Summary
Test me, Mistress, Kzandr wanted to say. You will not find me wanting. Kzandr discovers his taste for blood, and draws the attention of one of the mistresses of Arach-Tinilith.
Introductory Notes
Content warnings for this chapter: mentions of slavery, incredibly inappropriate teacher/student relationships, power imbalance, and some non-explicit sexual content with dubious consent.
End Notes
Nithrys (briefly mentioned) is my current PC, an aberrant mind sorcerer. He won’t show up much in Chitin, but ideally he’ll get his own multi-chapter fic after I finish this one.
“Shebali” means “non-noble drow” in the Drow fan dictionary.
For this, and for all the Drow words that pop up, I use a combination of this Drow Dictionary PDF (which is one part the glossary from 2e’s Drow of the Underdark, one part fan-created), and Chosen of Eilistraee’s Drow Translator (which includes everything from the PDF). I tend to prefer the canon stuff to the fan-created stuff, but there’s only so much one can do with the vocabulary Ed Greenwood gave us!
House Kenafin is one of the two houses that will later merge and become House Melarn, who become major antagonists in the more recent Drizzt novels. They’re definitely the house bringing the religious fanaticism to the party! Kyrnill is actually a minor canon character, named as the matron some years later.
Vaen’jraa’kah is another PC, a barbarian/ranger. She’ll come up a lot more when we finally get to the actual plot and not just Kzandr backstory.
Ethestra’tana is first priestess of House Vel’bol and… both an NPC and a PC. It’s weird; we’ll get to it! Aksharu, as I mentioned last time, is an NPC, second priestess of the house.
Kzandr is like 5’2”. Perfectly average for a male drow, but I do enjoy the mental image of him looking Kyrnill directly in the boobs.
The reason I describe this chapter as dubcon is because, even though Kzandr is clearly into Kyrnill’s seduction, he’s also very much in a coercive situation (teacher vs. student, age differences, truth spells used without consent), and in a society where he’s not really free to say no. Pretty much anything involving Kyrnill and Kzandr is going to have this tag.
Keptolo is described in Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes as the consort of Lolth. He’s basically the minor god of “keeping your sugar mama happy.”
“Orthae Thalack” is fan-Drow for “holy war.” As far as I know there’s no canonical place where drow go to train as paladins, so I created one.
As far as the mechanics go, Kzandr is an Oath of Conquest paladin. By default, that’s a lawful evil oath, as it’s very much aligned with the devils of the Nine Hells, who hate the chaotic evil demons of the Abyss where Lolth lives. But with DM Bill’s permission, I modified it to be more suitable for a chaotic evil paladin.
I missed writing this bastard. It’s funny to me how I can switch seamlessly between writing Bright Future — which I’d gloss as “a sad drow male learns about love from a manic druid dream girl who doesn’t own a hairbrush” — and this story, which is the Udadrow at their worst. (I literally got back to writing this chapter the day after posting the last chapter of Bright Future).
Anyway! I cherish your feedback, positive or constructive! And your opinion: is Kzandr going to be able to keep Kyrnill happy? What’s his next poor life choice gonna be?
Featured image by Max Muselmann on Unsplash
