Being an elf in Sembia is far from easy, even when you're raised in the so-called "Cormyrean" city of Sembia, Daerlun. I was raised in what amounts to an elven ghetto of that "fair" city, surrounded by a curious mixture of Sembian and Elven culture. Most of the adults in the compound were artisans of one variety or another... despite their distaste for us, no Sembian I ever met would let their prejudices get in the way of having a source of elven-crafted goods to be sold in the West. Many of the children were taken into their family's crafts, or went to another elven family to be tutored, or both. I'm a pretty fair basket-weaver, still, just as my parents tried to make me, and I can follow my letters in a couple of languages, but the life of a quiet basket-weaver wasn't for me.

I was probably only fifty or so when I first hooked up with the 'Rath (an abbreviation of an elven word, which we liked because of its homophonics with the human word "wrath"). I suppose the humans saw as being an elven gang (if you can imagine it), but we saw ourselves more as an elven protection society. If someone was found to be cheating elves, he wound up getting his lock jimmied and a load of manure shoved inside. If someone was getting other people riled up about elves, we'd booby-trap his house. And may the Seldraine help anyone who we caught actually abusing an elf... there'd never be a killing unless the human killed first, but we'd work hard to ruin them... booby-traps in their houses and businesses, shoplifting and burglary sprees, even the occasional naked hog-tie in the middle of town... anything to remind them that, while they may look down their noses at us, anyone who did more would suffer the consequences. Some of the guys tossed around the idea of trying to unite Daerlun with Cormyr, figuring we'd get a better deal under our western neighbors, but for the most part, we were just elves having fun and trying to keep the People from being cheated.

It was one of those gone a bit wrong that convinced me I might want to take a vacation from fair Sembia for a while. One of the local sweet vendors had taken to giving out candies laced with all sorts of nastiness to elven children... nothing serious, but enough to give them all a stomach ache. Of course, we felt this should be stopped, so we did what was only reasonable: we broke into his shop and moved a beehive into the shop. It was my idea, and I pulled it off with a couple of the mates, one of whom was an apprentice with enough magic to pull off a couple cantrips. Once the beehive was in place, we opened all the cabinets in his place, closed the door between the upstairs apartments and his store, threw a rock at the beehive, and closed the door behind us. We figured we'd destroy all his sweets, give him a couple stings, and close him down for a couple days until he could get someone in to move the bees. What we didn't count on was him being allergic to bee stings. His death wasn't pleasant.

I decided that it was high time I saw more of the world, and less of a gibbet. By this time, my parents realized I wasn't going to ever put much time into weaving baskets, so they weren't too surprised when I told them that I was going to disappear for a while, going wandering. I had quite a few options, but I figured on Cormyr; if the rest of the 'Rath wanted to join up with them, I might as well see what it was like... plus, it was the closest border. I packed up my gear and headed west.

I'm not exactly sure how I wound up in the Vast Swamp. I think it started with deciding to take a short-cut to Arabel, and hopefully live off chickens filched from farmhouses as I went along. Why I decided to go into the big, nasty, evil-looking swamp is a little bit vague, but I think it had something to do with a farmer and a heavy crossbow. I spent about a year skirting the swamp, getting lost, hiding from the various inhabitants of the swamps, getting lost, and foraging for food. Erevan Illesere, of course, had my back, so every time I got into too much trouble, some of the swampers would find me, dry me out, give me a meal and some advice, and send me on my way. Since most of them were human or half-elf, it was rather nice to meet some with their blood who weren't stuck up know-nothings who hated me for the points of my ears, and I became rather fond of the lot of them.

After about a year in the wilderness, I decided I needed a serious infusion of some city life. After taking stock for a while, I decided that Arabel would be an interesting place, seeing as how it had only been freed from a bunch of orcs (something I had not heard about during my time in the swamp) recently, it would have a good combination of city life and flux. Of course, the Trickster wasn't going to let me take a real break... only a couple hours after walking into town, I saw a couple guys in an alley. Any time you see people with Helm and Tyr symbols doing something in an alley and trying not to make a sound (they're so cute when they're trying to be quiet...), you know its going to be fun to watch, so I wandered over and started talking to them. Hopefully, this will prove to be fun...