Fanfic Journal: “A Prison Made of Chitin”, chapter 2

Read chapter 2 here

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

Fanfic journal: “A Prison Made of Chitin,” chapter 1

Oh no more drow bullshit.

Read “A Prison Made of Chitin,” chapter one, here.

Summary

Kzandr Vel’bol Veldrin is honored to serve as paladin of Lolth, and wants nothing more than to give his life in her service. But when his eldest sister Ethestra’tana is murdered, he finds the carefully-constructed fiction of his life unraveling. Will the mercy of the Spider Queen save him? (Spoiler: it will not).

Introductory Notes

This series — “The Fortunes of House Vel’bol Veldrin” — is the novelization of the ongoing drow intrigue campaign I’m playing in. While the campaign itself is homebrew, it begins in Menzoberranzan in 1325 DR, around the time Drizzt graduated from Melee-Magthere. (Canon characters may occasionally appear). We play members of the 20th house of Menzoberranzan, scheming and murdering their way up the hierarchy of the city.

(“Vel’bol Veldrin” is short for the ancient full name of the House, which basically is “what we do in the shadows” translated into Drow. Oh, we have fun…)

Drow fancier that I am, I had too many character ideas to play just one, so I decided I would play them serially, bringing each character’s arc to a good conclusion. Thus each fic in this series will be primarily the POV of one of my PCs, detailing how they experience the adventure. This work, “A Prison Made of Chitin,” is focused on Kzandr, the elderboy of the house, an Oath of Conquest paladin of Lolth, who in-game I have just managed to kill off in a narratively satisfying way. The first few chapters will be short character history vignettes about Kzandr, and then we’ll go into the adventure itself.

Because (Lolthite) Drow Are Awful ™, this is an evil campaign, and evil shit will happen in this story. In our campaign, we have safety mechanisms in place and have all opted into Some Pretty Dark Shit, though by consensus the darkest shit (torture, sexual violence) is veiled or off-screen. Of course, in this fic, any disturbing content will be tagged appropriately.

Content warnings for this chapter include: child abuse, blood sacrifice, some deep cultural misandry, slavery, and spiders.

Future CW are likely to include: murder (including of children), implied/referenced torture and mutilation, implied/referenced sexual assault, some deeply fucked up and not entirely consensual relationships (because what even is consent in an evil matriarchy??), body horror, transphobia and deadnaming, and probably a bunch of stuff I’m forgetting. I’ll tag them as they come up.

… yes, I do have another campaign novelization going right now, why do you ask? Trust me, I have not forgotten about Mavash and Jorlan and their much, much healthier relationship.

Chapter End Notes

I won’t introduce the PCs yet because you’ve only met Kzandr so far! Aksharu and Zeska are both NPCs — respectively, the second priestess and the Matron Mother.

Darthiir are surface elves.

Your comments are priceless, and constructive criticism is welcome ❤️


The featured image is art of Kzandr I commissioned from iisjah/Natalia Komuniewska