environments where she feels at ease.

Felyntree doesn't identify with either her human or drow heritage to any significant degree, although she acknowledges both. When she and her mother were rescued and brought to the Surface, her discomforts and preferences alienated her from the rest of the human community and eventually drove her back underground. Despite her affinity for the Underdark, she feels no particular kinship with the drow, nor has a desire to 'connect' with them on a societal or cultural level. She views herself as something outside of either world, comprised from both, but also separate.

## History

Born to an Illuskan who had been taken into the Underdark as a captive, Felyntree was raised in the dark. She was called Felyn by the drow, and in the absence of a name given by her mother for a while to follow, it became part of her identity. It was years before the group that had been taken were liberated by adventurers and those who survived the ordeal were returned to the Surface. While the humans rejoiced their freedom, Felyn was extremely uncomfortable on the Surface. She found the light of day time overwhelming, the night sky disorienting, and could be coaxed out only when it was heavily overcast - and even then, the shifting clouds made her uneasy; pockets of open sky were cause for vertigo. She was only ever at some kind of ease on starless, moonless nights where the immensity of the sky was obscured, making for a schedule that didn't mesh well with the rest of her community. She was given the name Aska Neðandóttir, more for the convenience of her Illuskan kin to not have to speak her drow name, than any real effort of inclusion for her benefit.

Her mother did what she could to help her daughter adapt, but was often simply unable to keep track of her. To her guilt, she found that she was happier when Felyn was away and she was not confronted with the reminder of her time below - and so she eventually condoned it and stopped trying to bring her daughter back in to the fold. Felyn, in turn, spent increasing amounts of time away from people as she grew more experienced with the hazards and opportunities of the nearby caves, exploring any subterranean niche she could find.

One of the adventurers involved in the liberation, a ranger and ally of the Emerald Enclave, learned of the situation from her mother when he traveled through the village again, checking for any more raiding activity since. He tracked down and approached Felyn with a choice; either she could continue like this on her own, and become prey to any number of subterranean and Underdark creatures, or he could take her to someone below who she could learn survival and self-sufficiency from. It was an easy choice.

Felyn was taken to a drow hermit called Vuztel, a pseudonym applied to him countless years past after he had discarded his original name. [Training montage]. Felyn added '-tree', the feminine version of name suffix '-tel', to her own name as a link to her mentor when she struck out on her own, becoming Felyntree.